First Step Marketing

There are two primary ways of promoting yourself and your product. (Remember, you and your product, should become synonymous. That not only do people know the products or the service but they know them as being yours.)

The two ways are, the promoting you do yourself, and the promoting other people do for you by word of mouth.

• If you are selling finished articles, your best vehicle for advertising is your merchandise – how you package and present it and then how you display it.
• If you are short on ideas, or not sure how to display your work, go to art galleries, look through art books and display books in book shops, look at the latest magazines, particularly interior design magazines and of course explore other shops – especially in up-market areas and shopping centres. They are most likely to be right up there with the latest fashions. Inspiration is all around you – all you need to do is to open yourself up to it.

• If you’re starting to teach head for the shops that stock your raw materials, be they art, craft, needlework, paint, fabric or haberdashery supply shops. (Public libraries are also quite good.) Ask if you can put up a poster or leave business cards. Most of these shops have a notice board for exactly this purpose. As a customer, I have often found exactly the service I was needing in this way.

Pop in regularly to check whether you need to replenish your supply of business cards, or to see that your poster still looks good. Take responsibility for your own business. Don’t expect or hope that someone else will do it for you. Nurture it.

Your posters should be no bigger than an A4, in fact A5 would probably be better. You can design the poster yourself using a computer or letraset. Have them laminated, because then they’ll last longer. Most shops that do photocopying will do laminating as well.

Avoid hand written posters – unless you can do calligraphy – they always look horribly home made.

It’s important to create a professional impression. A great deal of marketing is in the hidden messages that you’re putting out all the time, which determine how your business is perceived by others. Treat your business with care and people will take you seriously.

Offer to give demonstrations at these supply shops, or shops complementary to your craft. For example, if you paint porcelain, ask gift shops, or florists or plant nurseries if you can set up a painting demonstration outside their shops. For this, you’ll need a couple of tables: one for working on and one for displaying your work. The important thing is to create awareness of what you do and how you do it.

From awareness comes interest and then involvement. Capture someone’s imagination and you have a customer for a long, long time.

Ask shopping centres for their year’s programme of promotional events. Possibly you could link in with one of them.

Offer to give free demonstrations for your church or for community clubs like Rotary or Lions.

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