Every year, there are special days like birthdays, anniversaries, and even christmas’s where people give and receive gifts. But as years go on, everyone soon realizes it gets harder and harder to find ideas in which they can give their special someone a gift. Some may even want to be more sentimental and give a gift where they can show how much love they have for the person. That is where handcrafted gifts come into play. These days, many people are looking for ideas online in which they can create or find something unique and special for their loved ones.
In order to get started with your business, you will need a Digital Marketing Strategy
For anyone who is interested in creating a business on gift ideas or handcrafted gifts, please stick around!
How is Handmade Gifts doing currently?
Knowing the current business success of handmade gifts will give you a better understanding on how you can analyze what strategies to use and help you improve on what is working and what isn’t for your business.
For example, this business utilizes social media to gain exposure and interaction online. Some main social medias that are being used are of the following,
Pinterest: Pinterest has over 900+ posts of handmade or handcrafted gifts of 2021. It has been very successful on this platform due to people looking at this very topic online. The easy to use instructions and pictures keep people gravitated towards Pinterest more than any other social media platforms. If you decide to use Pinterest, an easy to use tool is Pinterests Analytics where you will be able to track impressions, saves, and link clicks.
Instagram: Instagram holds 5.3million posts with the hashtag #handmadegifts, and is very successful due to the sheer amount of users actively on instagram. With how easy it is to contact you and scroll through different accounts, Instagram is a great choice to have your business allocated. If you decide with Instagram, a great tool to use is Hootsuite as you can track your performance and even manage your posts.
Identify your goals
So now that we have laid out what social medias to use and what tools to incorporate in order to analyze data, it is time to decide what your goals will be.
These goals should be specific, measurable and attainable to you as you want to be as realistic as possible. You can also set short term and long term goals in order to have a good range of planning for the future.
Here is an example of setting goals for a handcrafted gift business.
Short-Term Goals (0-6months)
- Within 2 months, I want 500 followers on my instagram page and 200 impressions on my Pinterest.
- Within 4 months, I want 100 unique visitors on my website per month.
- Within 6 months, I want to have 30 crafted gifts made and sold per month.
Long-Term Goals (6 months+)
- Within 7 months, I want 1000 followers on my instagram page and 500 impressions on my Pinterest.
- Within 8 months, I want 300 unique visitors on my website per month.
- Within 9 months, I want to have 60 crafted gifts made and sold per month.
- Within 1 year, I want to make enough profit in which I can use that money to go back to increasing the quality of my advertisements.
Create a Digital Fingerprint
In order to be successful online, you need to take s step in creating the foundation of your online presence. Social Media is a great way to make yourself known, but isn’t reliable when it comes to identifying who you are and your brand. That is why creating a webpage is so important, because most consumers need to do some research in order for them to be interested in purchasing your product.
Here are some things you can do in order to create your digital fingerprints.
Website
Having a website is an essential part in creating your brand and making yourself known. This is where people can see who you are, what you’re brand represents, information on your products, and reviews and testimonials for accuracy.
Google my Buisness
Google my Business is a great way to introduce your business through the search engine result page. It is a a valuable tool that will help display business information, location, reviews in which you can manage, and interact to potential consumers.
Finding your Unique Selling Point
Uderstanding your target market and what makes your business unique is an essential part to make you stand out amongst the competition. This is the unique selling point, in which you should definitely put focus on.
Here are a few things to break down what your unique selling point is.
Find your Target Audience: Segment and narrow down a specific audience that you believe your product is aiming towards. Ex: For creative individuals around the age 15 – 25 who wants to give more sentimental gifts than store bought gifts.
Problems you Solve: Understand the problems the targeted audiance has and how you can solve it. Ex: Some people want to create a gift but don’t have an idea or how to make one. We provide gift ideas with step by step instructions and a list of the materials we used in order to create it.
Something you offer that is unique compared to others: Ex. Not only do we offer gift ideas and instructions on how to make it. We also offer special services in which we create a product catered towards the specific consumer. That can be through pictures of their loved ones like portraits to even a specific theme.
Find what Digital Marketing Elements to Incorporate
Content Marketing:
Content Marketing is a strategy in which is used to engage with the audience and consumers by creating content like blogs, websites, videos and even podcasts.
Examples:
- Website: This website can include products or a blog that talks about why this gift is perfect for this time of the year or why it would be the perfect gift to make for a loved one.
- Videos: These can be tuorials with step by step instructions on how to create this gift.
- Infographics: An easy to follow infographic about tutorials or gift ideas for the season.
Search Engine Optimization:
This is a strategy used to increase you websites visibility on the search engine results page.
Examples:
On Page SEO: Improving everything about your website. This can be from adding keywords, increasing the quality and relevancy of your content and even adding headers and title-tags.
Off Page SEO: Creating high quality content like blogs in order to have a higher chance of other websites linking back to you. You can also be linking other websites from your site.
Google my Business: Having a Google my Business will help you increase your reach to potential customers looking for you online.
Social Media Marketing:
SMM is a marketing strategy where you can use social media to create brand awareness, public relations and even engage with your potential consumers.
Examples:
Social Media Platforms: Instagram, Etsy, Pinterest and Facebook are all essential platforms that utilize visibility and engagement to your consumers. Here you can show shows posts of gifts you have created, seasonal gifts, and even gifts you have made for others. You can engage with your customers through messages and chats that will put you on a personal level with them.
SMM Automation Tools: This is a tool that will help you schedule and manage your posts to different platforms. This is an easy way to post content without having to send one everyday.
Email Marketing:
A marketing strategy used to interact with consumers on a personal level and update or follow back on products that they prefer.
Examples:
Newsletter: Update existing buyers with new products or services that are relevant to them. Maybe a gift for the Christmas time or beautiful spring gift for the season.
Promotional Emails: Giving discounts to existing or first time buyers in order to entice them to buy the products more.
Conclusion
Starting a business online can be tricky if you don’t have the right steps or foundation to work your way up to success. That is why Digital Marketing Strategies are so important because it brings a starting to point to focus on. If you create a marketing strategy, you are already one step closer to being successful online.
Hello there! My name is Shawn, and I am a recent Business and Marketing graduate at Seneca College. I am a coffee lover who enjoys outside activities, but isn’t afraid to crawl back inside my house. I have a passion in pursuing Digital Marketing and exploring all the different channels. such as Display Advertising, Search Engines, Content Marketing and PPC.