Make Sales Not Content

Once you've established a presence online and in your community, the next and most important step is to start focusing on SALES. 

If your sole strategy is content marketing (via email and social) your audience will become numb to it and view it as nothing more than free entertainment.

It will just become more background noise, and they will tune you out.

Bombarding your audience with random content makes them pay LESS attention, not more.

The Influencer Strategy of content marketing that all of the online ‘experts’ tell you to do (ie. warming people up to build up the know/like/trust factor), was created to sell personal brands, not physical products.

Content marketing is a completely passive strategy for getting sales because it relies on factors that are totally out of your control.

I see so many handmade sellers relying solely on content marketing to get sales, but that’s a huge mistake.

They think that content marketing is a substitute for sales, and they’re hoping that if they just put out random content for long enough, people will magically decide to buy someday.

You don’t have to warm someone up with content and romance them for months in order to sell them a $36 candle… you just don’t - it doesn’t even make sense.

You CAN just sell to them the first time they scroll by - and it’s sooo much easier than you think!

Most handmade sellers are introverts, and our biggest fear is being seen as too ‘salesy’, so we LOVE the idea of not having to actually sell.

That’s why we try to get around it but just creating random content instead, and then justify it by saying we’re trying to build up the “know, like & trust” factor. (We’re busy! We’re hustling!)

But they are doing themselves a huge disservice. They have wasted months (years?) creating content and trying to warm up their audience, when they could have just been making sales the whole time instead.

The truth is; you can religiously use a 365 day content calendar and crank out Reels and emails until you're blue in the face, and you STILL won't get the sales you want if your ‘content’ isn’t compelling them to actually take action and BUY (ie, give you $$).

We’ve been conditioned by the stereotypes we’ve seen our whole lives, that show salespeople as being pushy or obnoxious, but that’s a myth, and it will keep you stuck forever.

Meanwhile, with just a few tweaks in messaging, you COULD be getting consistent weekly sales year round, without creating content OR relying on social media.

It's not enough to post product pics, create videos and send emails if you aren't giving them a reason to buy TODAY - that’s just 'Show and Tell'.

In order to generate sales, you have to compel them to take action (ie, BUY). You can do that by eliminating the need to make any decisions, and by removing all friction from the buying process.

That’s how you turn buying into an experience that feels more like a SERVICE, than a transaction. That is SALES.

Sales is how you begin teaching your audience HOW to buy from you, WHAT to buy from you, WHEN to buy from you and WHY they should buy it TODAY.

If you don't give them a reason to buy today (and make it super easy) - they won't.

They will just scroll past (or delete your email) and go on with their day.

When you focus on sales, you'll be able to generate income whenever you need it, and you’ll be able to create systems and processes that will do that for you on auto-pilot.

SALES is where the work you did in MARKETING pays off in DOLLARS.

Sales is about strategy and intention, and it’s so much easier than marketing because there are principles and processes, proven over decades, that are designed to drive results, and get people to take action.

Human behavior and sales psychology did not change with the advent of social media. People still make buying decisions all day long based on ingrained and predictable patterns.

Focusing on sales over marketing is the difference between creating content to entertain them vs offering them something they can’t refuse.

CAVEAT: If you LOVE social media content creation, by all means - do that to your heart's content! But do it intentionally, and make sure the messaging you use will generate sales, NOT just likes, clicks and comments.

Don’t waste any more time making content, when you could be making sales instead.

Take advantage of the 3 seconds you have when they scroll past your post, walk by your booth, or open your email.

You can’t assume that they will remember to come back and find you someday… because they won't.

They will move on with their day, and be gone.