Modish Biz Tips

Double Your Marketing Impact With Cross-Promotion

The following is a guest post by Meredith Keller

{photo by Pochaco} 

Imagine you have a company newsletter with 300 subscribers. Your website gets 3000 visitors each month and you've managed to amass 100 fans on Facebook. You're using these channels to promote special sales and discount codes and seeing a trickle of a response from customers. Now imagine you could let two or three times as many people know about your current promotions without spending a dime. How is such a thing possible? With cross-promotion!

Cross-promotion is marketing activity that is mutually beneficial for two or more businesses. You may already engage in some of this now by having a friend in business insert your promotional flyers into orders she ships to customers. Big businesses do this type of marketing too. You've probably seen the Geico commercials featuring Mrs. Butterworth syrup, for example. There are lots of ways to engage in cross-promotional activities but before we explore some examples, first you need to know how to pick the right partner.

Picking a Cross-Promotion Partner
There are two elements to consider when selecting a cross-promotion partner and they're both very important:

Build Your Own Ultimate Press List

The following is a guest post by Meredith Keller

{photo by Anita Canita}

When you start asking indie shop owners how to market your business, inevitably PR will come up. Shop owners will tell you how they scored loads of sales after getting a write up on a blog like Design Sponge, Indie Fixx or Modish. Look hard enough and you'll even find terrific lists like this, featuring every major blog under the sun that writes about handmade goods. Sounds simple right? Beg these bloggers to feature you and you'll be rich before you know it.

Not so fast. Just because every other indie biz owner is soliciting Modish, Indie Fixx, Poppytalk, Scoutie Girl and the myriad of other well known indie blogs, that doesn't mean you should. By all means, put these blogs on your press list, they're all great. But don't stop there. If you really want to have a terrific press list you're going to have to be a little more creative.

Step 1: Think Outside the (Indie) Box

Expand your press list beyond the indie scene and add publications that are relevant to your business in other ways. Doggy tee designers should reach out to pet related publications. Make products from recycled materials? Reach out to green publications. Make a list of all your potential customer types. Your list might include groups such as moms, men, pet owners, punk music fans, goths, foodies, bibliophiles, yoga enthusiasts. The more types of customers you can think of the better. Think about who would buy your products and why.

Step 2: Make your List

Giving it away for free: How to know when it's good for business

The following is a guest post by Meredith Keller

{photo by Staura. Feel like everyone just wants a free hand-out?}

How to Evaluate and Sample Request or Giveaway Sponsorship Request

You'll know your business is starting to grow when bloggers begin taking notice. There's nothing like a little publicity to introduce your brand to new customers. As your brand grows you're sure to begin getting requests from blogs that either want to review your products or give your products away in a contest to their readers.

Before you head to the post office with your valuable merchandise, you may want to ask yourself "what's in this for me?" On the face of it, the opportunity to get a blogger to review your products sounds good. The opportunity to sponsor a giveaway practically for free also sounds like a pretty good deal. All it's going to cost you is your product and postage. 

The trouble is saying yes to every request that comes in starts to cost money and you may never see any returns. That's why it's important to carefully evaluate every request for free products and make sure that before merchandise goes out the door, odds favor that there will be some return on your investment.

Not all blogs are created equal and unfortunately a lot of so-called bloggers are simply interested in free products and they really have nothing to offer you in return. So how can you tell the difference between a scam and a golden opportunity?

7 Ways to Get Your Shop Noticed by Etsy Admin

{The Watcher, photo by Alice Lily.}

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the three most high profile spots for sellers on Etsy.com are the Featured Seller, Front Page, and Gift Guides. These are high visibility parcels of Etsy real estate where you are guaranteed to get a few hundred views over the course of a very short time (and possibly a few hundred sales if you’re a Featured Seller.)

Though there is no guaranteed method of getting featured in one of these desirable spots, you can take some steps to improve your chances. What do all of these things have in common? They’re all curated by Etsy staff members (with the exception of the Front Page which is sometimes chosen by other Etsy members.)

To get exposure, you need to make your shop known to the taste-makers on the Etsy staff who are in the position to raise you to front page status. A spot in one of these curated sections means more eyes will see your work and potentially make a purchase, heart you or consider adding you to a Treasury. In the Etsy game, it’s all about raising the visibility of your shop, so listen up and I’ll tell you 7 ways to get the Etsy Admins to take note:

6 Things you Can Do to stay cool during the Summer Slump

{Photo by Emma Über. Hot fun in the summertime may = slow sales in your shop}

If you've found your online sales have started to slow down lately, just know, it's not you. Blame it on the summertime. These months can often be the slowest of all for many online retailers, big and small, in a good economy or bad. Why?

Mother's Day, Father's Day and graduation season are officially over, and there will be no more big gift-giving pushes until holiday season rolls around. Unless you're in the wedding business, the summer may leave you coming up a bit short.

Also, people just spend less time on the computer during summer. We're outside more, going on vacation, doing household projects. Much more of our free time right now is spent offline (thank goodness!) but that means less online sales across the board.

So what are you going to do about it?

Virtual Labs follow-up- How to submit to bloggers

Hello BIZtips readers!!

Thanks again to everyone who attended the virtual lab on Tuesday! It was a whoooole lot of fun, a little hectic on my end and I'm sure I looked like a spaz trying to speak and keep up with the chat at the same time, but I tried! ;) I'm sure, SURE, I missed a whole bunch of your questions though, so if you have any that weren't addressed then, please feel free to ask now!

I was going to write up a little re-cap, but honestly, everything I spoke about was drawn from a prior post I wrote here: How to Approach Blogs (and get them to write about you!) That post covers what to say in your email, what to avoid and what to expect after you send it off, how to follow up and more. (hint hint, it's a good one to bookmark!) Please take a peek at it and let me know if you have any additional questions in the comments here or on that post.

I also have a companion post to get you started with a big list of blogs that specifically feature handmade goods, along with the names of the editors and their email addresses. It's by no means an exhaustive list of all the blogs out there, but it's a good place to start!

And if you need further help finding great blogs to get featured on, help in writing bloggers about your shop, help deciding what blogs to advertise on, etc, I offer marketing consulting on the side, too. If you're interested, feel free to email me (biztips{at}modishblog.com) for more info and rates. I should have them posted here on the site too by the end of the month (that's my goal, at least! :)

Thanks again for your support! You just don't know how much I truly appreciate it.
<3 jena