You’ve created a beautiful line of scrapbooking products but now how do you get the word out and the customers to show up at your virtual door. Methods for web marketing change almost as fast as the web but there are a few time-proven methods and a few new ones.

When I decided to get back into the scrapbooking and paper crafts business, I needed a new marketing plan. I started by researching scrapbooking websites to see what they were doing now. I noticed several things.

First, I noticed that some of my favorite scrapbooking websites no longer existed. That’s not surprising for web companies which come and go quickly. But there were also some that not only were still in business but had evolved over the past five years. Evaluating what had changed and what had stayed the same helped me build my own marketing plan.

Website

Most of the big scrapbooking companies have a site dedicated to their business. One example is scrapbook.com, which has grown into a superstore on the web. Starting in 2001, scrapbook.com was one of my favorite digital scrapbooking sites, as digital scrapbooking was very popular at that time. Now this site carries many more products related to scrapbooking including almost everything you might need from adhesives and card stock for traditional scrapbookers to digital papers, software and die cutting machines for the digital crafter.

As I browsed the web, I also noticed that even the small scrapbooking businesses and hobbyists also have websites dedicated to scrapbooking. Even those digital artists who sell their products on marketplace sites such as Etsy, Ebay or Creative Market had a website dedicated to their business. This is where they interact with their customers and send them via links to their marketplace store.

Blog

Inspiration for your customers is just as important as the products you are selling. In the past, most scrapbooking sites had galleries, challenges and contests, which are still important marketing tools. I have noticed a new type of marketing tool in that most sites now have a blog section which contains articles and tutorials featuring ideas as to how to use their products. Some of these are written by the site’s designated designers. But one way to get your customers to return to your site/store is to allow them to also submit to the blog.

Another reason that the blog section of your business site is so important is content. When it comes to search engines, content is very important. But that content needs to be quality content related to your website. This will give you a higher rating in search engines and more traffic coming to your site via those search engines.