Want to boost your craft business sales? Sell the story not the product
Storytelling is a powerful medium to utilise in your craft business to help generate sales. At a time when the market is more competitive than ever, selling your creations requires a focused sales & marketing strategy. This is where sharing the stories around your craftwork, rather than simply selling your work, gives you an advantage by helping your work to stand out and potentially boost your craft business sales.
When you sell a product, you are likely to use words and phrases such as ‘buy now’ or ‘If you buy this, xyz will happen’. This is direct selling, asking outright for what you need. Direct selling, of course, has its place in the sales process. However, when you use your story to do the selling for you, asking for the sale is much subtler because it relies on emotional connections to what has been written, said or shown. When faced with a sea of products that have the same functionality, i.e. a mug, a chair, a pair of earrings, it is the story that can aid the customer’s decision to purchase or not.
Selling the story behind your craft and business becomes even more crucial the higher you position your work in the market. This is because at this level, the expectation becomes less about how much something costs and more about emotions. The feelings around why we are drawn to certain things. And this is what stories create.
Here are some practical, quick-to-implement tips on how you can use stories in your craft business to earn consistent sales.
Enhance your craft product descriptions.
Product descriptions often get overlooked, but they are there to help convince your customer to buy the product you are selling. It is essential you make your craft product descriptions enticing. For example, having the words ‘a blue porcelain vase’ tells you what the product is, but doesn’t tell you what makes it different from the other blue porcelain vases out there. How is this for contrast? ‘a delicate hand-thrown porcelain vase made using sustainable clay sourced from the Limoges region. The vase is decorated using a natural hand mixed glaze that turns a mesmerising blue when kiln fired.’ That description sounds more intriguing and makes me want to know more.
Leverage your craft business newsletter.
Your newsletter connects you to your audience with no distractions. It is a wonderful, intimate space for sharing the stories of your craft and creating links to purchase your creations. If you have a newsletter, experiment with a few formats such as: writing a paragraph or two about your latest collection, what inspired it, the materials used, and how your products are made, and then include 2 or 3 product images with links to the relevant sales pages.
Share your style/mood boards.
Create style boards that tell the visual story about how your object fits in with the other handcrafted pieces in your collection. Alternatively, share the mood board you created for your collection. Your readers will appreciate having a window into your creative process.
Unleash the power of video.
There is nothing like seeing something being handmade to truly appreciate what goes into the process. If customers are unable to visit your studio/workshop, then bring it to them. Being able to see how an object is made can motivate your customers to click that buy button.
Ask for and share testimonials.
Testimonials are the stories your customers have to say about your work. If you have testimonials about specific products, include them on the relevant sales or promotional pages and in your posts. Also, instead of displaying the ones that just say ‘beautiful blanket’, choose the testimonials that go into a bit more detail by demonstrating what buying the product meant to the customer and the part it’s played in their lives. Testimonials are word-of-mouth, getting others to sell your crafts for you with the stories they tell.
These are just a few ways to let your stories sell your work and help boost your craft business sales. If your audience is not taking sales action, I invite you to shake up the way you tell the stories behind your work by looking at where you can include them within your craft business and creating the compelling copy and visuals needed to tell them.
If you need help crafting and telling the story of your craft business, I have a collection of services to help you. Choose from my personalised done-for-you storytelling service to my self-study online course Unfold Your Story, which expertly guides you through the brand storytelling process.
Tapiwa
[Image credits: The image shown belongs to Mary-Jo Post via Pexels. If downloaded and used elsewhere, please credit accordingly.]
