Episode #46: My 5 Favorite Online Marketing Tactics To Grow Your Toy Business
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With the Christmas season fast approaching and COVID-19 numbers rising, today’s episode focuses on what you need to do to adapt your toy business or toy career so that you can attract sales and clients in a seemingly cold virtual climate. This new virtual first world we’re living in, while efficient, lacks human connection and warmth. So today we’re going to talk about the marketing tactics that lend themselves well to an interjection of the human experience. The Toy Coach shares her top 5 favorite tactics that have driven growth in a pandemic world, and most importantly dives into WHY those tactics have the ability to drive that growth. Add these tactics to your 2021 marketing plan to expand your customer base and deepen existing customer loyalty. Let’s dive into my 5 favorite online marketing tactics to grow your toy business.
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Azhelle
You are listening to Making It in The Toy Industry, Episode Number 46.
Intro/Outro + Jingle
Welcome to Making It in The Toy Industry, a podcast for entrepreneurs like you. And now your host Azhelle Wade
Azhelle
Well, hey there toy people Azhelle Wade here. Welcome back to another episode of Making It in The Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by thetoycoach.com. So many of you out there are reaching out to me asking me all about Toy Creators Academy. When is it coming? Where is it coming? And most importantly, Is it right for me? Well, after chatting with all of you in DMs and messages, I thought what better way to answer some of your questions then with a student testimonial. Okay, so are you ready to hear what a recent TCA grad said about Toy Creators Academy? Listen to this lovely testimonial from TCA grad Karen C,
Karen C
I just love toy creators Academy It is so perfect. It's exactly what I was looking for in a toy class, or just to learn the basics from everything from beginning to end. Azhelle covers it all and you will learn you'll be ready to go which finish the course
Azhelle
Oh, I love that. Thank you again for that this module Karen and for being part of TCA. Now listeners, if you need a little help turning your idea into a toy business, and you would love to be invited to weekly toys coaching sessions with me, then I want you to check out toycreatorsacademy.com the academy will open for enrollment again in February of 2021. And if you're interested, I do not want you to miss it. I have had people reach out to me in the past, asking if they could join when enrollment closed. And I was just so sorry that I couldn't bring them into the course. So make sure that you are on my email list for Toy Creators Academy. So you get the first notification as soon as the doors to enroll open up. Okay, let's dive into today's topic to people. I am so glad that you're joining me here today for this super, and I mean super important episode around marketing. Now I'm going to share with you today my top five favorite online marketing tactics that can become a part of your toy businesses marketing plan for 2021. And based on the circumstances of what happened in 2020, these different marketing tactics really rose to the top because of their virtual or online focus. Now, this year was tough to say the least if your health wasn't affected by COVID, your bottom line was if your bottom line wasn't affected, your relationships certainly were. But there were some companies, some businesses, some Kickstarters that launched and thrived through the worst of 2020. And they were able to do that because they were able to adapt. So what you're going to learn in today's episode is what you need to do to adapt your toy business or toy career so that you can shine in this climate. And this climate is one that is pretty heavy handed on the virtual and one where everyone is craving connection, warmth and joy. So I'm going to walk you through my five favorite ways to market your business warmly in a virtual space. I'll tell you what those five tactics are, why I love them so much so that you can understand the importance of implementing them in your business. Now we're going to start this time at the bottom of my list today. So I'm going to save my number one favorite marketing tactic for the very end. Starting off at tactic number five, one of my favorite marketing tactics of this entire pandemic, LinkedIn posts and articles I know I know, you're like what Azhelle again with this LinkedIn. But I'm telling you, LinkedIn is where people go when they are in a career mindset. When they're in a business mindset. They're either going there to share a company win, or they're looking for talent, or they're fishing for a new client or to keep up to date with their industry. So what you'll notice on LinkedIn is it's fairly an impersonal platform. Still, most professionals are buttoned up with their profiles and their comments, leaving the platform a little bit dry and cold. So you're going to go into LinkedIn, and you're going to warm it up a bit. Because what you're going to notice with LinkedIn is that long form articles that express the human experience of the writer, find a lot of engagement. So if you haven't already started adding LinkedIn to your marketing plan for 2021. Make sure you do it right away. But keep in mind, your focus on this particular platform and how it's going to be different depending on who you are. And what your company does. Now LinkedIn is a place to connect with professionals. So let's think about who you'd be connecting with if you're a toy business. So the professionals you might be interested in connecting with might be buyers, or they might be sales reps, or maybe you sell direct to consumer. So you're actually focused on connecting with professionals in the media space, people that can write up articles or feature your product. So what you want to do in this marketing plan with LinkedIn involved, is make sure that everything that you post interact with, like comment on positions, you and your company, as an expert in your category and reflects the values that you want the world to see. And you're probably thinking, but wait, why do you say that Azhelle? Why does everything I do on LinkedIn needs to be, you know, business focused and focused on my values? Is that true? Like, does everything really need to be business focused? Yes, 1,000%. This is something that a lot of people don't realize about LinkedIn, if you don't use it that often. But on this platform, your connections can see everything you like, comment on and post about. Sometimes it'll show up directly in their feed, like Azhelle likes this, and then you see the article that I liked, but all of the time, it's actually going to show up on your personal LinkedIn page. So if somebody goes to visit that page to learn more about you, they can see the things you have liked and commented on recently, and they can see a history of it if they click in. So if you like, or comment on something that speaks negatively to a buyer that you're actually trying to land a meeting with. Or maybe it says something negative to a media person who is considering featuring your product, you could end your toy dreams or the growth of your business before you even get a chance to have that initial conversation. So I want you to be really mindful about what you're doing on that platform, and then get really targeted and start to make a plan to use that platform to grow your business by expanding your notoriety. Now, let's move on up the list to tactic number four virtual events. Now, I say this because virtual toy trade shows exploded this year. Every organization that normally has an in person show had at least one virtual show and I say yes, at least one toy for everywhere had like three market weeks global licensing group put together to and every other event like Astro camp actually ended up extending the length of their shows, due to really high demand. Now, in 2021, I do hope that we have a chance to see some in person shows again. But you know, I do believe they're going to be massively limited by the number of people allowed to attend. Now, this is my personal hypothesis. This is not insider information. But whatever happens, there are going to be virtual shows as many organizations have already committed to having some virtual component of their live shows moving forward. And I believe that attending at least one virtual show in 2021 should be a part of your marketing plan. And here's why. Virtual shows are much more affordable options to in person shows for small toy companies, you don't have to worry about the cost of shipping your product, flying yourself flying your team members. All of that can be cost prohibitive when you're just starting out. I mean, who am I can it is definitely cost prohibitive when you're just starting out and virtual shows. While they're not as personal, you know, you don't get the face to face. Unless you actually land a zoom call, they do give you the opportunity to make initial contact with dozens of new people in the toy industry. You can showcase your product online. with ease in these shows. You can use the built in matchmaking services offered to connect with buyers and distributors, and even some people in the media all in one place. And the best part of these virtual shows is that you can rest assured that every one listed on the database is intentionally there because they are ready and looking for new product to either buy or sell or feature which means that you are meeting people where they are at which I always say is foundational to successfully marketing your product. Let's move on up to tactic number three and talk about email. I know I talk about email a lot especially if you follow me on my Instagram stories. But email is the number one way to connect with Your customers or your potential customers, depending on who your customer is, you're obviously going to adjust the frequency of your emails, it might be weekly, they might be monthly, or you might be sending something out quarterly. And your customers, you've got to remember they can be actual consumers like mom and dad buying a toy for their kid. But your customer can also just be your retail buyer. Now, I believe 2021 is the year for establishing a plan on how to regularly communicate with your potential toy customers via email in a way that serves them and gives them value when and how they need it. Now, there are a variety of marketing styles when it comes to email. And knowing which one fits the types of people on your email list is your job to figure out and it is extremely important, do not skip doing that. So let me just walk you through a few examples of the different variety of marketing sales, you might try out for your email list. Now first, if your list is filled with consumers, like mom and dad, they might prefer an image based email that really showcases your product. And really highlights like the price point or the sale with a clear easy to see easy to find button call to action button that says click here to shop now. Now these people might like it clean because their lives are fast paced, they barely had time to open up that email in the first place, they definitely don't have time to read a 75 word email message about what's inside. Now, Contrastingly, on the other side, maybe your email list is full of someone like retail buyers. And maybe they've decided, yes, you can send me a couple of emails, but they would prefer that you send something quarterly something not too often. And that comes with simple bulleted information that might be breakdowns of industry reports that highlight customer needs that your product can actually fill for them. Now, one really important note, when you're building an email list and creating like a regular newsletter to send out to that list, you have to make sure that at the time that you gathered the emails that you're putting on this list, but you just really received permission to add them to your newsletter. You cannot just like go online, gather a bunch of emails and say, Oh, I built an email list. Absolutely not. That's a great way to get your your accounts shut down and and your email sent to spam. You really need to make sure that you're doing your due diligence and only adding people to your email list that have said yes, I would be interested in hearing from you regularly via your quarterly newsletter or what have you. Now, every country has different standards for how email marketing needs to be handled and how you need to obtain that permission. So make sure that you do it in a way that follows the legal standards of your country. Now, let's go on to tactic number two, I can't wait to get into this tactic. It's actually Instagram lives. And Instagram lives. These are great for B to C businesses. But also you'll find a lot of success if you're going b2b. And here's how. Now IG live streams are really effective in connecting with your audience, almost one on one. And you can do a variety of things during an IG live, you could have a giveaway, you could do q&a, you could ask questions, you could even invite one of the members that has joined your IG Live to partake in the live with you and do a split screen. Now I know when you're just starting out with your Instagram, you are likely going to have one or two people jump into your IG Live for the whole the whole time that you're on there. And they might not even stay around for the entire live. But as long as you go into that Id live with a focus and intention. That is not just to have people join like a vision for what you're going to talk about, you can get and you can give a whole lot of value in just 20 minutes, even if only one or two people show up. Now, the way you'll do that is by planning your IG Live. And when you plan it, make sure that you have an idea of what you're going to talk about, and that you announce that topic to your followers in advance of the live itself. So let's get into an example. I love examples. So let's say you created a spinning top toy. And you're selling it direct to consumers. And you've been getting a lot of emails lately with people they're unsure of how to keep that spinning top toy spinning. And you could decide, you know what I get a lot of emails about this, I want to talk to the world all at once all of my followers about how to keep the spinning, top spinning. So you can do an IG Live all about that all about how to keep that top spinning. And before you go live about 24 hours before, you want to actually create an IG story announcing your topic. And when you do that, you're kind of letting people know where you're going to be showing up using the same format that you're going to be showing up later. Because they're going to have to click on your picture to get to the big story, which will also be how they show up to the IG Live. So in that IG story, you're announcing our topic, but it's also great to try to get your viewers to engage. So you might say something like, are you struggling with keeping our spinning top spinning? And you could put in a poll that says yes or no. So that the people viewing that story, answer it. And then you would add one more story after that one that says great, we're going to have a live tomorrow at 1pm, where I'm going to show you my tricks for how to keep our spinning top spinning. Are you interested and you can actually with IG lives, you can actually add a countdown inside your IG story. And you can make that countdown, say that it's for your IG live, you know, okay. So once you do that, you're going to go live the next day, 24 hours later, you'll go live. And right when you go live, make sure you have an email going out, you can schedule it in advance to go out and say I'm live. Where are you? Here's the link, join me now that email would go to your existing email list. If you have one. If you don't have one, don't worry about it. Just go live Instagram is going to do what it can to get people to join your live video. Now, what are you going to do if only one person joins your live? After all that work you did trying to get people to come to it? And what if they're not even engaging with you? They're not responding to any of your questions. They're literally just watching and not saying anything? Well, what I want you to do is just go back to the initial questions that inspired this live at all the questions that your customers were emailing you saying like how do I get this spinning top to spin? And just reiterate those questions and answer them live. And you might feel silly saying like, oh, but no one's there asking questions, and I'm just talking to myself, do not worry about it. And don't think about it that way. Once your IG live is over, once you end it, you're actually going to be able to download that video and post it directly on Instagram or on Instagram TV. And then that video can live as valuable content for all of your followers to engage with in the future. Now, the real value of these IG lives is even if one person joins and they only stay for a little bit, you can engage them and get direct feedback from your customers. And at the same time that you're getting this direct feedback, you're also building a feeling of connection and camaraderie and customer loyalty with your customers or your potential customers. And that's because they're seeing you hopefully the creator behind the product, playing with it, enjoying it, and addressing their concerns with compassion. This exercise will build your customer relationship, and most likely increase that brand loyalty. And I just want to say if you feel discouraged because you're having one person, join your live and then two people join your live. Just remember people love consistency. So I would recommend you pick a time every week that you are guaranteeing your group of followers that you're gonna go live and you go live for at least a month, just consistently going live, same time. Don't be late every week and just go live and tell them what you're going to talk about before you go and you'll definitely see those numbers climb. And finally, we have made it all the way to tactic number one, the biggest tactic this year that has had my inbox blowing up his media pitching. Now, media pitching can be anything from pitching yourself to do a guest blog article on a respected industry website, one that's related to your product, or pitching your product to be included in a holiday gift guide. It could also be pitching your product or yourself to be featured on a podcast so that you can promote the product and it can also be Be pitching yourself to form a partnership with a related organization whose members would actually benefit from knowing about your product. Now, the reason that media pitching is blowing up so much this year is because with everything becoming virtual content has become king. And everyone is looking for ways to engage with their existing audience by using or creating new content. And because of this need for content, this need to find a connection with an audience that people were used to communicating with physically or, or in other ways. Because of this, content has actually become a form of currency. And you can offer your content offer yourself and your time and your energy and conversation and story in exchange for eyeballs on you and your product. Now, it's awesome, and it's great. And, you know, you just have to make sure that whoever you're pitching to your product, and your story really fits what they want to share with their audience. But if you get an opportunity to be featured in media, or go on a podcast, make sure you have a plan for what to do with those eyeballs once you get them. And that means you've got to know how to nurture them. And then I'm going to send you back to tactic number three. Well, there you have it toy people might top five favorite online marketing tactics that you've got to be applying to your toy businesses. Now, these tactics have been popular for many years. But for the toy industry for products, they've really boomed as a way to gain visibility for your product in the pandemic, mostly because content is king. And people are looking for a way to stay connected, and feel warm and fuzzy about it. So if you have a good journey story to help people feel connected, or if you have educational content that relates to your product, it's going to be a whole lot easier for you to get placed and get exposure on different platforms and even form partnerships. So I hope you found super value in this episode. I think it's a really important episode, especially around this time of the year when we're trying to get last minute sales, but also trying to set us ourselves up for a really successful 2021. Now, if you love this podcast, and you haven't already done so please leave us a review. Your review helps this podcast be discovered by other toy people like yourself. And I want to reach as many toy people as possible. So I would love it if you left a review and helped us do that. So if you have any ideas for future episodes, where people I would like to invite you to join my podcast community on Facebook called Making It in The Toy Industry podcast community, you can grab the link to it in the show notes. As always, thank you so much for joining me here. I know there are many podcasts out there. So it means the world to me that you tuned into this one. Until next week. I'll see you later toy people.
Intro/Outro + Jingle
Thanks for listening to Making It in The Toy Industry podcast with Azhelle Wade, head over to thetoycoach.com for more information, tips and advice
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🎓Learn more about how you can develop and pitch your toy idea with Toy Creators Academy® by clicking here to visit toycreatorsacademy.com and join the waitlist.