by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
Before I go into the information about the 5 steps to a good web presence, the most cost effective way to advertise your embroidery business, I would like to ask you a few questions.
- Do you have a good web presence set up for your embroidery business?
- Do you have a system in place to automatically attract new customers and prospects into your business?
- Are you keeping your customers informed of all new happenings in your business?
- If you have a web site, is it bringing in the sales that you need?
It is so important to create a good web presence in today‚’s market and without one, your business may really suffer. Creating a good web presence can be very inexpensive when compared to the cost of advertising and so much more effective. This is a very efficient way of spending your advertising dollars rather than on something that you hope will work. A good web presence with a marketing system works for you on a constant basis and can give you a quick return on your investment. You cannot count on that with any other type of advertising system.
What do I mean by a good web presence? A good web presence means that you are easily found on the internet by your customers and prospects. You appear to be in many places on the internet making it easy for customers to interact with you. You website can be easily found when someone searches for a particular type of product that you have to offer.
Creating a web presence is a major part of any embroidery business. This is just as important to a local embroiderer as it is to one that is trying to reach the market globally. Before you can begin to reach a worldwide market, you must first reach out to your local market and the best and most cost effect way to do this is through your own web presence.
In today‚’s economy your prospects want to learn all that they can about you and see what you have to offer before they will choose to do business with you. This has been brought about because of all of the Social Marketing that has taken place in the past few years. The entire marketing system has changed and the way that business has been marketing in the past has totally changed.
Everyone in business needs to create a web presence. Having a web site is very impressive to your customers and clients and if it is one that they can interact with, that is even better and means a lot more to them. This puts you at a whole new level in the eyes of your customers or clients.
Basic Steps To Creating A Good Web Presence
Step 1- Creating a good web presence starts with Social Media.
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest social sites is a great place to get started marketing your business. You will not create a lot of sales here, but that is not the object. Creating an awareness of your business is the place to start. Your first step is to create a Fan page or Business page on Facebook. Start letting people know about you but do not try to sell anything when you first start. This will turn many people off. You want to show what you have to offer, give great tips, share inspirational quotes and be of help to other people. Share your pictures on Facebook and send them to Pinterest as well.
Step 2 – Add a shopping cart.
I do not recommend adding your shopping cart to Facebook. I recommend keeping your shopping cart independent on your own hosting account and then send your fans to your shopping cart through your pictures on your Social Media sites.
Step 3 – Add a Blog
Blogs tell stories about your products, how you create them and what your customers are doing with them. You can have testimonials on your blog and again, lots of pictures. People like pictures and today, much of our marketing is done through pictures.
Step 4 – Add an Automatic Emailing System
This will allow you to create messages that will go out to your customers and prospects on an automatic basis. You create a set of follow up marketing messages that you can schedule and send out to your customers without you even having to be involved once the messages are created. When you have something special coming up, you can send out a broadcast message to everyone at one time, saving you a lot of time and money. You can even create a newsletter and send it out through your system and keep your customers totally up to date with everything that is going on in your business.
Step 5 – Add a lead capture form on your blog
A form to capture names and email addresses on your blog site from new prospects in exchange for a coupon or gift certificate will give you the opportunity to start marketing to them. A coupon towards their next purchase is always a winner! By capturing their name and email address you can keep them informed of any new products, specials or events that are happening within your business.
Creating your web presence with the Marketing System needs to be search engine optimized, very simple and easy to use and will get you up and running very quickly! This is very important, you do not have the time to go out and do research to find a system and then try to learn how to use it. You must get your marketing system going quickly!
Creating a total marketing system will help you to be found more quickly on the internet and will make it easy for you to stay in touch with your customers keeping them informed at all times.
When you are first starting out in business, especially in the embroidery business, you are more focused on creating your products than you are on marketing! Marketing is one of the most important parts of your business and without it, you have no business. In today‚’s world you have to find a way to get your customers jobs done on a timely basis and still build in time for marketing your business. If you have a system that will work for you 24 hours a day 7 days a week, you will find that marketing is not such a chore!
How Do I Get A Marketing System That Will Work 24 Hours A Day, 7 Days Per Week?
The easiest way is to follow a step by step program that will guide you through each step of the way. I am starting a 6 weeks “Embroidery Business Marketing System Workshop” on May 7, 2013 that will show you each and every step in the process. This easy to follow system will start with choosing the right name, getting your hosting account, setting up your shopping cart, adding a blog with marketing pages and then setting up your automatic emailing system. This will be a system that you will have total control of at all times. Go to www.EmbroiderybusinessMarketingSystem.com for the details.
This system has worked very well for me and I will share it with you in this workshop! If you have pieces of your marketing system together already but are not seeing the results that you are looking for, then you will want to attend this workshop. I want you to become very successful in your embroidery business. I would also like for you to share some stories with me about the success that you have had with your current marketing system. Please comment below and let me know what system you are using and how your system is working for you!
Join Us For The Embroidery Business Marketing System Workshop
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
I am Joyce Jagger, The Embroidery Coach and I help embroidery business owners who value quality products and customer relationships that are ready to take massive action to shift their embroidery business into high gear! Through on line training and one on one coaching I help you avoid pitfalls, you will learn how to price your products and discover easy steps to follow on your path to success!
I have written a business book for Embroidery Business owners, “The Truth About Embroidery Business Success”, 7 Elements to a Highly Profitable Home-Based Embroidery Business. This book will give the new embroiderer or the person that is thinking about starting an embroidery business the right information that is need in order to be able to build a Profitable Embroidery Business. If you already have an embroidery business and would like more information about the business side of your embroidery business, this book will be idea! Click on the link in the far right sidebar to purchase the book from Amazon.
Joyce Jagger,
The Embroidery Coach
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
Are you looking for the best ways to spend your advertising dollars? Being an embroiderer and being in business is all about a way to earn an income. We also want to keep as much of that money as we can and not be spending it on advertising. You need to look for ways to advertise that are cost effective and will give you a high return on your investment.
The ways that we have reached out to our customers or prospects in the past are different than the ways that we need to reach out to them today. The 3 best ways that I have found are:
- Great marketing materials
- Networking
- Marketing System on the Internet
While we need to be spending our time keeping our machines busy so that we are earning an income, we also need to spend a certain amount of time getting our name out there. Without those steady efforts we will have no work to keep those machines busy!
You cannot sit in your shop and wait for the prospects or customers to come to you. You have to reach out to them. You need a way to market to them that is not going to take all of your time and is not going to cost you a fortune.
Great Marketing Materials
I wrote about creating some outstanding marketing materials in one of my past articles but I cannot emphasize that enough. This is the first impression that you make on a prospect or customer. You must have a great business card and brochure that lets people know what you do, and how what you do benefits your prospect or customer. People really do not care about what you have, they only care about how what you have is going to benefit them in one way or another. It does not matter if this is a gift item that they are looking for or something that is going to promote their business. How can you help them?
If you would like to read more about creating a great business card go to embroiderybusinesssuccess.com/impression-embroidery-business/
Networking Off line and On line
Joining a networking group is a great way to get your name out there. You meet a lot of other business owners that are willing to exchange ideas. Someone in the group is bound to know others that are looking for what you have to offer. This does not usually happen immediately but over time, it does happen.
Before you start trying to do any marketing to the other members in the networking group you want to see if there is a way that you can help them get their name out there to other people. When they see that you are willing to help them, they will be willing to help you. Do not ever push your products off onto the other networkers in the group without offering to help them first! This just does not work and you will not be looked upon favorably!
Wear your products while you are networking. This is very important and make sure that what you are wearing is of high quality and the embroidery is impeccable. This is by far the best way to let people know you offer high quality products!
Let everyone you know, know what you do and how what you do can benefit them. Hand out your business cards and brochures to all of your friends and family and ask them to hand them out to their friends and family. This is an excellent way to start.
Create a Facebook Fan page and a Pinterest business page for your business. Post lots of pictures with content letting people see what you do. You will be better off not trying to sell them anything when you first start your pages. You want to have pictures and content that will be beneficial to them before you start promoting any type of sales to them. A social network is just that. You are trying to get your name out socially, not just blasting them with ads!
On Line Marketing System
A good web presence is one of the most cost effective ways to advertise today! You must have a total marketing system to make this effective and to create the sales that you are looking for. Having a shopping cart is not enough. Having a WordPress or standard HTML website is not enough. These must be combined with a system to collect names and email addresses from a group of people that would fit what you have to offer. But, how do you reach these people?
You must start out with your local market. The best way again is through networking, both off line and on line through your social network. Send prospects to your website for a free gift. This can be an article about something that will benefit them, a coupon for something free or a discount coupon for their first visit. You must give them a reason to visit you at your place of business but at the same time, people want to check you out to see what it is that you have to offer and how you are different than the other embroidery businesses in town, before they are willing to come to your place of business.
Once you have them in your automatic emailing system, you can start sending them information about you and your business and keep them informed of anything new that you have to offer and what is happening in your business. You could even promote a certain product each month. These emails can all be sent out on an automatic basis. You create them once, add them to your system and each time someone requests your free item, they are added to the system and will automatically receive these emails.
In today's world people are so skeptical and they will not do business with you until they know, like and trust you and this is done through networking and receiving information from you prior to doing business with you.
To receive the most from your advertising dollars, you need to have great marketing materials, to be marketing on the internet and be networking in your local area.
Advertising in the newspaper does not work anymore. A press release can work for you if you have a special announcement, but it can only be an announcement. You cannot promote your business. If you have a special event that is happening, such as a grand opening or some type of promotion that you will be giving some of the profits to charity, you can send a press release and if they feel that it is news worthy or will be of benefit to someone else, they will publish it.
Advertising in the yellow pages does not work well anymore unless you are in an area that does not get internet access efficiently or you have a market that only looks in the yellow pages.
Today's marketing is changing and the way that we advertised in the past is not going to work anymore. You need to find other ways of getting your name out there and you must be very careful about how you are spending your advertising dollars today. You want your advertising to increase your income and give you a great return on your investment!
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
Have you really thought about your business card and what that first impression says about you and your Embroidery business? The first impression that you leave with your new prospect or customer is extremely important and if you do not leave the right impression or a positive impression, you will not have the opportunity for another chance. What does that first impression say about you and your Embroidery Business? That first impression is the lasting impression and you want it to be the one that they will want to remember you by and tell others about you. Here are some questions that you need to answer that will help you to create a good first impression.
- Do you look like you have an Embroidery Business?
- Does your logo give an indication of what your business is about?
- Do all of your Marketing pieces flow with the same look?
- Do you advertise your product every place you go?
- Is your appearance reflective of your workmanship?
- Is your Showroom neat and organized ready for customers at all times?
When you talk to your prospect or customer that first time, you need to have a marketing piece to hand to them. Most generally, this is your business card, but it can also be a brochure or postcard. What does your marketing piece say about you? Is it leaving the kind of impression that you want to make.
When you are creating or having your marketing pieces created you need to make sure that they gook great, let the customer know exactly what it is you do and how it is going to benefit them. What do your marketing pieces say about you? Are they leaving the kind of impression that you want to make?
You Must Tell Your Prospect What To Do!
What is it you want your customer or prospect to do? You must let them know by the marketing piece that you hand them.
- Do you want them to call you?
- Do you want them to visit your website for a FREE gift or coupon?
- Do you want them to come to your place of business to receive a FREE gift, coupon or discount?
You want to make sure that your message is clear and that you are giving them a call to action. You must give them a reason to come to you! Your business card is the first item to take into consideration. What does your business card look like? Is it one that they will remember? You want your marketing pieces to be items that they will look at and say “WOW! I need to check these people out!”
Many people overlook the importance of a high quality business card, one that will actually leave a great impression. Remember, the first impression is the lasting impression Most people will buy the cheapest business card that they can, never thinking of what an impression that is actually leaving with the new prospect. Many have a standard logo or a logo from a company that is printing them on the back of the card. Do Not Ever Do This! A cheap business card with no real thought behind it says that your business does not pay attention to detail. Bad mistake!
What Does Your Business Card Say About You?
Thank about how your Business Card is representing you and your business. Here are the important components that need to be your business card.
- Business Name
- Logo
- What you do (Your tag line)
- Address (if applicable)
- The best way to contact you (email-phone or both)
- An offer on the back (You can send them to your Facebook Fan Page or your website for a FREE offer!)
Only have 500 Business Cards printed up the first time. You may want to make a change on it. You can then make the changes and have more printed. Give it some color. Use a color that you love and one that you are going to use in all of your marketing materials including your website.
Have a coating applied to the front side. Do not put coating on the back. You may want to write a note on it. The colors that you choose should be part of your branding process. Yes, you will make changes. You may want to change your offer or your message. I did this several times until I came up with exactly what was working the best.
Here is the Front of my Business Card Here is the Back of my Business Card
I get a lot of compliments on my card. You can see that I have all of the information on the front that is important and I have an offer on the back. This has worked very well for me and has brought in many prospects. I had my business cards printed on line through a company that offered overnight service. I did not choose the overnight option, but their service was excellent and fast.
You can also have a postcard created with one lead product or some type of promotion on it that you can hand out at different functions that you go to. It can really work for you. Again, make sure that you have an offer on it, one that they cannot resist! It does not have to be expensive, just something that will make them take action. If you have a post created make sure that it is 4″ x 6″. I have learned that people do not pay as much attention to the normal sized 3″ x 5″ postcards as they do the larger ones.
Remember, that first impression is so important and if you want the opportunity to create customers out of your new prospects you absolutely must create a great first impression!
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
Do you ever wonder how you can create more profits and have more Embroidery Business Success? The better you serve your customer, the better your customer will serve you. This is a service business and I cannot emphasize enough the importance of excellent customer service and the effect that it has on your profits and your entire embroidery business success.
Your customers depend on you for guidance in their selection of your products and services that will help them promote their business. The more that you help them and show them that you truly do have their best interest at heart, the more business they will do with you and they will help you promote your business!
Here are 5 tips that will help you to serve your customer better!
- Educate them so they know exactly what to expect up front.
- Be willing to work with them and give them a reason to come back for more.
- Always return their phone calls and emails ASAP.
- Have samples tagged with product information to make it easier for the customer to make their selection.
- Deliver On Time!
Educate your customer so they know exactly what to expect up front!
Do not have any hidden costs with their order. Make sure that at the end of the order taking process you have given them every bit of information that is needed to complete that order. If there are any art charges, set up charges, color change charges, hard to hoop fees, leather fees, wool fees or whatever other fees that can be applied to their order, let the customer know this upfront. Never make the mistake of going ahead with the order without their permission.
Unless it is a request that is going to take a lot of research such as a certain product that you do not carry on a steady basis, you need to have price lists ready and be able to give them an instant price. This always makes the customer feel very confident in you and your services.
Be willing to work with them and give them a reason to come back for more.
Today, the customers are demanding more and more from their suppliers in the way of services. If you do not meet their demands or wishes, someone else will. If it is not possible for you to accomplish something that they are requesting, given your situation, you must let them know up front immediately. Do not mislead them in any way. If you do, you will not see this customer again!
Your customer will be very happy that you took the extra step and will gain more confidence in your company. You want to make sure that you give your customer a very pleasant buying experience and they will return for more!
Always return their phone calls and always respond to emails ASAP!
When a customer or potential customer calls and has to leave a message, make sure you get back to them right away. If you do not return their phone call, they will feel that you do not want their business. All present and future customers need to be made to feel important.
The same principal applies to emails. If a person takes his time to email you, you must be courteous enough to take your time to reply to that email. They do not care how busy you are; their time is as valuable to them as yours is to you! This type of customer service is expected!
Have samples tagged with product information to make it easier for the customer to make their selection.
Having good samples tagged with up to date information is an excellent way to make it easier for the customer to make a selection. This gives them the feeling of confidence that you know what you are doing! Have some sizing samples ready for them to use.
Many customers are not looking for a high quality shirt, especially businesses like restaurants or construction businesses. They go through a lot of shirts and are usually looking for a low priced shirt.
Embroider your logo on the samples that you are tagging. The customer will be able to see your high quality work and when you have discontinued samples, you can give them away and have free advertising.
Deliver on Time!
This is by far the most important tip that I can give you that will help you serve your customer better and create more success in your embroidery business When you take an order, the customer must be given a delivery date. That is expected right up front. The average turnaround time today is 2 to 3 weeks. If you can deliver quickly, you will be servicing them better than the average embroidery business.
You must deliver on time or ahead of schedule of the agreed date. This is an excellent way to set you and your business apart from the crowd!
Just remember, the better you serve your customer, the your customer will serve you and you will see more profits and greater embroidery business success!
by The Embroidery Coach | | Embroidery Business Marketing
In a previous I talked about how I had three major life changing events that occurred in 2012 and I shared with you the first major change; I went back to work to manage my old embroidery business!
In this article I want to talk about the other two major changes that took place in my life and how they affected me physically and emotionally!
A New Embroidery Training Website
At the beginning of every New Year we all want to set new goals for the coming year for both our personal life and our business! After taking a long look at the goals that I had set for the previous year, I discovered that my TheEmbroideryTrainingResourceCenter embroidery training website was not doing what I wanted it to do. I was devastated but I really did not know what do do about it.
I sat down with my business coach and she told me that I had no choice but to start over with my website if it is not allowing me to accomplish my goals! Starting over meant another year of work that I had not planned on but if that was going to help me reach my goals then that was what I was going to have to do!
We Must Willing To Make A Change
Change is not always a welcomed visitor but we absolutely must deal with it and be ready when it shows up! When I was faced with the fact that I had to rebuild my embroidery training website I was not a happy camper, but when I realized that this was standing in the way of me being able to reach my goals I did not have any other options.
The accounting system in the back end was not working like it should and I could not even add any more membership levels. My goal is and always has been to help the new embroiderer and the existing embroiderer with all of the information that they need to start and grow their embroidery business.
The back end system behind TheEmbroideryTrainingResourceCenter was blocking me from being able to build the kind of complete system that I had envisioned. This required me to lay out a new plan, start from scratch and build a brand new embroidery training membership website, I wanted a complete embroidery training site, one that would help the brand new embroiderer with the basic information to get started in their embroidery business as well as more advanced levels of information for the more advanced embroiderer.
Embroiderers need ongoing training to teach them how to create and tweak their designs, how to create the right type of business plan, how to price their embroidery products, how to market their embroidery, get their questions answered and help them through the rough times when they are first starting their embroidery business.
With this new system that I have created, I am now able to keep adding more information each week. It is still a work in progress but there is so much more inside of TheEmbroideryTrainingResourcecenter than I was able to upload into my old system. I am so excited about this new website. It is going to be everything that the embroiderer needs within a few short months. There are monthly Free trainings trainings in addition to the videos and other programs that I already have uploaded.
I am very excited about this new embroidery training site and I look forward to being able to help more embroiderers with their embroidery issues!
Surgery That Made A Huge Difference Physically And Emotionally!
The third major change this year was the surgery that I had on August 14th to have my left knee replaced. It was a surgery that was long overdue and as a result I had complications that caused me to be laid up for 10 weeks instead of just a couple of weeks that I had planned. I knew that I would not be able to be back to work in two weeks, but I had no idea that I would still be off my feet most of the time after 8 weeks and still in pain. I had lots of time to think but I was not able to do any work. During much of this time I was able to digitize but could not write or do any other type of productive work on my websites. My brain just did not want to function right! Digitizing is like an automatic reflex to me. I have been doing it for so long and I do not have to do much thinking about it as I go through the design!
I could not write any articles or even create my newsletter. This set me back a few weeks and again, I had to take a step back and take a good look at what I had done and do some re-planning for the remainder of the year. At times I was starting to feel like maybe I was done with my career and it really scared me. I really do not know what I would do if I could not do embroidery or help other embroiderers. That is a major part of my life! I guess you call it feeling sorry for yourself, but it really made a big impact on me.
I discovered that this was the time that I needed to spend on reflecting and look back at what I had actually accomplished and stop looking at what I had not yet accomplished! This made me feel a lot better and even stronger. I made lists of what I had accomplished and then I made a list of what I had not yet accomplished and my first list was a lot longer than the second one!
This gave me the courage to change what I was thinking about and helped me to keep going. Through this I was able to pull myself out of my doldrums, shall we say, and get back at it. There are times when we are all afraid of changes that need to take place whether we cause the situation that requires a change or whether it is totally out of our control.
Welcome change when it creeps into your life and make the best of it. By the way, I had a record breaking December in 2012. Change was good for me and I look forward to the next obstacle that causes me to make another change! Change can be great!
Click on the link to Register for our Free Training that occurs each month!
