Found this fun idea for getting customers to buy jewelry (or any art or craft) at craft shows.

How to Get Your Jewelry Customer Buy at Craft Show Event.

Thank you Ooh-la-la Beadtique for sharing such a fun idea!

Also read Do Sales and Discounts Hurt Craft Show Sales? and 5 Places to Market & Display Your Handmade Jewelry for Free

How do you get your customers excited about buying?

First read Why Add Art and Craft Buyers to Mailing Lists.

Next decide what information you need to mail and email your customers useful information that will encourage them to buy your one of kind handcrafted art work. Information that is generally collected includes:

First Name Last Name Address City State Zip Code Phone Number Email Address Birth Date

Remember that the more information you try to collect at one time the less likely your customer will be to give you any information at all. Try to collect small bits of information at a time but...

be sure to collect information that makes sense together all at once. For instance mailing address, city, state and zip code. It wouldn't make sense to ask for the street address and not get the other information.

Begin to collect your customers contact information. Read Simple Inexpensive Ways to Collect Your Customers Contact Information.

A database program will make it so much simpler to mail your customers. Many people also use a spreadsheet program like (Microsoft Excel) and that will work but may have some flaws that could cause you hassels as your database and needs grow.

I'm using Microsoft Excel successfully for now.

Don't have money for expensive database software or Microsoft Excel? It's free to download Open Office (which includes a database, word processing, a spreadsheet, a simple graphics program, a power point like program, and more at http://www.openoffice.org/.

Now all that is left to do is create mailings or emails that share valuable information (valuable to them-not you) with your customers about your products or services. Merge their information into the mailings or use it to print address labels and send.

Need to see examples of email messages that give your customers valuable information? Visit http://www.extravaganzacrafts.net, on the right it says Get 6 Articles Free put your email address in that box and hit Sign Up. You will receive my marketing emails, including 6 articles that will help you make your art festival or craft show booth more profitable, some bonus articles etc. Don't forget to think about how you can make your emails valuable to your customers! Comment below and let me know how I can make my emails more relevant to you.

You need to be a great salesman to make money selling arts and crafts. The problem is how do I become a great salesman without becoming the pushy salesman?

I have to admit I haven’t been the best example of a good art and craft salesman. Why, because I was always afraid of being too pushy. So, when I heard the word no I took it to mean no and I didn’t push the issue any further.

A good salesman of arts and crafts will have already contemplated all of the reasons someone would buy their product as well as the reasons someone wouldn’t buy.

They will already have answers ready to overcome the objections made by people considering buying their arts and crafts. They won’t take no personally and will simply see what they can do to gently persuade the customer to make the purchase, without being pushy.

So what are the reasons people should buy your art or craft?

1. high quality
2. price-affordable vs. good value for the money
3. handcrafted
4. great customer service
5. support local economy – local artist
6. help a good cause – charity

What are the reasons someone might not buy your handcrafted merchandise?

1. poor quality
2. price – not affordable or not a good value for the price
3. poor customer service
4. not ready to buy right now
5. not what customer is looking for -salesman needed to offer something else
6. salesman didn’t ask for the sale

So now you know why someone might buy your handcrafted art and you know why they might not. You are now prepared to offer the customer the sale several times through out the sales process and work to overcome their objections.

Also read 6 Reasons Your Art Festival Customer Won't Buy

What other objections do you face? How do you overcome these and other objections? What do you say when faced with these problems?

Have you used Google's Adwords keyword tool to find out what words people are using when they are searching to buy arts and crafts? https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none

I visited an Etsy store and right clicked to view the source code which is what the search engines use to view your store. What I found is:

< meta name="keywords" content="fancy stone necklaces, wire wrapped pendants, hangings and suncatchers, stone bracelets, stone chain necklaces, men's collection" >

I typed those keywords into Google's Adwords Keyword tool and learned.

 stone bracelets High 9,900 5,400
 wire wrapped pendants Medium 2,900 1,900
 fancy stone necklaces - - -
 hangings and suncatchers - - -
 stone chain necklaces - - -
 men's collection - - -

So what this tells me is that the keywords stone bracelets has high competition (meaning many other people are using those keywords to sell their stone bracelets) but only receives 9,900 global monthly searches and only 5,400 local monthly searches not enough to support any business.

I didn't see the keywords metaphysical jewelry (which the owner of the site often uses to describe her jewelry). The results for metaphysical jewelry were High competition 590 global monthly searches and 390 local monthly searches.

The key to using Google Adwords and selling art online is finding long tail keywords that buyers use not browsers.

Browsers get online and start their research using general terms. If they are looking for jewelry they may search for the keywords "jewelry" then as they learn that what they really want is jewelry made of a certain element they add that word to the search. For instance if they want a semi-precious stone or silver, gold or a pearl. When they learn the specific name of that element their search gets even more specific. At this time they are probably using a 3-4 (sometimes not always) keyword phrase known as long tail keywords.

Now they are using keywords that specifically describe the product, they are now ready to buy. This is when we want them to visit our website, Etsy store, or Artfire.

Using general search terms like jewelry, jewellery or jewellry gets 13,600,000 global monthly searches but these people will generally not be prepared buyers and by the time they are prepared buyers they won't find your shop using these general keywords.

Very rarely is anyone going to find your site if you use keywords that people either aren't searching for or there aren't enough monthly searches for.

Keywords with high competition will mean that your site has to be highly optimized to be listed high enough on the search engines to rank.

The ideal keywords would have low competition, 10,000-100,000 local monthly searches, and describe your product exactly in 3 to 4 words.

All of the information above tells me either people aren't looking to buy metaphysical jewelry or the site owner hasn't zoomed in on the correct keywords people are searching for when they are looking to buy her product.

This information holds true whether you are selling on Etsy, Artfire, or your own website.

Learning where to place keywords is as important as using the correct keywords to optimize your site for both search engines and for your human visitors.

To receive a free 30 minute review of your site like the one above or to get help learning what keywords are best for your site and where to place them email me.

Hi Shasta, 

I think of you so often. I hope your website, email and all are ok now and that you were able to restart everything ok. Hope everything is ok with the children and your family.

I want to thank you again for all the help you gave me in the fall even though a lot of the time I now feel like I am going under the radar screen with my shop. My sales are improving and I got over 3000 views in dec and made $800+. It was busy for a while. It got busy again last week for some reason and then now nothing.

I will need eventually to connect with you again to try to understand the shop stats etc. I am not sure how to track where people are coming from and what gets their attention.

Jeanne Costello of the Passionate Pearl

Holly Sennott creator of  Kooky Critters had this great idea.

"I have a large FB fan following and it brings loads of traffic to my Etsy shop and my website. I have not tried Payvment yet, but will certainly check that out.

One thing that I have found effective in Facebook marketing is giveaways. I do my own little giveaway each month and also do larger giveaways on other pages (they must have 2000 fans or more). You can typically expect to gain 5 − 10% of their fans during a giveaway period. I just completed one last month and gained 500 fans from it!

This is how the give away works... I am approached by a business to enter the giveaway. I then check to be sure that they have a large fan base. I offer a small product of mine (typically a $5-10 item) for their event. I will also offer free shipping to US and Canada. People are then required to "like" my page in order for the chance to win it. When the giveaway is over, the organizer lets me know who won and I then mail it directly to them.

It only costs me between $5-10 dollars in total and I can gain 100+ fans. That seems like pretty inexpensive advertising to me.

You can go looking for giveaways to enter if you are not approached. It has really worked for me and I always get orders from participants who did not win. BUT, be choosy about which ones you enter, be sure that they are your target audience."

Please thank Holly for her tip by visiting her pages:
www.kookycritters.com
www.etsy.com/shop/kookycritters
kookycritters1@gmail.com

Also See Barbara's tip Selling Custom Arts and Crafts
and Karen's tip Crafts That Sell-Selling Customized Arts and Crafts

One day I was riding in my sisters car. The roads were slick and the car slid off the road into a deep snowbank. The car was very stuck and trying to drive it out did no good. Along came a car with 5 guys in it. They couldn’t pull the car out using their car. They all got out and stood at different points around my sisters car then lifted up her car and put it back on the road.

One guy couldn’t have lifted the car alone, but together the 5 of them easily moved it.

Business is like lifting heavy objects. Doing it alone it’s too heavy but with many people working toward the same goal it becomes light.

Craft businesses often go out of business before they even get a good start when business owners try to do it all alone. There is just too much work to do and too many things to learn for one person.

Have you noticed that KFC and A&W teamed up? Have you thought about why they would do that? I have.

KFC and A&W are in direct competition with each other.

They chose to work together because they share costs and reach a wider customer base.

• They rent/own one building instead of two as well as sharing equipment.
• KFC and A&W share advertising costs. They put out one ad with both chains specials mentioned.
• They both use one set of employees rather than each company having to hire their own.
• KFC and A&W foods compliment each other. You might want rootbeer and ice cream with your fried chicken and mashed potatoes. You might want fried chicken and mashed potatoes while your friend wants a coney dog and tator tots, and everyone wants a rootbeer float. Both companies get more sales by working together.

In the business world working together is called a Joint Venture (JV for short). Jeff Dedrick says doing a joint venture isn’t like if I would make $1000 selling jewelry and my friend would make $1000 selling hair bows that we would make $2000 together. He says that if I would make a $1000 working alone and she would make $1000 working alone it’s possible that we would make $5000 working together.

So how do you make joint ventures work for your art or craft show business?

1. Choose someone with similar products but not exactly the same.

• Jewelry-Handbags-Accessories-Clothes-Other Types or styles of Jewelry-Makeup
• Woodworking-Furniture-Home Decor-Pillows-Curtains-Florals-Pictures-Light Plate Covers-Wood Carvings
• Pottery-Table cloths and place mats-Furniture-Florals
• Body Care-Embroidered Towels-Bath Fixtures
• Rugs-Furniture-Lamps-Curtains

2. Choose someone with a different style than yours if you choose a product that is very similar to yours. For instance two Asian jewelry artists can work together if one does very elaborate work and the other does only very fancy work. They would be able to offer products that closely match their target audience but would be able to offer a wider variety of price ranges, making more sales. Both jewelry artists would be experts in the same field and able to share information on the use and care of Asian jewelry.
3. Ask show promoters if it’s okay to share a booth or rent two booths next to each other and mix products.
4. Make an agreement to know each others products and to offer them equally if someone is looking for that item. Offer each others product as an upsell or downsell.
5. No one likes to work for nothing. Be honest with your partner and keep good records making sure they get paid for their items that sold.
6. Evaluate partnerships and adjust or discontinue as necessary

Recently I’ve been working to make my business more profitable each and every day. Today it occurred to me that I should share with you how I plan to do that.

Week one I worked on catching up on left over unfinished crafts and business projects from previous weeks to prepare for my 30 days of greater profitability. As usual I accomplished some of the things I intended to do, did some things I planned to do later early, and didn’t accomplish some of the plan.

Week two I learned new things about my email marketing to keep my messages from being flagged as spam. I joined a networking site I’ve been meaning to join for months when they ran a special I couldn’t pass up. I did a client consultation which was a new service for me. I blogged about what I was doing and I did all this while keeping up with requests for information about my business.

Week three I mailed coupons to show promoters, had a second client consultation, worked on facebook profile and group pages. I created a profile on Fast Pitch Networking and added a few contacts there. I worked on cleaning out my email box, and signed up for a MySpace account, and I blogged about what I had done to make my business more profitable this week.

Week 4 what I accomplished.

• Power Pay contacted me but then never got back to me. I guess I still need to call them next week.
• I remembered that I had a Linked in account and had a new member join there.
• I found my friend that was already on MySpace and reconnected with her.
• I created an email I can send to all my customers and prospects reminding them that they can follow me on my blog, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Linked in. I need to finish formatting it and send it to everyone. I remembered to tell a client over the phone that they could follow me all these places.
• Worked on creating my profile on Fast Pitch Networking. Added a few contacts there.
• Worked on cleaning out my overly full email box which got even fuller despite my efforts.
• I blogged about my experience working toward greater profitability this week.

Here is what I didn’t accomplish.

• I still didn’t get my accounting done.
• I didn’t call the people I just mailed free newsletters to in the last few weeks to ask them what they thought of the newsletter. It is probably too late but I will try to fit this into next week anyway. Call your prospects right away they are only interested about 7 days!
• I didn’t create any articles to send to show promoters that will encourage them to list their shows with me.
• Since I didn’t write the articles I also didn’t start calling my huge list of show promoters. Obviously I didn’t sign them up in my email marketing system.
• I didn’t get the article written for my newsletter although I have some very good ideas to write about.

I hope that this series is inspiring you to work along with me to improve your businesses profitability by doing something each day that will make your business stronger. I know that I’m a bad example but I would really suggest that you write your goals down on a calendar. This way you can truly see what you did accomplish and will remember what you didn’t get done so you can work on it in your spare time or in your next 30 day plan.

The plan for the next 8 days:

Day 24-Write and send a quick email to all my customers from the past asking them how their businesses are doing? Tell them how my business is doing and showing them where they can get more information from my business. Sort of bring them back to take another look at my business.

Day 25-Write the article for my newsletter.

Day 26-Finish writing my book.

Day 27-Clean out my email box.

Day 28-Do my accounting

Day 29-Create articles to send to show promoters who haven’t listed with me yet.

Day 30-Call show promoters and ask them if I can send them free articles.

Day 31-Blog about my 30 days to Greater Profitability for my art and craft show business.

Entry 4 of 6 in the series My 30 Day Plan to Greater Profitability.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Art and Craft Show Expert Shasta McLaughlin provides articles, hints and tips, checklists and more for artists and crafters that sell handcrafted products who want to save time looking for shows, packing for fairs, and get more sales at festivals. Now she is revealing how to collect your customers contact information, follow up with them and make more money while working less. Go to http://www.extravaganzacrafts.net to get her newsletter, The Extravaganza Craft News, that will help you avoid mistakes, save time and money when preparing your craft show booth.

Have you ever wondered exactly who your customers are? Who you should target in your advertising? How to find out if your target market is male or female, what age they are, or where they are located? Have you ever wondered who was the most likely to walk into your craft show booth?

Your art and craft based facebook business page can help.

First of all if you don't have a facebook business page I suggest getting one. You can learn how at How to Setup Your Art or Craft Show Booth Facebook Business Page.

So you are asking how does my Facebook business page help me know who my art fair customers really are?

Your Facebook business page allows you to begin conversing with people about your business then it gives you statistics it calls insights about those conversations and others taking place about your business. When done correctly-meaning most of your conversations are with people who will benefit your business in some way prospects, current clients, partners, affiliates, etc.-you will start to see some trends in those statistics.

For instance the likes The Extravaganza receives are mostly (78%) from females ages 25 to 55+. I also receive likes from males (13%) ages 25 to 55+. The age groups are broken down further but I think you get the point.

I can look further at the break down of ages of the females who like my page that tells me that most of my customers (44%) are going to be females between the ages of 45 to 55+. I know know where the focus of my marketing efforts should be. I also know that I totally waste my time and money when doing any advertising and marketing to males or females under the age of 24 as 0% of my likes are in those categories.

Take a look it will give you a place to start examining the demographics of your buyers and it's free.

Read 5 Ways to Use Facebook to Sell More Arts and Crafts and Art and Craft Group "Facebook Like" Exchanges on LinkedIn as well as Is Facebook and Social Media Selling Art?

Do you agree?

1. There must be enough people interested in buying your arts and crafts.
2. You must be able to persuade people who are interested in your art to buy.

These are two very separate and distinct problems with different solutions.

First one needs to realize that to be very successful selling their handcrafted goods they must chose to create a craft that is wanted and needed by a large enough group of people to support the number of sales the artist needs per day, week, month or year.

Most artists choose which craft to sell based on which one they like to create the most, the one they get the most compliments on, or the one they like the best. This is actually backward and can be detrimental to your business ever succeeding.

Crafters spend too much time looking for those who want their crafts this way. Artists don't realize they are trying to make people who aren't even interested in their art not only like it, but buy it-a losing game to be sure. 

They are always looking for people interested in their handcrafted merchandise and have no real direction to look... instead of going to a group of people who are already interested in their crafts and trying to persuade them to buy.

It's like trying to tell your customers their favorite color is purple when really their favorite color is green. They aren't going to even want to stand around and listen.

Like trying to sell hand tatted doilies to every child, teen, and young single adult that comes near your booth rather than slightly more mature married adults and grandmothers.

Let's be honest here we can't make people like what they don't like or want. They just won't buy it and our time and money will be wasted in the effort.

If your artwork meets the needs of a large group of people but still seems like people aren't interested the problem may be:

• is the group of people who want, need, and like your product large enough?
  • one caveat here is that you want to target a very specific group of people. Get too generic and you go back full circle.
• are you targeting your prospects well in your advertising, marketing and offers?
• are they are willing to pay your price to get it?
• are you selling where your buyers are, where they are prepared to buy, when they are prepared to buy?

You can still succeed selling your artwork this way if

• there is a large enough group of people who want, need, and like your product.
• they are willing to pay your price to get it.
• you learn where your buyers are and go where your they are to sell your product.
• you don't mind that your business will be less profitable than it could be.

On the other hand persuading a person to buy your crafts when they are already interested is much easier. It requires many skills but most of them are small and can be learned over your career.

The skills you will need include:

• correctly pricing crafts.
• using signage and tags effectively.
• proper displays.
• learning to make small talk that draws out the needs of your buyer.
• recognize the needs of your customers from clues they give in conversation.
• not over selling or underselling -giving the customer just the right amount of information so they don't feel overwhelmed or that their questions haven't been answered.
• recognizing when a buyer is on the fence-knowing what will get them off the fence and on the buying side.
• using coupons, discounts, sales, samples, upsells and downsells effectively to persuade an undecided buyer. Read Do Sales and Discounts Hurt Craft Show Sales?
• staying in touch with and following up with customers so they will buy for the first time, make repeat sales, and refer you to others.
• using your business documents, fliers, business cards, to sell more handcrafted works of art.
• asking for the sale and calls to action.

The difference between trying to create interest in your crafts and persuading people to buy your crafts is: You won't be able to create an interest in your crafts where there is none! You will be much more successful trying to persuade a large group of people who want, need, or like your craft already to buy.

The way I see if people really aren't interested in buying your artwork you have 3 choices:

1. Go where people are interested in buying your crafts.
2. Find a craft they are interested in buying and sell it.
3. Find a job working for someone else.

What do you think?

Recently I’ve been working to make my business more profitable each and every day.

Week one I worked on catching up on left over unfinished projects from previous weeks to prepare for my 30 days of greater profitability. As usual I accomplished some of the things I intended to do, did some things I planned to do later early, and didn’t accomplish some of the plan.

Week two I learned new things about my email marketing to keep my messages from being flagged as spam. I joined a networking site I’ve been meaning to join for months when they ran a special I couldn’t pass up. I did a client consultation which was a new service for me. I blogged about what I was doing and I did all this while keeping up with requests for information about my business.

This week I got less accomplished than I had intended but what I did do I feel good about.

Week 3 what I accomplished.

• I did mail coupons to show promoters.
• I had a second client consultation.
• I learned something new about my facebook profile and group page. Added links to my group from my profile page.
• Worked on creating my profile on LinkedIn. Added a few contacts there.
• Worked on cleaning out my overly full email box.
• Signed up for a MySpace account. You can follow our posts at http://www.myspace.com/extravaganzacrafts.
• I blogged about my experience working toward greater profitability this week.

Here is what I didn’t accomplish.

• I still didn’t get my accounting done.
• I didn’t call the people I just mailed free newsletters to in the last few weeks to ask them what they thought of the newsletter. It is probably too late but I will try to fit this into next week anyway.  Call your prospects right away they are only interested about 7 days!
• I didn’t create any articles to send to show promoters that will encourage them to list their shows with me.
• Since I didn’t write the articles I also didn’t start calling my huge list of show promoters. Obviously I didn’t sign them up in my email marketing system.
• I didn’t contact Power Pay and get signed up to accept credit cards.

I hope that this series is inspiring you to work along with me to improve your businesses profitability by doing something each day that will make your business stronger. I know that I’m a bad example but I would really suggest that you write your goals down on a calendar. This way you can truly see what you did accomplish and will remember what you didn’t get done so you can work on it in your spare time or in your next 30 day plan.

The plan for the next 7 days:

• Day 16 -Call the people I sent newsletters to. Ask them if they would like to receive free articles. Sign them up as prospects.
• Day 17 -Create articles for show promoters.
• Day 18 -Call show promoters and ask them if they would like to receive free articles to make their businesses more profitable.
• Day 19 -Call Power Pay and get set up to accept credit cards.
• Day 20 -Find my friends who are already on MySpace and try to connect with them.
• Day 21 -Do my accounting!
• Day 22 -Write article for my newsletter.
• Day 23 -Blog about my accomplishments this week.

Entry 3 of 6 in series My 30 Day Plan to Greater Craft Show Profitability. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Recently I’ve been working to make my business more profitable each and every day. Today it occurred to me that I should share with you how I plan to do that.

• Day 1-Set a goal to do something to make my business more profitable each day for 1 month.
• Day 2-Make a plan. Get out a calendar and write down the goal for each day until calendar contains one goal for each day. Make each goal one that can be accomplished in a time frame of 1 day to 1 week.
• Day 3-Finish writing down goals on calendar. Breaking larger goals down into step by step goals if necessary.
• Day 4-Clean office so I can find everything I need to accomplish goals.
• Day 5-Do projects I’ve been putting off for the past month or so especially accounting.
• Day 6-Finish projects I’ve been putting off for last month.
• Day 7-Blog about my experiences this week.

Entry 1 of 6 in series My 30 Day Plan to Greater Craft Show Profitability. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Art and Craft Show Expert Shasta McLaughlin provides articles, hints and tips, checklists and more for artists and crafters that sell handcrafted products who want to save time looking for shows, packing for fairs, and get more sales at festivals. Now she is revealing how to collect your customers contact information, follow up with them and make more money while working less. Go to http://www.extravaganzacrafts.com to get her newsletter, The Extravaganza Craft News, that will help you avoid mistakes, save time and money when preparing your craft show booth.

Lets face it selling handmade jewelry is tough. Handcrafted jewelry artists need every advantage they can get. I found an article I think will help.

Face Shape and Jewelry Choices by Barbara Van Look of Fire Mountain Gems is a very informative article. I thought it might help jewelry artists suggest the most flattering jewelry choices for their customers faces and increase their sales.

http://www.firemountaingems.com/encyclobeadia/beading_resources.asp?docid=A21B&WT.fmg_linksection=1K2B4BPKRVB81&_rid=173300.1704.459736&WT.mc_id=NL100511H_2#roundface

What would be easier trying to make everyone aware of and want your product OR trying to sell your product to people who already want it?

A key building block to a successful business is knowing who your target audience is. Without knowing your target audience it’s likely you will spend your money trying to make everyone aware of and want your product instead of trying to sell your product to those people who already want the product you are offering.

Demographics is the word used to describe the characteristics a group of people have in common. For instance the people who most often buy jewelry have many things in common that will help you know exactly how to market your product to them.

I’ve found that getting the demographics for any particular group of people could be especially cost prohibitive for artists and craft persons. Most of us can’t afford the $2500 it costs us to get a professional report on who our target audience is. I was thrilled when I found so much free information about the demographics of jewelry buyers on Google Answers http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=339097.

Of course you might find that your exact customer doesn’t fit the mould of most jewelry buyers.

The best way to obtain exact information about your target customer is to survey the people who buy from you. Ask questions like age, average income, amount spent on jewelry a year, who they usually buy for, how much they are willing to spend on one piece, time of year they spend the most on jewelry, if they usually buy one piece or multiple pieces, etc.  Asking this many personal questions will probably require an incentive so you might consider offering a coupon for a free or discounted piece of jewelry to respondents.

One thing is certain your business will be more successful if you gather the demographics of your customers and then market specifically to that group of people.

Also read How to Know What Crafts Sell at Craft Shows and Sell Handcrafted Jewelry by Making Your Booth Stand Out at Shows

The Extravaganza Craft Productions would like to thank Montana Arts Council for publishing the article “Grow Your Business During Tough Economic Times” by Shasta McLaughlin in their November/December issue of State of the Arts.

The article contains suggestions that help you cut costs at craft shows and market your business to grow your craft show business during tough times.

View the article at http://svcalt.mt.gov/art/soa/pr.asp?ID=1289

Thank You Montana Arts Council!