Angèle Kamp is known for her shop’s beautiful fonts, graphics, and templates. Before she opened up shop on Creative Market, she spent years working in a “normal” office job.
After just a few months on Creative Market, Angèle’s sales started exceeding her own expectations. A key to her success is how she effectively markets her business online. Today, she’ll be sharing her tips for online marketing success, touching on subjects like:
- Understanding a Marketplace’s Customer Base
- Marketing on Instagram
- Marketing on Pinterest
- Steping up Your Hashtag Game
- Tips for Those Who Are Just Getting Started
Start Building Your Online Presence Now
In this day and age, it’s imperative for businesses to understand how to capitalize on their online presence. This isn’t simply about keeping up with modern times, it’s important because building up an online presence can result in a large amount of traffic, which can, in turn, result in revenue.
For people who sell their work online, like her, Angèle suggests exploring different marketplaces. For each marketplace, it’s important to learn more about their common customers, and get to know the inner workings of the site.
In the area of customers, Angèle asks, “What different type of buyers are there and how can you make your products and preview images appeal to them?” After you’ve answered this question, you’re on your way to being able to make your products relevant to the right buyers.
But, there is a step two. You’ve got to make sure those buyers can find your products. Angèle suggests, “Find out which search words are popular, use them in your tags, titles, descriptions, and anywhere else where it’d be a good fit.”
Finally, having a personal human touch can tremendously help your online reputation with potential buyers. One of the easiest ways to do this is to be active in a marketplace’s forum or discussions section. Angèle’s tip for connecting with others is “Be polite and helpful in the forums and only promote your products if it is relevant.”
Know What Social Media Platforms Work Best for You
Now that you’ve built up a presence in a marketplace that fits your brand, keep the momentum going by jumping on to social media. Social media channels provide a great opportunity to further engage with your customers.
Keep in mind, every social platform is different and attracts a different audience. Don’t spread yourself too thin by trying to be active everywhere. Instead, “Find out where your ideal clients are and connect with them.”
For Angèle, Facebook and Twitter don’t work well for her brand. So she’s focused her efforts on Instagram and Pinterest, since that’s where her target audience can be found.
What works for one social platform will not necessarily work for all of them. Rather than a one-size-fits-all method, you’ll need to adjust your strategy accordingly. With this in mind, Angèle offers a few Instagram and Pinterest specific tips:
Instagram – The Place to Show the World the Real You
- Add a portrait of yourself to your profile image instead of your business logo
- Make a behind the scenes video with Instagram stories
- Use snippets of your life to write personal captions that your followers can relate to
- Let your personality shine through and you will see your following grow
Pinterest – It’s All About Discoverability, Quality, and Aesthetics
- Make long images, so they will take up more space and easily get noticed
- The number followers you have doesn’t matter much, what’s more important is the number of times your items get repinned. This means it’s important to always have high-quality Pin-worthy product images
- Find popular group boards to pin your products to. This will help you reach a larger audience
- Use the search bar on Pinterest to see which search terms auto populate. Incorporate these into your pin descriptions
When and How to Hashtag
Another important thing that Angèle relies on is hashtags. Hashtags have become a popular way of connecting people around the world who are interested in the same subject.
Angèle takes a growth hacking approach to this with an easy method that has proven results, “I keep a list of all the hashtags I use, which I categorize by platform and subject. For example, with Instagram, I will have around 10 different lists, depending on the subject of the post, then use the ones that best resonates with it.”
It’s very important to use the right hashtags, not generic ones where your post can easily get lost in a crowd of millions. For Instagram, “find hashtags with not as many posts but that are still relevant to your account.” If you’re having trouble finding hashtags to use, Angèle suggests looking at what other people are using. When you find a hashtag that fits your brand in some way, save it to your hashtag list for future use.
Pinterest and hashtags is a tricky subject. There’s conflicting information out there about the use of hashtags on Pinterest. Some say to not use them at all, others say they’re fine to use as long as you’re not over using them. As far as Angèle is concerned, it’s better to just focus on writing good descriptions for your pins.
Creating Relevant and Engaging Content
A lot of people mistake content marketing for product marketing, meaning all they do online is push, tout, and shout about their products. Angèle prefers to have her content come across as more meaningful and personal. She’s found this increases engagement on her posts. “It’s about sharing your story and the story behind your brand. It’s important to build a relationship first because your followers will want to buy from you once your products are released.”
Tips for Those Who Are Just Getting Started
Like with many other things in life, the more effort and time you put into your online marketing, the more it’ll pay off in the long-run. Still, we’ve all got to start somewhere. For those of you who are new to the game, Angèle has a few suggestions about where you should start:
• Invest in the community: Be helpful by answering questions in the forums, not only with potential clients but also with fellow designers who you might be able to collaborate with
• Provide great customer service: be available 24/7, write helpful tutorials, or make a video with product instructions
• Share free samples of your products: Let people see how amazing your work is and they will come back for more
Keep the Conversation Going!
Are you planning to revamp how you currently market your business? Do you want to learn more, or maybe ask a question about a marketing area we didn’t touch on?
Now is the time to ask all your burning questions! Angèle will be hanging out in the comment section below and she’d love to talk to you and/or answer questions.
Products Seen in This Post:
Download these worksheets and start practicing with simple instructions and tracing exercises.
Download now!
Making beautiful design simple & accessible to all.
View More Posts
23 Comments