If you are going to have a business in 2022, it is imperative that you have an online presence. I have worked with vendors who rely solely on the presence of the brick and mortar that houses their booth to do all of the advertising and marketing on their behalf, and while I hope that your storefront is working hard for you as the vendor, I believe this is an irresponsible business move. The future of the storefront where you pay rent is out of your hands. You need a presence for your own business and brand that you control.
Treat your vendor booth as your own storefront inside a commercial mall. The Mall will attract customers by the nature of being a mall, but if you want people to come specifically to shop in your store, you have to advertise and market your own business.. JCPenny’s and Belk don’t rely on Simon Malls or Tanger Outlets to promote for them, and they sure don’t just fill their store and wait hoping that someone will drive by! They actively market their brand and their products to potential customers. This is how you should approach your own business.
You also never know what the future holds for the store you are in. I’ve known several vendor based stores that have closed unexpectedly in the past. Vendors with a solid online presence have the ability to bring their existing audience with them to a new location in a new store, or even to shift to an online model. Vendors with no online presence, no email list, no way to connect with existing customers will have to start all over again in a new location.
Time and energy invested in growing an audience for your business is never wasted. So on that note, here is what I consider to be a comprehensive list of the places you need to establish a presence online as well as walkthrough videos to show you how to do it.
Google Business Listing
If you don’t already have an email for your business, you can create this by simply setting up a business email and indicating that you are in fact a business. Google will then prompt you through setting up a Business Profile.
Fill it out completely. Choose multiple categories that describe your business. Add photos of your products. Upload your logo. Put in the store hours. There is actually an option to set your store up inside an existing location for Google Maps.
Facebook Business Page
Use Canva to create a Cover Photo for your page. You can put together a collage of product photos with your logo over the top if you are just getting started. Once you’ve uploaded the photo click on the picture and click “edit” to add a caption. This is one caption that Facebook doesn’t police so make sure someone who is finding your page for the first time gets all of the information they need in this caption! Here are some examples;
Fill out every available space in your about section. Make sure that your profile picture is either your logo or an identifiable product photo. Remember when you comment as your page this is what will show up. Make it recognizable.
Instagram Business Page (Linked through Meta)
If you don’t already have an IG account for your business then create one. Under Profile Settings select Professional profile. You can then link this account to your Facebook so that you can manage both accounts through the Business Suite provided by Meta. If you don’t have a website or want to direct people to more than one place use linktr.ee to set up a link menu.
Email List
At the end of the day you don’t own Facebook or Instagram or a plethora of other platforms. Having an Email list ensures that you can always communicate with the people who want to hear from you. If you have a website this is a great place to capture emails with a simple pop-up. You can also link to your email sign up through a linktree page and add the hyperlink in the caption of your FB cover. Basically I recommend putting this everywhere to get as many emails as possible!
Website
Even if you aren’t immediately starting with e-commerce, or if you have your products available through a webstore connected with your vendor mall, I still recommend setting up a basic website for your business. You can always link to the place where you sell your products but having a domain where you have control over the information customers receive is valuable.
Check out today’s video for some resource walkthroughs and use the PDF provided to make the process simple and check things off as you go.
