I decided on my week off to pull out my camera for more than just capturing day to day memories of what we were up to at the cottage, so off into the forest I went…
Author: kbarlow
Lichen
I love the perspective of looking down into a little world close up. These rocks were covered in a really neat lichen that looked like coral.
ABCs of Business: Goals, Highlight, Invest
G is for Goals:
Setting goals can be daunting, but goals play such a key role in so many parts of your business – and can keep you on track for easier marketing!
First, let’s start with the obvious one: your financial goal for the year. Create a feasible (base it on your business’ history & target market research!), but also slightly ambitious goal to help you to push yourself. This one goal is going to drive a lot of smaller ones, as it works its way down through your business’ nitty gritty.
Step two: you’ve got your sales goal for the year, now break it down even further, how many products/services do you need to sell to reach that goal? (This can be tricky if you sell a variety of things, so base if off your ideal – but realistic -scenario.) Divide it by twelve, how many a month is that? Is that possible for you to accomplish without going over your maximum capacity for the month? If so, move on down to step three. If not – we need to sort out a few things so you’re not going to burn out trying to keep up with an impossible goal!
Step three: Which of your products are your best sellers? Which products and services make you the most happy to sell? Which ones do you want to focus your marketing on for this quarter, half year, or even for the full year? Remember if you’ve got a bigger number of products or services, that giving equal focus and weight to each of them means none will stand out. For example, if you sell handmade jewellery, but you also offer workshops, and the workshops are where you make the most money, and it’s your favourite part of your business – focus less on selling the individual products, and more on getting people into your workshops! You can mix it up if there are other things you’d like to sell too, but give yourself a solid couple of months promoting a one or two things to really get your message out there before moving on.
Note: Don’t forget your website! Make sure your website is always updated to reflect what your top/ideal sellers are! If you need some insight into the best way to organize your website for maximum impact for selling, shoot us an email and we’ll chat about what you can do!
Step four: Breaking down marketing into its own set of goals! (Flow chart, anyone? I know, it’s getting detailed!) There are so many streams available online alone, from e-commerce shops to social media channels – so how are you going to decide where to put your effort? Look at what you’re focused on selling, and go where those customers are. Let’s keep going with the example of jewellery workshops. Since jewellery is such a visual medium, Instagram is a great choice for marketing. You can post your own finished pieces, but beyond that, also show in progress pieces, behind the scenes work, short clips of what people can expect during your workshops. Find where your audience is, and show them what you have to offer, but don’t put all your marketing efforts into just one channel. Use the research you did for your business plan to know where your clients are.
Reaching goals feels great, but remember to celebrate the small goals you’ve reached so you don’t get too focused on just the biggest one.
H is for Highlight:
Highlighting your education, skills, awards, and other special qualities you bring to the table is a big part of establishing authority in your field, and credibility with potential clients.
Don’t forget to highlight these things on your website, through your marketing, and other places people might scope you out, such as LinkedIn.
I is for Invest:
Time to talk time and money. I hope by now it’s clear that your business plan, website, and marketing aren’t things that you should be able to do in a day. It takes time and effort, and usually an outside point of view to help you get out of your own head, and to suggest things you might not have even thought to consider.
Since the process is such an investment in time, money and mental space, you want to make sure that you pick the right person to work with. You find them easy to talk to, good with communication, and they should be genuinely excited for your project. If you’re going to take the time to do it, you might as well do it right the first time – use true professionals. People that have education and experience, references, and a solid portfolio of work. Referrals are a great way to check out people that might be able to help you with your business. My main source of clients are from word-of-mouth, and it’s something I’m very proud of.
Your online credibility is a big factor in what people look at before they decide to buy from you – to make sure they can trust your company to deliver what you’re offering. You want to have a clear message for your ideal client, and you want that message to show that you’re willing to invest in your own company so they trust you’ll provide a quality product/service to them too.
Want to learn more about working together? Shoot me a message and we can chat about what you need your clients to see in your business!
ABCs of Business: Design, E-Commerce, Foundation
D is for Design:
Design is more than just making things look good. Design is about communicating a clear message.
The design of your elements is also your first impression to your target market. Are they seeing the message you’re trying to direct to your ideal clients? Are they seeing a quality product or service that they want to invest in? Knowing who your ideal client is is half the battle, but making sure that you know them well enough to be able to speak to them through your design and message to let them know you’re a good fit is just as important. Your design/branding elements (logo, website, social media, marketing) need to reflect your company’s message.
I often use a document called a “Scale for Tone” when I’m getting to know a business better. I use that in conjunction with their business plan to make sure that the two are meshing well together, and that a clear message will come across with the branding and design elements. Within the document are a series of adjectives (some more vague than others) that I ask to be put on a scale of one to ten. There’s a place for notes so they can explain what they mean for the more vague adjectives, and while it’s where I get the most questions – but it’s also where I often get the most clues as to what they really want their brand to say. Not everyone is able to accurately describe what they want succinctly, off the top of their head, but they can look look at a word, and know whether or not that describes their company or not, and by how much.
When the design concepts are complete and ready to be reviewed by the client, I’ll refer back to the Scales for Tone document, what we talked about in the business plan, show how the two are relevant, and why design choices were made based on their own business plan elements. It’s not about the font of the month or the colour or trend of the year – it’s about your business being reflected in your branding, and speaking to your ideal client.
E is for E-commerce:
Online shops are a great way to make your product available to people from anywhere, but there’s more to it than just signing up and uploading products! An important step is choosing the platform that’s best for your business plan, audience, and products.
For many people something like Etsy is where they started to sell online. Since Etsy controls how the shop functions, sets up the product space and delivers the audience, it’s a great first step into e-commerce, but can be limiting for people that are interested in showing more of their branding, sales, and in general having more control over how it looks and works. Many makers have an independent e-commerce solution like Shopify, WordPress + plugins, or one that works well with your brick and mortar store’s inventory system – either in tandem with Etsy or completely independent. Having your own site to be able to advertise your featured products, sales, and have customers be able to browse your products without having them be able to browse your competition at the same time is a great asset, but can be intimidating to start from scratch.
If you’re considering starting up an online shop, shoot me a message and we can talk about your platform options, goals, products, target audience and how to drive traffic to your online store so you don’t have to worry about the details – just making your products and getting them sold!
F is for Foundation:
Everyone knows the old adage about building a house on a strong foundation – the same is true for your business plan.
You need to lay the foundation of your business through your business plan. Do the research into what you’re offering, to who, why, and how. Once that foundation is set, you can use that to direct your planning for all the aspects of the day-to-day of running your business.
Your website’s structure, goals and design will be based on your business plan. Your marketing will be based on what you learned about your target market within your business plan. Your sales, online presence – it all falls back to the foundation you set with that plan – and it makes it so much easier when you’re confident in that foundation.
If you’re not feeling as though you started with a strong foundation, and it’s affecting your company’s message (be it through your website, marketing or online presence in general), check out the Business Plan Refresh, and we’ll see what we can do to make sure you know exactly who you’re talking to in all aspects of running your business!
ABCs of Business: Analyze, Business Plan, Call-to-Action
A is for Analyze:
Analyzing is a part of business in several ways; you analyze how your marketing strategy is going (using tracking and analytics), you analyze how your business is growing, and it’s also important to analyze your online presence (website and social media) to make sure that it’s in line with your target market, your goals, and branding message. If you’re not analyzing where you’re at, you could be missing opportunities to improve your message, better speak to (and engage with) your ideal clients, and identify where you’re leaving money on the table.
See where you’re missing opportunities – get a website analysis now »
B is for Business Plan:
Taking the time to create a solid business plan including market research, a financial plan, operations processes, systems templates, a marketing plan and a sales plan will provide you with the foundation you need to better predict the viability and profitability of your business. Get a sense of what you can expect running your business, and discover valuable insights about your target market, competition and overall picture.
Even if you’ve already started your business, ever changing trends, technologies, and any number of other factors will affect your business plans and goals. Look at each aspect of your business annually, create new goals, and assess what worked in previous years (and what didn’t!). It’s important to recognize these changes, and have a plan to make your business thrive in the positive, and survive and overcome the challenges.
Is your business idea feasible? » or Refresh your existing plan with this year’s goals »
C is for Call-to-Action:
Call-to-actions are a vital part of marketing – you want to make sure you’re letting your audience know what you want them to do! Call-to-actions are phrases that prompt the user to want to take some sort of action. For example: purchase something, sign up for a newsletter, take part in an offer, etc. Encouraging your audience to take action is often done through creating a sense of urgency (a limited time offer), getting something in return (a freebie/discount/sale), or evoking enough curiosity on their part to click the link (click-bait titles). CTAs are also often used for tracking how well a campaign is doing, or testing different methods of advertising by analyzing which ones were the most effective.
How effectively are you using CTAs in your online marketing and website? Get an analysis of your website based on your business goals, and find out where you could improve user click-through »
The ABCs of business
I am so excited to start learning how to use my new watercolour waterbrush, and I figured I’d start with the alphabet, so here we are – the ABCs of business!
With every letter, I’ll talk a bit about each word and how it relates to running a successful business.
Excuse my shaky writing as I learn, but practice makes progress!
Follow my alphabetical journey over on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!
How to Make a Quick & Easy Lightbox for Product Photos
It may not look like much from the outside, but this little box has been a huge help when taking photos of felted friends over at Woodland Trail Studio!
It was so easy to make, it took less than an hour, and there aren’t even any instructions needed – get a good size box (this will depend on the size of product you create), cut a hole in two sides and the top, cut off the front, tape it together, tape some white tissue paper on the holes and voilà!
The best part of it being a freestanding box, is that you can move it around your house/studio/office until you find the right light, you can set up lights to point at it, and it can be complete and total chaos all around you… but all people will see is the background colour you have within the box, and nice, soft lighting.
I chose an aqua coloured piece of fabric, I preferred it to white as it can be a bit harsh, and it’s a favourite colour of mine (and part of the branding colours for Woodland Trail Studio!).
It’s not fancy – it’s not even ironed! It’s just taped up to the back of the box so I can easily change the position if I need to, or swap out for a different piece of fabric or paper. I have a piece of printer paper behind it just to help give it a bit of structure for the curve of where it falls, but it’s not necessary.
Here you can see the difference between the left and right – where I changed the outside lighting, so the shadows would be less harsh. I like to use natural light where possible, so I set up the lightbox on a side table by my sliding glass doors. The image on the left was the first test, the image on the right was when I pulled the sheer curtain to make the light less direct. I could have also moved away from the window to help, but the sheer worked great. Even if I didn’t have sheers, I could have temporarily taped some tissue paper to the glass, and added layers until the light was how I wanted, or simply moved it to a different window to test the light there.
If you’re a maker and you’d like to get more tips to make your life easier – sign up on our resources page for handy little tips and tricks delivered right to your inbox!
Instagram Giveaway Winner!
Congratulations to @craftadian! You’ve won a needle felted chickadee family from Woodland Trail Studio!
Thank you to everyone who entered! We had a great time, so watch out for more giveaways in the future!
Instagram Giveaway!
Enter our giveaway contest running on Instagram, and you could win a needle felted chickadee or owl family from Woodland Trail Studio!
It’s easy to enter, just follow these steps and cross your fingers:
- Follow @kbarlowdesign and @woodland_trail_studio on Instagram
- Click “like” on the first post
- Comment to let us know if you’d rather win the chickadee family or the owl family
- Get Bonus entries one of two ways:
- Tag a friend that you think might like to win too (extra entry!)
- Sign up for the Resources Email List below to get valuable worksheets and tips for your business (another extra entry!)
Contest is open to Canadian residents (except Quebec). Contest closes July 26, 2016.
See the full list of rules and regulations here »
Did you know we have services specifically for makers to get their own online shop set up?
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Aphasia Awareness Month
June is National Aphasia Awareness Month – something that many people struggle with daily, but also something many people have never heard of.
Aphasia is a communication disorder that affects a person’s ability to process and use language. It affects people differently, from moderate to severe, and can affect being able to understand what people are saying, being able to express what they want to say, or both. It’s an acquired language disorder, usually due to stroke, brain injury or brain illness. It can affect a person’s ability to speak, understand, read and/or write. If you’d like to learn more about aphasia, there are tons of resources online, like this one.
The most important thing to know about people with aphasia – it is a loss of language, not intellect.
Our family has been through a lot in the past few years, and we’ve learned a lot about aphasia. The type we deal with in my family is both expressive and receptive. My Dad has trouble understanding what people are saying sometimes (although there has been a massive improvement over the years!), and sometimes struggles to find the words he wants to say. I often explain it to people by comparing it to a stutter. I find that helps people to realize that he’s still the same person, with all the same memories, education and experience, he just can’t spit them out the way he used to!
We use a lot of gestures in our family, often interrupting what we’re trying to say because we burst into laughter at some of the ways we use facial expressions, body movements and sounds to express ourselves in a way that he’ll understand the story we’re trying to tell (along with words). We laugh a lot! (And eventually we get the story across!) We’ve got some gestures that we’ve used for years that are staples that he recognizes easily, so we use them while talking as a secondary information source. Some days are better than others, and some days you’d never know there was any issue at all. He’s worked so hard to get better, and the change is incredible since 2012. We’ve learned what works best for him; for example to trigger a word he wants to say but can’t get out, we ask him to start to spell it. By the second or third letter, it will often release the word from his brain to his mouth and he’ll be able to say it. His favourite form of communication is written, so we write emails back and forth all day which keeps everyone up to date on what’s new, and makes it easy for him to understand.
If you’re trying to communicate with someone who’s struggling, offer different options:
- use gestures to offer to write something down (or pull out a pen and paper)
- speak clearly
- ask them how they prefer to communicate (if they can understand that)
- confirm they understand what you’ve said before you move on to the next thing
- and above all, be patient – they’re the same person they always were, just with a challenge in communicating what’s in their head.
Lots of programmes exist within Ontario for those with aphasia, and those that want to help by volunteering their time. You can find out what’s near you through a quick Google search, asking your doctor, or your local hospital for information.
Spread the word about aphasia, and hopefully it will help someone know what to do if they’re faced with a situation where they don’t know how to assist someone in communicating what they want/need.