Lessons

Lesson Info

Find New Customers For Your Etsy Shop

So let's talk really quickly about finding new customers for your Etsy shop. I felt like we could close here with a little marketing, a little taste of what we're going to get into tomorrow. Creatives often cringe at the idea of targeted marketing. Nobody wants to cold sell what we've made with a warm heart. That's what I know for sure, that's what I know when I was starting out and I was gonna have to sell and nobody wants to feel salesy, they just cringe at the word marketing, but I love it. Marketing simply means finding customers that desire your work. What could be better than finding customers that desire your work and there's absolutely nothing cringe worthy about that. Introducing yourself to people who are interested in your product serves you both in the best wholesome way possible and there's nothing cringe worthy about running a successful business but for some reason and around Etsy there's a lot of cringe going on, there's a lot of judging going on, there's a lot of criti...

cism going on about selling it. But you know I think that's just because it's an overcrowded marketplace, we get a little nervous when we see Etsy shops thriving, there's a little competitiveness going on and we just need to overcome all that and we need to do you and do your business and give it justice and focus just on you. There's going to be nothing cringe worthy about marketing to your customers. I can hardly wait to show you how I do it, there's nothing cringe worthy about it, in fact it's very authentic and it's very, it makes me feel good, and the way that I market a shop has my customers if I send a marketing email has my customers replying back, "Thank you so much". And so I'm not, there's certainly nothing cringe worthy about pleasing your customers, making them happy and making them excited to buy and there's nothing cringe worthy about generating business for your business and for your income. So without further ado, here are three things that you can do today to start finding new customers for your Etsy shop. The number one thing is to create an offer. There's a language that goes on and it's like the language is when I field a lot of questions, it's how do I get traffic? How do I get more sales? Nobody's getting anything online, you earn traffic, you make sales, you put in the work. So the thing about online business is that offers are everywhere and I don't know if you've noticed but there's this new thing going around with content upgrades. That means if you read my blog post, you'll do a content upgrade and you'll get a file and it's a single page file or something like that. So content upgrades are the next thing. It's where online marketing and online business is evolving to. But what it results in is a lot of clutter because sometimes you're getting something from everybody all the time. Does anybody feel like that? Like, okay, now everybody wants to give something to me and it's like I'm on a crowded street and people are just handing me flowers, flowers, I'll take flowers. If people are just handing me flyers and I don't want your flyers, I don't want all the stuff and I certainly don't need anymore clutter on my computer. So when you create an offer, yours needs to be good. It needs to provide value, it needs to be enticing and it needs to speak to your ideal customers needs. The offer is a tactic you're going to employ that's gonna ultimately do the marketing leg work for you, people should love it so much that they're eager to share it and let other people know that it exists. That leg work is valuable, those shares are valuable. So your offer is gonna be unique to your business and I would ask that you start to pay attention the next time you feel compelled to hand over your email address. Since I don't know about you but I'm protective of my email address now because it's just like my phone number when they used to do telemarketing all the time. I won't give anybody my phone number no matter what. Three people have it, I'm not joking. So it's like when I give my email address, I'm just as careful and do you ever know if you notice if you go shopping in the stores and they say your email. 'Cause they've learned, they're catching on to online business and how well online businesses are doing. So now I say "No, thank you". Your email, "No, thank you" because you have to protect it or you're gonna get spammed. So the next time you want to give your email in exchange for an offer, be sure you're asking yourself why. I keep a folder in my inbox of things that I've signed up for or when I am sold on a product or when I'm sold on an offer, I keep a folder of those so that I can refer back to it. Because I wanna know things like what sold me on that offer, what compelled me to sign up, what was so moving about that process that I really enjoyed that I wanted to give my personal information away because I'm very private. So always be asking yourself why because it will be built into your offer. It's marketing that you like and when you do marketing that you like, when you do marketing that moves you, you'll enjoy your marketing more. So, the offers. There's a lot out there and I know we're talking a lot to product based businesses. So if you know online a lot of offers where we do blogs, we have digitals, we have ebooks and that type of thing. I give out ebooks on my blog. But for your product based business, you can focus more on discounts. Pardon me, discounts and you wanna make it an enticing discount, something that's gonna get them in, something that's gonna make them a first time buyer. You can give out principles. I love this idea for people who are in photography or art or anything like that, I love when people give one sample away so that everybody could download it instantly. It gets them on your list and it gives them a sample of your work that they're gonna hang and display and love and if they have it hanging and displaying and they're using it, they're more likely to want to come back for more. You can do ebooks as I said, tutorials are a great way, a great way to get signups so if you have a business where you can sell patterns of what you make and you can give away tutorials or patterns one free if you have a whole collection of offers is a great way to get email signups. Desktop wallpapers and backgrounds, I love that too for graphic artists and photographers. When somebody gives you something that you can display on your background, not only is it just a great gift but now every time I open my phone and I see that background, I'm thinking of the person that made it. It's great advertising for your business and a great way to get more eyes on your, onto your website and free shipping. Free shipping is a fabulous offer. I'll be talking about it tomorrow in more detail but free shipping is a fabulous incentive for customers who are shopping. I've talked about this a lot over the last few years. I've talked about giving offers, I get a lot of feedback on it, I get a lot of hesitancy, sellers don't wanna do it because they don't like to give discounts or they don't wanna do all that work and get nothing back. That's not the way to build a relationship. That's certainly not the way, that's not the way to start a relationship. To say, "I want your email but I really don't wanna put in "the work, I don't really wanna create it." And so I'm willing to eat costs, and I'm willing to reduce my own profit in order to please a customer for the first time because I understand the value of customers. I know what a customer is worth over a lifetime of repeat business and a strong relationship building so I will absolutely eat those costs and I will absolutely reduce my profits to have somebody sign up to thank them and welcome them onboard. Okay, the number two way to find new customers for your Etsy shop are Pinterest referrals. I love it. Pinterest is everything for traffic these days and what I love most about it, what I can't, like I want to sing it from the rooftops is that Pinterest creates compound interest. What that means is what I pin today will be more popular in three months than it is today when I first pin it. So name me one other social media that promises that kind of compound interest. What it means is, when you share something on Twitter, it goes down a feed, it's forgotten. When you share something on Instagram, it goes down a feed and it's forgotten. When you share something on Facebook, it goes down a feed and it's forgotten. Pinterest not only shows up on somebody's feed but three months later, it's way more popular than the day that you pinned it. That's compound interest at its finest and that is the only social media platform that will do that for you. So my traffic increased by 400% the minute I started cropping for Pinterest and angling for Pinterest traffic. I continue to give it attention and I've used group boards and I use group boards in my niche to help do boosts. Again, something we're really gonna have fun talking about tomorrow. I get hundreds, sometimes thousands of extra visitors every day thanks to Pinterest and that's not something I'm working extra hard on, that's not something I worked on today but hundreds of extra people will arrive at my storefront or my blog because I pinned something three months ago. I mean tell me another social media that has that kind of return on investment, it's amazing and every creative business owner should be using it. And if you're using Pinterest and you're not getting those type of results or you're not getting good results, it's always one of two things. It's either your images are not appealing or number two, your content does not serve other pinners. So on Facebook, I have a Facebook group that I run for free. It's called Creative Entrepreneurs by Marketing Creativity and the whole point of that Facebook group Monday through Friday is we take a different social media platform. Say on Monday, it's Twitter, thank you love and we take everything on Twitter and we, I'll post the tweet that I want promoted and then everybody who uses the group post the tweet that they wanted promoted and we go around and we like and we retweet each others. The point of that is not to get, to sell to each other, the point of that is to create hack social proof and create a popularity around what we're saying so that we get in front of more ideal customers and the ideal customers see that popularity. So, that's also how a lot of social media platforms, Facebook will show it to more people when it's reading that it's popular so we're hacking all of that and we're not doing it to sell to each other, we're doing it to boost outside of that. And when people are using it and they're not getting shares, 'cause it's very valuable but when people are using it and they're not getting the shares that they want or they feel like they're retweeting everybody else's and nobody's retweeting theirs or nobody's repinning their material, they will have every complaint. Like they feel entitled to it right, they feel like they have, there's issues with the system like something's not working right but it's always one of two things. Either their images are not appealing or their content does not serve other users. That's why we're not sharing some of the people's posts and that's why we don't wanna support them. And there's no way to sugar coat that. I like to say it directly, I will say it to them directly in front of all of the other members 'cause I'm not gonna get onboard with that, there's a reason or this isn't working or this is lopsided and just some people are getting all of the attention. The people that are getting attention have good images and their content serves other users. You gotta remember that when I wanna share it in my feed, I want it to serve all the people that are seeing it in my feed, they're always asking what's in it for me. I wanna serve that question so those two things. Also important to note, especially about images and about gaining traction in social media and the feed that goes out with those images is that we used to be skimmers and if you write a blog, you'll know that we're told that readers are skimmers so you make sure you put a bold headline. Make sure you put subtopics because people don't wanna go and spend all day there, they wanna skim, they wanna know what's in it for me before they even start reading word for word what you're saying. But that has evolved where skimmers have become scanners. I believe that people are now scanning an image and when they see that image and when they look at it, they're asking wrap it up for me. We want that image to tell us what we're doing here and if that image doesn't tell us then we're leaving. So be careful of all of that. Images are crucial, be careful that your images are scannable and people are reading a lot from them. People need to read the message in that. So, work on that. If it's not working for you, if you're not getting the shares and the connection that you want to, keep trying until it clicks. And market your Etsy shop to sold out success we're gonna dive deeper into social proof and that's the psychological phenomenon that we are attracted to what's popular and we're skeptical of everything else. The number three key to finding new customers for your Etsy shop is to gather industry support. Be supportive of each other, be supportive of creative businesses as a whole. We are an industry and we are an industry on the rise so don't look at this as competition. Don't look at the one million people around you and compare yourself, realize that everything we do to boost each other's efforts is making us all better. It's making our industry that much more respected. Specifically you can hack social proof if you feel on the bottom of that totem pole and the way that you do that is you get niche relevant Pinterest group boards, you join Facebook groups. Again, the name of mine is Creative Entrepreneurs by Marketing Creativity. I manage it very tightly though so if you join us don't post off topic, I'll delete and ban ya. But we (laughing) we interact daily to boost that social hack, to boost that social proof to hack the system, to get each other in front of more of our ideal customers and that's the whole point. It's never about like for like's sake. So it's not like I like my page 'cause you like my page, that's all pointless. If I like your page and I'm not your ideal customer, I'm not helping you, we're not helping each other at all. But instead it's a way to boost specific posts with specific material to your ideal customers. It's a way to boost you to the outside world rather than it be between you and I liking for likes. So if you're using effective support groups like the one I run and you're not getting an equal number of shares, again, it is one of two things. Your images are not appealing or your content doesn't serve other users. Those things must be perfected, you must take the time, you must invest in whatever equipment or whatever lighting you need in order to improve that if you want to expect the feedback, if you wanna expect the support and if you want that connection. So that is just a taste of what I have for you in market your Etsy shop to sold out success. In that class, my number one goal is to help you create a marketing approach that works for you and I'm gonna show you how to do that in a very authentic way and one that you're going to be excited about. We have a couple questions online, Lisa. Okay. The green work handmade, she had a question about Pinterest, your advice about Pinterest and her thought, she said "My thought was if you pin, "if your pin is more popular in three months then your "listing expires, does that mean the link to that item "and page are broken even if you relist the same item? "If the Pinterest pin linked to the item is expired?" No, yeah, it will be, if it's active then it will stay an active post. When you renew something or you reactivate it, the link doesn't change for it. It'll go where it's supposed to go. Do you have any questions? A few things you said, the good images and that there's value in it for other users, was that just pertaining to Pinterest or is that all content out there? That's social media. Oh, okay. It really is, that's everywhere. It has to look good 'cause the whole point of the shares or asking for shares is to show it to people that you like, that you want. You know if I'm gonna take your product and I'm gonna show it to everybody else, I wanna be proud of that share. You know or else why would I share something that doesn't, isn't visually appealing? Why would I share just a random thing that doesn't serve anybody? You know it's just funny to me the way that people sometimes come on and post products after products and kind of spit it at people, it's a strange approach to me so I'm more thinking, what's in it for them and how do you make what's working look more popular, how do you create more buzz around what you're already doing and what's working well? Anybody else? In regards to Pinterest, are you posting the same pictures that are from your Etsy website or are you personalizing pictures just for Pinterest, like different pictures? Well, I post directly from my main listings because I don't take the time to edit them for Pinterest but Pinterest has an image that works really well and I find that anytime I do format it so it's longer and skinnier and it works, it would be definitely be more popular. Or like even how you take an image and you stack products on top of each other and you create that for Pinterest, that again, that would go really well 'cause it's gonna give multiple offers, multiple products to look at. Then my second question was in terms of offers, how often to give offers and how much is too much where it's to that point where you might seem desperate for sales? I love that question. I love it but I'm gonna have to save it for tomorrow. (laughing) Because we are really going to, it's gonna be in depth. Let me give you a short answer though. Like I said, with the product based business and email marketing, I really want my emails to matter so I would rather go six weeks without emailing anything and then send them something powerful. I'm also gonna give you an example of something powerful that's not a discount or not a sale but I have an example to pull up that's a really powerful email that's just connecting with the customer in a very friendly and authentic way and that's gonna be the example of how to contact them in between with something that's really gonna answer what's in it for me. So we're really going to talk about that and then it becomes an individual thing with how often do I con, well how often do I feel comfortable contacting my customers and do I feel like I have a really good reason. At some point, I'm gonna push you maybe to contact them a little more than you're comfortable with. Like if you're running a three day sale, I'm gonna push you to send reminders, I'm gonna push you to market because it's the time to market there but looking down the line at a year in a glance and when am I gonna contact my customers, I for a product based business I like to contact them not with daily specials, not with daily deals but with a really good sale that I'm having. So I'm happy contacting them every six to eight weeks.