Craft Venture: marketing basics: who are your customers?

Hi all! Brenda from Phydeaux and Phydelle hither, writing on a lovely sunny Summertime day. I hope you all enjoyed your first weekend of Summer! Fourth dimension to first thinking about marketing and promotion for the holidays! You might be thinking that the end of June is far as well early to start thinking most the holidays. Nevertheless, retail buyers are already placing orders for their stores and major retailers already take their ain marketing plans finalized for the biggest shopping season of the year. Independent online businesses should exist no different – information technology's not also belatedly to plan and implement your own holiday "plan of set on."

I think that many small concern owners seize up and get blank when they hear the dread words, "marketing plan." (Aforementioned goes with "business organization programme.") I'm going to put your fears to rest by sharing a cloak-and-dagger with you lot: a marketing plan can be equally unproblematic as a brief outline. A marketing plan can too be a circuitous certificate of many pages, but allow'southward get our toes wet with something far less scary that will add immediate value in your business organization. Pull out some paper and a pen for brainstorming every bit we walk through a few easy steps!

Nosotros talked nigh marketing versus promotion terminal week on Craft Venture:

The American Marketing Associations' definition of m arketing: "the activity, fix of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and guild at large."

More than simply, everything you practice to create value for your actual and potential customers, with return on investment (e.thou., sales!).
Earlier you can plan how to add value to your customers, you need to have an thought of who your customers are. This may be the about difficult stride that prevents many sellers from developing a marketing plan.

So, who are your customers? Do you accept a targeted typical customer? If this is impossible to reply because of the wide range of items in your shop, you may want to consider revising your shop's focus commencement. A shop offering ceramic housewares, beaded jewelry and bridal dresses definitely needs to either focus on but one of those areas or open separate shops for those areas. When I was planning concluding yr to start a line of miniature knits for Blythe and other collectible dolls, I decided to do so under a separate shop, because each shop has such a different target client and marketing programme.

Withal not sure who your customers are? Pull out your pen and paper (or figurer) and work your way through the following questions/ideas:

ane. Who do you lot desire to buy your goods or services? Maybe you want teenagers with disposable income to buy your jewelry or teeshirts or ipod cozies? Mayhap you lot desire career women with dispensable income to buy your wear and accessories?
2. Who is most likely to buy your goods or services? If y'all design banner ads, owners of online shops and blogs are probable to be your customers. If you sell your delicious processed or broiled goods online, you lot're non every bit probable to have diabetics or do/fitness enthusiasts equally your customers.
3. What does existing market research say well-nigh your target marketplace? Run some Google searches on "market research," "demographic," and what y'all sell! Note of circumspection: yous desire reliable information, not just someone'due south opinion. Check with your local small business or merchants clan for additional resources!
4. Who is buying your goods or services? Who's hearting you or putting your in their favorites? Check out your customers' interest – expect at what they're buying and favoriting! What are the commonalities between those shops and yours? Ask your customers how they constitute you, what they like nearly your shop, what they'd like to see more of, etc. That will requite yous some insights into their interests.

Your homework this calendar week is to get a stiff sense (although a better sense would be great) of who you want your customers to be and who they are currently! If yous have a stiff customer base that's not the demographic you want, exercise you want to lose your electric current customers in gild to attract the ones y'all want? Or do you want to tailor your marketing programme to reach more than people like your current customers?

And at present that you have a meliorate sense of your customers, what'southward the next step in your marketing plan? You'll have to come dorsum next week to find out!

I would love to hear from you this week! Was this a helpful exercise? What did you learn? If you already know who your target customers are, how did yous make up one's mind this?

Image credits: 1. Mini bud vase – felted wool – with glass, from papaververt; 2. Recycled paper basin, from picapica design