How to Market your Jewellery

When running a jewellery business we all want to spend the majority of our time making jewellery, but in order for it to be successful and make money customers need to know you exist and this is where the magical world of marketing comes in.

Marketing is an umbrella term covering everything from paid advertising and promotional material through to websites, branding and packaging. Here are a few of the basics to get you started in getting your jewellery out there…

Your UPS – Be exceptional 

USP stands for Unique Selling Point and is a real marketing buzz world. It answers the question: what makes your jewellery business different to your competitors? What makes you stand out? And why should anyone buy jewellery from you over everyone else? Some examples could include; excellent customer service, truly unique designs, ethical focus, quality guaranteed or value for money. Often it is a combination of things but before embarking on a marketing drive it is important your message is clear and you, as the business owner are focused on what you want the business to represent.

Action: Brainstorm a list of words that describe your jewellery and what you want your business to represent. Compare this with a selection of your competitors and see what makes you different. Try to put the keywords from this into a sentence or two describing your USP, your marketing message.

Building a Brand 

With marketing, consistency is important. In order for customers to recognize you time and time again you need to work on building up a strong brand that is easily recognizable. This is usually done by; designing a logo, tag line, mission statement and choosing a colour scheme, which will be used on all your promotional materials. If you are computer savvy, it’s fairly easy to design a simple logo on photoshop or you can pay a designer to make one for you.

www.digitalgreen.co.uk provide a simple logo design package for £80 with unlimited design revisions. Or there are plenty of other companies on the net with similar offers. A logo often includes a tag line which is a short sentence summing up your USP, the essence of your business. Some examples of tag lines you may recognise include:

–       ‘Its good to talk’ (BT)

–       ‘Every little helps’ (Tesco’s)

–       ‘Everyone can make jewellery’ (London Jewellery School)

Action: Design your logo and tag line and put it on everything, business cards, promotional material, website etc…

Advertising 

Advertising is the aspect of marketing you pay for, e.g. adverts in local magazines, online adverts such as Google Adwords and any other paid promotion. The disadvantage of using this method, aside from the cost is that we are all so constantly bombarded with adverts in our day-to-day life that we tend to block many of them out and in effect ignore them. Do you usually look at all the classified ads in the back of a magazine? Most of us just flick through that section. Having said that, some targeted well thought through adverts can be very beneficial in reaching out to new customers.

If you are going to use adverts my advice would be to keep it local and targeted. Local magazines are usually much more successful for this than the big glossy’s (not to mention cheaper!). Online advertising can be hugely beneficial as long as it is well aimed at your target market and be careful not to blow the budget. Finally, be sure to track your performance, ask customers where they found you and if your advert wasn’t successful in bringing new business don’t waste your money, try something different.

Promotional Tools and Materials 

Business cards, flyers, price lists, photographs and websites are all fairly essential components to promoting your jewellery business in this day and age but can be very costly. When setting up, looking after the pennies is crucial to success, so it pays to look for bargains when developing your promo materials. Some useful places I have used in the past include:

–       Moo, a lovely printing company for getting business cards and flyers printed. They do fabulous mini business cards and you can select up to 100 different images to print on the back of the cards to show of your range of jewellery. http://uk.moo.com/

–       Mr. Site, create your own website that you can update for under £40 a year. You do need to be fairly confident on computers but this programme is great for jewellery startups needing and online shop and website on a shoestring budget.

–    Create, another package for creating your own website. The great thing about this is you can trial it for 30 days free. The designs look very modern and professional and is definitely a package I would recommend. http://www.create.net/

Know your Customer and Market 

Last but not least make sure you know who your customers are. What age, sex, approximate income, location etc… are they. By knowing about your customer you can work out where to find them and how to engage them.

Work out where you fit in the market you are in, research your competitors and make sure you are providing a competitive, unique service.

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If you run your own jewellery business or are considering setting one up and would like to find out more, London Jewellery School offer regular classes and workshops in business skills relating specifically to running a jewellery business. They are also currently developing a distance learning jewellery business course which can be completed anywhere in the world from the privacy of your own home. For more information please click here.

Until next time,

Happy Making

Jessica Rose at LJS x