Teacup Tuesday, with a little help from the press

Press, Marketing & Advertising. 
Bleurgh!!! Always a dreaded subject for most makers. 
Nobody likes to tell the world they are great and what they make is even better!
Ok, there are the odd few, but generally it is rare.

As a company we don't tend to advertise. We have in the past and it hasn't been fruitful so we stopped. 

Instead we wrote to the journalists, papers and magazine directly to tell them of our special things. At this time of year if you are a maker it's a good idea to do the same. A small editorial or a little mention can make a flurry of sales and is great to let people know who you are and where to find your things.

So, Do a little homework. Find the magazines and newspapers that you feel your clients read. Make a list of those who write the articles and do the photo shoots you think your items would sit perfectly with. Write a press release explaining why your product is special and send it directly to the people who write the articles. We have been successful with this many times. Our products have been included in ST kids (The Telegraph) and Selvedge magazine, The Telegraph Christmas gift guide to name a few.

Remember magazine (long leads) plan and prepare their issues well in advance. In fact Christmas planning is in July! So if you plan to send a press release keep it to the short leads (short lead Magazines and Newspapers).

Have a try.

You never know when it may be a success. Look what luck we've had with our Christmas Press releases. 

Good Luck!

unikgifts

Guildford Insider- A lovely mention in the article
for the Godalming Independent Market
that we participate in.

The Telegraph- Christmas Gift Guide
Our stocking filler paper animals

Selvedge- issue 43
Christmas Gifts you'll Love
Our kantha stitched baby blankets

Familesse online magazine
Our wooden pull along toy.

Mother and Baby Magazine
Our paper Christmas creatures

Monday Maker- Marketing & promotion

It’s week three of our making blogs. Our top tips to making a product to sell.

We have looked at inspirations, making a product, selling methods & websites alongside photographing your pieces. Now we look at marketing your products and promoting them to increase a sales.

Marketing & Promotion means what can you do to help sell your product? 
There are endless ways and means to do this. There are many paid marketing websites out there but here I recommend all those that are free. If you are starting out, counting the pennies is important.

If we assume you are selling your wares on our own website or a  selling site like Etsy or Folksy, 

How do I encourage people to come and see my wares on the sites and places I am selling them?? 

How do I get word out that I am selling something lovely?

Word of mouth

Firstly this is probably the best form of promotion. Hard I know to do for a maker. 
Not many people like to tell the world they have made the best thing since sliced bread. There are easy ways to do this in a hidden way.
The about.me website is a site where you can make a little home page about yourself, who you are, what you do with an image to support your page. Like a little C.V. You can add links to your website, facebook, twitter and Linkedin pages if you have one. As well as a touch button for people to directly email you.

Have simple business cards made and have them in your pocket always with photos of what you make.  There are many reasonable sites doing cheap deals. Look at Vista print and moo.com. 
Moo.com often run free cards through the about.me website.
You never know when you may get chatting to someone who likes what you do, and would like to contact you at a later date. My Mum and sisters are great advocates of my work and have talked about what I do so much so I have had sales through their friends. 
Word of mouth doesn't just mean your own words. 

Put up flyer's

Putting up flyer's in local places your clients may be. For u-ni-k this is easy. New Mums and Dads regularly go to coffee shops. As do Grannies and Grandads, Aunts and Uncles etc etc. 

The charity N CT generally tend to do seasonal second hand sales. At these they give away flyer bags promoting local businesses. . At a small charge you can have your flyer's added to these bags. 

If your company is child friendly like ours, put flyer's up in local sure start centres , drop flyer's at nurseries if they allow and ask schools if your flyer's can be added to book bags. 
Make your flyer's informative, simple to read and aesthetic. 

“Best of” sites

If your local area has a “best of” site add your little company to it. Now days many people are looking to help independents and will always try and “shoplocal” and support small & micro businesses rather than put money into large corporate rich companies.

Social Media

-Facebook. Look at setting up a company page on Facebook, Upload good quality photos into albums that show your pieces off to the best you can. Simple is always best. In the “about you” section write some simple words to explain a little about you and what your product is. If you have multiple products talk about the “ethos” of your product. Have a way that clients can contact you by phone, contact form or email. Add status updates frequently that are friendly and informative and complement other small companies. Normally that will encourage many to look at your page and “like” it.

-Instagram. Although u-ni-k doesn’t use this to the best of our ability I know companies that use Instagram to promote and run competitions on instagram. A photo speaks 1000 words!

-Twitter- a simple way to “follow” like minded businesses. To chat, liaise and # with key words that showcase or “class” your product to get new followers who may spread the word or be potential clients. Words like “handmade” “gift” “baby” etc are good for a u-ni-k gifts. Through networking on twitter we have managed to get u-ni-k included into Joanne Dewberry's newly published book & won an WOW award from Jacqueline Gold.

Linked in is great too. Look at setting up a business page to support your little company and link it to yourself. Ensure you make is appealing with regular updates to make people come and look. Old colleagues love to be nosey at what you are doing.

Grow your clients list

When you have a sale, ask permission and keep the clients  contact information. It will come in handy with marketing tools like Mail chimp. (See below)

Crafting sites

Ukhandmade is my favourite. 

It’s a place to share your thoughts by suggesting your written blogs to be used on their site. A place to look for local craft markets to participate in. You can ask for your company website to be listed. They are frequently looking for companies that have products suitable for a certain editorial planned to be included. So keep your eyes and ears pealed. They even have seasonal showcase walls where makers selected images shown for a  set time for a small charge.

Craft Markets

UKhandmade has a written article on this that explains all! 
An very important and interesting read. Click here

Networking

I am part of three local networking groups. A place for like minded businesses to welcome new people and their companies, promote your own and ask for help. A place to find a local printer, source a perfect ingredient, share a promotion and find like minded friends. I have found once you use regularly, by helping and sharing other businesses, people then recommend you too. 
Share the love and people will love back.

Mail chimp

This is a fabulous free tool that I think every company should use. Mail chimp provides a news letter type tool. You can maintain, add, edit your mailing list too. You can design a newsletter to send with news on new products, seasonal suggestions, offers and sales etc with links to your website. Mail chimp kindly accesses the “opens” and use of links on the newsletter and cleanses your client list for you. A perfect tool in my mind.

Blogs

If you have a lot to say (Sarah & I do) write about it. Get a little following, link it on your website too so it's constantly new and spreading the word.

Go right to the point

Do a little homework. Find the magazines and newspapers that you feel your clients read. Make a list of those who write the articles and do the photo shoots you think your items would sit perfectly with. Write a press release explaining why your product is special and send it directly to the people who write the articles. We have been successful with this many times. Our products have been included in ST kids (The Telegraph) and Selvedge magazine, The Telegraph Christmas gift guide to name a few.

u-ni-k baby blankets featured in Selvedge

Paper animals- Casa Facile

Generally-

-Always have in mind who you aim to sell your product to. Don't put up flyer's for a product directed at the elderly in a Sure start centre!

-Be friendly and open and always remember you are representing your product.

-Always use edited and simple text.

-Always use a simple, naturally lighted, beautiful image that shows the product off to it's best ability. 

-In our opinion, word of mouth is the best way to promote your wares if done correctly. 

unikgifts

Monday maker... Selling your wares

So you read Anna's blog last week and you've mastered your craft & have produced something that can be sold to the discerning general public?

So now what? Well you are only 20% of the way there, now you have to do all the preparation that goes into selling your product.

Firstly, you have to think about the channels you are going to sell your product through - B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer). We're B2C (at the moment, we are looking in to providing some of our gifts to local businesses to sell). The nature of our handmade pieces mean that we are usually unable to fulfil the large bulk order nature of B2B.

Once you've decided which channel, or in fact indeed both channels, you are going to concentrate on it's time to do your market research. Find out if anyone else is doing something similar, talk to them (most people are happy to provide you some advice), talk to people you know and have them talk to people about what they need / are looking for in a product like yours.

Firstly - don't always choose people you know! Ask a group of people who already meet at regular times to provide honest feedback on your products - church groups, WI, Mummies coffee meetings / Toddler groups. Make it as simple as possible for them to provide you feedback - a questionnaire (provide pens / pencils with your details on just incase they 'walk away' with them). Make yourself stand away from them so you don't jump in to defend any negative comments - take on board all feedback and use it to fine tune your product.

Secondly - USE the data! Don't think 'well they obviously didn't get it, my friends tell me it's great...'. Analyse the data and put it into practice. This will help you fine tune your product to sell.

Thirdly - Don't forget to use online resources, it's a global market these days and people on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other networks are all sat out there waiting to give you their opinion!

Use your market research data to guide you towards your next step, preparing to sell.

Before you even start to think about your website, market stall, shop(?) you need selling materials - images, text (sometimes called 'copy'), costs (so that you can work out prices), and a basic start on logistics: a budget, an idea of postage costs - including any wrapping, insurance, a company identity (your 'brand' should reflect your values as well as your product), a company number, all in all the basics of starting any company.

We've already covered taking decent product photographs, decent copy and insurance in our Teacup Tuesday blogs - for more information just browse through the links on the right!

Like Anna's blog last week - if you're not starting your project in a 'clean kitchen' then you are going to struggle later on. Have all your images, copy, prices, logos and selling thoughts clearly laid out before starting up your selling medium.

Market / craft stalls - Invest in a table (they're not always provided and you don't want to be caught short), lay it out with your products before the event. Play with different layouts - ask your friends / neighbours / focus group what they think of your display. Make sure you have marketing materials to hand for the event, we usually run out of business cards / bookmarks / flyers - sometimes people don't buy on the day but they take away our marketing materials to share with others and to have to hand when they are next at a computer.

Websites - You don't have to create a website from scratch (OK we did but I'm a nerd). There are plenty of websites out there that cater for crafters. If you don't want your own .com or .co.uk web address then consider www.folksy.com or www.etsy.com - these online market places cater for the small maker market. They are also well known so some of the hard task of drawing people to your website is done for you. The downside being that there are probably 100 people doing something similar and it's your job to make your product stand out! Otherwise, take the plunge and make your own website. Again, do your market research first and choose the right template / service provider for you. It's hard to purchase the correct template and then find out that they don't provide you the flexibility for your brand's colour scheme or the ability to add a shopping cart!

So once you've done your research, built your selling platform & prepared yourself for launch - it's crunch time. You launch but you need to let everyone know all about your company & it's fantastic new product. We use social & national media for this, we post up flyers around the county, we hand out business cards when we are out and about, we talk about what we do when we're out, we live, eat and breathe our company.

Start a Facebook page, get a Twitter account & follow people, use Instagram, contact your local newspaper / radio station and tell them YOUR story, sign up for the free trials of PR & media agencies. WORK IT! Start a email list & build it - use LinkedIn, Pinterest, and craft forums. Interact with people, let them know who you are and what you do.

The wider you cast your net the more people will know about you & potentially you may see more sales because of your hard work.

Wordless Wednesday

I'm a bit late with the blog... been busy posting up our new flyers!

www.unikgifts.co.uk

Marketing - a necessary evil?

I'd like to point out that the views in this post are entirely my own and do not represent that of u-ni-k gifts or Anna Matthews. So all grief to sarah@unikgifts.co.uk, OK?!

Marketing, it's just adding a strap line and colouring in big words making sure to stay in the lines right?! I have a hate-hate relationship with Marketing. A hang up from my project management days, as we'd keep the Marketing team cc'd in on all our project updates, invite them to join in our new system training sessions, and organise regular meet ups to walk them through the new functionality so that they would be informed and knowledgeable come the roll out and accompanying marketing campaign. So invariably they would ignore the updates, send 'underlings' to the training and meet up sessions (these 'underlings' would sit there bored drawing doodles on a pad thinking IT were sad boring geeks who weren't very important) and then go off and make up their marketing campaign based upon what their friends in 'sales' told them.

Not surprisingly this would end with me, the responsible 'buck stops here' project manager seeing something in the national press that proudly proclaimed my new project had warped into something I didn't recognise and with additional bells and whistles. So when the big boss or 'project sponsor' asked to see and play with the bells and whistles, I was in the enviable position of letting aforementioned boss know that there were not any bells and whistles. I can't count the times I've had the following conversation:

Big Boss: "Why aren't there any bells and whistles, it says here there are some bells and whistles? What release are the bells and whistles in?"

Overworked Project Manager: "We've not planned to have any bells and whistles, they weren't in the spec (you signed off mumble mumble). No one told us they wanted bells and whistles, so there isn't any. Look at all this other great stuff it does, look it will clean your house and cook you a 3 course meal..."

Big Boss:"I don't care about that stuff, I want bells and whistles."

Overworked Project Manager:"OK, we can deliver bells and whistles, just let me go away and do some due diligence to let you know how long it's going to take and how much is going to cost"

Big Boss:"I don't want to hear about that, use your current budget and deliver it next week".

And you wonder why nothing ever works when a big company rolls something out and the call centre staff say to you the customer. "Our computers are down again. It's our IT department, they're rubbish". No they're not, it's all Marketing's fault.

So imagine my horror when Anna and I started a conversation about advertising. Should we? What publication would we choose? How much are we willing to spend? Do we hire a professional to help us?
My initial thoughts of - What with colouring in and staying in within the lines and making up stuff as you go along?! Pay money for that? come from the old me, and I'm trying very hard to be a mumpreneur - a new me.

Anna is being very patient with me, she knows that I'll eventually come round and we'll have a lovely tasteful advert letting our 'target audience' know that we are there as the best source of children's gifts. I may even link to it from the website to let you all see how I've grown into a mumpreneur!

In the meantime, we can be found on UK Handmade's directory, Business Mum's Directory, Surrey Business Mum's Directory etc.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!