Marketing Your Crafts - Part 3

Online Marketing

~ Create a blog at one of the blogger websites. Do your best to update and blog with new articles and content a few times a week at the very least.If you are able to blog daily....that is best!

~Exchange links with other similar blogs

~Add a mailing list sign up form on your blog

~Offer tutorials, tips and articles of interest on your website.These can also be mentioned in a blog.

~Have a "Post the Most" contest on your message board.

~Offer a freebie with every order on your website. Everyone LOVES something that is FREE.

Offline Marketing

You may be wondering why we would suggest offline marketing if your business is online. Offline marketing can actually bring in additional traffic to your website and therefore more potential customers.

Here are some creative ways to market your website offline:

~Include a paper flyer or business card with your information and website URL in all your outgoing snail mail and packages.

~Exchange paper flyers or business cards with other online business's and include them also in all your outgoing mail and packages. They in return add yours in with their outgoing mail and packages.

~Place flyers with your information and URL on bulletin boards at grocery stores, doctors offices, daycare centers,schools, church, local business's. If you do crafts make sure and have a bunch at craft shows to put in every bag, place them in your booth in an antique mall. If you have a garage sale include a flyer in every bag when people make a purchase.

~leave your business card on the table at a resturant with your tip

~Place white cling lettering with your URL to the back of your car.

~Ask neighbors,friends and especially family if they'd be willing to have a sign with your website logo and URL placed in the window of their cars as well. They might even allow the cling lettering!

~Contact your Chamber of Commerce and see if your business can be listed in the Welcome Wagon mailings.

~Place a listing in your yellow pages or local business directory

~Have an open house! Place an ad in your local paper for a time on a weekend or evening and allow customers to visit your home to view and purchase your crafts. Have a snack available and also a registry book where they can write their name, address, phone number and email so you can contact them in the future with notices of upcoming home shows, craft shows, online sales etc.

~write related articles and submit them to several submission websites. This is a great way to gain exposure for your site and bring additional traffic to it.

Marketing your crafts is an ongoing endeavor. When you have a website where you sell your wares, especially a new one it can easily get lost amongst all the others on the Web.Your website is a grain of sand on a very large beach.......you have to do everything in your power to make your website stand out from the others.

Its important to make marketing your website a weekly priority.Just do a few of the above tasks each week so your not overwhelmed and so you still have time to do your creating. If you stick with it, in time you'll find you will have built up a customer base and some nice traffic to your website. All new business's online or off take time to grow. Be patient! Its not unusual for it to take a year or more to really find yourself established. Even then....you have to keep working hard at it.

Kelle Arvay of Pattermart

Tracy(Cedara)Dunn of Thru The Attic Door