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Find your FAB: features, advantages and benefits

The day I turned in my manuscript, I immediately went to the library and stocked up on books. Every kind of book. Books about writing, about faith, about veganism.
Imagine my delight when the very first book I read post-book, reiterated what I had written!

My book is a system for talking about your thing from two angles: what makes you and your thing unique, and what your people (the buyers) want from your thing.
Write to Sell starts right off with your customers and figuring out what they want. In fact, the first chapter starts like this:

If you've ever written anything for your business (a product description, an about page, an email) then you're familliar with the struggle to put what you know and think about your item out of your mind and focus on what your customers care and think about what you sell.

And as Write to Sell points out, your buyers are only thinking ONE thing about your product: What's In It For Me?

This is where makers get mixed up. They think that buyers are thinking “Oh, this is handmade! I love handmade! I want to buy it!“, so they write about how handmade it is, what they used, what their process is like.

In reality, buyers are thinking “Oh, this is handmade and buying handmade is better because….(it reinforces my self-image as someone who doesn't buy mass-made stuff, it's sustainably-made, it makes me feel like I'm supporting an artist, it's longer-lasting, etc).”

Your job is to fill in that blank for the buyer, to explain why buying this handmade thing is, in fact, better.

The author shares a helpful equation for filling in the blank.

Features ->Advantages -> Benefits

For example:
Feature: my Monthly Yarn Mail is spun-just-for-you and sent automatically, once-a-month
Advantage: You get the colors you want, delivered right to your door
Benefit: You don't have to “hunt” for the perfect yarn, it comes right to you.

Let's do another example, this time with something technical:
Feature: This bag is double stitched
Advantage: It's very strong
Benefit: You never have to worry about it busting, even if you have it stuffed full of your kids toys and food and books.

Walking through this equation in your product description or sales page makes it obvious to the buyer why they care and it how it benefits them.

What's the FAB of your product?

It costs how much?! aka, Marketing with Price

This month we're looking at marketing without promotion and the other ways to market: using Place, Product and, today, Price to share your work.

This whole marketing-with-price thing is a tricky subject. You want to think about using price to find new (or repeat) buyers…but you don't want to slip into doubting your price, or worse, trying to compete on price. So before we start thinking about pricing and marketing, let's get one thing straight:

Your customer doesn't buy on price, she buys on value.

Value = How much your product is worth to the Right Person. (This has nothing to do with numbers, and everything to do with how it makes her feel when she buys it).

Think about your last haircut. Did you pay $5 for it or $35 (or more!) for it? Why? Was the action the same? Before you got your haircut, you couldn't be sure of the results, so you didn't really pay for a better haircut, you paid for the promise of a better haircut. And you probably paid for a nicer environment in which to get a haircut. And a friendly hairdresser.

Or your last cup of coffee or tea. Did you drink it at a gas station? Or a coffeeshop? Or did you make yourself a cup of the good stuff at home (with your favorite creamer and sweetener, in your favorite mug). If you drank it at the coffeeshop or at home, it wasn't because of price, it was because of value – you wanted the experience of enjoying that cuppa.

So how do you market with Price, without trying to compete on price?

Start by thinking about your price range.
What's your most expensive item? And your least expensive? Is that a very big range?
If it's a wide range, could you fill it in with mid-range items?
If it's a narrow range, could you add a lower-priced item? A higher-priced item?

Be careful! A lot of my students immediately think of offering a low-priced item to their range. You may want to do that, but before you jump to that conclusion, take a minute to think of a few other options. What could you create that would be worth a higher price?

When considering which to do, keep your Right Person in mind. What else could she buy from you that goes with her current purchase? Or how could you reach a new segment of your Right People with a new price?

Another way of marketing with Price is to group products together (a higher price, but perhaps a savings overall), or to break up a group of products. Or you can change the way people pay for and buy your item.

For example, I no longer sell single skeins of yarn online (you can find it in yarn stores) – instead I offer Monthly Yarn Mail. 1 skein of yarn, every month, delivered right to you. You sign up and are charged monthly, automatically. Or, you can buy a whole year of yarn at once.

While I didn't alter my pricing much, I did alter the way my customer interact with the price. They don't choose to buy a new yarn each month, it's automatic, and that makes the price less of a factor.
Other fiber artists offer “clubs” – where you sign up once and get three or sixmonths of yarn. It's the same principle – grouping something together, since we know our customers usually buy multiples (repeatedly) of what we sell.

Let's look at a few examples:

A jeweler can offer a high end range of jewelry and a more affordable teen-inspired line.
A bag maker can also offer wallets – a great, low-priced add-on to your order
A knitwear designer might create multiple lines – one of affordable basics and another that are very detailed, very intricate knit shawls.
A bookmaker might add a line of handmade bookmarks.

What else? How can you market using price?

Do you want fries with that?

Using Product as a marketing tool.

This month, we're talking about the difference between self-promotion and marketing. Marketing is made up of 4 aspects: Place, Price, Product and Promotion. Last we talked about using Place to market your work and today we'll look at how 2 makers used Product to reach a new market.

: Collaborative Cthulhu necklace

Amy makes art.
Shannon makes laser-cut jewelry.

They met in the Starship and got to know each other while chatting in the Holodeck (our Starship-only chat room). When Shannon visited San Fransisco and stayed with Amy (a side effect of the Starship: you've always got a couch to crash on), they got to see each other's work up close. And they realized that their target markets (or Right People) aren't that different.

Shannon makes jewelry that geeks (math and science geeks) like, and Amy makes art that geeks (horror and sci-fi geeks) like.

They collaborated.

They talked, they asked the Starship questions, they sketched different ideas.
When they decided on what to make, Amy created the art and Shannon took those files and turned them into the right sort of files for the laser cutting software. They figured out the costs (and paid them up front) and now they each sell the work in their shops.

This collaboration is a really great example of reaching a new market by creating a new product. Amy now has a high-end jewelry to offer her card-buyers. Shannon now has geeky/gothy jewelry with a slightly different aesthetic to offer her current customers.

The trick of creating a new product is to look at your existing customers.

What do you offer them? What do they use it for? What else might they like?
(Bonus points: what could you give them to help them use your main product?)

You want to be careful not to create something for an entirely different kind of customer. For example, If you sell geek-themed wall hangings, you might not want to make cutesy, Disney-themed baby blankets. (But baby blankets that go with your wall hangings = perfect!).

The mistake I see a lot of crafters make is to branch out into products for other crafters. This makes sense if you already sell something to crafters (patterns, yarn, supplies), but not if you sell the finished work to non-crafters. Remember, the girl who buys your jewelry probably doesn't make jewelry…so what else would she like?

Whether you choose to collaborate to create a new product or just come up with something yourself – what kind of new product might introduce you to a new market?

Here are a few ideas from the makers I've worked with:

A knitter who sells scarves can make custom-ordered blankets
A fine artist can sell cards
A knitwear designer can teach classes
A lotion-maker can make soaps
A jeweler can create a line of men's jewelry
A purse-maker can create wallets, or big beach bags
A yarn shop can create their own kits with yarn + patterns
A yarn-maker can carry someone else's handmade kitting needles
A glass artist who makes beads can make holiday ornaments
An embroiderer who makes wall hangings can create embroidered jewelry

How about you? What new kind of product could you make?

Where ARE you?

Last week we talked about the difference between self-promotion and marketing. Marketing is made up of 4 aspects: Place, Price, Product and Promotion. In my next few posts, we're going to have examples of how you can use each one to share your work with more people.

The following example is an amalgamation of the work I've done with several fabulous knitwear designers.
If it sounds like you, that's a sign that your worries are normal!

Went to Lambikin's Hideaway yesterday for some needles

Lindsay creates knitting patterns. She has an online shop on her site and sells through Ravelry. She has a well-read, well-liked blog (she's writing about the kind of things her Right People – knitters – want to read about).

But her sales have plateaued. She wants to reach a bigger audience and is thinking about doing some sort of promotion (buying an ad in a knitting magazine, offering 2 patterns for the price of 3)…and she wonders – is this the best way?

The problem with this plan:

Holding a sale is not a good match for her objective (reaching a broader audience) because who will she tell about her sale? Her current audience! A sale might generate more purchases from your current audience, but unless you pair it with something else, isn't going to introduce you to many new people.

While buying an ad on Ravelry might increase her Ravelry sales, buying an ad in a magazine is going to reach a lot of people who don't shop online, and who shop mainly in their local yarn shop.

And there, buried in her problem, is a hint for the solution.

She can reach a broader audience by focusing on Place instead of Promotion.

She can make her patterns available to more people by being in more places.

What are some of the places she could offer her patterns?

She can offer a wholesale line of patterns to yarn shops.
She can submit patterns to print magazines (the magazine pays you and their subscriber base becomes familiar with you and your work).
She can vend at knitting and stitching shows, fill her booth with samples of her work and sell printed versions of her patterns.
She can hold a trunk show at her local yarn shop (or even a regular boutique!) with samples of her work in a variety of sizes, so knitters can try on a pattern before they commit to making it.

Where else could this designer put her patterns to reach her people?

Have you thought of how Place is a marketing tool you can use? Where else can your products show up?

Don't know where your people are looking for your product?
Let's research that during an Exploration.

Self-Promotion vs. Marketing

I'm allergic to the term “self-promotion.”

Lots of crafters call it that, getting their work in front of other people, and it's not just a malapropism; it's dangerous! It distracts you from what you should be doing.

Beau begs you to stop calling it self-promotion.

Self-promotion sounds gross. In fact, just promoting yourself, telling everyone how great you are, is kinda gross. No one wants to be around the girl who can't stop talking about how great she can sing. (You know the girl.)

But calling it self-promotion is dangerous.

If “promotion” is the only way you're thinking of marketing, you're avoiding it. And that's dangerous, because you're probably avoiding all the other aspects of marketing, too.

(Or you're the other kind of creative, that just accepts the gross aspect of self-promotion and fills your twitter stream with “just listed [link to shop]”…but I'm pretty sure that's not you.)

Marketing, however, is the process of communicating with your people, about your product, your business and how it can help them.

Promotion is only (a small) part of the marketing equation.

It might help to know that traditional marketing (as defined in my past-life, MBA marketing classes), Promotion is just one of the 4 P's of Marketing.
In other words, it's only a quarter, of all the marketing you do for your business. In creative businesses, I have a theory that it's even less than 1/4, but we'll get into that in a bit.

The 4 P's of Marketing is a framework for thinking about your marketing mix (all the things you do to communicate with your people). Inherent in the concept of a marketing mix is the belief that Promotion isn't everything; that your focus should not only be on telling people about your work.

The other P's:

Product
Price
Place

Product – It all starts with what you're selling – Is it something people want? If so, what about it do people want? Is that clear? Is it remarkable? Is there a new product you can add (or delete) from your line to reach a new market?

Price – We already know that pricing is not a benefit…but it is a tool for marketing. Not just special pricing (a sale or discount), but the overall pricing strategy: Do you have a range of prices? Do your prices appeal to one market over another? What does your price say about the quality of your product?

Place – Where your product is sold directly effects the market it reaches. Is your product where it's people can find it? If you only have an online store, do you know your Right People shop online? When you pick a craft show, do you make sure your people will be there? How do you pick a shop to carry your goods? Where does news of your business show up? Is that really where your buyers are?

See, there's lots of marketing to do that doesn't involve promotion. In my next few posts, I'm going to share stories of how specific businesses can market (and grow) using the other Ps.

What Ps do you use in your marketing mix?

Is there one you want to explore?

Irony

It's a little ironic that my next class is about how to blog for your business when I am not, how shall we say, much a blogger.

my fancy note-taking process

The truth is, most of the work I do is behind the curtain. I spend most of my day working with people, not trying to find new people (which is what a regularly-written blog can do). I answer questions, teach Starship-only classes, send yarn to subscribers. I do my best, I write most helpfully when it's for a specific audience, when I know exactly who needs my answer (this is why I create free mini-courses via email instead of just blogging them).

This is why we created the class.

Because not everyone needs a big flashy blog to create a booming business.

Our new class (which I'm teaching with Diane, because she is a woman who knows how to blog!), is about that, the process of figuring out what you want from your blog, what your people want from it, and then creating a plan for it. Instead of numbers, you focus on reaction – What brings in your best customers? What helps them move towards you (and your products?)

When you pay attention to what your customers want, and what you want to communicate, you may even find you don't need or want a blog.

That's what happened in my crafty business, at Blonde Chicken Boutique.
I realized that even if blog posts got comments, they didn't do anything for sales. My emails helped people buy. My special customer-only emails have an crazy high open rate and an even crazier click-through and buy rate. I realized (after quite a few years of fighting it) that my yarn lovers aren't blog readers. They visit my site, sign up for the emails and then expect to the emails to remind them to buy.

So now I use the blog as a resource. I show off what customers have made and give pattern ideas… but it's less of a blog and more like an archive of helpfulness. When my retail customers (which represents the largest percentage of my business) ask me what they can make with my yarn, I send them to past posts. Since I don't have an active shop (I sell one yarn a month, to email subscribers only), I don't need to do a lot of showing off of new products, I just email it directly to the people who want to buy it.

This is weird, I know. When all the rest of the world is tell you to blog! And make videos! And tweet! I'm telling you – you have permission to do what works.

It's not particularly glamorous.
But it works (really well).

Your way, the way that works for you and your people, might be something else entirely. You might want to blog daily. Or weekly. Or never.
I want to help you figure that out.
And more than anything, I want you to know that you have permission to use whatever works for you.

To Blog or Not to Blog…is that the question?

“Is it absolutely necessary to blog, or can I find my Right People without one? I have never been a blog reader myself; I've found most of my favorite shops via Twitter, and the idea of blogging kind of gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies”

“But I don't like blogging! Do I have to blog? If I don't, how will I get the word out?”

A few months ago, two Starship captains posted the above questions.

So we started to have the conversation: To Blog, Or Not to Blog?

As I was thinking it through, I emailed Diane, she of all Blogging Knowledge (seriously, that woman knows how to make an addictable blog!) and we started talking about it. Is there some way we can help people answer this question? For their own business and their own strengths?

We started compiling all our thoughts on it; the stuff she's learned through helping people tune-up their crafty blogs, what I've learned exploring crafters' businesses.

And what we came to realize is that To Blog Or Not To Blog is not the question.

**The question is: How do you make a blog (or ANY marketing) work for you, your goals and your people?**

**Where's the balance between what you want to say and what your people want to read?**

As we answered this question, we found we shared a little system. A system that anyone can apply to any business, to make their blog (or their emails, or their twitter stream) balanced and in congruence with the rest of their business.

We'll be sharing this system (along with lots of worksheets to make sure you apply it to you) in our new class. You can read more and register here.

PS. Don't miss Diane's experience (and myth-busting) as a Lucky Blogger.

It’s time for the contractions

In Do More Great Work, the author describes the creative rhythm as expanding and contracting, imagining and doing. I think a lot about the cycle of creativity, the flow of inspiration + doing, followed by a time of quiet not-doing…but I've forgotten the rhythmof every creative endeavor, the rhythm of expansion and contraction. Of breathing in inspiration, ideas, big dreams, and then breathing out, narrowing in on the things you will do.

We creatives LOVE the expansion part. We soak up inspiration, we breathe in dreams, we acquire ideas. Magazines, classes, pinterest…it's all one big inhalation, one glorious expansion of all possible things, zooming infinitely outward.

But the exhalation, the contraction, the doing…well, that's not as glorious. Not as tweetable.

But if anything is ever going to get done, if you're going to write that book or finish that project or launch that line, there has to be a point where you stop inhaling and you start exhaling. You zoom in on what you will do.

In narrowing your focus, the outer stuff, the stuff you decide not to do gets fuzzy and eventually falls out of the frame.
And while this doesn't look so exciting, exhaling and contracting can be filled with enthusiasm, an inner propulsion that glides the project out of your head and into the world.

I'm here.

I've inhaled inspirations, stories, examples, and dreams. It's time to exhale, to breathe out the last bit of the book. To hand it on time. To contract narrow my focus to only the book and the Starship* (for the next few weeks).

Are you inhaling? Is it time to exhale?

*This means you won't be seeing me on the blog, in your inbox, or anywhere else (except for Instagram, and the Starship) until February 8th.

The Map-Making Guide is my personal exhalation process. Turn dreams and wishes into measurable milestones and do-able to-dos. The Starship will be starting the map-making guide together, with weekly check-ins, this Wednesday. Join us here, if you like.

In safety, I found YES

Quite by accident, I'm writing this exactly one year later.

Last year, I wrote that my theme, quite unwanted, was safety.
It wasn't what I wanted to focus on, but it's what I needed.

One year later, what I realized (thanks entirely to Leonie's yearly planner) is the RESULT of all that safety.

Instead of putting up walls, instead of creating a hard shell, focusing on safety allowed me to open up, blossom, and risk things I never would have imagined.

Quite unexpectedly, 2011 was about saying YES, even when I wasn't sure I was enough.

I said YES to two big clients who sought me out, doing completely new-to-me kinds of work, things I never would have dreamed selling.

I said YES to a sudden goal to get a book deal before my 30th birthday (which is still 6 months away). Even stranger, I said YES to that book deal and to a writing schedule that might just result in having a finished book by my 30th birthday.

I said YES to the bizarre idea of the Starship. And then I said YES to putting in the daily work to build it, to lead it, and to support all of the captians aboard it.

I said YES to travel. I said YES to writing.

I said YES to the things I (secretly) wanted.
I said YES to things I thought I was afraid of.

And with every single one of those things, I had a clear, panicked moment “Me? Really? What? Can I even DO THIS?!?”
And then I did it.

Because I sought to cultivate safety and internal (and external) support, I had the confidence for YES.
Because I make sure I feel safe and cared for, before I say yes.
Because I (finally!) prioritized what I deeply need.

I still have so much to say about safety and where I found it and how it surprised me and what it taught me, but that will come later.
For now, I'd love to know:

What did you say YES to? What do you need before you can say YES?

Reviewing the year in your business

As the year wraps up, it’s time to review the past year. Now, this can be as painful as doing your taxes or it can be as fun as attending a New Year’s Eve party.

Let’s do it the fun way, yeah?

Making your yearly wrap-up FUN can be as simple as setting some intentions before you get started – what do you want to learn? What information do you need to make the New Year awesome?

I like to know:

What are the best things I did for my business in 2011?
What were my most succesful months?
Where did new business come from?
What risks didn’t pay off?
What was the most painful time (or project) of 2011
(notice: I didn’t ask what wasn’t successful,because if something was a huge money-maker, but I hated every second of it…I want to avoid it in the future, or find a way to make it more fun)

To answer these questions, I do a quick three-step process:

1. Gather information

2. Find the connections

3. Use what I’ve learned

1. Gather Information

Now, this is the step that you’ll try to avoid, but you’ve gotta just buckle down and do it.

The kind of information you want to gather is:

Your business financials, by month (all income and expenses) – I get this by donwloading my Paypal activity by month into a spreadsheet, then I update the spreadsheet with information from my bank statements (anything that I earned or spent that didn’t go through Paypal). If you use Vianza, these reports are easy to generate!
A list of the time-specific marketing you did (what months did you run advertising, attend trade shows, release new lines, etc) – this is easiest to gather if you’ve been writing it down as the year’s progressed, but you can dig through your emails to find the info you need.
The metrics that I care about, by month – this is everything that reflects the health of your business that isn’t related to money. For you this might be new accounts (and when you landed them), web traffic (pay attention to spikes, and changes in where the traffic came from), publicity.

To keep it simple, I like to organize the information in a simple list with each month’s final numbers (income and expense), the marketing in that month, and any other metrics listed under the Month Name. If you spread it out too much, over multiple documents, you won’t be able to see as clearly how one month affected the next.

Now go back through your months and write in anything else that you think of.
Did a trade show one month lead you to hire someone to help you fill the orders? Or did it overwhelm you so much that you sent orders out late?
Did one retailer fail to pay you one time and mess up your cashflow?
Did you get a sales rep in one month and see your orders double the next month.
Is one month’s income made up from just one big order, while another month’s made up of several small orders?

Whew, this is a lot of digging and thinking and it may take you more than one day. Take as long as you need to think over this list and add things as you think of them.

When you're ready for Part 2 of the review process, check it out at Vianza.

I wrote this post for Vianza, but liked it so much I had to share it here! Let me know how your review goes!

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