Spring is in bloom and craft fairs and markets are back in business like they never left! If you are a crafter or small business looking to break into the market/craft fair scene - this is the episode for you.
This week on the Small Owned Business (S.O.B.) Marketing podcast, Vivian and I are talking about our basic blueprint for participating in markets and craft fairs. We list 5 simple steps to keep in mind when deciding and setting up for your events, so that you can be a successful S.O.B.!
Vivian and I have participated in a LOT of events over the years, and we’ve made a bunch of mistakes. We don’t want small business owners to make the same mistakes, so we created the Rock Your Fair course. It is a comprehensive guide on craft fairs, markets, and event marketing. We discuss everything from how to PICK the right event or market, to how to build an engaging table display. You can learn more about this course here: RockYourFair.com
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Chapters:
00:00 Thank You For Listening & Please Leave a Review
02:00 Introduction to Craft Fairs and Markets
03:50 Understanding Your Business Identity
09:12 Identifying Your Target Audience
13:30 Researching Events & Markets
21:41 How Much Product Should I Bring To A Craft Fair?
27:10 Track Your Business Data
29:15 The Importance of Practice
38:03 Post-Event Communication
41:09 TLDL: Blueprint for Craft Fair Success Summary
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Rock Your Fair Course: RockYourFair.com
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Chelsea: If you live in the South, get a battery-powered fan. If you're going to start doing these craft fairs and you're going to be outside doing outdoor markets, you need a battery-powered fan. It is too hot to be out there.
*Intro*
Chelsea: Hey everyone and welcome to the S.O.B. Marketing podcast. Where we celebrate to S.O.B. you are, and if you haven't figured it out yet - we mean Small Owned Business, we don't mean S.O.B...
Vivian: Listen, we know that as a small business owner you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea: Our commitment here at the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, and promoting your business. And then what doesn't really work.
Vivian: And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
*Beginning of Episode*
Chelsea: Hey everybody and welcome back to the SOB Marketing Podcast. SOB as in small owned business. I am not calling you guys names. Before we get started, just a little bit of housekeeping. Please, pretty please, pretty pretty, pretty pretty please leave a review.
Vivian: That's a lot of pleases.
Chelsea: Well, I feel like I ask this every week and you guys aren't listening to me. Okay, just please leave a review. It's helpful.
It helps us get in front of more people and in front of more small business owners, which is what we are all about. We just want to help you guys feel comfortable with your marketing. Also make sure that you are subscribed or following. And if you have a topic you want us to talk about, let us know. You can leave it in the comments. You can send us a DM or you could email us at help@TheSeasonedMarketer.com. Vivian, my wonderful big sister, what are we talking about today?
Vivian: Tis the season for craft fairs, markets, pop-ups, all of those fun things. Today we want to bring you some information on that. If anything, listen, if you are currently out there participating in events like that and you think, I don't need to listen to this, we encourage you to stick around because if anything, maybe it'll help you go back to basics or maybe we're just covering something that you forgot or glossed over. It's always good to brush up on this stuff, but this is also going to be a great episode for any small business owners out there that has been thinking about starting to sell their products or services at local events. You just kind of want to feel a little more prepared, right? So the idea is there. You're like, okay, I need to buy the tablecloth. I need to pay attention to my setup. I need to know, this is going to be a great starting point for you because we cover from A to Z the stuff that you should be thinking about ahead of time so that way you don't get caught with your pants down. Okay metaphorically, right.
Chelsea: Y'all we have a TLDL section. Too long didn't listen so if you right now don't have the time to listen to this entire episode, that's fine. You can go to that chapter and I'll give you a little summary. But later on when you have the time, go back and listen to this entire episode.
Vivian: All right, so to kick off this conversation, Chelsea, we are going to start at the very, very basics, and it's going to be, you need to know who you are as a small business. Do you want explain that?
Chelsea: Yeah, I can. For one, I wrote these notes, so you might not understand what I meant by this. But, you know, you need to have at least somewhat of an understanding of who you are as a business because that will legitimize your business. I have seen a lot of people want to start selling at craft fairs, but they don't know what they want to focus on creating. They don't have an actual business, like an LLC created. They kind of just want to bake some cookies and then sell them at a market.
There's nothing wrong with selling cookies at a market, of course. But if you want to be successful, you need to have this kind of figured out a little more. You need to have a mission and vision. You need to have an LLC. You need branding, something to help you stand out in front of other people. If I see one cookie stand, it has a beautiful display and clear branding. Then I see another, which is just a person selling saran wrapped cookies and no branding, you know, just their smiling face. Like I'm sorry, but I'm going with the well branded cookies instead of this random person that's selling saran wrapped cookies, you know.
Vivian: Yeah, and let me add another layer to this. If you don't do your due diligence, that example you just gave about cookies. The funny thing is, the first thing you said when you're like, "and you're just selling cookies out of saran wrap". I'm pretty sure that's illegal because they're going to come get you because you need...so the reason I bring this up is, depending on what your product and service is, you need to know what type of license you need to be able to participate in this stuff. The reason I say this is because this is one of the most commonly asked questions that I see on forums, that I see on YouTube videos, all of this stuff. People are so confused about legally what they have to do to be able to sell those cookies, legally what they have to do to be able to collect money at a venue.
That's all very important. Do your due diligence. Be sure that you are, you're clear about what you're selling as a small business. You're clear about what your mission is going to be. You go out there and you do the homework required depending on the product that you're selling. One of the things around here that's interesting is some counties allow you to have like what they call a peddler license. So you're able to utilize that at events, and then other times they tell you that you have to have a full blown like, you know, license of a different kind. This is also important because depending on which events you're trying to participate in, the organizers may ask you for this info. They may say, you have your peddler's license? Do you have this and that?
Chelsea: Yes, side note Vivian, but last year at the Flower Town Festival, so in downtown Summerville, South Carolina, we have this big festival. It's called the Flower Town Festival. There's a lot of vendor tables and booths, like food vendors and stuff like that. I noticed there were a lot of vendor tables that for one just had jewelry kind of like laid out on the table, flat, just flat laid out there. And you could tell that they just bought the jewelry off of Amazon and they were trying to resell it. Big surprise, but no one was going near any of those booths because people want to support small businesses. They don't want to support people just trying to make a quick buck off of reselling not well-made jewelry.
Vivian: Yeah. Interesting business model and not trying to knock everybody. I mean, listen, everyone's out here just trying to make a livelihood. Understood. I do think though, that's where, you said, Chelsea, as a small business owner, we source, right? Your job is to source materials, regardless of where you source that material from, the perception. If Chelsea was walking by and she knew, like she could tell it came from Amazon and that they were just reselling it. They hadn't done anything, whether with the display or with having a little frame that talks more about like, you know what I'm saying?
Chelsea: Vivian it was literally just like a table with a tablecloth on it and they just had it laid out. There were no signs. There were no nothing. There were no prices or anything. They just laid it all out on the table.
Vivian: Yeah. Interesting. We do not recommend going that route. I think everything that we're going to share here, that's like the exact opposite. So the second step, I'm glad you brought that up, right? Because I do think it deters people when they feel like you're just trying to make a quick buck from taking something off Amazon, doing nothing to it, putting it on the table and reselling it and marking it up. But step number two, Chelsea. We say, who is your target...I just sounded like an owl. Hoo.
Chelsea: No, you sounded like the, what is it, the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland?
Vivian: I have not watched that in a while.
Chelsea: Who are you?
Vivian: I'm to have to go back and watch it. Who is your target audience? Why is this such an important question to ask yourself before committing or even thinking about doing markets, events, and craft fairs?
Chelsea: Well, for one, if you know anything about Vivian and I, you know that we are going to tell you your number one rule as a small business is you need to know your target audience.
But specifically relating to craft fairs, your target audience is going to have a huge impact on the type of craft fair that you participate in.
So I think I've probably used this example before in this podcast, but The Design Demon. Our friend Rae, she's The Design Demon. She sells some really fun products because she's not just jewelry now. She has other things as well. But for example, I have a pair of her earrings that say fuck off on them. She's not going to participate in a church bizarre.
Vivian: And I recommend that you stay away from all churches because I feel like you would just like, I don't know, disintegrate in like two seconds.
Get a little holy water on you.
Chelsea: No comment. I mean even just her name, The Design Demon, you know, people probably aren't going to appreciate that at a church bazaar. She's not going to sell to church ladies. Okay. So when you know who your target audience is, you know where they are likely to show up.
So then when you're trying to decide the events in the markets that you want to participate in, you can easily answer whether or not your target audience is actually going to be there, which is key. You want to show up where your target audience is going to show up.
Vivian: One of the recommendations that I have to every small business owner, if you are getting started in working events and markets to sell or promote your business, highly recommend that you find a business buddy that has done it before and ask them a few simple things because every small business owner that has participated in a craft fair event, pop-up, whatever, can speak to this.
They can probably tell you "there was one time I did this event and it was not the right target audience". Look at the example that Chelsea just used is a great example of that, right? Know who it's for and who it's not for. Another thing could be if you have a premium type product, right? We, Chelsea and I do the circuits around here pretty often and we see some of the same vendors at these events and it's great because you know that they're out there working it, making their money and doing well. There's one particular jewelry vendor that I love. She does like gold chains and stuff. She's a little pricier. She's on the higher end. I don't recommend for somebody like her who's in that type of business to do a church bazaar either, right? Unless it's in a community that is economically, you know, well off to where they can be spending that type of money. So it's a little more nuanced than just like, hey, is this the type of person that would buy? Is this also the type of person that has the capability to buy my product? Am I attending an event that's putting me in front of people that are out there wanting to spend money? If it's an event that's well known for like the swapping stuff, right? Like you could swap things, then you're not going to make a lot of money off of that, right? So just be very particular about knowing your target audience is going to guide these decisions and it's going to allow you to do it rather quickly.
Chelsea: Well Vivian, I feel like our second step kind of relates to our third step. I love that you said finding a business buddy because I do mention this in the third step, but it is doing your research. This goes hand in hand with picking the right market or event. You need to know if your target audience is going to be there, yes, but you also want to find out how many people in general are expected to attend. This is super important because then it'll help you figure out how much product you need to bring. You can ask past event goers or participants, small business owners, your small business buddy, how much space will you have? Are you going to be outside? If you're going to be outside, will you have access to electricity or if you're going to be inside, either or, will you have access to electricity? Y'all, this is a side tangent, but if you live in the South, get a battery-powered fan. If you're going to start doing these craft fairs and you're going to be outside doing outdoor markets, you need a battery-powered fan. It is too hot to be out there.
Vivian: The research part of it is probably the most exciting part, I think, and I know that's an unpopular opinion. The reason being, in my big girl job, we still get invited to a lot of events, and there's always a list of questions that are like my top three or four go-to questions.
By the way, Chelsea and I have developed a, what is it, 10 questions.
Chelsea: 10 questions to ask yourself before participating in a craft market or pop-up or event.
Vivian: That download is available to you in two ways. Either you can just go get the straight download by itself. We'll go ahead and place that link or it's included in our Rock Your Fair course. We have an entire course that goes in depth on all this stuff, you guys. So it's not just the, Eagles view. It is like the nitty gritty stuff you need to be doing with examples and downloads. So if you want to go check that course out, we'll drop the link as well in the description below.
Chelsea, what's interesting to me is like the research part of it, it starts off, like I said, I have like those three or four go-to questions and if it doesn't meet or answer those questions or they say, I don't know, then I'm like, this isn't going to be worth my time, right? Because at this point, you have to understand that even if it's a free event, free for you to participate in, it still takes time, energy and resource, which means...and we value that for you guys, okay? I don't know if you don't, but we value your time and resources and energy. So that means we still have to be very specific about what you participate in, and what you don't. Those questions, that's the first starting point. Then going online and actually finding pictures of the event. I love doing this because for one, I look for, I'm like a little detective. I look for what does the crowd look like? What do the booths look like? Okay. Is there any promotion about this event ahead of time? I should be able to find all this stuff online if it's a good event. If I'm able to find that and then from those years past, I can kind of gauge like, yeah, that would work for me. I think that'll be a good, you know, event for me. Then you could go confidently into it. But the research part is a big part of this.
Chelsea: I love that you brought up doing research specifically like, Are there promotions? What are they doing? And talking with the event organizer, if they don't answer these questions that you're not even going to do it because not all events are created equally. There are some really amazing vendor markets out there. And then there are some not great ones.
Vivian: There are ones that are in their first year and then there ones that have been doing it for 20 years. I think all of that, I don't mind participating in a first year event. I'm going to be a little harder on it as far as like, you need to give me all the details. Like, how are you promoting this? Who is in attendance? Who are you inviting? How are you getting the word out there for it? Like Chelsea said, what's the venue look like? Can I come take a look at it? Do you supply the tables? Do I bring the tables? Is it inside, outside? Are the outlets nearby? Approximately how many people do you think are going to come because if I don't have enough product like you said, I'm going to have to order more. Can I get it in on time. All of this stuff plays into it, but I don't mind doing that first year event if the organizer was actually organized, knows her shit, and then like gives me her personal cell number so that I can call her like, you know, if anything comes up between the day I commit and that morning that I'm expected to show up.
Chelsea: A great episode to listen to of this podcast, if this is, if you're wondering how exactly to pick a vendor market or stuff like that, if you want to go a little more in depth, we have an episode where we talk with Rae, The Design Demon, specifically because not only does she do the vendor market circuit, as The Design Demon, but she is also the market organizer of the Feminist Magic Market.
So she has knowledge on both the front end and the back end when it comes to vendor markets. So go listen to that episode. But this reminds me of, she explains this story in depth in that episode. Okay. I'm just going to give a little synopsis real quick.
She did a market and they took her money and then no one communicated with her. It was supposed to rain on that day so she's trying to figure out if the event is even going to happen or not. No one's getting back to her until like the night before the event. She goes to the event, it just didn't go well. She didn't have a good time.
Part of that is on the event organizer.
Vivian: Yes. I can tell you, just because I've been doing events a long time, when you have a really good experience at an event, you don't got to sell me on the next one, right? If it was good because the event brought in the kind of people that I want to talk to. Right? And if I had good conversations and if I made good connections and it was worth the time and effort for us to spend X amount of money and me being there for half of a day, then I'm willing to do it the next year. I'm like, sign me up. You do this once a quarter, sign me up every quarter. I'm willing to do it. And I think it speaks to her. I definitely agree with you. Everybody please go listen to that episode with Rae because she drops a ton of information about from the event organizer perspective, what she is looking for in a small business because her event now has the luxury and it's had for a couple of years, where they take applications because it's so big. That's the stuff. It's beautiful for the small business owner that gets to participate because for one, she has a large following. People love going to this event. So they know that if they get selected and they get to participate, they're likely going to make sales, right? It's just a matter of how many, how much sales they're going to make that day.
How many sales? I'm sorry. How much money? I switched there. I had it right the first time.
Chelsea: Vivian, I also want to have a little side conversation before we move on. A very popular question that small business owners and maybe new businesses joining the market scene, stuff like that. A very popular question is, how much product do I need to bring?
We can't answer that for you. The best thing you can do when you're just starting out is to do your research on the market and how many people have shown up in the past or have shown interest this year and base it off of that. Focus on your best selling products and/or the products that you have an easier time moving, selling. But there's no right clear cut answer, especially when you're just starting off.
Vivian: Yeah, it's a guesstimate and the thing is you try to lower your risk as much as possible. So basically, I wouldn't go bananas and like, you know, order all kinds of like, this is what I would do. I would start with messaging the event organizers. Let's say you found an event, you committed to it, great, you paid $100 to participate. You should have already done this at this point. You should have already messaged them, that organizer and said, hey, how many people attended in years past? I'm about to place an order for some product. How much product maybe should I order? Right? They're in some instances, they're not going to give you like a number, but what they can say is they can say, last year we had 1500 attendees. Okay. This year we're expecting double. And the reason we're expecting double is because we're putting more money into advertising the event, right? So those things can give you a little bit more feedback.
I've seen a lot of small business owners that do what you're saying, Chelsea, and they're not taking every single product they make out there. But instead what they do is they maybe decide on three things that they're going to focus on on that event, that is going to align with the target audience or the event attendees for that particular thing. So whether that be, let's say, stickers, if you do stickers, patches, and hats, trucker hats, maybe those are the only three items. Then what I could do is either have a lookbook in the binder or put up a little screen, right, that rolls through and has pictures of my other stuff. I give out business cards with the QR code that links them to my products page and I tell them, you know, if someone's interested and their perusing, I could always just say like, Hey, by the way, I also sell X, and Z. I just didn't bring them out today. If you scan this QR code, you could see all of my products that are available and I ship straight to you.
Chelsea: There's no specific answer that we can give you.
As you continue to participate in markets, you'll feel more confident in knowing what you want to bring. You'll figure it out. But the best thing that you can do when you're starting out is make these educated, educated guesses.
Vivian: I like how you reiterated that.
*S.O.B. Community Commercial*
Vivian: You know what we keep hearing from you fellow S.O.B.s?
Chelsea: Small Owned Businesses.
Vivian: Yes, small owned businesses. You guys are so overwhelmed with your marketing.
Chelsea: And we totally get that! You didn't start your bakery, or your boutique store, or your jewelry business to become full time marketers or content creators, or ad designers.
And marketing can feel really overwhelming.
Vivian: Oh yeah. Then you S.O.B.s try to go figure it out, because that's what you do. You Google stuff, watch videos, and end up spending hours trying to figure it out, only to sometimes end up more confused.
Chelsea: This is my full time job and trust me, the way marketing is talked about on the world wide web can be really misleading.
Vivian: Let's not even talk about trying to hire an agency for help. It's daunting, they don't know your small business like you do, and so they are not as effective. And let's not even talk about the cost.
Chelsea: We understand why a lot of you S.O.B.s feel ready to give up. That's why we even bothered to create The Seasoned Marketer.
Vivian: That's also why we started the S.O.B. Community. We wanted to create something practical and affordable for people who can't, or simply don't want to, outsource their marketing.
Chelsea: Right. So for $50 a month members can get free downloads and templates, step-by-step tutorial videos, a weekly live Q&A call with both of us marketing professionals and other S.O.B.s. You also become part of a supportive community to bounce ideas off of.
Vivian: It's like having a boardroom of like-minded individuals and marketing professionals where you can talk through all your marketing questions.
Chelsea: Without having to pay boardroom marketing agency prices!
Vivian: So if you're tired of wasting time trying to figure it all out on your own...
Chelsea: Or spending money on things that don't work, join us over at the S.O.B. Community.
Vivian: We'll help you turn your marketing stress into marketing success. And hey, it's just $50 a month.
Chelsea: So click the link in the description to join, and we can't wait to see you in the S.O.B. Community.
Vivian & Chelsea: Now back to the episode.
*End of Commercial*
Vivian: Set yourself up for success. Start thinking about the future. If this is going to be the first event that you're doing, what do you need to do now to set yourself up for success in the future? Track data. Okay. So be sure that you have those mechanisms in place before you do that.
Even if it's just in a spiral notebook, y'all, I'm not talking about anything fancy. Actually, real life example, there's a local artist here who I love her stuff. Okay. I have one of her things in my room. Love her artwork. She actually, and she's gotten pretty big, right? So she attends all of these events, her sales. I mean, people are in there always going through bins, looking at her prints and stuff. So she does very well.
One of the things I noticed is she had a little notebook that she kept and she had already printed on there or listed all of the designs that she had brought out or the name of the artwork. Then beside it, every time she sold one, she would just put a marker, a little marker. What she was doing was tallying up how many of each design she sold. Very old school paper and pencil type of way to do it. But listen, that worked for her and she was on top of it.
You know what she did that night is she opened that back up and she was like, which one did I sell the most of? And for my next event, do I want to get more prints made of that? What did I sell out of? I just think that's great. Go into it, collecting data, figure out your mechanisms of how you want to do this. They can morph and change over time. Don't make it super complicated. You're going to be nervous that first day. You're going to be, you know, kicking yourself in the butt for not bringing your fan because it's hot. We're going to be doing all this stuff. So make it super simple and very feasible for you to track all of it.
Chelsea: Love that little conversation at the end because guess what? The fourth step is to practice.
Vivian: What? Chelsea, how do you practice?
Chelsea: Practice your setup. Practice your small talk. Whatever you can do to help yourself feel more prepared for the big day, do that. Strongly, strongly suggest practicing your setup. I have an example. When I was in healthcare marketing, I was going to an event and I was going to be outside.
I was like, okay, well, we have a tent. Let me practice putting up the tent. I did. What I discovered is I'm not tall enough to put up the tent by myself.
Vivian: You short little shrimp.
Chelsea: I'm at normal height. This is what I tell Tim all the time. I'm normal height. You're just too tall. Okay.
Vivian: It's a you problem and not a me problem.
Chelsea: It's a you problem, not a me problem. What I could have done is I could have said, okay, I'll bring a stool with me so I can set it up myself. What I decided to do is just say, you know what? When I'm there, I'll find a tall person and have them help me set it up.
Vivian: That's really taking a gamble, because can you imagine if like, no... I just, I have the worst like...
Chelsea: Okay, this was baby Chelsea. I was just like, it'll be fine. I'll find someone who's tall. Right? When I was practicing setting it up, I was comfortable with it. I could set it up real quickly. I just needed that one tall person in that one specific section to help me. But I figured out how to do it. That is so helpful. Can you imagine if I had...
Vivian: I'm just glad you weren't going to a vertically challenged conference.
But then you could keep the tent small.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm, okay. I'm glad you find this so funny.
Vivian: Okay, okay, sorry.
Chelsea: Anyways, a great way that you can make sure you're prepared and practice and all that stuff is y'all, you're never going to believe this, but we have another free download and it is a checklist.
A checklist for pop-ups, markets, and craft fairs, so that you can visibly check off to make sure that you have everything and that you're prepared. Another example that I've given before on this podcast is I went to an event and I decided I was going to blow up balloons and have them on the sides of my table with ribbons, and I didn't bring any scissors to cut the ribbons.
Vivian: So she gnawed on it you guys.
Chelsea: I did not. I had to run around and find someone. I found someone who had a knife. So I just cut it. But if I had a checklist, I would have remembered that.
Vivian: Details here, asterisks. We live in the South, so having a pocket knife is not a big thing, y'all. Okay, I don't want y'all, if you're listening, I don't know, in California or something, you're like, who the heck carries a knife around? Yeah, it's the South. We carry pocketknives everywhere. But so I love this one because practicing is super important for all those reasons. I agree with you in all aspects of it. I would even add one more in there and say practice packing your car. I know this very silly, you would not believe how many times, especially if you're like one person. Bless you if you have a significant other, a friend, someone who's helping you with it. But there are going to be times where maybe you're working these things by yourself. To Chelsea's point, if you have a tent, you have to know what your approach is going to be.
I laughed and I made fun of you for doing that. I do the same thing. We also have a tent. If I had to, if my life depended on it, I could get that tent up by myself. Okay. I would struggle and it would take me probably like an hour, but I could get it up. What I do every single time, and we talk about this more in the course. If you guys really are serious about making this a part of how you promote your business and how you sell product and service, I highly recommend that you do take our course, because in there we talk about these little things that you need to be thinking about. Like how when you show up, you need to be introducing yourself and just being open to having that, you know, business buddy for the day that's next to you, that vendor buddy, because when you need to use the restroom, who's going to be watching your stuff, right? You need to have some sense of camaraderie with them. And I know if you're hesitant, you're like I'm an introvert, you do it because you got to do it, not because you want to do it, okay?
You do it because it's good for business and because over time, you can also tap into that person's knowledge, right? Hey, by the way, I love this event. Do you know of any other events like this one here in the community? Oh yeah, I just worked two other ones and I made a ton of money and they were great. Here's the name of the event, here's the event organizer. That's how you build a small business. All right, over time and building those relationships. But also because when you show up with a tent that you can't pop up by yourself, you scout and you look around, you're like, that person's pretty tall. And I'm not shy. I go up to people and I just always ask them, like, usually it's the tallest guy that's around. I'm like, hey, I'm so sorry. I'm really short. Can you help me set this up so I'm not spending an hour struggling with this thing? They're always more than happy to do it. And they usually bring on like a friend or two and that way you got one person on each side, you pop it up, you're done in five minutes.
Chelsea: One more thing about, you know, practicing your table set up. It could be that you set up your table and you're like, oh, I actually don't like this. Like it could be better. Another reason, you know, rock your fair. Please check it out if you're serious about doing craft fairs and markets. But we talk about how to actually make a vendor table invite, like inviting. I almost said it, inviteable.
Vivian: I mean, it is, I guess, a word.
Chelsea: Yeah, no, it's not. Inviting. How to make it inviting, interesting, you know, bring people in. So if you practice and you're like, oof, this is actually not a good design. Now you know that beforehand, instead of getting to the event and going, this is not a good representation of my small business.
Vivian: Absolutely. All of these little practice runs that you do with it, practicing, downloading our checklist so that you know you've packed everything that day that you need, packing your car ahead of time so that you know everything fits, or maybe it's kind of like playing the real life adult version of Tetris, right? You have a little fun with it. How do you want to be sure? The other thing I think people don't understand is sure, you can pack a car, but there are nuances where like sometimes you're taking stuff out there that's breakable that needs to have its own like, so you can't be just like stacking stuff randomly. There's a system, okay? And you have to start to get that system down. So pack the car ahead of time, practice it, putting it in, taking it out, practice your table display setup. These little steps are going to give you so much more confidence, because you're going to be nervous the first time you do this. Okay. It's just, it's a lot you get there. You have to set up, there are things that unexpectedly go wrong. And then you're expecting to talk to people and to be on point and to sell like what, and then it's a long day and you got to worry about food. Did I bring snacks and like, you know. All of this stuff is very important, but so more practice runs you get in the more confident you're going to be going in there because it's like muscle memory. You're like, I know how I'm going to pack the car. I know I got my little cart set up so I'm not having to carry boxes 20 miles away. Like I can just pull the cart. Help yourself out you guys.
Chelsea: Well, our last step Vivian, is - and I think you might have already touched on this when you were talking about data, but setting up ways to communicate with event goers after the market, setting up ways to look at your data and understand how the market went. This is a part of preparing for your craft fair because you have to plan this stuff ahead of time. You can't just decide to do this after the event. You have to figure this out before the event or it's not going to work.
Vivian: Participating in events, craft fairs, markets, pop-ups is a marketing opportunity. Treat it like you do every other marketing initiative, meaning I want to get the full value out of it. If I'm spending $100 to spend my Saturday setting up to sell my jewelry at this event, I want to get all of the juice out of it, which means that for every person that comes in that looks at my stuff, regardless of whether they buy or not, I'm going to try to get them to come into my ecosystem, which means perhaps I am setting up QR codes where they could easily start to follow me on Instagram. I have business cards available and I can hand them to say like, hey, by the way, connect with me on Instagram because I take, what do you call it?
Chelsea: Commission?
Vivian: Commissions, yes. Because I take commissions. All of that stuff is stuff you need to be thinking about head time. Great, you purchased a candle from me, I'm going to get you on my email list. Okay, so that means that when I set up my Stripe account or whatever it is, I need to have it set up to where I at least ask the question and prompt the person, hey, do you want to get notifications for future discounts? Yes, provide your email address, right?
They can skip it if they want, but that's another way. All of this stuff helps because now what Chelsea just said is you have that person on your email list, the event is done and over with, but guess what? Now you can target those people that signed up at that event and you could say, send them a follow-up email to say like, hey, it was so great to meet you. I'm not talking about like, writing each individual, let's say you have 50 sales, you don't have to write 50 emails. What I'm saying is you segment them in your audience and send them like a welcome email. Say like, Hey, it was so nice to meet you at the event. Here are some other products you may be interested in. Here are the ways that you can stay updated with me. Check out my Instagram, check out my YouTube, whatever that is. But you do have to plan all that at a time. This doesn't just happen like, you know, an afterthought. It can't be like, man, I really wish I had encouraged people to sign up for my email list.
Chelsea: Vivian, are we ready for the TLDL?
Vivian: Yeah, girl, I think we covered it.
Chelsea (40:06) Okay y'all, so this is the TLDL, too long didn't listen. So if you skipped ahead to this chapter, I'm going to give you a quick little summary of what we talked about today. But when you get the time, please go back and listen to this entire conversation because it'll probably make more sense when you hear the entire conversation.
So this week we were talking about Blueprint for starting at craft fairs and markets and vendor events. We have five steps. Your first step is going to be who are you? What is your brand or your small business? You need to understand who you are as a business. Your second step is going to be who is your target audience? Your third step is going to be do your research. Fourth step is to practice and your fifth step is going to be to set up ways to communicate with event goers after the market.
So again, if you skipped ahead to this chapter, go back and listen to the entire thing because there are a lot of nuances and us explaining things. So definitely listen to the entire conversation. Also, if you got all the way to the end here, go leave a review. You listened to the entire thing, you could leave us a review and we'd really appreciate it.
Also, if you have a topic you want us to talk about, can let us know at Help@TheSeasonedMarketer.com or in the comments. Or you can send us a DM, whichever works best for you. We want to talk about the topics you want to hear about. So make sure you like, follow, subscribe, do all the things and make sure you go be the best SOB you can be.
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