Are you a cybersquatter?

Do you rely on borrowed or leased bandwidth to run your business?

Be honest.

If Etsy shut down your shop tomorrow,
how screwed would you be?

Lisa got the answer the hard way when Etsy suspended her jewelry shop. Gut wrenching to read, she shared her story on Handmadeology.

It’s great that Lisa found a way to set up another shop — except any returning customers had no clue what happened or where to find the new shop. It’s not like Etsy would let her leave a note on her old shop page, right?

Getting her own URL was a great step.
However, there’s a more effective way to build your business.

BUILD YOUR CUSTOMER LIST
Your customers are your business, the most valuable part of your business. Making sure you never lose contact with them is the smartest business tactic you can use.

Your list is YOURS.

• You own it
• You control it
• No one can shut it down
• No one can take it away from you

Use your list to announce new product launches, specials collections, sales or any thing you’d like your customers to know.

And if Etsy ever pulls the plug on your shop, you can contact your customers and let them know where else they can find you.

BONUS: IT’S EASY MARKETING
Just as you sign up with your favorite companies to get their product and sales updates by email, your customers (current and potential) will sign up with you.
This is the most effective marketing you can do.
Email marketing is the most cost and time effective marketing there is.

Think about it. You’ll be talking to people who told you that they want to hear about your products or services.
Perfect!

Build your customer list with a professional email service.
It will:

• keep your emails from landing in your customers’ spam folders
• provide forms to copy-and-paste where you want them
• easily send 1,000s of emails instantly
• give you stats on how many customers opened your email
• give you stats on how many customers clicked on any links you included in your email

There are several email services available. Some services will restrict the content of your emails. Some services have rates that go up as your list grows or if you want more than one list. Some services suck at staying out of spam folders.

That’s why I recommend Aweber* to build your list. For a little less than 20 bucks a month, you’ll have the peace of mind knowing that your customer list is safely in your hands.

With Aweber, you can have as many different lists as you want, for as many businesses as you want and send to as many people as you want. Their prebuilt forms come in handy for HTML-challenged people like me.

No matter which email service you choose, sign up with one of them. This is really important! An email list is the most valuable investment you’ll make in your business. Hands down.

Once you’re signed up, everything you do from that point on should funnel customers to your email list. Every. Single. Customer.

Put sign-up forms on:

• your blog
• your website
• your Facebook page

Put an invite to join your email list on your:

• business cards
• thank you notes
• packing slips
• sales tags
• boxes
• signs at shows
• your email signature
• and any other business correspondence you do

A QR code is great to electronically send customers right to the form.

HOW TO USE INCENTIVES
Incentives are little bonuses for customers who sign up for your list. Right now, I’m offering a free copy of a soon to be released ebook as a way of thanking people who opt-in to the Indiepreneur list.

You may not need an incentive for your business, but it’s still a nice thing to do for your customers.

A discount on their next purchase would be nice. Or give your customers exclusive access to a special collection at low member-only prices. Use your imagination to come up with incentives that fit your business.

PROTECT YOUR LIST
Customers trust you with their email addresses. Please respect that and them by not inundating them with emails. Don’t sell or lease their address to other companies. You may, from time to time and at your discretion, recommend another business your customers might enjoy. But don’t over do it.

Be sure to download your list from your service on a monthly basis — just in case something happens to the main server. Aweber has a one click back up and export button that will email you a spreadsheet of your customers.

CYBERSQUAT THE RIGHT WAY
Cybersquatting is using someone else’s bandwidth to run your business.

The harsh truth is that you don’t own your shop on Etsy. That digital space belongs to them. Tick them off and your shop is outta there.

You don’t own your page on Facebook or your Twitter account. Should your favorite social network shut down or your account get hijacked, you will lose all those followers, likers and potential customers with no way of contacting them — unless they’re on your list. (Facebook’s solution to a hijacked page is to delete it and have you start over. How much would that suck?)

Etsy, eBay, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. are free and easy marketing tools. Absolutely take advantage of them.

But never forget that you don’t own those tools. Making them the foundation of your business is not a sensible Indiepreneur tactic.

Be smart.

Invest in and build with tools that you own and you control.

Make sure any screwing by Etsy won’t cost you your business.

We all love a good story, don’t we?

Hearing a funny one can brighten our spirits, while listening to a tale of heroism bolsters our strength.

Have you ever considered that the way you present your business, your products, your services, is YOUR story to tell? That the way you present your products can speak volumes to your customers AT FIRST GLANCE?

It’s true.

You can begin to ‘Tell Your Story’ from the moment that potential customers first view your business.

My goal as a retail consultant has been to help every business discover what their unique story IS, and then relay it to customers in an effective and original way. Over 35 years, I’ve been able to assist thousands of retailers achieve success in the way they present their businesses and products. I’ve done this through the displays and stores I have designed for them, the articles I have written for magazines, blogs and websites, and by presenting seminars at national gift shows. Those retailers have run the gamut from corporate wineries and independent home décor boutiques to artisans and antique dealers who sell at shows and in malls and galleries.

The same basic guidelines work for all of them, because the Story is all in the ‘Telling’… each business uses elements that help them stand out from the competition. (Much like the way a good story or joke is told with voice inflection, pauses, facial expressions, and a good summary or punch line!)

One of those elements is how you display your goods.

Visual merchandising/display is the process of thoughtfully presenting your products. Whether you do that in an online venue like eBay or Etsy or your own web store, in a retail store of your own, in a rented space within an antique mall or cooperative, or as a vendor at shows, it is important to maximize this part of your business in a busy and often overwhelmingly ‘similar’ marketplace. At shows and malls, your ‘competition’ is literally inches away from you…. making your booth and your products stand out from the crowd is paramount to getting noticed! You certainly don’t want to look just like the guy next door. (Do you?)

Increasing your ‘visual impact’ – which is the way that your customers SEE your business and products – starts helping you to sell without speaking a word. It’s the equivalent to the great opening line of a story or joke, and catches people’s attention: A customer coming down the aisle at a show sees a fabulous color, or item, or setting in the booth in front of them, and they are intrigued to come closer and discover more.

As the customer comes closer, a bit more detail in the displays is revealed, drawing them INTO your booth to investigate further. The customer is now in proximity to you, the salesperson – or, in the case of mall space, to your signage and price tags. Either one serves the purpose of providing information and detail about the products…telling more of the story.

The customer is now actively participating in the selling process by looking closely, touching, perhaps picking up (trying ON, maybe?) your products. Here is where you give them the full story: You inform and entertain by offering more information on the items, sharing alternative uses and added value, why this is an opportunity not to be missed.

You make the visual impact so strong, so intriguing to them, that they cannot resist the pull to take a part of it home with them. Even if they purchase only a small something, they can own a bit of the magic that you have created and introduced them to. With them, they take your information so that they can be sure to visit you again and repeat the experience. This is how you use the story you tell to sell products – but also to create an experience, build a brand and develop a fan base.

As a part of my seminar ‘Tell Your Own Story’, I offer an outline of the basics in displaying products and designing retail space. In 2009, I created a new version specifically for antique dealers. It contains dozens of basic and advanced tips on maximizing your visual impact, and will help you plan and develop the Story that you will tell through your booth’s appearance. I’d love to share it with you, to assist you in discovering and telling YOUR story!

You can access the document here (http://decodivadebi.blogspot.com/2009/10/creating-successful-displays-resource.html) and also find it on the sidebar links on my Retail Design Website (http://www.DebiWardKennedy.com ). Please feel free to use it to develop your own visual plan, and share the link to it as you wish. The material contained within that document is my original work, and is not to be used in any book, article, blog post, class, seminar, or other method of sharing with others for profit or press. Contact me via email for permissions at debi.wardkennedy@gmail.com

My website ALSO features six videos about retail display & merchandising – I produced the series in 2008 for the Gift & Home Channel, and filmed at The Farm Chicks Antique Show in Spokane, Washington. You’ll find a plethora of inspiring ideas, tips, and examples of successful booth design and display in those videos.

My Retail Design Blog, accessible from my website, offers resources on every aspect of display and retail visual merchandising – literally hundreds of links, articles, tips, photos, books, videos, and more.

While I am providing those resources online, with a limited availability of private consulting and speaking/writing engagements, I am focused on utilizing my experience and abilities in our own Vintage Industry business: Retreat http://www.RetreatStyle.com . I invite you to come and introduce yourselves if you are at a show that we are selling at! Our 2011 schedule is on our website.

Content of attachment and this post is original content property of Debi Ward Kennedy Copyright 2008, 2010. www.DebiWardKennedy.com | debi.wardkennedy@gmail.com

Online Banner Generator

If you’d rather create your own Etsy shop banner (or blog banner) without having to shell out big bucks for Photo Shop, here are a few Free online tools to try.

Online Banner Generator

Banner Fans

Animation Online

I recommend playing with all of them to see which works best for you … and then let us know which you prefer.