Marketing Monday:: Rock the Swap!

This week, we want to be sure you know about all of the amazing tools available to you here on Poppy Swap. They will really help you rock the Swap! If you set up your store 3 months ago and then moved on to the rest of your busy life with your fingers crossed for some sales, it’s an important time to check back in and amp things up. Poppy Swap continues to bring us better tools and creative community. Let’s be sure to use them for our benefit. We have new customers to delight everyday!

Tips ‘n Tricks to rock your Poppy Swap selling experience

Widgets, Widgets, Widgets! Its a weird word but you really need to know what it means! Because Widgets ROCK! Widgets are a mini-version of any possible page on Poppy Swap. There are a variety of ways you can customize a widget for your store including featuring just your store’s teas, or just lip balms or just herbalists in West Virginia. You can easily create the widget you want. Poppy Swap gives you the code to embed and you can move your whole gallery of products ANYWHERE ON THE WEB. For Free!! This means you can make your own website, Facebook page, or blog super fancy, super fast by including your customized Poppy Swap store gallery in the form of a widget. Fans will then be easily directed to your Poppy Swap store to have a little shop. Here’s a great example of how Kathy @ Dragonfly Dew uses her Poppy Swap widget to create a store front on her blog. Heck, ask your friends or family who have blogs and websites to include your Poppy Swap store widget as a banner on their site. They love you, just ask! To get started making your very own cool widget, click here.

Discount Codes: These handy dandy discount codes can really provide incentive for potential for customers to shop in your Poppy Swap store. By offering free shipping or 10%-15% off people will be more motivated to spend. You can set coupons to run for a designated period of time or choose a designated number of coupons and run a special for the “first 10 shoppers.” It’s easy and simple to set-up. Just go to “My Account” when you are logged in and look for “Discount Codes” in your management area.

Poppy Swap Schwag: We have lots of FREE and fun ‘schwag’ (i.e. marketing materials) available to you here on Poppy Swap to help you ROCK the Swap. You can download postcards, stickers, and even business cards right here on our website to help YOU promote your store and products. It might seem challenging or even creepy to promote yourself. We’ve all been there!! We just want to support people and hang with the plants but if no one knows we are here, how can we help? I encourage you to take some time and make the effort to put Poppy Swap in the consciousness of the people. The co-op board, your herb school, local green grocer, and community events are great places to hang a flyer. People are looking for healthy products and community. We can help if they know where to come! The stickers are great for adding color and personality to your product shipment and look awesome on the outside of your package. And if you don’t have the computer chops to make a business card, the ones on here are all set up and ready to go! Click here to check out the cool Poppy Swap schwag.

Network with US! As you’ve probably already experienced, Poppy Swap is an online network that allows us to connect with one another in the virtual world when we can’t be together in person. We can share ideas, enjoy good herb company and inspiration, and even provide leads and referrals. You’ll be rewarded in spades! Have a question about how to work on your store? Want to meet the other herbalists in your neighborhood or get people to your event? USE THE FORUM! Twitter and Facebook are also our playground. Herbalists are friendly. In our experience, just introducing yourself is enough to be welcomed into the tribe! Recently I had a customer ask me about morning sickness and if I had a pregnancy tea that would support her. I didn’t, but I sure know who did! I referred her to Jessica at Morgan Botanicals. I LOVE to support my herbie friends!

Events: We have a great events page here on Poppy Swap. We encourage all of you to continue to post herbal events, classes, and symposiums on our events page. It’s a wonderful way to let our customers know of all of the great things happening in your area and a great way for you to “get in the know” and get yourself present at the gathering. Having fun and learning about herbs will skyrocket your herb world more than anything else because your heart will become full. And you know, we here at Poppy Swap LOVE to travel. So, if you have an event that you think it might be beneficial to have Poppy Swap attend, let us know, and we will see what we can do!

Our goal for summer 2012 is to help our vendors get discounts into some of the larger festivals and conferences. Start visioning your dreams for summer. What does your booth look like? What events will you be at? How can we help YOU make that dream come true? Click here to check out the events page.

Feature, feature, read all about YOU: Did you know that every month we LOVE to feature herbalists on our blog? And our readers LOVE to hear about the herbalists behind the scenes. If you’d like to share your story and journey on your path to becoming and being an herbalist with the world just email Kiki at kiki@poppyswap.com and let her know. It’s a wonderful way to get to know your peers as well as introduce yourself to customers. You can submit recipes, articles and other herb news as well. This Ginger Oil recipe from Ananda got hundreds of views and and our readers were so grateful for the idea~

Get YOUR good word out—advertise! Here on Poppy Swap we are building our advertising program. We have created excellent ‘slots’ on our homepage as well as forum and blog where you can place your savvy and creative ad. This is an effective way to gain exposure to potential customers. And it’s CHEAP! Email Kiki at Kiki@PoppySwap.com for more information. We’d LOVE to help get people into your store!

Have a friend, Be a friend: I imagine that we all here agree that being a part of community and supporting our fellow members is one of the most fulfilling and nourishing aspects of being here on Poppy Swap. We learn from one another, share with one another, and in general just feel GOOD when we can help each other out. So, let’s be sure to spread the word by sharing links from each other’s websites, blogs, and Poppy Swap stores. Let’s lift each other up and spread the Poppy Swap word!

We hope you find some of these Poppy Swap tools helpful to help you rock the swap. Please know, you can always email us with ANY questions. We’ll do our best to make your experience here on Poppy Swap the best!

LOVE!

About the author:: Would you like support with your herbal business efforts? Kristie Nackord, fellow swapper and the ‘herb girl’ behind Spirit Horse Herbals, is also an independent marketing consultant available to help YOU! For more information, click here~