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:

• Tap into the power of local holidays and events. Use local themes to sell specific elements of your offering. A number of yarn sellers ran pop-up shops and studio hours in the surrounding area. Here are some window dressing ideas.

• Create special products for major events. Make an exclusive offering and/or pricing for events.

• Show buyers how to use your products. Every marketer should do this. I call it FAQ content.

• Let customers sample your goods. In addition to Miss Babs’s yarn samples,  Gale’s Arts knit large swatches of her yarns so buyers could see how the fabric looked.

• Care about your customers. I bought a project’s worth of yarn from O-Wool because I like their naturally sourced merino. But more importantly, I know Jocelyn, the owner, will take the time to help me select the best colors for my project.

This week I’ll be at the Incite Summit in Brooklyn. I look forward to learning more from senior marketers about the following:

1. Customer personalization and experience. Tap into the power of your data to tailor and personalize your customer experience. Jay Baer, author of Hug Your Haters and Dan Gingiss, author of Winning at Social Customer Care, have been talking about this for a while.

2. Brand storytelling. Your unique story makes your brand standout. (Here are 29 tips to help you find your brand stories.)

3. Attribution and Insights. The rise of the marketing analyst helps you discern insights to your business success.

4. Omni-channel. Understand how different channels influencer your prospects and customers.

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.

Heidi Cohen
Actionable Marketing Guide

Brand Storytelling: 30 Ideas That Will Make Your Business Memorable

How To Improve Your Winning B2B Content Marketing Distribution [Case Study]

Entrepreneurial You – Book Interview

​​​​​​​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!

• Heidi was interviewed by Mary Ellen Slayter for Velocitize regarding Interactive Content.

  If you’re interested in getting up to speed on Interactive Content here are 3 great primers:

  • Interactive Content Defined
  • 5 Types of Interactive Content
  • Interactive Content Metrics
    
    

• Dennis Shaio interviewed BuzzSumo’s Susan Moeller on Medium about content creation. Moeller mentioned HeidiCohen.com as a go-to-site! W00t!

  Important take-aways:

  • Moeller spent about 12 hours crafting a blog post over a period of 2 weeks! This is on the high end based on Orbit Media’s Blogging Survey.
  • Shaio created interview content on Medium. Are you using Medium yet?
    
    

• Big hat tip to my colleague Lee Odden of Top Rank Marketing. He truly walks the talk when it comes to Influencer Marketing. Heidi Cohen was one of 50 B2B Influencers for 2017.

  

  Looking to take your marketing to the next level? Then fill your social media streams with these folks and read what they write and think is important.