Hello all, TP Design here. I have been asked to write a post each week for the Etsy Moms about marketing/branding. I am very excited to be doing this! Sharing my knowledge with you and hopefully helping you all to make you and your shops stand out on Etsy and anywhere else that you sell your products. If you ever have questions or would like me to cover a specific subject please post it here or convo me on Etsy.
A little info about me, I am a graphic designer by trade. I went to University of North Texas for a degree in Communication Design and a minor in Marketing. I have been helping clients of all types of businesses figure out who they are and designing branding/marketing plans for them for over 4 years now. I own and started 3 businesses without any capitol and as of right now all 3 are making money. So I have a little background on this subject. I hope this new post to the EtsyMom blog will help you all. I would love to hear if this does help you and whay changes you make because of it. Thanks again for reading. Enjoy!
Knowing how to market yourself can make the difference. But how do you do this? What makes icons like Nike and Coke stand out from it's competitors? This unsure land that businesses sink or swim in is called the brand gap. It's knowing the difference between marketing and branding and how to use both.
Now I know that you are asking yourself, there is a difference in marketing and branding? I am here to tell you there is! We will start with marketing. The easier of the two, well maybe. Let's start with a product, it can be anything, now you take this product and deciede that you need to advertise it. Get the word out. Well what are it's features? What does it do? What do you want people to think about it? And other such questions... So you come up with a campain. Now after you figured all that out and who you want to sell it and have your campain to you think you are ready to send it out into the world to make you money.
But have you asked yourself, what is the lifestyle of the people buying this product? Or even better what do you want them to think their lifestyle is after they buy your product? Studies have shown that it's not necessarily what the product can do for their lives that sells the item but what people think of themselves after they have bought the item. Does it make them feel hip, cool, in the know, or even rich. The iPHONE (or any product from apple) is a great example of how this works. You can buy an iPHONE and feel like you are part of the "cool" group or "in the know", even though you haven't changed who you are one bit.
Now some people think you can get by with just one or the other of these two different strategies. And some companies do. But if you combine the two together...that's when you get the Apples, Cokes and Nikes of the world.
But now you ask is there some magic formula to get there. No, but there are things that you can do to help you get there. First ask yourself 3 questions:
1. Who are you?
2. What do you do?
3. Why is that important?
The first two are simple, it's the answer that you give to the third that will make you stand out. Of coarse there are a few other things too, but one of the most important is you are never afraid to try anything. And if you fail, get up and try again. It's always ok to fail, just never fail twice the same way. Good luck!
