Marketing 101

The very wise Neil of WoodJewellery said something today that made me smile: "There are a great many way to sell. the hardest and least successful one is to sit and wait for sales to come to you."


Necklace from WoodJewellery

So true!

Right now on folksy there are a gazillion forum threads from sellers trying to work out how to improve their sales.

Clare of ClaresCreations
put me on the spot and asked me: "where else do you advertise?"


Clare's fishbowl

Here's an edited version of my answer:

Clare, I don’t often “advertise” in a direct way, but I do spread myself about!

I chat on twitter and facebook, I have a website (address is on my business cards) which is pretty much just an address book so people can find my various links and I blog several times a week. Oh and I hang around etsy and folksy forums.

Right now I’ve sent a couple of meerkats around the world visiting members of my etsy team, and each one is blogging about it and reporting back to their facebook page



baby meerkat from folksy
baby meerkat from etsy

This in turn has given me something to tell the local paper, so they featured me a couple of times and put a video interview on the paper website.

I've even been interviewed on the radio!

I go to local twitter network meetings (next lunch is on Friday!)

I’ve entered harry hill’s K factor knitting competition

So – you might not call much of that “advertising” but in my opinion it all works much much better than going on twitter and saying “I’ve made this, buy it!”

I'm currently working on a blog post about "real" advertising, in particular Project Wonderful (you may have noticed the two advertising slots that have appeared on the right >>>) but it seemed appropriate, in the light of today's threads, to address these other methods today. Please leave a comment with other forms of advertising you find useful.

Farm shop time?

I'm still working on being brave enough to go to the local organic farm (just down the lane from me) and ask them for space to sell my toys. They have diversified into butchery and sell their own meat, sausages (which are absolutely scrummy) and even make cheese, and do have a few other complementary items for sale such as local honey.

So...I've been building a stock of farm-compatible knits. I didn't want to be in the position of them saying yes, and me replying "Ok, I'll just go and knit something!"



So - pigs, cows, sheep, dogs, cats ... and for the non-Kent-dwellers, those little cylindrical things are Oast houses.

Some of the animals featured in the photos of my scarecrow (listed yesterday) cos it seemed apt! Maybe I'll ask if they'd like one of him.



Now I just have to work out what to go for - consignment or wholesale?
There was a really useful thread on Etsy about this dilemma, lots of great info especially from CricketsCreations.

So many helpful folk on Etsy, aren't there? I thought it would be a good idea to put a different range in the farmshop (if indeed they'll take anything at all!) then there won't be a pricing issue. I can pop a card in with each toy so people can check out my other stuff if they want to.

*fingers crossed!*