Marketing Advice By Market

Marketing a Native Crafts Business

A profitable Native crafts business is about more than supply and demand. It's about designing ways to entice new customers to engage with your products and to encourage existing customers to increase the frequency of their purchases.

It's difficult to pinpoint a single marketing strategy that is capable of turning around a struggling business. However, great marketing strategies share a common characteristic.

Simplistic promotional techniques can't penetrate the clutter of the current marketplace. Effective marketing now means translating market learnings into techniques and tactics that are relevant to your business.

Price Matching

In a difficult economy, consumers expect businesses to engage in a certain amount of price matching. The principle is simple: Since pricing is a primary factor in product selection, your business agrees to match advertised competitor pricing. Without price matching, if they can locate lower pricing from a competing Native crafts business, potential clients will abandon your brand in droves. Survey the marketplace. If competitors have adopted price matching strategies, you have no choice but to adopt price matching as well, even if it means reshaping your business model to accommodate a new pricing structure.

Public Relations Strategies

Public relations is more subtle, but no less powerful than a full-blown marketing push. For example, if you buy a premium mailing list and use it to conduct a direct mail campaign, that's marketing. On the other hand, if the Sunday paper runs a story about your Native crafts business, that's PR. The art of storytelling is a core PR competency. Storylines need to be believable and objective while communicating your brand's strengths and value proposition.

Competitive Awareness

Competitive awareness is the starting point for creativity in marketing. There's nothing wrong with creativity, but if it precludes your messaging from being represented alongside other Native crafts businesses, there's a good chance that you're missing something. At a minimum, we recommend seeking a third-party perspective before you adopt any innovations that dramatically alter your marketing model.

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