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| photo by echoforsberg |
Your target market is the first thing you must clarify before you can even dream of being successful in your home based jewelry business.
One Mistake That Will Kill Your Jewelry Business Even Before it's Begun
Don't make the mistake of starting your business plan with your product instead of the market.
Whether you like it or not, handmade jewelry sellers are a dime a dozen. The handmade markets online and off are saturated with them.
This means that you have to market well, and market smart.
The easiest way to market smart is to start with the market and give 'em what they want.
What's a Market, and What's a Target Market?
- A market is a group of people with similar interests or characteristics. For example, "women with small children" is a market.
- A target market is group of people that you are interested in selling your products to.
It stands to reason that the more you know about your target market and what makes them tick, the more success you'll find in selling products to them.
Building a successful handmade jewelry business starts with knowing who your customers are and precisely what they want to buy.
"Find a Need, Fill a Need"
~Big Weld, Robots (the Animated Movie) 2005.
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How to Use the Target Market Concept to Improve Your Handmade Results
1. Define your target market.
Who are you marketing to specifically? The more specifically you drill down, the easier it will be to find your market and go to them. Remember, no one is looking specifically for you. They look to fill their needs.
2. Do your market research.
Is the target market a good one? Are there people in quantity searching for and spending money on the internet? If not, then move on to researching another market until you find one that you like, that you can make products to suit, and that is easy to target online.
3. Become clear on who your target market is.
Take a piece of paper and write down the characteristics of a typical person in the target market.
You might want to write down things like...
- Age
- Marital status
- Gender
- Hobbies
- Work
- Children? How many, and ages
- What makes them excited?
- What keeps them up at night?
The clearer you can be in defining your target market, the easier it will be to engage with them, build rapport, presell, and inevitably woo them to buy from you.
4. Become a steward of your target market.
A steward is a caretaker. If you become a fan and caretaker of your market, they will take care of you. Always keep your target market's needs in mind throughout every aspect of planning, marketing, and selling from here forward and enjoy the rewards.
Good luck and go find a need and fill a need with your handmade jewelry business 
Best,
P.S. Need a step by step blueprint for selling handmade jewelry online?
The Handmade Results Weekly Training Modules take you by the hand and show you how to make your handmade jewelry business profitable step by step. 52 weeks is all it takes to plan, build, and thrive - without extra time wasted along the way.
8 Comments
I find this my biggest issue! I can pick out some factors but then get lost on how exactly I’m to zero in on my target market. I make paper crafts, but I’m not sure as whether focus on selling crafts because I’m not really running into paper craft collectors. My website has paper craft tutorials but I’m not sure how to monetize that, I don’t think I’m getting enough traffic to really pin point what people want because I’m all over the place a bit. Do people want supplies? Kits? Tutorials? I could target young women with sensitivity to metals angle but I don’t know if that is a big enough market. I’m struggling because I thought I was really making forward progress and now I just feel like I missed something somewhere.
Hi Cynthia,
I feel your frustration. The best advice I can give you is to research other sites that are successful in your niche and test and track your own results over time. There is a bit of an art and a science to it.
You know your niche best. And if you don’t you need to start getting feedback from your visitors. You might want to email some of your mailing list and send them a survey, or just analyze where they go on your site. Where do they start, where do they leave, and why?
Without knowing your niche at all, I can’t really give specifics, but here’s what I do.
I try to focus on three high volume keyword terms at a time, and work on ranking highly for those in Google.
So for now, make that your target market. Make your content comprehensive and authoritative, and get as many backlinks as you can from high quality sites to those three high volume keyword terms, and see if that doesn’t get you somewhere.
I’m a little worried because my highest entry page is also my highest exit page and I haven’t tried to monetize it yet. I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong. So looks like I will stay that course until hopefully something starts working.
Thanks!
Cynthia, it’s likely that you biggest entry page is also your biggest exit page just from volume, not from lack of quality. The better number to look at there is your bounce rate. That’s the % of people that immediately leave upon arrival. Gives a much better view of how you’re doing in terms of “pleasing” your visitors.
Christine how do you find this? My brain is literally tossing information out one side as the other soaks more up. I have have looked at my exit pages, my entry pages, how many pages were viewed but I’m still looking. Its different than click through analysis isn’t it? I’m reading sbi ‘s action guide for the hundredth time still trying to get it right!
Cynthia, now that I think about it, I don’t know if SBI has that stat. I look mine up in Google Analytics. I can’t remember if I set that up myself with code, or if SBI has a box to input an analytics tracking code or not.
I really have a whole bunch of work to do. My work is scattered because I love to try new and exciting designs and jewelry materials, So finding the specific niche is hard for me. I have NO web traffic and gave up on etsy.
Although I love polymer clay, gemstones and silver. I just cant commit to one specific material or group of people to sell to, I have a 15 month old so I thought maybe moms would be a good niche, I joined cafe mom and am now addicted, but that market is HUGE!!! HELP!
Christine, I know you’re very busy so I appreciate any reply. Thanks!
Janine:)
Hi Janine,
The necklaces on your site are beautiful. I see what you mean about trying out different designs and materials. My personality is like that too which makes life more interesting but really messes up business plans.
Moms are a huge market. If you wanted to zero in on moms, try to find a sub-niche. There are natural moms, home schooling moms, working career moms, young moms, older than 40 new moms, attachment parenting moms, breastfeeding moms, moms with special needs kids, etc. Then decide who the jewelry will be for exactly. For the mom? For the kids? I can’t tell you what to do exactly, but there is always a way to go if research enough.
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Your Target Market: Handmade Marketing 101 | Handmade Results Jewelry Marketing http://www.handmaderesults.com/1981/target-market/
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