Why marketing makes me uncomfortable

I had this post saved for another day, but I accidentally hit “publish” so now I have two long entries in one day. Sorry! (The previous one is my Craft Happy post.)

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I’m constantly plagued with thoughts about marketing and pricing. I suppose when it really comes down to it, the big question that preoccupies me about my shop is simply: “If everyone loves my creations so much, why aren’t more people buying them?” And then I feel like a terrible person, because it’s just not a fair question. I mean, I’m a shopper too, at times a quite avid one. As a shopper, the above question insults me. Why should I be held responsible for all the things I don’t buy? I’m trying to save money too, and not clutter up my house, just like everyone else. There are thousands of things I admire that I don’t buy, and there are even hundreds of things I truly, truly love that I don’t buy (like Mo’s cheese and crackers tray, Jenn’s black starfish earrings, some adorable felted eggs I saw at Craft Happy, or this incredible fabric from Swanky Swell).

Like every other thoughtful person, I buy or don’t buy for a complicated mix of reasons, and it’s not always something I can explain… nor would I want to be asked to do so. But of course, as a shop owner, it is my job to wonder why people don’t buy from me, and it is even my job to try to change that. So thinking about marketing and sales is always very awkward; there’s such a tension between my personal anti-consumerist, anti-materialistic stance, and my professional interest in making people buy things made by me or my friends. It’s endlessly troubling.

I ran this all by Erik, ever my sounding board for all things, and he gave me back a very simple, immensely helpful response.

“There are two ways of looking at marketing,” he said. “First, you can just try to get as many people as possible to love your stuff. You get a bazillion people to love your stuff, sales will happen on their own. Second, you can take the people who already love your stuff, and try to make them buy as much as possible.” The second method is sleazy and advantage-taking, while the first is friendly and user-focused, and works to build as broad an audience as possible, based on having the best product out there. He pointed out the example of Google: they laid low during the hectic early days of search engines, while AltaVista, Yahoo, AskJeeves, Lycos, and all those other companies battled it out for advertising profits. Instead, they made their product as excellent and user-friendly as possible, and then at some point in the early 2000s, they stuck their heads out and blew everyone else out of the water… and now they’re one of the major players of teh internets (and beyond); they’re a company name, a noun, and a verb; and does anyone use any other search engine?

As a software engineer, Erik draws lots of useful business examples from that world, but as he was telling me this, I remembered a conversation I’d had with Jinny and a lovely Craft Happy attendee on Saturday, about Anthropologie. Almost every girl I know adores Anthropologie, even quasi-tomboys, and even me, against my will and in spite of my disapproval of its founder’s politics. However, I don’t know anyone who can really afford to shop there, except in the sale section. And yet… it’s like our Mecca. We’re all addicted to its website and catalog, we all secretly want to live there, we compliment things we like by saying they’re “so Anthro,” and we go there on our birthdays… yes, our birthdays, as if it were Chuck E Cheese for grown-up girls (and it totally is). We can’t afford to go there regularly, but Anthro has so captured our loyalty that we go there whenever we can, sometimes just to look. I may not like its founder, but I have to admit that it represents another example of Erik’s first style of marketing (at least in some sense). Anthropologie doesn’t spam me with constant sale announcements, or offer 2-for-1 deals, and its cashiers range from indifferent to rude… frankly, it doesn’t even show me its products when I read the catalog, because all the pictures are so artsy, many of the details are obscured. (“Terra Incognita booties $258″ tells me all I need to know, anyway.) All it does it make me love it, love it more and more with every soft-focus outdoor photo and sweet styling job and vintage/handmade-inspired prop, and that is enough to guarantee I will buy as much Anthropologie as I can, whenever I can.

I like this way of thinking about marketing, because it frees me from having to question people’s choices. It puts the focus on me, and pushes me to make my creations, my photos, my listings, and everything else shop-related, as eye-catching and craveworthy and distinctive and beautiful as possible, regardless of whether anyone’s buying my stuff. Wondering why nobody’s buying just leads to bitterness and angst, but perfecting my work is a fun challenge, and one I can get behind without having to feel like a sleazeball. In this way, even though I no longer want to support Anthropologie the way I used to, it’s still serving as an inspiration!