How to share your thing: a simple marketing equation

Running a succesful handmade business is full of questions + decisions (no matter what your definition of success is!). Where should you sell your goods? How do you talk about it? After you’ve got everything set up (shop, a few sales, good photos)…what do you do next?

Six years ago I started my own handmade business, and three years later I quit my dayjob to do it full-time. And whoosh! Just like that, I started getting a flood of those questions: How did you do it? What do I do next? I’ve been answering those questions (by asking more questions!) for the last two-ish years and I’ve learned one thing: everything comes down to marketing.

And after the initial set-up of your shop, nearly all your questions come back to that – how do you get your gloriousness into the hands and minds of people who want it? Price, retail vs wholesale, writing copy, taking photos, ordering business cards (glossy or matte? This picture or that?) all comes down to marketing questions.

So I spent the last two years thinking about, writing about and digging into the marketing of  many, many handmade businesses. And I came up with a little equation for answering nearly every question you have.

If you’re ultra-clear on what your awesomeness and what your people want, and where those two things meet up, you’ll know what to do.

Let’s look at it a little bit closer:

1. Your awesomeness – the thing that makes what you make extra-special. This is your vision, your color sense, and your attitude. It’s your words, your photos, your designs. This spark of you-ness separates your thing from all the other things kinda like it. When you can talk clearly about this and share it with others, half your marketing is done.

2. Your people – the people who will love your thing when they find it. These are your buyers, your celebrators, your friends. It’s their language, their favorite colors, their wants, needs. If you know where they are and what they want from your thing, the second half of your marketing is done!

When you combine these two things, you can make all kinds of decisions – from your price to the places you sell your goodness, from the craft shows you attend to the labels you use.

Most of the crafters I work with know one more than the other. Some spend all their time thinking about what makes their goodness so good, that they forget what their people love about it (and if you don’t speak their language,they won’t know it’s for them!). Others think so much about what people will buy, that they forget to add their own spark (making lifeless, middle of the road stuff).