Preparing to market your products and services
Marketing, in brief, is a word that describes how you intend to present your products for sale in the market place. For home sewing and embroidery businesses the ideal way to market your business is through word-of-mouth and networking. This doesn't have to be a difficult process. Here are some ways you can effectively market your products and services with little effort.
Create a uniform with your logo on it
This could simply be a polo shirt with the front pocket and back embroidered with your business name. Wear this uniform when you're meeting with potential clients or even when customers are coming to your place of business. It's a great way for them to see a sample of your embroidery before you've even made the sale.
Network with companies within your local area
If your sewing and embroidery business sells library bags to children with their custom name and design on, it's a great idea to network with local companies to get your name out and push sales. This could be by creating a flyer with your costs, products and services and contacting your local school or day care centre to see if they will get involved. Create some samples to leave with them and even offer them a cut out of every one they sell.
Promote your skills
Be confident in wearing your home made embroidered garments and promote your company when people ask or approach you about what they see you wearing. It's incredible how often people do actually ask you where you purchased your shirt or even if they see some of the beautiful things that you've made in your house. The more confident you are in selling what you've made either based on it's quality, design or unique style the more people will recognise you for your skills in sewing and embroidery.
Create your identity
It's not to difficult to create a company identity and identify how you want to run your small home sewing and embroidery business. Here are a few steps to take to get started:
Establish your identity
This should normally be a fun part of the process coming up with a name for your company. You can choose something to identify with yourself if you are already recognised within the industry such as 'Mary's Sewing and Embroidery', or can you choose something more related to the business itself such as 'Sew Easy Embroidery'.
Now you can register your business and create your ABN and trading name using your chosen company identity. It might be best to talk to your tax advisor on how you should set up your business.
Logo and business cards
Think about what sort of image you wish to portray and how your customers will see you. Professional, friendly, fun, fantasy, artistic, creative, modern etc. Not everyone is a graphic designer so come up with a few ideas on what you want in your logo and find a company that can help. You don't need to pay hundreds of dollars to get this logo completed there are vector sites with thousands of pictures or vector images that you can download and incorporate into your logo for as little as $1-$25. Some of the most affordable websites are Vectorstock, Depositphotos and graphicriver. However read the licensing guidelines when you download any images or vector files to ensure you are meet their use requirements.
Alternatively some business card companies will offer logo design for a small fee when you order your business cards, so you can kill two birds with one stone.
Networking
As mentioned the home sewing and embroidery businesses rely heavily on networking. Now that you have established your company identity now is a great time to network your business. Here are some tips to easily network at no cost!
Pass out business cards
Make sure you have plenty of business cards on you when you meet clients, go out with friends or family etc. as this is a great time to hand out your business cards. If friends and family are interested in your business give them ten, as you will be amazed at where they end up!
Get social
In this day and age more and more people are turning to social media to effectively and efficiently market their products are services. This could be by simply creating a Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram account or one of the many other social media networks available to everyone at no cost.
If you've never used social media before don't be scared to try them! You might be surprised how much fun you have while learning. Plus, these sites are much easier to use and you don't have to be a computer expert to run your own social page allowing you to share and tell the world about your products, services and latest news.
Benefits of social media
- Establish new connections and customers
- Increases exposure to your business
- Builds awareness of your products and services
Create a blog
If you can use Microsoft Word then you should have no problems creating a blog. There are a number of blogs that allow you sign up and create your blog in a few simply steps. The most commonly used blogs are Blogger and Wordpress.
- Blogs are easy to manage
- Choose which template, colours, styles you like to match your company in a few simple steps.
- View analytics on who's viewing your website, where the traffic is coming from and also how many people have visited your blog in the past day, week or month.
You will feel like an expect and it's all made available to you in simple, easy to use interface.
Due to the simplicity of blogs many people are now choosing to create a blog instead of a website and then link it up to their social media account, such as Facebook. Plus, there is a huge network of sewers and embroiderers already online that are heavily active in helping and supporting each other worldwide. You never know you might even make a few friends while you're doing it!
If you would like to know more about marketing online check out this blog post which gives you some useful tips about E-Commerce for Beginners.
