Your Guide to Standing Out When You Want to Give In – S3 : E3
Do you feel like you are trying to create a name for yourself in an oversaturated art world? The arts and crafts world has become flooded with sellers over the past couple of years, and it can be really hard to stand out. As someone who knows what it takes to run a small business, I have done a lot of research and I combined that with my own personal knowledge to dig in and talk directly to those of you who are trying to grow your art business. If you are ready to stand out in a crowded market, this episode is for you.
I truly hope that something I’ve said today will resonate with you, perk up your ears and spark an idea you can try with your business that you haven’t done yet. Feel free to DM me on Instagram and let me know how this episode resonated with you. Keep creating!
Sarah Brown
Hey, friends, welcome back. Today’s episode is going to be a bit different than I had originally planned. Because to sum it up, in two words, life happens.
Sarah Brown
I had an interview scheduled with a business owner in our community who I really think you’re going to enjoy hearing from and you will get to hear that interview down the road a bit. But as some of you know, my husband Barry has been in and out of the hospital for the last two weeks, and I haven’t done much other than hover over him. Our family and staff have been running the business in our absence and doing an outstanding job and we just wrapped up our huge Black Friday sale and our customers showed up for us big time, like you always do. And I always get a little bit gushy when I talk about our customers because we truly have the best customers. And especially during a time when we’ve had a few crises to deal with here and our family, you have reached out and offered words of encouragement and support.
Sarah Brown
We are so very fortunate to have this business and the support of an amazing community like all of you, because so many of our customers are business owners, I decided to dedicate this episode to encouraging you with your businesses as we are right in the thick of the busiest time of the year. For most of you, you know that 2022 has been an extremely hard year for businesses. I’ve seen several artists who say they’re ready to throw in the towel and a number of small shops are closing or barely keeping the doors open. And as someone who knows what it takes to run a small business, I wanted to use this week’s episode to talk directly to those of you who are trying to grow your art business.
Sarah Brown
The arts and crafts world has become flooded with sellers over the past couple of years. And it can be really hard to stand out. So I did a little bit of research. And I combined that with my own personal knowledge. And I want to share a few of the best tips, I think, for standing out in a crowded market. And some of these are practices that we employ at our business and some are more specific just to those of you who are making and selling artwork. But I hope you’ll find something here that will help you and encourage you. So the obvious place to start is with quality products. And I have seen people who jumped straight to selling as soon as they pick up a hobby and sometimes that just isn’t the right move. If you’re still learning a craft at a pretty basic level, particularly with epoxy which can be temperamental, you may risk having issues with your product that you didn’t anticipate. So be sure to give yourself time to hone your craft before you start charging people for it. So you don’t risk bad reviews or unhappy customers as you’re still working out those little oddities that can happen when you take on a new craft.
Sarah Brown
Now once you know you’ve got a great product, you need to set yourself apart with storytelling. Branding will set you apart, get a professional eye catching logo, set up your website and or social media to support the story that you want your brand to tell. And let it be authentically you whatever that is. Are you more of a hippie? Are you more of a sophisticate? Whatever is truly you, even if it’s only one small part of you make that a part of your brand so that people can relate to you. Sharing a little bit of yourself is going to make your potential customers more likely to connect with you. They don’t need to know your whole life story. But seeing that you’re an individual who creates with a purpose could be the deciding factor between buying from you or from someone who does something similar. And know your target audience. Do your research on who’s going to be buying your A product and cater to them in the story that you tell next set yourself apart by offering something that your competitors don’t, in an environment where so many copy what others are creating, find a way to do it differently. And let’s be honest, you’ll have to do this over and over as people will continue to copy. That’s just the nature of the arts and crafts world. You’ll also set yourself apart by offering upgrades to your product that others don’t. Hopefully that gets your mind spinning, it needs to be something of value that not everybody else is offering.
Sarah Brown
Next, make it easy, simple and fun to buy from you. Set up your sales channels to eliminate guesswork for the customer. Make sure your presentation is clean and professional, use spell check, I’m going to repeat that use spell check and proofread everything your customer will be more confident buying from you seeing that you’ve taken the time to present yourself in a professional manner.
Sarah Brown
Next, don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself. Just because something worked a year ago does not mean that you have to hold on to it if now it’s not working, make those changes, tweak what isn’t working, whether that’s your product, or your marketing, or your target audience, whatever it is, make sure that you’re always operating at your very highest capacity. And if that means dropping off a product that isn’t selling anymore, making changes to your branding, because people aren’t relating to it anymore. Whatever that is, don’t be afraid to do it.
Sarah Brown
Next, don’t be afraid to brag on yourself. Sometimes that’s hard for some of us to do. But it’s really necessary if you want to set yourself apart. So be proactive in sharing what makes you different, whether that’s your particular experience, whether it’s superior ingredients you use, whether it’s supporting a charity, with proceeds of your art, or maybe the fact that you are the originator of a certain design or technique or style. Whatever it is, be bold in promoting it, just be honest about it. Because you know that over inflating your description of your product will backfire. So make sure that you can back up your claims. But if you can back it up, if you’ve got it, flaunt it, make sure people know how great you are. And don’t be overly modest if you’ve got something special to offer.
Sarah Brown
My final tip for setting yourself apart in a crowded market is customer service being number one, and I think we all know this. But not everybody knows how to implement it. But the number one thing that’s going to get a client to both recommend you to others, and return to purchase from you again, is the experience that they have shopping with you. Even if they end up with a great product. In the end, if they weren’t comfortable while they were doing business with you, they aren’t likely to return. Back in my corporate retail days, I was introduced to something called the platinum rule. It’s basically an upgrade of the golden rule. And it made such an impression upon me that I continue to use this almost every day when I deal with customers when I deal with people around me in general.
Sarah Brown
So the idea of the platinum rule is that if the golden rule is treat others like you would want to be treated, the platinum rule is treat others the way they want to be treated. And that may not always be exactly the way you want to be treated. So get to know your customer, and do what is necessary to make them happy, even if that’s a little bit off from what you would have preferred if you were in their shoes.
Sarah Brown
Now of course we all know that occasionally there’s an unreasonable customer and there is no making them happy. And that’s not who I’m talking about here. I’m just talking about people that are going to come to your business with a little bit different idea than the person who came before them and making every effort to accommodate them and make them feel amazing. Because at every interaction that you have with a customer from the first time they look on your website, the first time they reach out and contact you to when their payment is accepted to when they open that box and receive their item. Every single interaction that they have is an opportunity to either make them feel great or disappoint them and you want to make sure that every time your business crosses their mind that it is a great experience.
Sarah Brown
I truly hope that something that I’ve said today will resonate with you perk up your ears and make you think that’s something that I can try with my business that I haven’t done yet. I wish you all the success with your art business as we steam towards Christmas. And I’ll be back next week with another interview with an artist in our community. Between now and men. Be sure to stop by our artists support group on Facebook. Let me know what you thought of the episode. And also share your tips for growing your art business so that we can rally around each other this time of year and make sure that everybody has a great selling season.
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