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These days, “Going Green” ain’t just for hippies. Environmentally-conscious products sell like hot cakes, because everyone can see the damage excessive consumerism wrought on our environment.
Selling a “green” product demonstrates to consumers your company cares about the planet, and that means you care about them.
A Green Product
Your new clean, green company image starts with your product. Consumers searching for earth-friendly goods are extremely well-informed, so you don’t want to pull a fast one on them by offering a “Green” product that isn’t 100% . You need to research, test, and have your products certified by environmental bodies your buyers trust.
Part of creating effective green products is solving problems in an ‘earth-friendly’ manner. For instance, many of us shop at the supermarket or farmers markets, but we don’t want to keep using plastic bags. Solution: the cloth shopping bag. Now create your own unique cloth shopping bag – voila, a green product!
Problem: your customer has just had a baby, and they need a new diaper bag but don’t want one of the plastic ones. Solution: a “green” diaper bag, made of recycled fabric OR recycled bottles OR recycled inner tube tires (yes, I’ve seen it done, and they look fab!)
Designing green products means focusing on durability. Customers want something they can buy ONCE, than give to a friend when they no longer need it. Anything you need to replace means more junk lining the landfills.
Be very, VERY careful labelling your products. I’ve noticed on Etsy and other online sites, many sellers don’t understand the meaning of ‘vegan’, and label bath and beauty or food products ‘vegan’ which contain goats milk or eggs. If you label food as ‘vegan’ or ‘free range’ or ‘organic’, you’d better know what those words mean!
Green Packaging
No matter the product you sell, you’ll probably need to package it in something, especially if you need to mail it out to buyers. It’s all well and good selling eco-friendly handbags, but if you’re shipping your bags out in plastic packaging with styrofoam peanuts, you’re not “exactly” doing the earth any favors, are you?
Green Marketing
Now that you’ve created your eco product and sourced earth-friendly packaging, you need to get the word out to potential customers. Once again, the opportunity to practise green business presents itself. While some advertisements in print publications are unavoidable, forego expensive mailout and brochure campaigns in favor of … the internet!
Utilize this massive (and paper-free) hive of concerned, informed individuals for marketing your green products. Advertise on awareness blogs, shopping websites. Hell, you can start your own company blog (or hire me to do it for you!)
When you create green products you tap in to a growing market of concerned consumers, who need and want products, but don’t want to be burdoned by more junk they’ll just throw away. Provide a solution, and you’ve earnt a customer.
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As you all know by now, I am HUGE fan of Etsy. Many of my blog readers and clients sell handcrafts through Etsy shops and I even have a Wedding Skulls etsy shop.
Many of my Etsy clients are concerned about the amount of time they spend promoting and managing their shops verses the amount of sales they actually make. One girl said “currently, I’m putting in 50 hours work for every sale.” She’s selling handmade bracelets that sell for under $10.
So I’ve put my head to the task and come up with three excellent tips for scaling back your time managing and promoting your etsy shop (giving you more time to craft those beautiful things!) If you’re not an Etsy seller, don’t look away, you can apply these tips to any small business or non profit!
Create a Plan (and STICK TO IT)
Divide your business activities into four sections – Creating inventory, packaging and shipping inventory, marketing and promotion, and shop maintenance. Decide how much time you are to spend on each of those activities each week - 5 hours on inventory, 2 on marketing, 1 on shop maintenance and 2 on packaging, for example.
As soon as you’ve used your allotted time, move onto the next activity. Keeping yourself locked into time constraints like this is an excellent motivator to work productively.
Use Templates for Conversations
A lot of a seller’s time is spent answering emails and Etsy conversations. To save time, I keep a word document on my desk with all the ’standard’ replys I send out “Your item has been shipped and is winging it’s way across the Atlantic as I type…”
I cut and paste as the need arises and add name of customers and items. I know everything I send off sounds professional and is properly spell-checked. This saves me so much time.
Market Smarter, Not Harder
Forums, chatrooms, blogging, twitter, facebook, bookmarking…all the different online promotion tools can feel overwhelming, especially when it seems like you put in hours of time for not much reward.
The answer is not to market harder, but to market smarter. Instead of trying ALL these things – try one or two. Do you get more conversions from you blog readers or your facebook friends? How about Twitter? Drop the promotion activities that give you the fewest sales and focus your attention on improving your efforts in the others.
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In my last post, I talked about why I’m not worried about the economic recession. As promised, the second installment in my recession series on ‘Recession-Busting tips for Small Businesses’ is how to brand your business for a niche market.
I’m a firm believer that the business practises that fail during an economic downturn are the practises that weren’t so hot to begin with. In a booming economy, bad business practises go unnoticed, but when things get tough, shareholders get tough, and the crackdown begins.
The key to succeeding in a small business is targeted niche marketing. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read on for five steps to brand your business for a target market.
Step One: Know Your Target Market
Part of my job as a copywriter is to evaluate your customers. I need to know who your target customers are so I can write copy that speaks to them. If you don’t know who your target market is, we’re both in trouble.
Write a profile of a target customer? Are they female or male? A teenager, a 20-something or a retiree? Are they well-off or struggling? Do they work for themselves? What are they interested in? What are their hobbies? Do they have kids? Are they from a certian area? Do they own their own home? Do they need to relax more, organize their life or lose weight?
Knowing your target market is the KEY to success during the recession.
Step Two: Research your Market’s Needs
If you’ve completed step 1 above, you . With the economy slowing and more people losing jobs, your target market’s needs are changing. You need to meet those needs.
Is your target market trying to save money? Are they cutting back on non-essentials? Are they trying to stay healthy or help the environment? What effect does the economy have on your target customer?
Don’t just sit at home and ponder your market – get out amongst them. Go to the places they hang out and ASK them about their lives – what do they want and need? What are their hopes and dreams? The best market research is done by engaging directly with the market itself.
Have you brainstormed a few ideas? Good. Now we move on to step three.
Step Three: Assess Your Business Against your target market
Assessing your own business with a critical eye can be difficult, but you need to do it if you want to succeed. If a target customer showed up at your store or found your website online, what would they see? How would they feel? What items or services would they be drawn too? What items or services would they find useless?
For example, you run a gothic clothing store. Your target market is older goths with families/jobs/responsibilities. You’re selling a lot of business clothes with gothic twists – lace here, a little Victorian detail there. You also sell a line of clubbwear, but that doesn’t do very well, because it doesn’t really sit with your target market.
Step Four: Use downtime to refocus your business
Now is the perfect time to reassess your business practises. First, focus on your inventory. Are there any products (such as the clubbwear above) that don’t fit with your target market? Could you perhaps get rid of these products and replace them with more appropriate items? Use your target market research as a jumping-off point to brainstorm new product lines.
Next, look at your branding and image. Does your shop graphics and colours mesh with your products? Do you have a uniform branding? Are you targeting your niche market? Now you have the opportunity to rethink, rebrand, refurbish.
Step Five: Market Smarter, Not Harder
You’ve got your target audience sussed. Now how do your market your newly refurbished business? You need to focus your advertising where your target market hangs out? Are they on the internet? Are they reading blogs? Are they on facebook? Are they at the local market, or the grocery store, or the antique shop? Are they in school? Do they work at home? Where do they eat out? Where do they go to relax and unwind? The answers to these questions are where you should focus your marketing efforts.
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Yesterday my husband came home from a work meeting with a sad face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“According to the powersuits upstairs, our section’s run up a massive debt over the last six months. They’re letting one, probably two people go.”
“Are you worried one of them will be you?”
He shakes his head. “I’m indispensible. It will be B— (a friend of ours), since he doesn’t do any work.”
My husband works in a lab with eight other people. This meeting put everyone at his office in a somber mood. Our flatmate has informed us he’s moving out to live with his parents for awhile. He can no longer afford the rent since his archaeological work has dried up completly.
Continue reading Why I’m NOT worried about the recession
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Y’all know me well enough by now to notice I dish out a fair wad of advice about blogging. Writing blogs is a passion of mine, one I’m fortunate enough to get paid for. When I’m passionate about something, I want to talk about it ALL THE TIME. This annoys my poor, long-suffering husband, who is currently enduring with zen-like patience my recent fanaticism with sustainable, self-sufficient living. (He does like my home-baked bread, though).
Hence why I talk about blogging, a LOT. I believe it’s important for my clients and other businesses to understand why blogging has become important in the online world. When new work arrives on my desk, I see the same mistakes again and again – no blog, not updating a blog, a stale, badly written blog, the list goes on – and I want to help.
I started blogging only two years ago – and since then my skills . Everything I know about writing and online media I have self-taught, by reading books, ebooks and other blogs, and by trial-and-error. I haven’t always got things right, but every is a piece of knowledge I can pass on to my clients. And today, I’m passing a few tips on to you.
So, please don’t laugh too much, but here are a few blogging mistakes I’ve made:
Continue reading Blogging Mistakes I’ve made
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Does your business have a website? Are you thinking it’s time you moved into the digital age? Are you pricing up graphic designers? Before you commit to a website design, consider the purpose of your business website and whether your chosen designer is best suited to realise that purpose.
So what IS your website doing for your business? Think about this very carefully. Is your website your primary means of interaction with your customers – ie, an online shop. Does your website bring in new business via search engine traffic? Or does it serve as an information source for customer who’ve already brought with you – offering product advice, software updates or networking resources?
Continue reading What IS Your Website Doing for Your Business?
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As a copywriter, I’m often called in to ressurect dying business blogs. “I don’t know what happened,” the client says. “I tried to keep up with the blog, but after the first few months I ran out of things to say about vintage hats, so I just left the blog for shop updates, and all my subscribers left and my readers dissapeared.”
Sadly, I see this all too often. A business owner will start a blog with every good intention, but unfortunately, not everyone is a born blog writer. Most business owners have better things to do with their time than worry about feed subscribers and fresh blog content. If that sounds like you, it’s high time I suggest you hired a copywriter.
But what if you’re happy running your blog yourself? Perhaps you’re really enjoying blogging about your business, but you feel like you’ve run out of things to say. Well, for all you perservering amateur bloggers out there, I offer five post ideas to stimulate a boring blog.
Continue reading 5 Posts to Stimulate Boring Blogs
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Copywriting clients come and go. Most you adore and hope to work with again. Some become lifelong friends, some you wish you’d never met. I’ve been thinking a lot about my wonderful and not-so-wonderful clients, so I compiled this list on how to be a great freelance client:
A Great Client has a Plan
When you go into business, or start up your non-profit, the VERY first thing you should do is not buy your domain name or throw a party, but draw up a business plan. Your business plan then becomes the backbone of every business decision you make.
The client with a plan is the client who comes to me and says “I need to website to fulfill this specific purpose. I want this information included. I need a blog that targets this specific audience and attracts new clients to my business. Go to it.” This client is a joy to work with because they understand what a copywriter needs to produce successful website content.
The client without a plan says “I need a website, with some articles and probably a blog.” They don’t understand the purpose for their website, their target market, or the goals they’re working towards by setting up online. These clients are difficult to work with as they don’t know what they want to achieve, so the copywriter can’t target their content accordingly.
A Great Client is Excited about their business
My favourite people to work with are those enthusiastic, ultra-driven people. You know the ones – they ooze passion from every pore. They’re the plumbers passionate about drain-laying, the gothic clothing designers passionate about Victorian lace, the seed-growers passionate about organic compost. Their enthusiasm is infactions, and before long I discover I’M passionate about drain laying, victorian lace and organic compost, and my passion comes across in the words I write.
Inspire passion in those around you, and you’re business will thrive.
A Great Client knows when to Leave you To It
Some clients are so concerned you don’t understand the needs of their project, they’ll ring you countless times to ‘go over the details’ or drag you in for meeting after meeting.
Great Clients understand that all these interruptions break your flow and result in a disjointed focus on the project. Great Clients trust you as the expert to deliever your best work based on their detailed brief.
A Great Client Asks for the Best
Sometimes – for whatever reason – you don’t get things quite right the first time. Maybe the focus for some of your articles is a bit off, or you’ve touched on a controversial point your client would rather avoid.
A Great Client gives you detailed feedback on the areas they want improved and allows you to rectify these areas.
Some clients simply take the content and make do, or attempt to edit it themselves. A Great Client understands you want only your best work to enter the world and will allow you the opportunity to improve your content.
A Great Client Pays on Time
Every freelancer has a tale of ‘the Client that Didn’t Pay’. My worst was an editor who didn’t sent a check for four months. The check never arrived (not the editor’s fault, mind you) so they told me they would write another check and send it right away. Two weeks later, a check arrived – not the new check, but the FIRST check, now reversed. The new check arrived three months later – seven months after I was due payment.
It’s easy to forget the writers have to eat too, and pay our bills, and buy our husband’s chocolate. Great Clients pay promptly, and if there’s any problem with payment, they rectify it forthwith.
Do you have any more definitions of great clients? Perhaps you have a story of a great or not-so-great client you’d like to share in the comments?
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I can’t work without clients. My clients range from small business owners, non profit entrepreneurs, editors, and ebook buyers. Without them, I wouldn’t have an income for writing.
Think of your client pool like a vegetable patch. You only have so much space (my vege patch is 1m by 1m square!) for vegetables. This space represents the total amount of work you’re able to do without expanding.
Continue reading Finding New Freelance Clients is a lot like gardening
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Hi everyone!
I know, I know, it’s been far too long since my last post. Please forgive?
I’ve been super busy working on wonderful projects, finishing my novel and writing a couple of new ebooks! Both ebooks are currently only available from my Etsy shop, but I’ll soon have them up in the blog shop, too. I promise 