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I have recently started a business selling Beardcare products ('Beard Blessings'). I have a website: (http://madmonk.co/) and made an SA-Mart thread. I also participated in a local 'First Friday' event, which is an awesome streetfair and it's like $20 to get space to set up a table and sell stuff on the First Friday night of a month. I've been making some sales, but things have been slow. My next two steps are stepping up the social media marketing/SEO/ppc ads (ugh) and trying to get some local barbershops/beauty supply stores to carry my product. I'm figuring I'll go the local route first because it seems like a good way to get some more consistent sales than just web stuff, and also because I am bad at and hate doing online marketing, it just feels too much like being manipulative if you want to do it on any kind of large scale. The downside is that I have no idea how to go about pitching the product. I can go in and talk to them person-to-person, sure. But when it comes to sounding professional and business-like, I have absolutely no idea. Googling gives me a range of stuff that varies hugely, isn't that consistent, and seems to be focused way more on targeting big box stores, which I do not think is the way for me to go at first. I hand-make the product, so jumping up in demand too quickly would not be ideal. Of course if there's some great way to get it in box stores I would gladly take the problem of having too much demand. So business goons, how do you go about pitching a product well, besides just pitching it badly until you get better at it? Is it all just public speaking skills, or are there specific things to be aware of?
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May 30, 2015 19:09
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I will try to come back to this thread and type up an effortpost later, but the first thing you should do is have a "wholesale" link on your website. I use a google docs form and have the potential retailer fill out some basic contact information and a tax id#. I then send them an e-mail with a price sheet and 'how to order' and we go from there. I have my products in about 60 independant retailers as well as 20 whole foods stores. Most of my smaller retailers simply found me on the interwebs and contacted me through the form on the site. E: Why do you not have pictures of sexy dudes with beards all over your site? Your product is not a bottle. You are selling sexy beards. Put up some goddamn pics. Leroy Diplowski fucked around with this message at 20:18 on May 30, 2015 |
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May 30, 2015 20:15
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Thanks, that is pretty much exactly the type of info I need! I'm planning a re-do the site to get better copy in there as well, but definitely a good call on shifting to more sexy dudes with beards all over the place (and I feel so dumb over not even thinking about having a wholesale link. I use wholesale links on websites.  ). It sounds like your wholesale customers pretty much all approached you, do you know how they found out about you (were you running local ads, or just online?), and do you have any that you approached? Sorry to just fire off questions at you! I really appreciate even just that first post, it's exactly the stuff that just wasn't occurring to me.
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May 30, 2015 20:38
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Please feel free to fire questions at me. You will probably get more useful info that way and its easier for me to organize my thoughts when I am answering questions. Most of my wholesale customers approached me, but not all. When we are really slow in the summers I sometimes do cold calls with my crew. We can make a sale with about 20% of calls which is really great odds. We don't call anyone unless we are pretty drat sure that our product is be a good fit. The most important thing is to know your market. What type of place can move your specific products? Who is buying them Start broad and then get as specific as possible. for example: What is the retail market for natural handmade candy? Stores that sell food. VVVVVVVVVVVVVV Stores that use "health" in marketing VVVVVVVVVVVVVV Stores that use "gourmet" in marketing VVVVVVVVVVVVVV Stores that are independantly owned VVVVVVVVVVVVVV Stores that have an established clientele VVVVVVVVVVVVVV Stores that already have a candy section VVVVVVVVVVVVVV Stores in high income areas etc... Sales is 95% homework and 5% chatting and closing. I just use google to generate a "leads list" of retailers that fit the criteria or just feel right. Also, don't discount e-tailers. For a product like yours. bloggers are a great way to generate awareness. Just find a few beard blogs (They have to be out there) and contact the writer. Offer to send to free beard product for them to review. They will probably give you a good review unless your product really sucks. Not every blogger is worth your time, but just look at the traffic and the what they do on social media. for my business ppc and pretty much all other ads have been a waste of money. What really engages people with my product is constant quality content (something Ireally should spend more time on) Most of my retailers found out about my products from actually encountering it at an event, as a gift from a friend, or at another retailer. I also do community type stuff like demos at museums, farmers markets, chamber of commerce stuff, small business mixers, etc. The only ad I run online is the SA ads, and that's mostly an excuse to give money to SA. Another thing: There are a poo poo tonne of beard care products on the market. What makes yours different?
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May 30, 2015 21:18
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Yeah, the content is something I need to get on. Interesting (and frankly, relieving) to hear that PPC hasn't done much for you, that's a whole realm of stuff I know nothing about. Glad to see it's not a requirement, although I figure I'll take a look into it at some point just to see. And again, I don't know where my brain's at, but googling as a preliminary to physically going around and looking at places hadn't occurred to me either. That makes that a lot less daunting to get started on!  Regarding bloggers and social media, I see you have twitter, facebook, pintrist, and instagram on your site. Do you mainly get posts from bloggers that permeate through their own social networks, or do you post to those platforms a bunch yourself? (And any idea how it affects customers finding you, either small orders or wholesale?) surc fucked around with this message at 23:13 on May 30, 2015 |
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May 30, 2015 23:06
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Your branding/logo are fantastic. Thought I'd throw that out there as I know nothing about this topic. Good luck
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May 31, 2015 14:22
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Hey, thanks! I always love praise, my biggest highs and lows all come from anxiety/feeling successful about this business lately, so I appreciate it! I hired fellow goon Beanpants, aka Adam Roselund to be my illustrator for the logo, and the entire experience was a blast. I'd been wanting to commission something from him since I saw a print thread years ago in SA-Mart, so it was two birds with one stone! surc fucked around with this message at 18:29 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 18:27
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surc posted:Yeah, the content is something I need to get on. Interesting (and frankly, relieving) to hear that PPC hasn't done much for you, that's a whole realm of stuff I know nothing about. Glad to see it's not a requirement, although I figure I'll take a look into it at some point just to see. Read through the 800k goon thread and the old thread. I learned a lot about targeted ads through there and what scenerios it makes money in and what scenerios it doesn't. I haven't had a blogger write about my candies in about a year, but that's because I don't need to direct traffic to my site. Only like 5% of my business comes in via d2c. Quality content that enhances the value customers get from your product is key. It doesn't really matter how that content gets in front of your customers. I have a really over the top personality irl, so I try to capitalize on that by creating content (relationships, memories, stories, education etc) in the non-internet world. One of the easiest ways to add value to your product is by associating a compelling story with it. What do beards mean to you? Why is your beard important? You already have some good stuff on your site, but the method of engaging in social media is less important than having a vision of what your customer needs to be exposed to that will increase the benefits that your product gives them when they buy it. That said, I actually get a lot more social media exposure from my retailers than anyone else right now. If you could just magically get one retailer to pick up your product tomorrow who would it be and why? Once you answer this question then you can look for the most accessable retailers that share the characteristics that you think will make your product move. Also, I'd really be interested to get an answer to the question in my provious post. What makes your product stand out? Does it work better than other beard balms? Is it cheaper? Does it have better ingredients? Is your marketing better. Is your label more rasputiny? Is the packaging easier to use? Is it because you are such a cool guy that I would rather buy from you than from less cool beard balm guys? Then, who do your competitive advantages apply to? Do you have an easy to use wholesale ordering system? Is your MOQ low? Do you offer agreeable terms? Does your product have shelf appeal? (I'm with oxnard and agree that it does). Those are competitive advantages that apply to wholesale but not really online retail. What's your capacity like? How much of this stuff can you reasonably sell in a month? Is your wholesale price around half your retail price? when you call up these guys how are you going to convince them your beard oil is better than others? also, just doing some cursory googling tells me that you might do well on amazon. E: are you active on beard forums? I know they have to exist.
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May 31, 2015 21:18
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OP your product looks great and there is absolutely demand for it. With that said, if you do decide to start doing digital marketing to bring in more orders and increase sales, here are a few tips. FYI, this is my profession and have my own digital marketing agency. Site UX Your site is minimalist which is good. I've worked with a lot of manufacturers, OEM, designers, and companies that make their own products. I assume, just like them, you know and love your product a lot but are having a hard time explaining why it is the best (aka selling). Your site should be your best salesman and a resource that explains what need that your product fulfills and why your product is the best at it. With that said lets get into it. 1) Its good that your site does have bread combs (Home > Beard Balm > Grigori Beard Balm) but you are still missing the standard navigation bar. Also the Home button should be your logo. 2) Product pages lack features, descriptions, and content. You currently have a very basic page with basic product description. This where you explain how the product solves the customer's problem. (example customer: I'm all natural and I love putting honey extract into my beard for freshness, does your product have honey or bee by products) 3) Add to cart button only changes to a lighter purple. You need to gamify your conversion funnel. Make the purple turn into green, blue, or whatever that fits your theme. 4) The About Us and Beard Oiled Explained need to be more beefy. In about us is where you can make yourself a rock star. How you came about this miracule formula and how you are the coolest person ever, basically humanize yourself. BOE should be talking more in depth about the product and the need for something like this. Here you can explain the Need and why it is so important for a solution. 5) Drop the FAQ section. Contact us is fine, but you probably should have a phone number there and a form fill out. This way if any retailers or distributors do want to contact you, they can. Move the social media links to icons that show up in the upper right corner on every page. For Godsake, get a Pinterest going as well. 6) Checkout. Offer more options besides paypal. I see you accept all CC options, but only through paypal. That is another barrier for your customers and another reason for them not to convert. 7) Homepage. Beef the poo poo out of it. Have an sliding image gallery. Have content there other than your pitching your product. Peep this site, similar products but little better homepage. No need to copy them, but at least you can see the UX I am suggesting. http://www.1740beardbalm.com/ SEO The site is super small with barely any content. You will have to create more content if you want to rank. Blog is the easiest option. 1) A fifth of your blog post should be pitching your product, the rest should be quality that speaks to your audience. Bearding events. Beard shows. Dopest beards. Chicks with beards. etc. 2) You are currently missing a sitemap.xml, which isn't a big deal, but its one more thing against you when Google does its indexing/rankings. 3) Title tags and Meta descriptions. Titles are short and to the point. Its fine but you could spruce them up. You are missing all meta descripts which normally isn't that bad if you have words to pull from the page, but you don't in most cases. Also Google is pulling your links like About Us, Beard Oil Explained, etc. 4) Like the other poster said. Get your content, or create specific content, to promote on lifestyle/industry sites. If you make a great infographic or article that the other site owner would like, most of the time they'll use it for free and give you a back link. This is the most effective and safest way to generate back links, which you need. PPC This can be a solution for you, but not currently. Your shopping cart needs more payment options. You will also need a strong product/catagory pages as landing pages for the ads. Also, if you do this you should invest a couple grand over the course of several months just for data. Its very unlikely, even if you hire an expert, that you will break 2x or 3x returns on ad spend until you have several months of data at min spend of 1k per month. New products from new companies typically do not do well on adwords because there isn't a demand for them. Content creation is where you generate demand. Social This can be an important channel, but do not waste too much time here. Its like selling Cutco. You use up your friends and family (your immediate network), and are left with cold leads/customers. Generating cold customers requires a lot more work and effort than promoted posts and likes. Even for sites/products that do have demand, social usually equates to ~5% of yearly sales. However since your product is a B2C, paid ads with very targeted demographics/interests could work. But you will first need to fix the UX of your site first.
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Jun 1, 2015 19:23
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 This was like a one-two of perfect posts to help me with all the places I have difficulty thinking about solo!Leroy Diplowski posted:Quality content that enhances the value customers get from your product is key. It doesn't really matter how that content gets in front of your customers. I have a really over the top personality irl, so I try to capitalize on that by creating content (relationships, memories, stories, education etc) in the non-internet world. One of the easiest ways to add value to your product is by associating a compelling story with it. What do beards mean to you? Why is your beard important? You already have some good stuff on your site, but the method of engaging in social media is less important than having a vision of what your customer needs to be exposed to that will increase the benefits that your product gives them when they buy it. That said, I actually get a lot more social media exposure from my retailers than anyone else right now. (I chopped off the top because I didn't think responses to them would lead anywhere, and it could confuse what I'm responding to) -Content: This is a thing I really need to step it up on, and I know it. I'm going to brainstorm up a big list of content ideas tonight, and start in on writing them tomorrow. -Magic retailer selection: I think in a lot of ways the best thing for this would be to have it in small/individually owned barbershops and salons, as well as beauty shops. I figured I'd enter locally, and I live in the SF Bay Area, which has a lot of one-off shops carrying handmade luxury/beauty supplies. I don't know if maybe I'm thinking about this wrong, but that's what seems like the best to me. -What makes my product stand out: Oooooh boy, along side content, this is one I've been struggling with a lot. I love you forever for giving me thought provoking questions there, because talking about what makes it unique is the "what is your best talent/biggest failure" interview question of selling products, and it's hard for me to both stay sincere and feel like I've succeeded from a marketing standpoint. (Beard products are functionally generally pretty similar due to a small pool of oils that work the best). Those prompts help a lot, it gives me a direction for how to go about talking up the good things about it without it just becoming insincere marketing gibberish. To answer your question in brief: I use organic ingredients (this isn't on my site because I'm in the process of confirming that a couple of my suppliers are 100% organic), I really care about providing the absolute best customer service I can, the cost for my product is very competitive, I ship quickly, my brand is super awesome, and I am the  est dude. On the wholesale end of things, I need to get a good wholesale ordering system set up soon, and I have no idea what is reasonable when it comes to terms. Are terms generally fairly standard, enough that I could do research online and go from there, or am I really going to have to try and find somebody in a similar market and talk to them/talk to people at the stores? -Capacity/reasonable sales/wholesale price: I realized I'm not totally sure if the "reasonable sales" part of your question is how much I could reasonably make or sell. I'm not sure on the sales front, but I could make at least 1000 oz of balm, and 1000 oz of oil in a month. If it was going to be more than a single month of that I'd probably want to get some help though, as it'd be a big jump in production for me and I could see it wearing me down if I kept at it solo. On the wholesale price front, I can do around half my retail price for wholesale. Have you had people try and push you lower than that, and do you drop it below that if somebody's buying an extra large wholesale order, or is half retail pretty much the norm? And the last 3 are really good points that have occurred to me but that I need to follow up more on (I need more presence on beard forums, I need to write out an awesome pitch just so I have it all thought out, and I need to just bite the bullet and jump through Amazon's hoops for selling.) Snatch Duster posted:Awesome Web Advice I especially appreciate the ppc/social media tips, those are the things that I know nothing about, but feel like "Everybody's doing them oh god I must need to focus on them huge amounts to stand any kind of chance". It sounds like content content content is the key, plus some sexifying of my homepage and some meta-tags/navigation changes for SEO. The challenge will probably be beefing up the homepage without going overboard, I'll need to take a day and just like, go around town and get some good photos I guess! surc fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Jun 2, 2015 |
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Jun 2, 2015 00:45
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surc posted:
If you could sit down for a week or two you could fix up your site enough to start selling online. Sure there are people who specialize in every aspect of digital marketing from designers, content creators, to conversion rate optimize that only look at the site and how to make it sell. And you could hire an agency or find a freelance person to help you, but it can expensive and another area you will have to spend a lot of time with that isn't dealing with your product specifically. What I find with most of my clients is that either they tried to do this stuff themselves and gave up, or they got as far as their knowledge on the subject could take them. With that said, there comes a time when creators of products/services usually hire another person to sell their baby. It is very rare that a creator actually knows how to market and sell their product, that's why there are Robert Khoo's and Mo Siegels of the world. When will the time come for you? I don't know exactly, but from my experience its when the creator/founder realizes they can't do it all.
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Jun 2, 2015 16:10
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Snatch Duster posted:1) Its good that your site does have bread combs
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Jun 3, 2015 07:10
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If you're keen on a do-it-yourself approach, you need skills in both marketing (ie creating awareness and buyin) and then negotiation to secure agreements. For the latter, I thoroughly recommend reading Getting to Yes by Fisher and Ury. It has some great tips in there about seeing things from the other party's perspective and tailoring your message accordingly. http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Without/dp/0140157352
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Jun 3, 2015 07:41
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You should contact this distributor: http://crwgroupllc.com/ A customer of mine sells with them and does very well.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:55
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This is awesome info to which I will give an actually adequate reply later this week! I'm juggling a lot of stuff at the moment, and I haven't had a chance to get the site updated, but I am writing up content. (So far I'm working on 'Eating with a beard' techniques, Beard care/maintenance techniques including a 'how to use beard oil' thing, and a 'different style of beards' article. I know the last one has been done over and over, but I figure I'll do my own twist on it. I always feel like putting your own twist on any kind of 'standard' for a community or industry is a good way to help establish a brand and give people an idea of what you're about.)
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Jun 8, 2015 13:49
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surc posted:This is awesome info to which I will give an actually adequate reply later this week! That is a good start on content. Make sure you hire a good graphic designer to make the articles interesting to look at and get them placed offsite. Keep it up man!
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Jun 16, 2015 20:58
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