Soweto Festival Expo Competition 2013

1000 Beautiful Bracelets was privileged to be selected as one of the SMME's to be part of the Soweto Festival Expo SMME Program which comprised a Stand at the Soweto Festival Expo as well as seven invaluable full-day training sessions with Bill Gibson of Knowledge Brokers International over the next six months to assist the business in marketing itself.

Many people visited our stand, where we hosted a competition which was very popular.We are thrilled to announce the Prize Winner of the "1000 Beautiful Bracelets" Gift Set today: The Winner is Gordon Leeuw, of  Molofo Village, Soweto who was very excited when we called him to notify him that he won the Competition, he said he would give the Gift Set to his wife, Ntombi!

"1000 Beautiful Bracelets" Prize Gift Set comprising two Beautiful Bracelets and Luxury Chocolates...

On Sunday, the Soweto Festival Gospel Concert attracted at least 15,000 people and there was the most amazing vibe, the music was thoroughly enjoyed by all. Gospel Music is the most popular genre of music in South Africa: there are more sales of Gospel Music at the music retail stores than any other genre!

The CathSSeta Bus - the Kind Sponsors of our involvement at this event...

How to Ensure Better Success at a Flea Market or Farmer's Market

You can determine the level of success you have in selling on Flea Markets or Farmer's Markets! The first thing is to have a product or products that people actually want to buy in the first place. But there are ways you can improve your sales percentages on these markets. Here are a few tips that should help you to increase your chances of success.

On the day:

1. Plan to arrive early. The organizers usually give a window of time for traders to set up, there is nothing worse than feeling stressed and sweating to get everything set up and ready whilst customers are already trying to purchase items off your table. Rather be early at the start of the window period given by the organizers for setting up. If you finish early you can always go buy a coffee from one of the traders..
2. Decide if you want to actually sell your stuff or not. Seriously! You could sit in the back of your stall or in a corner reading a book or texting/SMS'ing people all day while assuming people will buy something if they like it, or you can stand up and sell your products to people. People don’t usually come to flea markets to buy stuff they NEED, they come to see if there’s anything they WANT. It’s your job to show them why they want something. Personally when I do flea markets, I never sit down unless it’s a really slow period. I don’t hover over people though, I just re-arrange or neaten the table or sort through excess stock, something menial so people don’t feel they’re interrupting if they have a question. Standing behind your table makes people more comfortable asking a question about a product, and thus, more comfortable buying from you. If a person browses through things for a while, or fingers an item like a bracelet, I’ll casually mention they are welcome to try it on if they’d like or recommend a pair of earrings or pendant I think might be a good match. Be honest! If someone tries something on that doesn’t look good on them, clashes with their face shape or hair color, say it! But recommend something new in its place. They’ll appreciate your honesty and be more inclined to try more things on. Now, rather than deciding WHETHER to buy or not, you have them deciding WHICH product to get. And that’s the key to a sale.
3. Unless you have a lot of stock on multiple tables or it’s a busy flea market, you probably won’t need someone else there all day. It’s more fun if you can get a friend to help you out, but it isn’t necessary. It DOES help though, to have friends pop in throughout the day either to chat, break the monotony if things are slow, or watch your table and attend to any customers when you have to go to the bathroom, grab something to eat or even just get out for a short break and browse other stalls. It’s better not to ask the trader next to you to watch your goods while you take a break. It’s difficult for both of you because you’re entrusting them with your things and they’re stretched enough trying to handle their own business. Plus, with no one behind the table, you’ll lose potential sales anyway. If you have no choice and have to ask them though, realise they’re doing YOU a favor and perhaps bring them back a bottled water or hot dog or something.
4. Packing up: Be careful to watch the money. This can be just as frantic a time, because you might have been holding out for the last possible customer or sale, and there’s a panic to get everything out of there before the market closes or, if it’s an outdoor market (which is a great feature of Sunny South Africa) before the rain comes down. 

Lastly, treat a market not as a chore, but a joy. The kinds of people who are traders are usually lovely personalities (although they can be very busy, stressed and unable to chat), and it is a wonderful outing and a chance to meet the people who really LOVE your stuff (or hate it, in which case you might need to think of a new business!). It’s a very good leveler, and will also help to give you a good idea of which of your products are “hot” and which are not. If your aim is eventually to get into retail stores or even have your own branded retail store, being “out there” on a market could be one of the best market research tests you can do.  If you want an excellent checklist for preparing for a Fleamarket, check out yesterday's post here.

Have fun!

Selling on Facebook: Why you need a Page

Within 3 weeks of the Startup of Beautiful Bracelets I sold a Bracelet to someone I don’t know, via the Facebook Business Page I created on Day 1. One of my friends who was at University with me in KZN is now teaching in Shanghai, China. She “liked” one of the photo’s I posted with a link to the Beautiful Bracelets website. One of HER friends (whom I don’t know and have never met), who is living in Durban was curious about why she “liked” the page, clicked on it, and immediately contacted me to purchase a Beautiful Bracelet for someone’s 21st Birthday. The Beautiful Bracelet was delivered in Durban overnight, she had it the next day! So the time is over when you can think of Facebook as a “good idea” for businesses to try. With over 500 million ACTIVE users, you simply have to be there! Here are some simple steps to get it done fast.

Facebook keeps changing things, so if this is out of date by the time you read this, their “help” guide would be able to help you. These are key pointers that may help you right now:

(1) Choose a classification: Go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and from there, choose one of the following classifications that best fit your business:

• Local Business or Place
• Artist, Band, or Public Figure
• Company, Organization, or Institution
• Entertainment
• Brand or Product
• Cause or Community

These will facilitate better search results (people finding you online). Once selected, choose a category (carefully, this cannot be changed once you confirm your business name, if you make a mistake you have to delete and start over) then fill out your business name.

(2) Fill out Basic Information. Upload a photo (pre-sized to 180x180, you can use one of the photo re-sizing programs to do this, I use IrfanView but Picasa works well too. It just is quicker if the photo fits well. This could be your Company Logo if you already have one. Fill out the “About” section, 2-3 lines, a short few phrases that “sell” the company or product and give the special features of your brand, include a link to your website here.

(3) Administration: Use your Admin Panel, it’s a useful tool to manage your Page and build Audiences (potential buyers/clients/customers). You can update the basic info provided earlier in “Update Info”. It allows you to add a description, giving more details than previously given in the “About” section. “Update Info” allows you to update the basic information you’ve already given, with more details selling your product or service, include your website here too. If you are a micro business you probably won’t have too many Page Administrators (you may need to delegate people to reply to comments as you grow busier). The other options allow you to manage your notifications and add page permissions.

Build Audience: Be strategic, rather make the page look interesting with content and interactions from one or two friends before you invite many more people to join your Page. Once you get to 30+ Facebook gives you useful statistics and insight, so for a micro business this would be your first goal. You could even create an Ad to generate more users.

(4) Fill your Page with Great Content.

Cover Photo. Put your best, most appealing photo here, the dimensions should be 851X315 (its just quicker if you pre-size the photo correctly using IrfanView or Picasa or similar).

Custom Tabs. Facebook allows endless Custom Tabs (Photos, Events, Competitions, etc) but bear in mind 4 are visible, the rest are hidden until clicked on.

Posts. Use a variety of posts, content, photos, video links relevant to your customers that will have the effect of making them interested to purchase your product or service. I try to have a more subtle approach on Facebook, in my view this is a “soft sell” although I have actually had nearly 30 percent of my sales generated as a result of people seeing the products, photos and comments on Facebook! The great thing is that my Blog gives me good insight as to what people are interested in.

Monitor: It may be fantastic to have a stunning Facebook Page but certain statistics have shown that failure to respond via social channels can lead to up to 15% of your customers preferring to purchase elsewhere! Be sure to respond to comments and messages not only to let your fans know you care about them, but certainly to avoid the detrimental effects of NOT doing so!

(5) Measure yourself. By this stage, you’ve built and shared a Facebook page that accurately reflects your business. Use the “View Insights” option (lower middle of the Admin panel). This enables you to monitor what’s working, what isn’t so that you can grow and adapt your marketing efforts and improve your Facebook content and Strategy.

Create a Blog for Your Startup

A Blog  is a useful tool to inspire or help others, provide updates, information about new product launches and opportunities as well as to share greater detail on a highlight or opportunity with your potential customers that  may be too much information for other platforms (website or social media). Some tips:

Don't become too promotional. People don't want to read advertisements, if they want to do that they will click on the adverts at the side of your Blog. Make sure the links to your website are clearly visible. A reader pointed out that the link to Beautiful Bracelets wasn't clear (actually he said it wasn't there). It was, but I fixed the visibility.

Plan Ahead. Work out what themes you want to cover, perhaps a series of topics you want to write about. I don't believe a Blog should be too long. Break up one potentially over-long post into several rather than load your reader with too much information in one sitting. People are more likely to follow your Blog longer term if your posts are organised.

Use Photos. Give your page a visual interest with good photos. Bad quality ones can make it look cheap. Take photos of your business in action, your products on the go, your employees, custsomers/clients or other businesses you interact with. Makes it more interesting to read. If you can't take your own quality photos (which I feel is the best way, at least they're original), use stock photos.

Be hands on. Encourage action. Ask for feedback. Platforms like WordPress or Blogger make it very easy to create and manage a Blog. You can read a comparison of  the two here. Get a dedicated domain. This Blog actually goes under www.1000beautifulbracelets.com. 

Generate Sales and Leads for your Business. Referrals (or clickthrough's) from this Blog to the Beautiful Bracelets website have resulted in sales. And that, for me, is a very good reason for a Blog. The other reason is to help and inspire people who are perhaps thinking of or already running their own businesses.

Ambush Marketing

This is an excellent way to maximize marketing for a startup or a new business with a low budget, but only if you do it right or you may end up arrested or worse: serving jail time! The best example I know of personally went down so well it is now a case study in business and law facilities of some universities! Here is the story in their own words:

Yuppiechef holds Woolies Lovebird ransom (1 February 2010 as quoted in Yuppiechef's online Spatula Magazine):

So this weekend we were wandering through Woolworths and came across their exciting Woolies Lovebird competition, advertised throughout their national network of stores on big posters (thanks for the pic @TalyaGoldberg).

It really is an exciting competition, and we wanted in, so we went online to check it out: www.woolieslovebird.co.za…just as the poster says. But the URL was not registered. What they meant to write was www.woolieslovebirds.co.za. We can only assume that the hangovers from the Woolies New Year’s parties were the cause for this little oversight. So we did something sneaky: we registered it and now we’re holding it ransom.

To get it back, and have us point the address to their competition asap, we’re asking Woolies to match, rand for rand, all donations made towards our 2010 charity, Soil for Life, between now and Valentines Day (and to be nice, we’ll put a limit of R5000 on it). Sound good? Excellent. So we invite all our fans to go ahead and donate R25 or more to support a great cause and make Woolies pay or the lovebirds get it.

Amazingly, the stunt went down really well, Woolworths joined in the fun, the stunt got them more publicly and positive spinoff than the original campaign would have, Yuppiechef got over R50,000 donated to the Charity in just 2 weeks, were interviewed on CNBC Africa and featured in many other media, and later won a Lurie Advertising Award for their Chutzpah.

Way to go!

Press Releases to Promote your Micro Business

One of the little-used and totally free means of advertising your startup business is to write press releases for as many publications as will host your article. For a comprehensive step-by-step guide, try Wikihow here. It's a bit long-winded for me but it would be useful for someone who has never done this before. I am used to writing Press Releases (from student days at High School where I was Editor of the School Page contribution to the Zululand Observer). So you don't need a journalism degree to do it yourself!

Each Press Release should be geared for the particular audience. I wrote an article on Beautiful Bracelets for the "Women of Acts" monthly newsletter (an inspirational newsletter for the ladies in Acts Church).

I also approached the Editor of the SAGoodNews who has requested an article geared towards highlighting the social upliftment part of the business idea for Beautiful Bracelets.

An article for the local Midrand Reporter would have a different angle (probably geared towards "what's happening in your local area - being Midrand). Find publications in your suburb or city...Sandton Chronicle, Knysna Herald, Tygerburger or People's Post (for Cape Town). Very often they like to publish the human-interest angle on your new business.

Sometimes they might request a very small "paid advertisement" to run alongside your publication, this wouldn't be too expensive and the increased sales would probably pay for it. If you focus on the Community Social Involvement aspect of your new business you will easily find many publications happy to publish with no charge.

I will be also approaching a free lance journalist I know who might be prepared to write an article that she would be paid for but would gain a wider audience via her networks and links to publications with a broad reach. Use every connection you have to gain wider press coverage for your new business, if you don't know anyone then create a general press release and email it to the Editor of as many publications as you can think of! It would be well worth it even if only one publication picked up on the article. Be aware they may edit your Press Release to suit their style but if you have done your research you would already have written each one directed to a particular publication which would also improve your success rate in getting published!

Common Sense Marketing Ideas

Marketing tips: methods that seem to work for Beautiful Bracelets:

1. Email your database of friends, giving them a brief outline of what you are doing and how they might get involved to assist your new business idea, with links to your website/Facebook Page and suggest they might be interested to purchase one of your products (Beautiful Bracelets work well as gifts for Birthday/Christmas).
2. Design a Beautiful Website that sells your product and solves a problem (Beautiful Bracelets - the perfect Christmas Gift - for those who wonder what to get this time!)
3. Use all your Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc). Connect with all your "friends" and ask them to also share your product "Page" with their friends too. Yesterday, a Beautiful Bracelet was purchased online by someone in Durban who is friends with a friend of mine in China and noticed "Beautiful Bracelets" on their Facebook Page! Don't underestimate the power of Social Media!
4. Blogging creates awareness of the product: create interesting topics that draw people to your online website. Another "selling" opportunity here.
5. Build in-person relationships with friends/partners who are already established: you never know who they may refer you to down the line!
6. Don't over promise and under-deliver: Only market features you currently have. I would like to extend the Accessories Range available, but for the sake of this 6 week project, it works better to maintain a low cost-input ratio rather than expanding the range of products available (necklaces, earrings, scarfs, etc).
7. Keep your marketing costs low by using friendship marketing, (free) press releases, and maximise every opportunity for publicity.
8. Use the power of Word-of-Mouth.
9. Be willing to spend money to make money.
10. Use all the free tools you can find (free website, social media, free advertising etc).
11. Get new business every day. This is crucial for a start up. Don't waste all your time on admin tasks instead of focusing on the marketing aspects.
12. Target your niche market.

Marketing a new business should be a priority for any new business owner. Your business idea can succeed or fail depending on whether you master this or not!

New Markets..

This week I attempted to get onto two of what must be the best markets from attendance point of view. I called the one (Irene Village Market) who directed me to email them via their contact form on the website. Which I did, requesting an urgent response since I would like to have displayed Beautiful Bracelets at the weekend market today (I know it's late, but with now only 4 weeks to go the time is flying by and I notice there are only 3 market dates left after today.) No response to my email yet. Neither to my application to the Bryanston Organic Market (which I'm applying to on the grounds of using beads which have recycled materials in them).

An amazing thing happened at the Acts Business Dinner last night (which, by the way, had the MOST inspirational speakers... on "coming up higher" to a level of integrity in business that may be scarce in some parts of our country if one judges by how busy Thuli Madonsela is. It just so happened that at this Business Dinner I was sitting next to a lady who somehow is involved or linked to people in Government who arrange flea market events for Special Days like Women's Day (9 Aug), Heritage Day (24 Sept). I asked her if people actually buy stuff at these markets and  if there were any "days" coming up soon. Yes to both questions. This coming Wednesday, 16 October, the MEC for the Department of Agriculture will be present at an event to market International Poverty Alleviation Day, in Bronkhorstspruit, and I was invited right there and then to be there (official email confirmation to follow). It may be a bit far, but perhaps travel could be arranged with the friend who suggested it, also, it seems an opportunity not to be passed up considering the ethos of the "day" fits some of my goals. And of course, last week I had a number of people ask if I would please bring Beautiful Bracelets to Acts Church this Sunday, as they wished to purchase (there is a rule that one cannot have a table or stand at the Church, but there is nothing stopping me from engaging in transactions with people who approach me directly.) So quite a few sales are happening by word of mouth and it seems the "word" is spreading like wildfire, and this is a congregation of about 3,500 people so I could be very busy just with that. I have also been given permission to have a stand at the next Acts Women's Conference and sell, they will have a kind of "flea market" situation at the conference with many people selling their goods. A funny thing happened last night. As we were getting ready to wrap up and leave, one of the ladies (a friend of someone at my table), decided she just "had to have" the Beautiful Bracelet I was wearing (it was Turquoise) and she bought it on the spot! (The first time she'd heard of Beautiful Bracelets.) Actually, there wasn't even time to tell her about the business, I will get her number from her friend and follow up. Follow-up marketing is the best and easiest way to get more business. Get loyal customers who will either purchase more Beautiful Bracelets, or will refer their friends to buy either online or in person.

Sales are starting to flow more steadily via the website www.beautifulbracelets.co.za. I have noticed even amongst some of my friends a certain level of suspicion and hesitancy to purchase things via the Internet. Some quote hearsay evidence of things going wrong. But I personally have only had excellent experiences purchasing online and I intend to ensure that Beautiful Bracelets is a pleasant experience for anyone who tries it. "Under Promise" and "Over Deliver" on service. That's what I hope to achieve.

It's beginning to seem as though I may soon need to employ more people (the 2nd person) to assist making the bracelets just to keep up with what I can already see is an increasing demand due to the marketing I've done, via friends, social media, and of course the very fact that the Radio 702 Business Challenge is receiving Publicity.. I don't want to run ahead just yet, I will be sitting with Stan Close of IKUSASA later today and working on the strategy for growth for the business. This is something that has to be carefully managed. No point over-reaching and hitting bankruptcy before one even starts.