Actionable Marketing Guide Newsletter
Published: Mon, 10/23/17
actionable marketing guide
Dear , This weekend, my husband and I headed to Rhinebeck, NY. The trees in this exurban area were dressed with yellow, orange and red leaves. Like us, many people were here to attend the New York Sheep and Wool Festival at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds. The festival attracts yarnies including knitters, crocheters and spinners and their family and friends from across the US and beyond. The town of Rhinebeck understands the power of this ready-to-spend audience (something every marketer dreams of!). Friday night, we walked down the main street. It was clear that the shop owners knew their audience. Many of the windows were decorated with knitting themes. The jeweler was selling charms in the shape of sheep. On Saturday, the line waiting outside the gate tickets in hand until the strike of nine stretched over a block long. Almost everyone in line wore at least one piece of hand knitting. Creating a special sweater to wear to the New York Sheep and Wool Festival is an annual tradition. In fact, there’s book entitled the Rhinebeck Sweater. Despite temperatures in the mid 70s, these knitters still wore their handmade sweaters and shawls. This mainly female crowd had money in their wallets ready to be spent on luscious yarn and fibers. Before you tell me that women like to shop, I can assure you that most if not all had wool stuffed into every drawer and hiding place in their homes. For the first time, I decided to indulge in branded merchandise. Even though we entered the fairgrounds with the initial wave of people, I spent 45 minutes in line to buy a NYSW baseball cap. The real star of the merchandise tent was the annual knitting bag made of canvas. It retailed for $40 and sold out before lunch on Saturday! A few yarn sellers attract massive crowds. To purchase their wares, you must fight the crowds in their booth and then wait in line for up to an hour to pay. Miss Babs, a yarn dyer, does an amazing marketing job. She was one of the first yarn sellers to knit samples of popular patterns using her yarns so buyers could visualize how their finished project will look. To remove the guesswork, she creates packages of coordinated colors and gradients for shawls. Additionally Miss Babs creates a special colorway (a mix of colors in one skein of yarn) for each show. She goes even further and creates small giveaway samples you can walk away with and do a small test knit. Social media goes live at the New York Sheep and Wool Festival. Ravelry, the knitting, crocheting and spinning social media platform, hosts a meetup at lunchtime. While small compared to the major social media platforms, Ravelry members are engaged. As a social media marketer, I never cease to be amazed how this bootstrapped platform supports its members. If you’re a yarn seller or designer, you no longer need a blog, you need a community on Ravelry where members ask questions, show off their projects and resell yarn. For foodies, there’s an array of food trucks where the lunchtime lines are often a half hour or more. Additionally, there’s a hall dedicated to New York State sourced food and wines. Actionable Merchandising Lessons You Can Use:
This week I’ll be at the Incite Summit in Brooklyn. I look forward to learning more from senior marketers about the following:
If Social Media or Content Creation is part of your 2018 plans, join me at Social Media Marketing World 2018. There are both full conference admission and content creator ticks. I’m speaking about Content Creation. Happy Marketing Heidi Cohen |
Brand Storytelling: 30 Ideas That Will Make Your Business MemorableBrand storytelling is your secret marketing weapon. In today’s information overloaded world, stories pull your audience out of their status quo, according to story expert Robert McKee. Your brand story must create sufficient intrigue that it yanks your reader out of his routine. Continue reading How To Improve Your Winning B2B Content Marketing Distribution [Case Study]5 B2B Content Marketing Distribution Tactics You Can UseNeed to improve your stellar B2B content marketing distribution? Of course you do! Before you pull out your spreadsheet to show me that your content yielded above average results for your business, consider how you’d feel if the opposite were true. Continue reading Entrepreneurial You – Book InterviewHeidi Cohen Interviews Dorie ClarkEntrepreneurial You: Monetize Your Expertise, Create Multiple Income Streams, and ThriveQ: What’s your best piece of advice for readers looking to improve their marketing?We often get so caught up in new customer acquisition that we forget: the best and easiest sales are usually to our existing customers. So the question to ask ourselves is, how can we come to understand them even better, and offer new products and services that they (and others like them) will want? Good marketing isn’t just promotion; it’s also smart research and new product development. That allows us to create new revenue streams in our business and really build a sustainable, thriving business.
Social Media Marketing World 2018 is just around the corner (February 28 - March 2, 2018, at the San Diego Convention Center.) Brought to you by Social Media Examiner, this is the conference for anyone wanting to learn how to make the most of social media and meet the companies and experts in the field. Join me at this exciting event. Don't delay – the current promotion ends Friday!
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Do you want to create and send email newsletters like this? I use AWeber. Rhinebeck Photos: ©2017 - Larry Aronson & Heidi
Cohen |