We’re launching a grassroots campaign today to let artisans everywhere know far and wide:
We’re building a cooperative online handmade marketplace: join the movement today!
The purpose of our grassroots campaign is to spread the word about our growing cooperative, recruit new members, and showcase our diversity as artisans. Done right, we’ll all help market each other as ‘actually handmade’ and call attention to the growing unfairness of Wall Street owned marketplaces.
A good word spoken to your friends, family, and community has a much greater impact than any other kind of marketing. It’s also more reflective of our cooperative values: in a spirit of pitching in, sharing the load, and collective action, together we will build this co-op from the ground up.
In this post, we make it easy to spread the word with these creative campaign actions, and tools and templates to make them happen.
Jump to:
- Easy Little Things You Can Do Today
- Put Up Flyers
- Share Our Work with Your Community
- Network at Craft Fairs
- Write a Blog Post / Medium Article
- Pitch Local Press and Niche Blogs
- Links to Digital Marketing Materials
Easy Little Things You Can Do Today
- Download the list! 10 Actions to Help Grow the Co-op
- Add a line in your email signature (business or personal) about the co-op
- Add a tagline in your social media banner
- Add our homepage to your “LinkTree”
- Download our digital business card to your phone and favorite it for easy access. When talking about us to others, you can forward, share, show the QR code, airdrop, or email the card to others.
- Call a friend. You’ve been wanting an excuse anyway! Tell them about what we’re doing, get their thoughts, and ask if they can help you hang flyers.
Pass Out Flyers
Time for an old-fashioned flyer campaign! We have all the tools you need to print and post flyers, and we are asking for our artisans to design new flyers, too!
Print and Post Flyers & Zines
- Read our one-page Flyer Posting Guide for suggestions on where to post
- Print your choice of already-designed flyers in our Printable Flyers folder on Google Drive or our house-made Zine.
- Grab tape, push pins, and a stapler, and go to town!
TIP: Send a care package with a set of printed flyers and a copy of our Flyer Posting Guide to friends in another city to post.
BONUS: We would love to see photos of your hung flyers on social media! Tag @coopartisans with #flyerthecoop, so we can say thank you and share your post.
Design flyers for your community
We need more flyer designs to represent the diversity of our community!
We welcome all artistic styles:
- Read our one-page Flyer Design Guide for links to branding and guidelines
- Go to the Flyer Design Toolkit Folder for marketing and branding assets
- Design your flyer and send to hi@artisans.coop to make it available to others!
We particularly encourage flyer designs in other languages (Spanish, French, etc), and formats (square, A7, quarter-sheet, half-sheet), etc.
Share Our Work with Your Community
- Share one of our blog posts in your newsletter. Examples you can copy;
- Post our digital business card or a digital flyer design to your social media
- Add a note about us to your store announcement or banner (or even a charity round-up / donation jar on your website!)
Network at Craft Fairs
For those who attend craft fairs and holiday markets, this is a great time to spread the word with other handmade artisans.
- Display a small pile of printed flyers to have on your table. We have 1/4-sheet sized flyer designs that won’t take up too much space.
- When you’re on break, taking a moment to walk around, use our digital business card on your phone to network with other tables and let them know about us
Write a Blog Post / Medium Article
Blogs
Do you write a blog? Write about us! Not only does it spread the word with your community, but the backlinks help with SEO. You’re welcome to use our blog posts as a template to get your writing started.
Send us your blog post and we’ll post them here so you get the backlinks back, and so that others have templates to work from.
Example Blog Post:
- Walnut Studiolo: Artisans Cooperative: Building a Handmade Alternative to Etsy
Medium
Fellow Medium writers: let’s connect! Follow Valerie Schafer Franklin for a follow-back and claps on your articles.
Pitch Local Press and Niche Blogs
In this age of disinformation and the “attention economy,” earned media is one of our most promising marketing tactics after word-of-mouth. Earned media comes from genuine, authentic, and compelling stories that inspire journalists – stories like yours!
Local media and niche publications that you read are likely interested in what’s going on in your world, too. Share your frustrations with expensive marketplaces and your excitement for a co-op alternative.
Send a message, tip, comment, or letter to editor about us to your favorite publications:
- Blogs at craft guilds and maker organizations
- Niche blogs in your craft/industry
- Local and neighborhood newspapers
- Co-op newsletters, like your electric utility co-op
We can help you craft a formal press release for important publications (email us for help), but we find that an authentic and honest note from a real person often gets more of a response!
Links to digital marketing materials
- Grassroots Google Drive folder
- Digital Business Card
- Printable Flyers
- Flyer Posting Guide
- Digital Flyers
- Flyer Design Toolkit
We welcome your contributions and ideas! Share your reactions in the comments below.
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