So, You want to be an Entrepreneur - Turning your Idea into a Business - Part 5 Advertising and promoting

Today is the last post in the "So, you want to be an Entrepreneur" series, although really this is the tip of this iceberg!  This entire blog is about being an entrepreneur, but since I must break things up into topics and weekly focuses, we are wrapping this one up!  Today is Part 5, and in case you missed Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3, and Part 4 follow the links!

So, now, hopefully you have narrowed down products and product lines, and thought about at least one target market for each one.  When you start doing the things I am talking about in this post, you may find that you must go back and redo each of those.  I cannot stress enough that product lines and target markets need to be narrow for this step or else your advertising dollars or your hunts on where to advertise are going to be impossibly large!  Please remember again, you are not excluding shoppers, and you really don't have to exclude products, but you do need to have a target market that is find-able, and a product line that seems developed.

Yesterday, one of our members mentioned that finding target markets was her biggest struggle, and I am happy to have given her some suggestions to at least find one market to focus on. She is committed to developing at least one more item to fill out her product line and give shoppers another option if they don't want to purchase a more expensive item.  Giving customers a range of items in a range of prices is great.

All these items are made of a sustainable material and would fit well in some of the current organic
cooking/sustainable/farm to table trends that are hot today.   So, her target market is people who value organic/sustainable foods, cooking, and living.

So, how to start targeting these markets ...

1. Update your titles and tags to including descriptive words such as organic, sustainable, green, earth friendly, renewable, biodegradable, etc.  If you have many products, try out these phrases on just a few of them and then review in 30 days to see if you are being found in more searches.  
2. Be conscious of using words that may have multiple spelling variations such as ecofriendly and eco friendly, make sure you use both. 
3. Utilize hashtags on Instagram. It is recommended that you use some widely used hashtags, but also some that are narrower.  Hashtags such as "organic", which currently has over 29 million uses, is going to land you in a very broad category.  Hashtags such as, "organicfood", "organiclife", "organicliving", and "organicproduct" are going to land you in smaller more targeted categories.  "Sustainable" is also a broad category, although not nearly as broad as organic.  Hashtags such as "sustainableliving", "Sustainabledesign", and "sustainableproducts" would be more targeted.  The hashtags "farmtotable", "farmtofork", "farmtokitchen", and "farmtoproduct" are also good ideas and the use of all of these examples will give you visibility in a wide range of searches on Instagram.
4. Tell your buyers in the description why your items are organic and/or sustainable, and why they would be good companions in a kitchen that is focused on organic and sustainable foods.  Also stressing that quality and usability is not lost.
5. Take pictures of your items in use that would be desirable to foodies - you may need to pay for this service if you cannot do it in your home kitchen.  However, it is always best to try and create pictures in your own setting so that that feeling can be recreated and all of your pictures will have the same look and feel.
6. Follow foodies and chefs on Instagram after you have loaded your Instagram page with 9 pictures of your items with food.  Make comments on their posts, but do not spam their posts talking about your own products.
7.  Search for foodies and chefs with an organic or sustainable cooking trend - https://blog.feedspot.com/organic_food_blogs/ - consider contacting them for advertising opportunities.  
8. Search for other sellers that have companion items and see if they blog or have mentions in blogs, magazines, and places that your items could be featured as well. 

This list of things could go on, and the next frontier for these suggestions is to make pictures with info-graphics for Pinterest, interacting with all the foodies and organic/sustainable people you followed on Instagram, and then start looking for them on Facebook.  Run Facebook ads that target people who follow the foodies and other organic/sustainable Facebook pages.

This advice is specific to one seller, but I hope it gives you ideas of how a small targeted focus can be utilized without removing a larger more generalized placement.  If you are stuck on what your target market is, feel free to join our Facebook Group, or contact me for a personalized coaching session!