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Last week we talked about the 3 not-so-obvious questions to ask yourself before you open your handmade craft business, and how it can help your business be successful.
This week, we are moving ahead and talking about what you need to do after you open your handmade shop.
This is a whole new ball game. You have worked SO hard planning and preparing to open your shop, and now that it’s open you are probably wondering . . . “now what?”
Great question … so let’s dive in!
When you first open your handmade shop, you are so excited! You have dreamed about this day for so long, and you might have this expectation or hope that now a bunch of people will start buying your products.
But . . . believe it or not, the most likely thing that will happen when you open your shop is . . . nothing. For most shops, the “launch” doesn’t feel that exciting simply because no one really knows about the shop – customers haven’t found it yet.
Now, if you already have a big audience when you open your handmade shop then you might see sales start up right away, but that isn’t the case for the majority of new businesses.
I know it might be hard to hear that you probably won’t see instant sales, but it’s the honest truth. And I want you to know that it’s completely fine and normal, this is all part of the process.
This can be a real letdown. You’ve just spent so much time working to get your store launched: creating your product, taking the pictures creating your brand—it’s huge, like you have been putting a lot of effort into it.
Don’t get me wrong, you should still celebrate this huge milestone of opening your store— toast yourself with a glass of champagne or have some cake and ice cream with your family or friends! You have done wonderfully so far, and now people can buy your products.
And then wake up the next morning ready to dive in on the next step, because you are truly just getting started!
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Something that’s really important to realize is that when you open your shop, instead of having a linear checklist of things to do like you did getting your shop ready to open (like for example step 1 – create product 2 – photo it 3- write product description 4- add to shop, etc??) , you now will have a cyclical workload and suddenly you will need to be working on many things at once.
When that happens, a question I often hear is,
“Deb, what should I prioritize now that my shop is open . . .
should I focus more on marketing . . . or on creating new products?”
And my answer always is that you have to learn to do both at the same time. Because now that your shop is open, there is never really a time when you’re not going to need to be either marketing or creating products.
Now of course, you can have a full week that you block out or a month where you focus on creating products, but you’ll still have your marketing running in the background— you’re not going to stop posting on social media, or doing whatever your marketing strategy is, because you’re creating new products that month.
And you will also continually be creating the actual products that you sell . . . and packaging them and going to the post office and all of that.
So just know that these two things need to happen simultaneously from now on. You don’t get to “do this, then that” it’s really “do this AND that”
I also want you to know that it’s normal to experience a bit of overwhelm when everything starts to feel like it needs to happen at the same time— so just be aware of it and know that if it happens to you it’s completely normal— OK, it’s almost a rite of passage and more importantly – it’s totally manageable!
What all of this means, actually, is that when you’ve just opened your store, the stuff you need to be spending time on initially is actually (drum roll) time management and creating efficient workflows and systems so that you can manage all these different things at once without being overwhelmed and overworked.
Like I said earlier, this is the stuff that no one sees, so you will be tempted to think
“I don’t have time to figure out how to organize my time! I have to work on my marketing FIRST to bring in some sales!”
. . . but trust me, this mindset is not the right one to have and will end up causing you a lot of trouble.
Focusing on creating time management systems will save you A LOT of time down the road and pay off over and over.
If you’re not sure how to manage your time more effectively, we actually have a course all about time management and productivity inside the Tizzit HQ course library, if you’re already an HQ member BINGO! If not, it’s totally worth checking out.
The other thing systems help you do is create time each week to grow your audience, because unless you already have a pre-existing audience, you’re going to have to build an audience before you can make some sales.
I call this the “Grow” stage, and I talk a lot about it in a free guide I created called “The Maker’s Roadmap Snapshot.”
Essentially what the Maker’s Roadmap does is give you a visual map and checklist of the different things you need to do in order to start and grow your handmade shop.
DOWNLOAD THE MAKERS ROADMAP!
So . . . now you are moving into the marketing part of growing your business. Your marketing is going to build some momentum for your product sales, but momentum is built over time.
And so you have to stay consistent and you can’t jump ship every two weeks. Jumping ship is the #1 reason I see shop owners grow slowly or not at all.
Set a goal to work on your current marketing strategy for at least three months, and I insist on AT LEAST, I’d recommend even 6+ before deciding if it is or isn’t working. So for example, you don’t want to try Pinterest for 2 weeks and then decide it’s not working and jump to Facebook or Instagram.
You need to stay focused and consistent and do the work consistently on one platform to really give it your best go and give the platform time to actually generate results for you.
Same goes for SEO and especially for you Etsy sellers: changing your SEO strategy too often wastes your time, because you aren’t giving your work time to pay off and never have enough data to really know what’s working and what’s not.
I have three articles that will help you set up an effective marketing strategy and stick with it consistently:
One talks about how long will it take to get sales from your handmade or Etsy shop, one helps you avoid a common trap where smart handmade shop owners get stuck, and the third talks about How to promote your Handmade Shop which talks about the pros and cons of different marketing platforms.
When it comes to the actual steps and what to actually do to promote your handmade shop, you will want to do two things:
Thanks for reading and until next time, au revoir!
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We acknowledge and give thanks to the Budawang and Yuin people, the Traditional Owners of the land we work and live on. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and elders past, present and emerging.
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Great post. I enjoyed reading your post and I think social media can be very beneficial for your business. Apart from that, I would like to add one more point i.e a digital business card. This card can help to grow your networking and will also promote it.
Hi Mellisa, Thank you for sharing your idea! We appreciate it!
It was a nice article; social media has become the best platform to promote your products and services. Thanks for these tips. Can you make a blog post to explain some marketing tips?
Hi Lucy! Thank you for appreciating our article. Yes, we do have numerous blog posts about marketing for handmade makers in our blog. You can start off with these: https://tizzit.co/marketing-handmade-what-to-do-when-nothing-works/, https://tizzit.co/10-tips-to-make-more-sales-on-etsy/, https://tizzit.co/craft-business-email-marketing-basics/.
Thanks for sharing. Really a great read. The content was beneficial. Keep posting.
Happy to hear that the content was beneficial for you, Cardddle!