The Power of Marketing Your Art in Collections

1. Introduction: Are you an Etsy shop owner or do you have a shop on your website? And you were just tired of launching and marketing new products constantly. Are you not seeing the traction you truly want to see? Do you want to see your sales take off and even a bigger way? Hi, my name is Shelly Hits and I am an entrepreneur, an artist, and I love sharing these classes with you to help you grow your art business. In this class, we're going to talk about selling in collections and buy collections. I mean that you're going to create 6 to 10 different items to sell and launch all at one time. This will dramatically decrease your launch fatigue for yourself, but also for your followers and your customers so that they'll get really excited for what you have instead of just blending in with everything else. Going on. Collections can really help you to get mo mentum in your marketing to help decrease your burnout. But it can also spark new creativity for you. As you think about themes or names for your collections, it gets your customers excited. You can start talking about the upcoming launch or the upcoming collections. It gives you a reason to market to your customers that doesn't feel spammy or pushy, and it just is, overall a great strategy to use. When you're selling your artwork, we're gonna cover selling in collections, so creating a cohesive original product line is a priority when growing your Etsy shop. Big companies use these strategies, and you'll also see this in fashion. For example, you'll see the new fashion trends for the fall or the winter or the spring. They tend to be seasonal, and so we're gonna talk a little bit about how we can apply some of these strategies to our Etsy shop and to our business. So in this class, I'm gonna walk you through some best use strategies when it comes to marketing and collections, and it's just a starting point. It's a place for you to start, and then you can grow from there. But one thing I love about using this technique is that then you can see what are your best selling products in each collection, and you can start adding those to your base collection that you offer all the time, and so what, you're gonna eventually have is you're going to eventually have a shop with products that are selling. And you're going to start to see what your customers want from you. What they're buying, what excites them. And you're gonna be able to really build on that one collection launch at a time. So if you're burnout on marketing, if you want to see better results, I encourage you toe watch this class and put it toe action. Start planning your next collection Launch cannot wait to see what you dio. 2. Why Market Your Art in Collections: So why would we want to selling collections? Now, as I talk about collections in this video, I'm gonna also be using the word product line, product line and collections. I'm using those words interchangeably. So I just wanted you to know that up from. So why would you sell in collections? Well, launching and marketing one product at a time is difficult and doesn't have us much impact . And frankly, it's tiring. I was doing this as I first started selling physical products. I was launching these products one by one by one by one, and I was realizing like it was getting harder and harder to really get people to listen or to to take action on my products because I was just having new products all the time. You might think about it as product fatigue. You know, if you keep seeing a company launch something new all the time, you almost start to tune it out, whereas marketing an entire collection creates buzz and anticipation. It's a special event, and it keeps your business exciting both for you and for your customers. It gives your customers or reason toe. By now, for example, I've seen several people that I follow on, Instagram say recently, Set your alarms. This product is releasing. This box is releasing. You don't want to miss out. And so it gives this anticipation and a reason to buy at a specific time. It provides a specific strategy for you for releasing new products instead of being scattered and all over the place. And believe me, that's how I started to. I was just releasing all these products. I felt scattered all over the place and wasn't sure what my strategy was. And to be honest, I didn't really have one in the beginning. But releasing and collections or product lines gives you that strategy, and it builds momentum in your business. 3. Base Product Line: So let's start off with your base product Line your base product line are products that you're known for. They are always available and these are your best sellers. So these are going to be your high quality, your best products, the ones that sell well and that you are known for. And you want these to be good products so you don't want to just be turning out products to turn them out. You want them to be high quality, really good products that you could be proud of and that will always be available in your shop. 4. Seasonal Product Lines: You will also have seasonal product lines with your seasonal product lines. You'll have 6 to 10 new products, and I encourage you to give your collection or product line a name that makes it fun. Your seasonal product line can be similar colors a similar theme, or they don't even have to be related if you don't want them to be. But it makes it more fun if they have something in common, and then you'll launch a seasonal collection around 3 to 4 times per year. But if that's too much for you, you can do even one seasonal product line per year. So I encourage you to include a variety of products, really popular items, items that are just really popular and study trendy items. So trendy items would be things that may go out of style very quickly. But it's a really hot trend right now and then. You can also include items that you just simply love items that you don't know if anyone else will love, but you love it and you want to include that in your product line, and then you can see how it goes. You can see how it sells for trends. I encourage you to follow Pantone. They have a color of the year, and they release different color trends throughout the year and then Stationary Trends magazine is also a great magazine to be a subscriber to four stationary trends, and I am a subscriber to it. So let me just show you the Pantone site. If you scroll down currently, you'll see the color of the year, and then they come out with different colors for different things. So right now, this have a color for the autumn and winter, and you can sign up for their email list to get notifications of new color trends and then stationary trends. Dot com is where you can sign up for their email, lest you can subscribe to their magazine and stay up on the trends for the stationary world , and then also consider including products at different price points. So lower price products, medium price products and higher price products. And the reason to do this is people just naturally tend to buy the middle option. It's human nature, your low option. You have a high option. Most people will tend to veer towards the middle option, so If you just have a low and middle option, people may not always be spending as much money with you and buying the products that you have, but if you offer higher price items with bundles or sets, we'll talk about this a little bit later. Then you have a variety of options for all of your customers to provide whatever they need . 5. The How: So let's talk a little bit about the how what you'll do is you'll work on creating a new collection so you'll decide on 6 to 10 new products. You'll be designing those. You'll be coming up with those, and you're really not sharing a ton about them as you're creating them and not something that's really hard for me, because I share. I like to share what I'm doing. But as you're creating the collection, you can give sneak peeks about what you're designing to create buzz so you're not sharing the entire design. You're not sharing everything that you're doing, but you can't be talking about it. You can be giving sneak peeks, building buzz and talking about when it's gonna release and things like that, and then you'll launch your new collection. Once you have all 6 to 10 products ready and and that's not an exact number, you can have less. You can have more, but around 6 to 10 is what most people say is good to release in a collection. With the research that I've done after you want your new collection, you'll market it then for the next 2 to 3 months, so I know that sounds like a long time, but some people need repetition to really hear about what you have to offer, and you're not going to be marketing the whole time. You're gonna also be building relationships is telling stories, sharing content. And so, as you're doing that, you're weaving in your marketing. But then you're not really worrying about like, OK, I have a new launch, a new launch, a new launch, and then you get launch fatigue and your customers get product launch fatigue. But you're talking about the same products, and it's exciting and you can share reviews. You can post pictures of your customers getting their products and posting them on their walls and things like that, so you can continue to share as you have that seasonal collection for that 2 to 3 months. And then once you come to that end of that seasonal collection, you're actually going to discontinue that seasonal collection. And I know this is painful. I feel your pain to you know, we all love everything that we create, but you're giving a specific timeframe for your customers to buy something, and right before you take it off, the market. Let him know seh these products are going away. If you want them, make sure you buy them. Now, However, I want you to identify one or two. Thus sellers from that seasonal product line, as long as it's not related to a specific holiday like pumpkins or Christmas trees or something like that. Identify 1 to 2 of your best sellers to move to your base product line that you will continue tohave on an ongoing basis. So this does a couple things. First of all, you're based product line will continue to grow with products that are actually selling and products that people want. But then what? It also does your constantly refreshing your products with new seasonal collections, and it keeps it exciting. It keeps it fresh, and it also keeps your shop really focused so you don't end up with, like, 300 products, and people are waiting through it. I recently went to a friend society six shop, and I literally had trouble just even finding anything because she had so many products, so many designs, and so what this does. It's almost like a pruning process. When you have a garden, you prune a plant, it actually will help it be more fruitful. The Bible talks about this in John 15 as well. And so that's what we're doing. We're pruning our products, and we're keeping the ones that are best selling that would continue to grow our business in a really powerful way. This is the Momenta. Um, I was talking about earlier. 6. Examples: So let me just show you a few examples of some businesses that are currently using product lines. I've included the links in your worksheet, but please keep in mind. This is at the time of recording this training so these businesses can change. Things may not be the same when you go to see the link, but I'm gonna show you them in this video and so you can see what I mean by seasonal product lines and collections. So this is a Etsy shop owner, and if you come down, you can see she has this BC collection. So this is specific to a location Vancouver, BC You can also see that the colors air similar and they really look like they belong together. So in etc. You can create a collection and you can group them together in this way, just like she has in her shop. So this shop owner has what they call a wedding day collection. And again you can see there's a cohesiveness. There's a similar look to the design of this collection. As you scroll through, they all kind of have a similar look and feel this same dress in the same tuxedo is used in several different products, and then it just all looks like it goes together. This site, AM Evita Designs, has these different collections you can shot by design. She is perfectly natural, boldly boho and blue than she's one in Pink Purple. There's one called Haley Collection, and so there's so many different collections that she has formed and you can see as you scroll down the different collections that she has. So let me click into one of the collections to show you this is the boldly boho and blue you can see there's different items with the similar pattern and similar colors that she has grouped together in a collection. Here is an artist that you can see when I come to her, Page says, introducing the essence of forest collection. So when I click on that, then all of these pieces are similar in that they have this misty forest. Look to them and it looks like she's almost sold out already in this collection. And so you could even do a collection with a theme like I mentioned earlier, and you can even do collections with original paintings. It doesn't have to be just prints and cards and other products like that. So on this site they have a collection called Simplicity Collection. And again you can see a similarity in patterns and colors. It's the red and black and white theme, and there's different products with this same collection. So on this site, Amanda's designer decals. I was just on here a couple days ago, and she had a summer collection that was coming across this banner. But now it's the classroom collection, and it says, coming soon. So if I click on here, she hasn't released this yet, but she's no longer marketing her summer collection. Now it is the classroom collection classroom deke, or for teachers. And so you can see how she's already changing from her summer collection to now a classroom collection, which is back to school fall. You know that sort of a theme. So I hope this gave you an idea of how this really works and even how you can possibly integrate these collections or product lines into your business. 7. Product Bundles: So let's talk a moment about product bundles. So I also want you to think about how you can bundle products together for a higher price option so these could be boxed sets, bundles, surprise boxes. Recently I saw a couple people that I follow on Instagram marketing surprise boxes. One was a staycation surprise box. One was a fall surprise box, and they were selling out like crazy. And so, you know, if you can really build a following that loves your products and then you can put things together in a box or bundle or a set, it can be very powerful. But then also, you're able to make more money because you're selling more products In one sale, for example, I recently did this where I bundled my book Broken Cran, still color with a print on identity in Christ. And then it also had a bracelet that said Broken Crean still color. And so I had my print. But then I had a book and a bracelet as well, and I bundled it together and I literally on. Lee had five of those bracelets left. I had them custom made for my book launch, and I had a few left over. I got the idea to do this bundle. They sold out within days. And so that's one example of a bundle. An example of a set is I created a freedom set. So it's a set of four different prints. And for the preorder, I included some bonuses. So one of the bonuses was a necklace that had, like, an old key on it, and that was the freedom theme. So it went with the theme, and I got the chain of Michael's. I found the keys on Amazon for pretty inexpensive. I think the necklace altogether was two or $3 then I also included one of my adventure awaits the brave cards. And also a four by six Print of adventure awaits the Braves. So they got a bunch of extra stuff if they ordered during the preorder. Now, these extra things didn't cost me that much money, but I was able to sell four prints in a set together, and I did actually pretty well with that promotion. So those are just some examples to get you thinking of how can you put things together in a bundle or a set that really makes it fun. Exciting has a theme, and it can really get your customers toe by that particular bundle or that set during that time. 8. Brainstorm: So now it's time for you to brainstorm. I want you to brainstorm 6 to 10 products for your base product line. If you don't yet have your base product line established, this is your first priority. But if you already have a base product line, I want you to brainstorm 6 to 10 products for your next seasonal collection. And I also want you to brainstorm names. This is fun. This is where you can brainstorm names for your collection and create whatever you want to create for that seasonal product line in your business. 9. Timeline: now also wants you to write out a timeline. So I want you to write out your estimated timeline for your product launches over the next year, knowing that they could totally change. But I just want you to put something on paper. So 3 to 4 product launches, but even 1 to 2 product launches per year can make a huge impact in your business. If you're just too busy at this point to really invest in doing 3 to 4 product lunches, do at least one every year and your business is still going to steadily grow. So I really want you to think about the timeline, and I want you to keep in mind the holidays for e commerce. I've included a list in your worksheet so that you know you can keep those things in mind as you're releasing collections like that, that last example I showed you. Her next collection is based upon back to school, and so that is something to keep in mind as you're writing out this estimated timeline and really just kind of planning out what you'll do over this next year for your business with these product line launches and 10. Your Project: Now, this is where the fun starts. Your project for this class is toe Polian out a collection. So you will plan out a collection of 6 to 10 products that you can create over the next few months or a few weeks. It depends how long the process takes for you and you can launches a collection. I want you to brainstorm some ideas of themes that you could use of different concepts of how you could maybe put them together in a cohesive way. Maybe you would have a certain name for your collection. So I want you to brainstorm this and share some of your ah ha moments in the project section. As you go through this, I'm really excited for you. And I know that this is going to help you to get more organized, first of all with your marketing, but that it will also help you to decrease burnout and to get more excited about your product launches 11. Final Thoughts: so I hope you have the wheels turning. This is so fun. Like I love marketing, but I also love creating, and this really combines both of them. And I think once you start thinking in this way and treating your business in this way, that you're really going to start seeing some mo mentum happening. I cannot wait to hear what you do with this information. As you plan out your product line launches for the next year. Thank you so much for joining me in this class. If you enjoyed this content and feel that it gave you some ideas for marketing your art, it would mean the world to me If you have post your review and share what you learned here on skill share, nothing motivates me more to create new classes for you than to hear your feedback and how much you've enjoyed this class. Make sure to click the follow button here on skill share to be notified when I publish new classes and follow me on instagram at your creative adventure. I'm so excited for you and can't wait to see the collections you launch in your product lines in the future. As a result of this class