Crafty Marketing: or My Weekend of Marketing Madness

Ok so most Etsy Sellers have heard that the secrets to success are off Etsy marketing. Well this is a daunting task... I know for me I would personally rather stick a knife in my eye than spend a whole lot of time marketing my Shop, when I could be spending that time creating.
So I have taken a few steps into the Marketing Wilderness. I will chronicle some of that journey for you now!

Step one... I'm one of those troublesome etsy shops now where the username doesn't match the shop name DOH! I've kinda started to establish my shop. I kinda like where it's going and the awesome feedback. So I want to keep it at least temporarily. So I worked out a way to standardize all of my marketing materials. I developed my SSC logo last year and use it extensively for my Graphic businness... A strong imagery is important to branding. So I wanted to use the cool logo (see below as to how I created that), and use it as the distinguishing and recognizable brand piece. I love the idea of textures and I didn't want to just throw the logo on a background, so I put it in a frame threw up a very nice textured linen background and used a classy but modern font called advent (found for free on the internets) and Voila. Branding Material. Next I figured lets carry this imagery onto a business card. Opened up photoshop designed a custom business card using all of the afore mentioned elements, went on over to Vista Print and ordered up some cards.
Next I needed to address the website. I wanted a site that was fun, decorative and me, and yet with a simple interface. So I WIPED my old SSC site that was graphic related all flashy and illustratored out and started redesigning the site. I still need to add my graphic business to the site which will come in a few weeks when I have some down time. BUT the site presents all of the information on the Craft business and how it works and is handled. I hope to be adding more content and more detailed information on the individual products as well, BUT for now it serves it's purpose well. I highly recommend Office Live... It has GREAT features once you get familiar with how the system works... I've tried both ways and I HIGHLY recommend not using the third party design tools... I know right??? A graphic designer says to use the crappy templates... Ha Ha I took a basic element and with a bit of java and html turned it into something sweet in the SSC style! It worked out well... You just need to figure out how to trick out the Office Live templates and pretty much anything is possible... feel free to email me and I will tell you how I did everything including hooking the site up to analytics!!!
Next step was hey lets do some marketing... So I had this facebook fan page just kinda hanging out... my first step was to locate a facebook ad promo code (yes they have them and you should search for them right now) I found a code for 50 dollars in free advertising... Awesome I got my page some fans and a nice base to start with.
Next I figured generating some hits on my webpage might be kinda awesome as well, so remember earlier when I told you that I ordered business cards from Vista Print??? They have a promotion when you order you can chose to recieve a promo code for Google Ad words... which was for 50 dollars as well. I signed up all my info and ran an ad... The Ad words credit got eaten up in about 5 hours you must watch this one to make sure it doesn't go over. But I got some traffic to the site AND the Etsy Shop... Because the shop tab on my website redirects directly to my Etsy shop. Eventually I plan on having a shopping cart on my site, but for now I'm redirecting anyone interested in seeing products directly to the shop from my website. Now I can market the crap out of the website which is a url I own and I can manage traffic, tweak things as I see fit and I can control my SEO. In the Etsy forum someone once said I have my own URL that I market with a redirect to my site and I don't have to worry about what Etsy is doing cause I don't market my shop I market my website. This sounded like good advice and it makes sense! So, so far so good. Feel free to take any of these tips and run like a crazy person with them!

Hello Again!

Ok so it's been a hot minute... so I apologize for that... But I had lots of stuff going on! So lets update from where we left off... Sunflower Express the Show seems to be headed towards hiatus-ville for the indefinite future and I have decided that instead of letting all that hardwork go to waste, I would keep the shop open and EVENTUALLY (as in when it seems appropriate) merge Sunflower Express with ShesSoCrafty on Etsy. For now the shops are seperate and doing well.

I have just completed the first straight etsy wholesale order and it went very well!

I will say this much... Think about your pricing hard core before you dive into wholesaling make sure the money is worth the time and effort, and remember unless you are a seller who has gobs of stuff hanging out all the time to just choose from, you will be making stuff and that takes away from time you could be making other stuff like for your shop or for shows. Pricing is key and it keeps you motivated if you know that you are getting paid decently for your products.

I posted in the forums on Etsy as to how to handle an on Etsy Wholesale order as they were foreign to me. I got lots of helpful information but I think the decision on how you handle things is completely up to you. For this first order I chose to go thru E. If this ends up being a return order I will definitely then consider going off Etsy and conducting this my self thru invoicing. Some people are very leary of being scammed, I on the other hand like to be a little bit flexible in determining my terms depending on the order and the customer. All in all this was a delightfully pleasant experience. I hope it leads to loads more!

Back to the blog front.... I will be trying to get myself back into a normal grove with this.... I will also be trying to migrate my SE handmade content over here as well so I don't loose those posts either! So regardless if you are a reader thanks for stopping by and I look forward to lots of crafty bits in the future!

Cheers

L