This week sees the beginning of the fifth
month that I have had my keyrings in the country. I have learned and continue
to have to learn the process of marketing, promotion and selling.
If anybody could have told me about the
huge amount of information that I would have to take in and the different
avenues which I would need to address, I probably wouldn't have started! So in
some ways ignorance was bliss, but having started I will persevere, learning,
failing and re-learning until I achieve what I set out to do. Whether that will
involve what I thought it would remains to be seen, as I am quickly learning
that in business it is like a moving ocean and you leap aboard and start to
navigate the seas, or get buffeted around.
I continue to sell at a steady rate
through the selling channels I have previously discussed but I have started to
see some online sales activity. I think this is due to marketing i.e. giving
out business cards with every sale and at any fairs I have attended, also word
of mouth is growing and key to all these I think I am starting to use
Twitter and Facebook in a productive way.
I started some Facebook advertising a
couple of months ago, not selling adverts but a campaign to increase my Facebook
audience. Having spent a huge amount of hours watching what other businesses
do, looking at their adverts, looking at their pictures and asking; Are they
clear? Are they attractive? How do they write their text? etc. before
trawling YouTube and listening to experts talking about how to set up campaigns
- I saw that statistics say 0.1% is the average across the board for display
and if you had huge budgets for your adverts then you could be achieving 1.5%
upwards.
My budget however was about £1.00 per day.
I started by experimenting with four adverts, different pictures,
different interests, different ages I kept the gender to female. I found a
formula that is working well and I am getting between 3.0% and 3.5% click
through rate (CTR) rate. I am very pleased with this and it shows that even
with small budgets if you research, think about your product, who it is aimed
at etc you can achieve a good CTR.
I have had a rejection from
a retailer that sells trendy stationery, a little like ‘Paperchase’. These
type of businesses seem to be a new trend in the market and quite
popular, and are springing up in different cities. The shops
are bright, clean, inviting and offer new style products, and also
bags and stationery that have always been around but they are displaying them very
attractively in a new way - almost like walking through a fashionable clothes
shop like Zara.
Following through my rejections from these
avenues, their feedback is that they think my Keyrings are not necessarily
right for the younger market, and that is their target market in their
stores.
My Facebook stats say differently, 25% in
the 13-18 group and rising rapidly and 45% in the 18-24 age group.
To prove my theory I have now started a
new campaign I have kept the most successful criteria but I am now being
far more specific on age and a particular category of people who follow certain
interests. I look forward to watching these results and adapting as
necessary.
I hope to prove that a well designed
product with a unique selling point is attractive to different ages, but
different designs will obviously appeal to certain ages. I know personally that
I would not buy the same pattern of say a Tangle Teezer (the new hair brush
product that de-tangles hair) as my sons girlfriend but we would both purchase
one.
I am also trying the new Twitter adverts. I
do not have a lot to report as I have only tentatively started to use it, so I
can not recommend any actions that bring certain results. I would
recommend however that you interact with people on Twitter both in your local
community and to a wider audience. I search for criteria such as business,
entrepreneur, fashion, accessories, bloggers and people who give out lots
of information that is really beneficial both for their business and yours.
This week I followed a person called Mark Tillison, MD at a leading UK Digital
Marketing Agency. The information given by this company is excellent, you can
pick and choose what is beneficial and if you need it you know expert help is
at hand. This week I learned the importance of acknowledging people
who tweet you, thanking them and interacting with them not just blindly
following and following back so thank you Mark!
In the next few weeks I will be selling at
a factory, and attending another gift fair. I still haven't got my video done
for YouTube, which is very frustrating but it is always uppermost in my mind. I’m
still thinking of the best way to achieve this on my limited budget but with a
professional look. I have also decided to take some lifestyle photographs for
my Facebook page, to link in with the image I want my brand to project.
This week has seen the campaign #SmallBizSatUk, a
day on the 7th December that was promoted to support and champion the UK's 5
million small businesses. It has given me an idea for a project for the
New Year involving other small local businesses and I may try and get Tesco on
board to support both the local community and themselves (I think business
should always be beneficial to all parties involved). Watch this
space....
Meanwhile the Christmas rush is really starting
to take hold and Mad Friday is looming ever nearer (that is when I'll probably
get around to doing my shopping!). With Christmas trees to dress, presents
to buy, parties and catch ups to arrange and the never ending demands on us all
with family commitments I should think we will all be looking forward to our
Bank Holidays so bye for now and I hope you all have a relaxing and happy
time with the people around you!
