by Shasta McLaughlin
The Extravaganza Craft Productions
copyright 2010

?How can you make your booth stand out at jewelry shows?

1. Specialize in something!

Artisans can specialize in:

* gold or silver jewelry
* vintage pieces
* bridal jewelry
* jewelry from natural gemstone, precious or semi-precious stones
* Western, outdoor, rugged, or nature jewelry
* Silverware jewelry
* Pieces inspired by any race or nationality
* Beaded jewelry
* remake antique jewelry

Your pieces can be inspired by a place such as all your pieces having the colors of the Grand Canyon or your favorite mountain scene. They might be inspired by your favorite city, or even by an industrial building.

The key in specializing is to choose a large group of people with similar tastes in handcrafted jewelry and design jewelry specifically for them.

Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

The article contains suggestions that help you cut costs at craft shows and market your business to grow your craft show business during tough times.

View the article at http://www.art.mt.gov/soa/pr.asp?ID=1289

Thank You Montana Arts Council!

You’re in the elevator and your friend John introduces you to Barbara who is the CEO of one of the companies you’d like to do business with. Barbara asks, “What do you do?”

Here is your chance to make a connection with a prime member of your target market. You want to get her attention, make a positive impression and get her interested enough to continue the conversation. You’ve got about fifteen seconds to do this.

Do you have an elevator speech?

Whether you are in the elevator, or on the phone, the way you start the conversation will determine whether or not it will continue. You could tell anyone what you do if you had half an hour, but with fifteen seconds you’re likely to simply label yourself, as most people do.

Labels don’t tell us much. Imagine you told Barbara, in the elevator, that you are a coach or a consultant. Are you talking about working with high school kids, senior managers, or actors? Few job labels tell your audience who you work with. Most labels are not only vague but don’t help to prompt the conversation to continue.

You could be more specific and tell your prospect you are a tax accountant or an automation specialist. That gives people some idea of what you do, but still doesn’t explain why your prospect should care.

Instead of using a label, you could tell your prospect how you do your work, the processes you use. You might say, “We analyze light manufacturing companies to identify areas where the addition of a programmable logic controller could boost throughput.” If she understands what you are talking about, you still haven’t given her a reason to contact you.

Whether you are an executive coach, lawyer, accountant, or automation specialist, when you start talking about the processes you use eyes glaze over and minds shut down. While you may have developed processes that no one else uses, prospects don’t car about the process, at least not initially.

One of the most common mistakes people make is assuming their message should be about themselves. If you are in business to provide services and products to clients and customers, your marketing message should be about their needs and wants. Here’s the difference:

• “I’m a marketing coach.” (It’s about me, and who really cares?)
• “I help independent professionals attract more clients and make more money.” (It’s about what I do for others and should prompt the question, “How do you do that?”)

Your prospects’ primary concern isn’t you. They want to know what you can do for them and how you can help them profit, financially, physically or emotionally. They want to know if you can solve a problem for them.

To get attention with a short sentence about the problems you solve, you might tell Barbara you “help reduce manufacturing operating costs and increase profits”. Cost containment is a continual problem for any CEO and should pique her interest and prompt follow up.

Stop shutting the door to new business with your business marketing message. When people ask you what you do, avoid using a label or a discussion of process. Instead, quickly clarify who you help and what type of problems you solve. One sentence should do the job.

Talking about what you do in a new way takes a little getting used to. The first couple of times you stop yourself from saying, “I’m an executive coach or consultant” and replace it with a marketing message or elevator speech that describes how you actually help clients, it will feel awkward. Keep using and fine tuning your small business marketing message and soon it will not only give prospects a clear idea of what you do but you’ll be comfortable using it.

Once you have a 15 second marketing message that works you can use it in the elevator, in the airport, on the phone, and at parties and watch your business grow.

You’ll b e more successful with a brilliant marketing message and elevator speech. You’ll be able to quickly help people understand how you can help them so they’ll buy from you.

The author, Charlie Cook, helps small business owners and marketing professionals attract more clients, whether you are marketing in print, in person or online. Sign up for the Free Marketing eBook, ‘7 Steps to get more clients and grow your business‘, full of practical marketing strategies you can use to increase profits at www.MarketingForSuccess.com

copyright by Rena Klingenberg

I first stumbled onto the “jewelry shopping service” approach to marketing my handcrafted jewelry a few years ago.

I couldn’t believe I’d never heard anyone talk about this before – because it’s a wide-open field with TONS of opportunities to sell your jewelry. It’s the main way I sell my jewelry now. Personal shopping services are a growing trend in all kinds of market niches.

Typically a personal shopper helps clients determine what they should buy, locates the best deal on an intended purchase, or finds the perfect gifts for customers to give.  Personal shoppers tend to specialize in a particular area of expertise, where they know a certain market and its suppliers inside and out.

Above all, personal shopping is a service business, and as people get busier and shopping options get more overwhelming, there’s an increasing demand for specialized personal shopping service businesses of various types.

What if you operated your handcrafted jewelry business like a personal shopping service?

There are absolutely immense opportunities for jewelry artists to sell their work this way, as you’ll see in “Secrets of a Handcrafted Jewelry Shopping Service”.

A jewelry shopping service could easily be your entire jewelry business, or just one income stream of it.

It’s a very flexible way to sell your jewelry, and I’ve found that it’s very easy to fit it in around all the other things going on in your life.

Why It’s Such a Profitable Way to Sell Your Jewelry

By operating as a jewelry shopping service, you’ll be selling directly to your clients at full retail prices, so you won’t be paying any booth fees, shop commissions, party hostess incentives, wholesale discounts, etc.

In fact, one of the best things about it is that you have very few sales-related expenses, because there’s no “middleman”. Nearly 100% of the proceeds go directly to your business.

And what’s more, many of your clients will be fairly big spenders. They’ll shop from you over and over again because they love your customized products, personal service, and the way you take their problems out of their hands – and they’re willing to pay quite well for it.

The book also has a chapter describing a clever strategy that will increase your profits even more; I give an example of this strategy from my own business, and explain why it’s so profitable.

Everything You Need to Know
to Start Your Own Jewelry Shopping Service

In this ebook I share my entire successful business model with you. It’s easy to do, and it really works. I’ve tested and refined my jewelry shopping service strategies, and I describe them in detail in this step-by-step guide.

I also share dozens of real-life examples of successful products, services, marketing methods, and stories from my own jewelry shopping service, to help you get started.

You don’t have to re-invent the wheel and go through the same learning curve I did to figure out what really works (and what doesn’t!). It’s all in the book. )

———————————————-

Unlock the secrets of a new way to sell your jewelry to customers who are VERY willing to buy from you, again and again, in Rena Klingenberg’s ebook “Secrets of a Handcrafted Jewelry Shopping Service” -
http://www.jewelry-books.com/shopping-service.html .

Okay I admit it!  I’m addicted to Sorority Life on Facebook for my family it’s Mafia Wars.  Sorority Life is a game where you do things like the girls in a sorority would.  You must add a certain number of new friends every level or you are bound to be beat.  You can send your friends gifts and vote for them etc.

So you are asking me what does this have to do with my art or craft show booth?

Well you only have so many friends you can invite each day.  You need to add that many or suffer the consequences.  Many people that you invite will probably not even be interested in playing the game with you.  A large percentage of the people you invite will not respond at all and many will not respond right away.

This is like your craft show customers, it is important to contact the people most likely to buy your craft.  The more people you contact who are interested in buying your product each day the more chances you have of finding the ones that will buy the most product from you. Continue to contact people who truly aren’t interested and you waste both time and money.

You need to try to contact a certain number of the prospects you should have collected at your last art or craft show each day of the week.  Give them a gentle reminder of who you are.  Offer them useful-useful to them, not to you-information about your product or service.   Offer them an incentive to buy right now for instance a coupon that is good for a limited time.

The people who aren’t prepared to buy your art or craft right away will appreciate the reminder that they still planned on buying your merchandise.  Contact them when they are ready and they are likely to become buyers.  Forget to contact them and when they are ready to buy they might buy from your competition.

Like your friends in Sorority Life your craft show customer likes to receive gifts.  Gifts make them feel appreciated and help them to trust you.  Your gifts can be small things like discounts, buy one get one xx% off, or a free newsletter or information about the product they bought.

You also need to be aware of your customers rights when collecting contact information.  Ask your customer if it will be alright to add them to your mailing list.  Let them know the valuable information that you will be sending.  Don’t do this and just like in sorority life you will be banned from sending messages to them.

The friends you add in Sorority Life also often add you as a Facebook friend and if done respectfully you might find some new prospects and customers there for your craft business.

See what you can learn about marketing from the games you play in your life.

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We would like to be able to offer teleclasses to our customers but first we need some help figuring out what will be most beneficial to your business.

We have created a survey that will help us get started on the right foot.  If you would be interested in teleclasses designed to make your business more profitable, more organized, more successful, or marketing secrets to make your business grow we need to know.

Please answer the survey by clicking here.

If you would like to sign up for notification of upcoming teleconferences and teleclasses you can sign up at the bottom of the survey or register as a subscriber of this blog.

Have a nice day,

Shasta

Today I came across this site I thought you might be interested in.

Sell your arts and crafts (or anything else you want) on The SOC Exchange.
Similar to Etsy and Artfire and allows you to sell unlimited items for just one price.

Hope it helps some of you out,

Shasta

by Shasta McLaughlin

The Extravaganza Craft Productions

copyright 2009

I’ve told you the things I did on My 30 Day Plan to Greater Profitability and I promised that I would let you know some things you can do to increase the profits your art or craft show business receives.

1.  Draw a marketing map that shows how the people you meet at craft shows are going to move from cold contacts, to warm prospects, to hot buyers.  Include on your marketing map all of your sales tools including your craft show booth, your fliers, business cards, website, blog, social networking, advertising, and more.

2.  Make sure each sales tool mentioned above (and any others you use) moves your customer through a process that leads to them buying your art or craft.

3.  Get a website.  Click here for easy instructions on how to build a website.

4.  Get your website search engine optimized.

5.  Arrange to take credit cards.

6.  Offer a payment plan.

7.  Get email marketing (auto-responders).  See my post on following up with your customers by clicking here.

8.  Create emails for your current customers.  Remember to follow the Can-Am Act for email.  Send your customers useful relevant information.  You want this to help your business reputation not hurt it.

9. Create emails for your warm prospects.

10. Create emails for your cold contacts.

11.  Sign up your customers to the proper groups above.   Ask permission before signing up people for your emails.

12.  Check if your business cards, fliers, etc. look professional and are updated.  Be certain they have current contact information.  Make sure they mention your website if you have one.

13.  Collect names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of the people who are interested in your product.  Ask if they would like to be signed up for your emails.

14.  Sign up for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Fast Pitch Networking or many others.  Let your customers and prospects know they can follow you there.  Post regularly.

15. Create a blog.  Post regularly.  Mention your social networking sites and your website often.

16.  Make sure your posts to your blog automatically post to your social networking sites.

17.  Pick up the phone and call a customer that you haven’t heard from in a while.  Renew your relationship with them.  Tell them the news from your business.  Offer to send them free information or ask if they would like to sign up for your newsletters.

18.  Send an email to customers that haven’t bought in a while.  Renew your relationship with them.

Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

I first stumbled onto the “jewelry shopping service” approach to marketing my #handcrafted jewelry a few years ago.

I couldn’t believe I’d never heard anyone talk about this before – because it’s a wide-open field with TONS of opportunities to sell your jewelry. It’s the main way I sell my jewelry now. Personal shopping services are a growing trend in all kinds of market niches.

Typically a personal shopper helps clients determine what they should buy, locates the best deal on an intended purchase, or finds the perfect gifts for customers to give.  Personal shoppers tend to specialize in a particular area of expertise, where they know a certain market and its suppliers inside and out.

Above all, personal shopping is a service business, and as people get busier and shopping options get more overwhelming, there’s an increasing demand for specialized personal shopping service businesses of various types.

What if you operated your handcrafted jewelry business like a personal shopping service?

There are absolutely immense opportunities for jewelry artists to sell their work this way, as you’ll see in “Secrets of a Handcrafted Jewelry Shopping Service”.

A jewelry shopping service could easily be your entire jewelry business, or just one income stream of it.

It’s a very flexible way to sell your jewelry, and I’ve found that it’s very easy to fit it in around all the other things going on in your life.

Why It’s Such a Profitable Way to Sell Your Jewelry

By operating as a jewelry shopping service, you’ll be selling directly to your clients at full retail prices, so you won’t be paying any booth fees, shop commissions, party hostess incentives, wholesale discounts, etc.

In fact, one of the best things about it is that you have very few sales-related expenses, because there’s no “middleman”. Nearly 100% of the proceeds go directly to your business.

And what’s more, many of your clients will be fairly big spenders. They’ll shop from you over and over again because they love your customized products, personal service, and the way you take their problems out of their hands – and they’re willing to pay quite well for it.

The book also has a chapter describing a clever strategy that will increase your profits even more; I give an example of this strategy from my own business, and explain why it’s so profitable.

Everything You Need to Know
to Start Your Own Jewelry Shopping Service

In this ebook I share my entire successful business model with you. It’s easy to do, and it really works. I’ve tested and refined my jewelry shopping service strategies, and I describe them in detail in this step-by-step guide.

I also share dozens of real-life examples of successful products, services, marketing methods, and stories from my own jewelry shopping service, to help you get started.

You don’t have to re-invent the wheel and go through the same learning curve I did to figure out what really works (and what doesn’t!). It’s all in the book. )

———————————————-

Unlock the secrets of a new way to sell your jewelry to customers who are VERY willing to buy from you, again and again, in Rena Klingenberg’s ebook “Secrets of a Handcrafted Jewelry Shopping Service” -
http://www.jewelry-books.com/shopping-service.html .

copyright by Rena Klingenberg

Customers love to feel like they’re getting a good deal, so offering some items at “volume discount pricing” can net you a lot of extra sales and repeat buyers.

For example, I have a big selection of very simple gemstone bead earrings with sterling silver earwires. I price them at $16 for 1 pair, $14 each for 3 pair, and $12 each for 5 pair. You’d be amazed at how many people automatically spend $60 buying 5 pair just because that’s the best price per pair.

If a customer comes to check out with just 2 pair, I mention that they’ll receive a discount if they get 3 pair – and nearly always they go back to pick out a third pair of earrings, spending $42 instead of $32.

I know that without the volume discount, most people would buy just one pair and spend only $16.

Why not try volume discount pricing on a selected group of your jewelry pieces? I think this tactic is most successful with a group of similar items that are regularly priced under $20.

You can increase people’s urgency to take you up on your special pricing with a sign mentioning that they can take care of all their holiday shopping today with this special jewelry bargain. Include a free gift pouch or box for each piece, and you’ll probably make all the sales you can keep up with.

Some quick tips on successful volume discount pricing:

- Be sure to calculate your volume discounts so that you’re still earning a good profit per piece at your lowest pricing.  (Even at the lowest price, $12 per pair, I make a very tidy profit on the volume-priced earrings).

- Post obvious signs next to the items listing your pricing discounts.

- If anyone comes to check out with just one, ask if they saw today’s special savings on this group of items.

- This kind of deal is most effective for you if it’s for something you can turn out quickly and in volume, with slight differences from one piece to another (such as changing bead color or shape).

- A “rummage bin” increases the sale of volume-discount items.  Put the items in mini-ziplocks in a pretty basket, tray, trunk, or box and observe the power of rummaging!

You can experiment with volume discounts till you find the right jewelry items and pricing that make this a guaranteed, profitable bread-and-butter item for you.

——————–

Sell your handcrafted jewelry like crazy at shows, fairs, and festivals with Rena Klingenberg’s step-by-step guide, “Ultimate Guide to Your Profitable Jewelry Booth” -
http://www.jewelry-books.com/jewelry-booth.html .