Day 4 Icraft Bootcamp Assignment

[PillowThrowDecor]

So far we have done

Day 1  Personal  bio
Day 2  Professional interview
Day 3 Done business cards /printed marketing material and done signature lines on our emails

This week we are focusing on getting ourselves ready for local business.  The beauty of icraftgifts.com for me is that I can send family, friends, prospective wholesalers to my site and they can pick something online and then come over to my studio for pick up. I don’t have to pay any fees or worry about “fee-avoidance”. I have done a number of custom orders like this and I love the flexibility that I have with my store.

So for you also, you have an easy “storefront” that you can point your locals customers to. Too often we ignore or avoid the markets around us so I want to keep you “armed” with "real "tools  (as apposed to virtual) for face to face selling.

Today you have a THINK PROJECT. You do not need to report it in the WHAT HAPPENED THREAD today but be ready tomorrow.  I want you to think really, really hard and give me three remarkable things about your product.

What’s your propositional benefit or in other words … why should I buy your necklace instead of the other guys?  Today I sat before a committee or “jury” for a fairly high end Christmas artisan show. What was so special about my pillows as compared to all the other pillow people? I knew it was coming otherwise Iwould have shaken in my boots!!!

1)   99% of my pillows are made from designer show room fabrics… fabrics that can’t be purchased by the general public.

2)   My pillows are fabricated to “workroom standards” and I often use certain ‘insider trade secrets’ that could never be employed in mass production.

3)   I have 2 “signature lines” that are weird and wonderful and not manufactured elsewhere (at least not yet). There is proprietary design / style that is not as easily copied unless your mind is as twisted as mine.  I have “branded” these with professional labels.


Your product benefit may be price? Saying that yours is different doesn’t help… a buyer wants to know WHY or HOW it is  different.

While you are thinking and wrestling with this, I would like you to LIST one new item in your store.  I am hoping that you have some new creations on your table that you just haven’t done the listing yet.

No matter how much marketing we do, the cheapest and easiest way to get views/traffic is to list new product.  If you have no new product then clean up an older item, CLONE IT and then go back and delete the old copy.  

This way you will show up on the front page with a “bright and shiny new item”  …  tricky isn’t it?  Grin.  Once you have listed it, then go into the WHAT HAPPENED thread and just simply give us the title and THE LINK . Tweet it.  If you don’t have a twitter account tell us and those of us that do will tweet it for you. Tweet some of the other bootcampers listing too.  Cross promotion of each other’s products is HUGELY beneficial for you / all of us.

Cheers

Christine

[PillowThrowDecor]

Oh Ya... I forgot to ask you to put the hashtag  #icraft in the tweet too so we can search for our each others listings for RT.

If you are not involved in twitter don't stress about this ... we'll teach you twitter another day.

Cheers
Christine