Need a Creative Marketing Idea to Boost Business Cheaply?

Try using a creative marketing idea from this list when your craft business needs a boost, but you're on a tight budget.

Marketing Your Home Party Business

Any one of these creative marketing ideas will help you get your name out there without having to invest very much, if anything:

1. Donate a raffle prize - Find a local event that you can donate one of your craft items to as a prize. Schools and other fundraising organisations are often looking for raffle prizes for fundraising events, so do some enquiries and you'll soon find some grateful takers. It's common sense to include your business card and any relevant brochures or leaflets with the prize, but also make sure you get the organisers to mention you as the sponsor for the raffle when they're selling tickets and promoting their event.
2. Have a competition - Hold your own competition with one of your crafts as a prize. You can also use this to gather information by getting entrants to complete a survey. Come up with another creative marketing idea to get free/cheap advertising for your competition, such as your website, bulletin boards and local shops.
3. Send out a press release - The ideas above give you the perfect excuse to send out a press release to your local newspaper! Otherwise come up with something else newsworthy that you can let your local paper know about in order to promote yourself. See Local Advertising for more ideas.
4. Network locally - Get known in your area by attending local meetings and events and contributing in a valuable way. You won't use these events to promote yourself, but the more people you get to know (particularly influential ones), the more future opportunities you're likely to come across. This will pay off for your business in the long run.
5. Get involved in joint ventures - Is there a local business or even just someone else you're acquainted with that you could work together with to give each other more business? A simple example would be finding another party plan agent with non-competing products and passing each other's details on at your respective parties. Or cardmakers could donate small gift cards to a florist in exchange for them promoting you in their shop. See Local Businesses for more ideas.
6. Do a leaflet drop - Print your own postcards or leaflets and deliver them yourself to surrounding areas. If you make them attractive and useful people will hang on to them, so you may get future business as well as immediate bookings from one drop. See Creating Flyers for tips.
7. Have an email promotion - If you have a list of people who've asked to be sent details of specials and new products, create a special promotion to mail out to them. E.g. if they book a party with you in the next month they'll get 15% commission instead of the usual 10%. Send this out to all your friends and family too and ask them to pass it on to anyone they think will be interested.
8. Generate referrals - Use your existing customers and hostesses to generate more business for you. Offer a reward for every referral they send to you that leads to a new sale or booking. Everyone likes a freebie, so they may make more effort if there's something in it for them, but you won't actually be giving anything away until it's paid for itself.

This is just to get you started. If you put your mind to it I'm sure you'll come up with a creative marketing idea or two of your own.

I recommend the The Little Black Book of Home Party Plan Business Secrets by Party Plan Pat to get your business off to a profitable start.

Click here to send me a creative marketing idea that's worked for you.

Where would you like to go next?

...See more inspiring craft business success stories?

...See our home party business tips as a method to sell your products?

...Check out our craft book reviews for the best resources for your craft business?