Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Black Friday

Cyber Monday 

Free Shipping Day (NOTE: Free Shipping Day 2010 is Friday, December 17)

Have you figured out your strategies for these upcoming events?

I have been busy doing the Holiday Season planning for a group of my niche websites.

NOTE – NONE of my online business streams are related to selling either needlework or quilting products in any way! Let me repeat that…

I WON'T BE SELLING NEEDLEWORK OR QUILTING ONLINE!!!!!

Anyway, I have my planning notebook, my Planner Pad, and my colored pens and highlighters, planning for the upcoming Holiday Season. (What can I say, I am visual person and I like shuffling paper LOL)

Three of the events I am focusing on are:

Black Friday

Cyber Monday

Free Shipping Day (NOTE: Free Shipping Day 2010 is Friday, December 17)

While my business are online only, these events are equally, if not more, important for brick and mortar.

(REMINDER – NONE of my online business streams are related to selling either needlework or quilting products in any way!)

In the case of Brick and Mortar, it is of the utmost importance that you start figuring out ways that you can make these dates work for your OFFline business.

If you have any sort of online presence, whether you have a business card site or run a full fledged online retail site with shopping cart or something in between, you should be planning… NOW!

Don't wait until the Wednesday before Thanksgiving…  at that point you are already 2 months behind

I am still in the tentative stages of my planning, but already I am thinking that I will start my promotions by Oct 1 — not necessarily blatantly, mind you, but I DO want to make the most of the lead time…

Some of my ideas are -

Create a Gift Basket of the week idea and promote it with a post on the site (note, all of my sites are built with WordPress and I primarily create Posts rather than Pages) and with Tweets (I will have a Twitter acct for each site) and on my email list (I will have at least one email list for each site)

Figure out a way to have an appealing (not annoying) Holiday CountDown. It would need to start BEFORE Black Friday, so maybe start it on Nov 1? Can I figure out a creative way to talk the Holiday Countdown up starting in Oct — maybe with something posted weekly?

Some thoughts related to retailers — ideas which are not appropriate for my business model –

Plan and promote WishLists for customers (Promote offline, and online with website, Twitter, Facebook if appropriate, and on your email list(s))

Offer incentives to get customers to visit your Brick And mortar location on Cyber Monday

Offer incentives and/or activities for Black Friday — for AFTER they have shopped elsewhere for everybody else. Think about offering rewards for surviving shoppping elswhere.

Create a Twitter Hashtag Campaign for these events – either individually or as a group

Tink Note – You SHOULD already be Tweeting and you SHOULD already have a Twitter Hashtag Campaign going where you send out Tweet Announcements as new products are put on the shelves

Check out Twitter for Offline Businesses

The important takeaways with all of this:

• You should be planning all of this now, not on the day before Thanksgiving
• You can't just go into ostrich mode about all of this… make a preemptive strike!

Sharing the Road to Success,
Tink
 

I have been pretty busy working on YarnAndThreadRetailers.com… fingers crossed, it will go live this next week!

This question was asked on the Quilt Designer’s List I belong to:

*quote*

I need some advice. I guess it is a little late to think about this but I am stuck as far as a marketing plan. I have met with good results when offering my pattern to shops in person but not sure where else to go from here. I am trying to get a web page up but it isn’t ready yet. What am I forgetting?

*end quote*

Here is my reply:

Marketing for independent Quilt Designers is getting more and more important AND more complicated, as the market becomes saturated, the economy tightens up, and the chain store situations become more tenuous.

Read the rest of this entry »

I grabbed a copy of the new magazine from McCall’s called:

*Quilter’s Home- For the new generation of quilters*

I found it a very interesting read and I am looking forward to seeing how it evolves. Right now I think that they have a good concept (if you believe their sub-title) but the execution and application of that strategy is lacking.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is an example of an innovative blog, used to market an artist/crafter’s work…
Loosetooth.com Shop Blog

She is doing so many things right! And look at how well she is using CafePress!

Read the rest of this entry »

I just wanted to share my GREAT experience with Konica Minolta.

My relatively new (and definitely under warranty) 2430DL died…rather spectacularly… (There was a stomach churning THUNK and then a *FATAL ERROR CODE*!

Read the rest of this entry »