EB Friday Hotlist: Marketing Tips and Tricks

First, I apologize for posting this late but I had a very important date with my elderly grandparents to play Scrabble and the game ran later than usual. :)

Anyway, this week's Hotlist has some tips on marketing that you may find useful for your shop.

I came across a great article this week at At a Glance Graphics' blog giving "9 Marketing Tips from a Six-Year-Old's Lemonade Stand."  While the post is written with graphics designers in mind (for obvious reasons), you can still take away a lot of great points from it regardless of what it is you're selling. The seventh tip from the blog is "Build Anticipation."  Instead of launching your new product line right away without telling anyone, let people know it's coming and have them excited and waiting to see what you will have to offer.  I know that worked on me with The Tiny Fig and the launch of her new website.  She showed us screenshots and dropped little tidbits of information in her newsletter prior to the launch of the site.  I found myself looking forward to seeing what the new layout would look like and what new features the site would have to offer.  So, when the time came, I ended up browsing her site - the work she did to build anticipation resulted in traffic.  Find out the rest of the nine marketing tips by reading the article directly at At a Glance Graphics.

There was an interesting post on the Etsy forums this week (and no I'm not referring to the debacle that is the new suggested shops feature and the related backlash).  Swan Mountain Soaps wrote a post entitled "It's not a job interview.  It's a first date." in reference to shop announcements.  Christina suggests that the shop announcement is too often used as a resume for artisans to list all of their credentials, everywhere they've been featured, etc.  It's also too often used as a place for artisans to say very generic, non-exciting things like that they make "special, one of a kind items.  Just about everybody here does...Cut to the chase. Get some chemistry going. There are a lot of fish in this big Estian sea, and if you don't set the hook right away, I'm going after someone else's bait."  Her interesting take on shop announcements is nothing if not a great reminder to go back and refresh what you've written.  Does your announcement tell me why I should buy from you over the potentially dozens or hundreds of other people doing your craft?  Do I feel your excitement and passion?  If not, maybe you should rethink the way it's written.  Food for thought!

Starglow Studio is another Etsian with popular forum threads, a series of which were featured in the Etsy Success email a little over a week ago.  Her 7 pieces of advice relate to common mistakes that artisans make with their Facebook "like" (fan) pages.  Mistake #4 is treating all fans equally.  As new fans join your page, Lori Lee suggests you repeat some of your older, valuable content for their benefit.  "Now I'm not referring to your "ads & promotions", I'm talking about the meaty stuff, the interesting tidbits about you, what you do, the theme of your page and those questions you ask fans to help get them engaged. (uh, you don't have posts like those? Hmmm, I better make that my next MISTAKE article.) BUT don't just copy and paste - rewrite what you repeat so that even older Fans will think its new!"  Getting fans engaged and interacting on my Facebook page is something I'm still working on and this particular tip is great advice for getting new fans involved.  Check out all of the Facebook Mistake threads here in the Etsy forums.


Well those are the marketing tips for this week which can be applied to your shop, advertising outside of your shop, and social networking.  Consider what advice might work for you as you work on improving your Etsy, ArtFire, Zibbet, or other shop.


Do you have a marketing tip to share?  Be sure to post it in the comments!


Until next time,
Elle