I have been making my own bath and body products for the last 20 years and selling them for the last ten.
I have quite the following locally.
I have a customer base of about one hundred and fifty clients and they always tell me that I should advertise to build my customer base. Word of mouth has kept me in business for years but I am starting to realize that I need to expand if I want to make it into an actual career. My biggest problem was that I didn’t know where to start. I have done craft shows and even larger festivals , but, those are costly and time consuming. I knew that the answer could be found online. Meaning, advertising to a specific target market in my own area. I wanted to start locally so that I could actually meet my clients and get to know them. The average person shops online at least once a month and I wanted my advertising to reach those people who were interested in natural products. For these reasons I started my first ad campaign with one of the social media sites. They offered a program where I only had to pay a small fee for set up and then each time someone actually interacted with my specific advertisement. It would be targeted to the few zip codes that I chose so I wouldn’t be shipping products all over. All of this would be cost saving and business growing at the same time. As a small business person it is important to make each dollar count. This type of PPC (pay per click) advertising was a great way for me to get my feet wet in the world of online marketing without breaking the bank at the same time.