Some of these might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people are still using them.
Relying on old and outdated marketing techniques can damage your reputation and end up harming your business.
No.1 Fake it till you make it!
I’ve seen this spouted out by so called ‘business gurus’ and experts, but I find it quite disturbing. The last thing I want my customers to think is that I’m in any way ‘fake’.
It’s a bit like the old saying ‘build it and they will come’. It isn’t true. It can take a lot of effort and hardwork to get people to buy from you. Imagine after all that hard work, you get some sales but your customers aren’t happy because they thought you were something that you clearly aren’t.
How about “stay true until you make it” or “try damn hard until you make it”?
They sound much better to me and they have the added bonus of ensuring your customers come back for more.
Sometimes I wonder where these bits of ‘advice’ come from. I mean, who actually comes up with them and thinks it’s a good idea to try and mislead people into buying your products or services?
Perhaps it came from a business strategy that aims to sell as many products to as many people as possible, without any care about repeat custom.
This would explain why someone thought it was a good idea (if you don’t care if your customers come back then you don’t need to care about your customers I guess) but this isn’t a good strategy for people like us.
We sew and we create amazing products that people love and we want them to trust us and to keep coming back and recommending us to their friends because we care about them and we want them to have an awesome experience when buying from us.
That’s why this strategy does not work for our types of business.
I must say, I wouldn’t be happy utilising this type of business strategy regardless of business type, but I’m happy with that.
No.2 Trying to appeal to everyone.
Luckily I learnt this early on in my business and I believe this piece of advice contributed to why I’m still in business 14 years on.
If you try to be everything to everyone, you will appeal to no one.
You need to niche down and focus on who your product is for. Making that group of people as small as possible is the best way to increase sales.
You might think it sounds counterinduscive but it works.
It’s a common mistake people make when starting a new business. The idea can seem to make sense when you’re first starting out.
“If I make anything anyone asks me, then more people will be in my target audience and therefore I will have more sales.”
But the complete opposite is true.
When we are looking to buy something, we want to buy from someone who knows all about the thing we are looking for. We don’t want someone who knows a little bit about lots of things, we want an expert who knows all there is to know about the thing we need.
Take my business as an example. I made dance costumes. If I had advertised myself as a “dance costume maker” I could make costumes for any dance genre as the basic skills are very similar if not the same. But, how would people find me? And why would they want to buy from me?
If you are looking for a pole dance costume, you want to buy from someone who makes pole dance costumes, not someone who makes ‘any dance costume’.
You want the reassurance that the costume maker you choose will understand your needs, rather than just knowing a little bit about each type of dance genre.
That’s why I chose to specialise in pole dance costumes. My customers chose me because they knew I understood their needs.
So by narrowing down my business to a small ground of people within the dance community, I was able to sell more costumes, help more people and be fully booked six months in advance.
No.3 Pretending to be bigger than you are.
This technique is so old and outdated, but I still see people using it online today.
Back when I started Pink Giraffe, it was the ‘done thing’ to refer to your business like it was much bigger than it actually was; whenever talking about it online.
So websites would have pages called ‘About Us’ instead of ‘About Me’ and correspondence would use words like ‘we’ instead of ‘I’.
There was a misconception that ‘one man band’ businesses run from home were unprofessional and therefore not to be trusted.
The bigger the corporation, the greater chance of presenting a professional image and gaining people’s trust. That was the attitude back in 2007.
But the world changed.
And unfortunately some small businesses didn’t keep up.
Nowadays people are much more clued up on what a small business might actually look like. People know that when a small business says things like “We are happy to announce… blah blah blah…” they know there isn’t a ‘we’ in sight.
It’s just you. In your spare bedroom. Running your business.
And that’s ok.
People love that. There’s something attractive to customers about the raw energy and determination a small business owner has. By putting yourself out there as just you, in your spare room or on the kitchen table making it work for you, that is appealing.
It’s refreshing after all the corporate BS we were fed in the 90s and 00s. People don’t want that corporate facade anymore. They want honesty, reality, even vulnerability, and they don’t care if your business is just you.
So next time you are writing some copy for your website, social media or email newsletter, speak the truth. Say ‘I’ and not ‘we’ (unless there is more than one of you, obviously).
The only exception to this rule is your Terms & Conditions. You can keep this in formal ‘business bollox’ speak because no one reads them anyway.
No.4 Copying other people’s prices.
Anyone who has followed me for any length of time will know how passionate I am about helping small business owners get their prices strategies right.
While there is nothing wrong with checking out other people’s prices to see where you sit in the market, it’s definitely only a small part of the puzzle.
Looking at what someone else charges will not allow you to have a successful business. You need to know 100% that you are covering the costs of running your business and making enough money to pay yourself a professional wage.
If you rely on looking at other people’s prices, you are only getting a small amount of the overall picture. When you look at the price of someone else’s work, you don’t know what their pricing strategy is, or even if they have one.
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- You don’t know if they have calculated the true cost of making the item
- You don’t know if they have business insurance
- You don’t know how experienced they are
- You don’t know if they are charging a fair hourly rate for their work
- You don’t know if they ate undervaluing their time and skills
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“While there is nothing wrong with checking out other people’s prices to see where you sit in the market, it’s definitely only a small part of the puzzle.”
There is so much you don’t know about the other person, so you really can’t use their pricing to decide how to price your own products. You need to do the work to ensure you have a good pricing strategy that ensures you are not working for peanuts.
No one who has the skills to use a sewing machine and create unique handcrafted gifts, clothes or costumes etc. should ever be paid less than an unskilled worker.
It doesn’t make any sense and it isn’t fair.
I’m on a mission to ensure people who sew, value their worth properly. If every sewist selling their work valued their time and experience, it would help the general public see that professional sewists are worth paying for their skills.
Just because the work is enjoyable doesn’t mean you shouldn’t charge your worth.
I hope you found this blog helpful in preventing your sewing business falling into any of these traps. If you would like more help with your sewing business from me you can sign up for my email list. I don’t send heaps of emails, only when I have something that I think might help you. So pop your name and email in the boxes and I look forward to seeing your sewing business blossom.
