The following excerpt is from the Staff at Entrepreneur Media Inc. and Jason R. Rich’s book Start Your Own Etsy Business. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | IndieBound
Once your Etsy shop is up and running, you’ve got to begin promoting your store. Following is information that focuses on some of the more commonly used marketing activities you can adopt for your business. Which options you choose are entirely up to you and should be based on your available resources, your target audience and what items you’ll be selling.
Word-of-mouth works best
If you’re able to impress your customers, get them excited about what you’re offering and provide top-notch customer service, one of your rewards as a seller is that they may speak favorably about you among friends, coworkers and family members. Plus, if your customers become loyal to you and what you’re selling, they may also provide a positive endorsement to these people about your company and products.
An even greater reward is that some of your customers may be inclined to share information about you and your company through their social media, which could quickly reach a much larger audience. When you receive complimentary calls or emails from customers, be sure to quickly thank them and politely ask for a favorable review on Etsy and to tell their friends via social media.
Positive word-of-mouth serves as a reliable endorsement and can be more powerful than any advertisement that someone sees because they know and trust the source of the endorsement, whether it’s from a friend, coworker, or family member.
Focus on generating repeat business from existing customers
Once you discover how much time, effort and money can go into driving traffic to your shop, you’ll realize that generating repeat business from already satisfied customers is much easier and requires far less effort.
Maintaining communication and a favorable relationship with your customers is one of the easiest ways to generate repeat business. However, you can help to ensure repeat business by adopting several approaches:
- Offer a discount on repeat orders that’s exclusively for returning customers.
- Reward customers for every dollar they spend in your shop. For example, for every $100 they spend, they automatically receive a gift card worth $10 or $20.
- Encourage customers to sign up for (opt in to) a weekly, biweekly or monthly email that will offer special discounts and promotions as well as useful information that the customer will find valuable. For example, you can share how-to information pertaining to your products, plus offer exclusive previews of new or soon-to-be released products.
- Publish a blog and, within it, promote special sales or discounts to existing customers.
- Create a birthday club that entitles existing customers to receive a special discount during their birthday month or within seven days of their birthday.
- Develop a referral promotion in which the existing customer receives a discount each time someone they refer places an order in your shop, and at…
