flawed jewelry
To find ones ideal market, one must first know who their customer is.
Here are some simple questions I compiled to help you figure that out.
- What do they look like?
- What age and sex are they?
- What is their income levels?
- Where does your customer like to go, visit, shop?
- What values does your customers strongly associate themselves by?
- What are the values they least associate with?
- What about your company/product appeals to them?
- What is on the top of their impulse buy list? ( mine is white t-shits)
You must by now have a pretty good idea of who your marketing to. Now, what venue will bring you in direct contact with your customer?
I've chosen to use my business as the example, for I happen to already know the answers to all these questions.
My customer is young, college aged to early 30's woman. She considers herself an individual, artsy, unique, environmentally conscious, and creative. She loves to own vintage, recycled, or one of a kind things and impulsively buys bizarre stuff as long as the price tag is $10 or less.
In hunting for places to come in contact with my future customer, I'd hit a wall of anxiety every time I approached the idea of doing a craft show. I couldn't afford almost all of them, my inventory was small and I felt like an ugly duckling in comparison to jewelry smiths. So I would always find myself passing on registering for them.
I instead tapped into a market I had belonged to for years. The indie music world (which I had been knee deep in since I was fifteen). I had finally found a place where my crafts an I fit in.
It seems so obvious in hind site. Sometimes the answers are really right in front of you.
So here's the success part. I took my jewelry on the road with me in July when I went on tour with my band Crunk Witch. I had high hopes and no evidence to back up my excitement. I'll admit I was scared at first and chickened out of setting up my display at our first 3 shows. I quickly got past the "putting myself out there" jitters and to my hopes... I was instantly met by my "Ideal" customers. They were drawn to me because I was certainly something different, something they had never seen before. I offered them everything they were always looking for in a place they didn't expect to find it. They got to meet me personally and hear my bands music. They knowingly contributed to us making it to our next destination.
the photo is of my first jewelry display set up in Richmond VA.
At the end of it all, what we walked away with in profit, was the exact amount I sold in jewelry. If I hadn't put myself out there, we would have walked away from three weeks of work with $0 in our pockets.
It is always said it is easier to find success if you walk in the opposite direction of the crowd.
So after sharing with you my story of finding my ideal customer in my ideal environment. I really hope this inspires you to really think about where your customer is, not where they "should" be.
Good luck and I would love to hear other stories about finding your ideal market.
This photo is of our tour mate MC Homeless and My band mate and husband Brandon
