Marketing Smarter Not Harder

copyright by Rena Klingenberg

If you sell your art or crafts at shows, fairs, and festivals, you can increase your profits by focusing on selling at juried shows. Although juried shows are harder to be accepted into, and the booth fees and other expenses tend to be higher, they are often much more profitable for artists than the shows that are less expensive and easier to get into.

Some juried shows have strict requirements about how your booth is set up and what you can sell – which, although this can feel limiting, can also help “keep the riff-raff out” and maintain a high quality show.

The appeal of being in juried shows is that they are generally run well, with a good mix of higher caliber vendors, and they tend to attract a larger crowd – often bigger-spending shoppers who like to purchase quality handcrafted items. (Our favorite kind of customers!) Read more…

A Quickstart Guide to Defining Your Business Identity as a Jewelry Artist

by Christine Gierer of The Jewelry Sweet Spot

To own a business that will stand the test of time, you need to create a business identity for yourself. Figure out who you are, what you stand for, and how you will portray yourself and your business, and you will have a much stronger foundation for your business to stand on.

There are a lot of things to think about when you consider turning your jewelry-making hobby into a business. I know from experience that the enthusiasm you feel at the beginning can oftentimes overshadow or even obliterate all thoughts about planning and making rational, business-oriented decisions.

If you are like me, you probably want to just jump in and create willy-nilly, buy far too many supplies (thinking you will figure out exactly what to use them for later) and hope for the best. I don’t want to quash your enthusiasm, but pre-planning is really key to creating a sustainable business and not blowing all your cash.

The following exercise is a great one for figuring out who you want to be as a jewelry designer and how you want to position your business in the marketplace. Your answers will be an invaluable resource for you when you write up (or rewrite) your Artist’s Bio and your Business Plan (yes, you really shoud have a business plan, even as an artist). Read more…

[By: Tom Kulzer]

Your web business probably gets product inquiries from potential customers around the globe. Inquiries come via e-mail and your web site, and you try to send information to each hot prospect as quickly as you can. You know that you can drastically increase the likelihood of making a sale by satisfying each person’s need for information quickly!

But, after you’ve delivered that first bit of information to your prospect, do you send him any further information?

If you are like most Internet marketers, you don’t.

When you don’t follow that initial message with additional information later on, you let a valuable prospect slip from your grasp! This is a potential customer who may have been very interested in your products, but who lost your contact information, or was too busy to make a purchase when your first message reached him. Often, a prospect will purposely put off making a purchase, to see if you find him important enough to follow up with later. When he doesn’t receive a follow up message from you, he will take his business elsewhere.

Are you losing profits due to inconsistent and ineffective follow up?

Following up with leads is more than just a process – it’s an art. In order to be effective, you need to design a follow up system, and stick to it, EVERY DAY! If you don’t follow up with your prospects consistently, INDIVIDUALLY, and in a timely fashion, then you might as well forget the whole follow up process.

Consistent follow up gets results!

When I first started marketing and following up with prospects, I used a follow up method that I now call the “List Technique.” I had a large database containing the names and e-mail addresses of Read more…