A few months ago, I sat down inside Artists and Profit Makers and charted the growth of my online jewelry sales from 2011 (the first year I had a website outside of Etsy) to today. The goal of sharing this with my members was to show that growing your online business doesn’t happen overnight.
That in and off itself was pretty enlightening for everyone to see, but what happened next was even more amazing. Thanks to questions from inside the group, I took a good hard look at what drove my growth, especially in years where I had big jumps, and I came up with three factors that contributed to my growth in online sales.
If you’ve been around me for a while, two of the factors shouldn’t be surprising – consistent content creation and regularly emailing my list played a big role in my online growth and they are strategies I regularly teach. But there was also an X factor that I hadn’t spotted before – building brand awareness by leveraging Other People’s Audiences. (Or as we’re now affectionately referring to them in the group, OPAs.)
When it came down to it, I could trace all of my online growth to one of these three factors.
Of course, none of these things work in isolation. They all feed off each other to help grow your business. But if you aren’t seeing the growth you’re looking for, it’s likely that you’re missing at least one of these three things:
1. You’re not emailing your list often enough. (And you don’t have a clear call to action when you do.)
When it comes to online sales, nothing has a bigger impact (yes, even in 2021) than your email list. While the numbers vary from time to time, my email list on average generates 7 times more sales than Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest combined! Now, don’t get me wrong, those platforms help feed into my email list. But when it comes to actually driving sales, email wins the day.
Unfortunately, most artists and makers aren’t seeing the benefit of their email lists because they simply aren’t emailing often enough. How often is enough, you might be wondering? I find the most benefit when I email every single week, but at the most, you don’t want to go more than two weeks without emailing your list. (To put it another way, that’s 2 to 4 times per month.)
And not only does frequency matter, content matters too. Your emails need to have a clear call to action that leads people back to your online store. Translation: you can’t be afraid to ask for the sale!
You have to be realistic about the amount of sales you can expect based on the size of your list. A good baseline metric is $10 per person per year. If you have a list of 200 people, you can really only expect to make around $2000 a year online. So if your list is small, you need to lean into the other strategies to help it grow. But if you aren’t at least hitting that $10 per person per year metric, chances are you’re not emailing your list enough, and you’re not asking for the sale when you do.
2. You aren’t implementing a consistent content strategy.
Most artists and makers underestimate the amount of content it actually takes to grow their business online. While the amount of content you need to share varies by platform (Instagram vs. YouTube vs. blogging vs. Pinterest all have different content needs) the reality is that most artists and makers aren’t producing enough content to make a dent in their chosen platform.
Take blogging as an example. One study showed that the real benefits of blogging to support your business only happen with at least 16 posts a month! A month! But I know plenty of artists and makers who are lucky to get 16 posts in a year, and who then complain that blogging doesn’t work. By contrast, in 2014, the year proceeding one of my biggest jumps in online growth, I blogged over 200 times! (And I pinned every single one of those blog posts to Pinterest multiple times.)
Whatever your chosen marketing platform, it’s not enough to create content and post occasionally. You need to really commit (for an extended period of time) in order to see results.
I want to be clear about something. Content creation alone is not enough to grow your business online. You can’t just post on Instagram every day and expect to see massive online growth. The other two factors (email marketing and leveraging Other People’s Audiences) are equally important. But if content creation is part of your marketing strategy, you need to be prepared to go all in on at least one platform to really make it count.
3. You aren’t building awareness by leveraging Other People’s Audiences.
Like I said in the introduction, the X factor in growing my online sales was increasing brand awareness by leveraging Other People’s Audiences. In fact, when I looked back at my jump from year one to year two online (where I grew my sales by almost 400%) I was shit at content creation and I almost never emailed my list. But what I did do in that year was focus on making people more aware of my business – including focusing on growing the wholesale side of my business.
That’s right – wholesale counts as leveraging OPAs. As do retail shows, gallery shows, and selling on other online platforms (like Etsy, if it makes sense for your work, or Artful Home).
I think this is the biggest misconception when it comes to leveraging OPAs – we tend to think it’s all about influencer marketing. Now don’t get me wrong, depending on what you sell, influencer marketing can work. And I’ve certainly seen boosts when people with larger followers (or even different followings than mine) wear and share my work. But there are so many more ways to leverage OPAs – including showing your work, getting featured in the press, and even running ads.
At the end of the day, people can’t buy your art or craft if they don’t know you exist. And posting on social media until your blue in the face doesn’t work if your audience never grows. That’s why it’s important to leverage OPAs to help get the word out.
If you’re thinking, “holy crap, this seems like a lot of work!” well, you’re right, it is. Building a successful online business is not easy – and anyone who tells you it is is probably selling something. Ok, let’s be honest – I’m selling something too. But I don’t believe in trying to make you think there’s a quick fix or an easy solution, because that only leads to frustration. Plus, it would be a lie.
Growing your online business takes consistent work in all three of these areas, but it is doable. And since selling online is only going to continue to be a bigger and bigger part of how people shop for art and craft, it’s worth taking the time now to implement all three of these strategies.
None of them will lead to overnight success, but when done consistently and together, they are the engine that can help drive your online sales growth.
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I’m calling these elements (email marketing, consistent content, and OPAs) the Three Pillars of Online Growth, and I’ve put together an in-depth training about them exclusively for members of Artists and Profit Makers, my online mentorship program and community. You can get access to thi training (plus a library of over 40 others!) for just $199. Plus, you get access to our monthly Q&A calls and exclusive members forum. (Which is NOT a Facebook group!) There’s no commitment and you can cancel your membership at anytime, so why not join for a month, check it out, and get access to this exclusive in-depth training? (Which is seriously worth $199 on it’s own!) Head to artistsandprofitmakers.com to join today!
