When you start creating beautiful art and craft and decide to share your talent with the rest of the world, you don't necessarily factor in the business skills necessary to make this successful. Most market sellers are artists first and foremost who would love to spend all their time creating rather than planning marketing strategies and dealing with BAS statements.

Unfortunately to fund future creativity, you need to get the most out of each market you attend. So, to help all our creative entrepreneurs Daisy & Dandelion will be putting on a series of workshops that will help you with the business end of your art and craft business. The workshop series covers the following topics:

Wed 22 July at 7pm - Before the market: Marketing on a shoestring

At this workshop we will focus on what you can do before the market to encourage people to visit your stand. We will look at strategies like pre-market promotions, PR, collaborative marketing and developing a word-of-mouth marketing campaign.

Wed 29 July at 7pm - At the market: Making your business stand out

At this workshop we will focus on your stand as your store, stand layout, creating the right atmosphere, at-market promotions, customer service and managing expectations.

Wed 5 August at 7pm - After the market: Creating loyal customers

It is much cheaper from a marketing point of view to increase the spend from existing customers than to continually chase one-off sales. In this workshop we will look at building a relationship with your customers over time and moving them from customers to advocates of your business.

Wed 12 August at 7pm - Pricing Strategies

It can be very difficult to price the time and attention you pour into your handmade items. We will look at some of the ways you can determine the price of your products, including value-based pricing, loss-leaders, the special order, wholesale pricing and selling on consignment.

Wed 19 August at 7pm - Developing your brand online and offline

In this workshop we will examine what you can do to differentiate your business both online and offline. We will explore the basic laws of branding that will help you to decide where and when to advertise, how to use PR, when to expand your product line and how to advertise on the Internet.

Wed 26 August at 7pm - Developing a marketing calendar

We will tie everything we've discussed together to produce a marketing calendar that will make the best use of your time and money to promote your business.

The workshops are small facilitated discussion groups that have between eight and twelve participants and meet once a week in Kambah. The format of the workshop allows each participant to tap into the knowledge, experiences and ideas of the group as well as benefit from the peer support and contacts they make which carries on long after the workshop has ended.

Where: Theiss Cottage, Reynell, Place, Kambah.

Cost: $35 (incl. GST) for individual workshops or $145 (incl. GST) for all 6.

Booking: Places are limited. Please contact Candice on (02) 6292-1573 or email candice @ daisyndandelion.com.au to secure your spot.

Tags: stall holders | markets | arts and crafts