How to make a product people want?
Making a product that people want
As I mentioned before, I will be focusing on helping you create an anchor product that will help support your artistic business.
So, what is an anchor product? An anchor product works harmoniously with your other artwork. It is a distilled essence of your work’s style and message. This product may represent a type of pottery, glazes, jewelry style, gemstones you use, paint colors, brushstrokes, material you use in your sculptures, subject matter, and so on.
It is what makes your artwork unique to you. It is what sets you apart from other artists. And it is made specifically for a type of customer that would want it and could buy it. Think of the anchor product as the anchor in the middle of all your products.
Anchor Products
As an artist, this is the best way to organize my products. I start with my anchor product in the center of all my other work. These products are at a lower price point than the other items and are your work’s distilled style and essence.
Supporting products surround the anchor product. Supporting products stay true to the intent of the anchor product but at a slightly higher price point.
Bridge products are your main products. They are the artwork you love making and have your style, creative growth, and message. People who buy these products are your collectors. They are the people who love your work and want to be part of your personal brand. These products are also more expensive than the anchor product and the supporting products.
High-end products are artwork that is exclusive items that are typically one-of-a-kind or limited-run items. These are often commissions or part of a number series that creates scarcity because there are only 10 or 20. After that, you won’t make any more like it.
Let’s look at an example of the price breakdown for each category.
I have broken the pricing into the shape of a pyramid. Don’t worry it’s not a pyramid scheme.
The pyramid represents our audience, customer base, and willingness to spend money.
Anchor Products and Pricing:
At the bottom of the pyramid is your broadest audience, representing a broad part of the population that may be interested in your type of artwork. They are not necessarily art collectors and may only be willing to buy at a low price point. Often, this price point will be around $20 to $65. If it is any lower than that, it won’t be worth your time even to make the product.
A large percentage of these customers are going to be people who are willing to part with $20-
$50 to have some of your artwork. They like your style or message, which may be a one-time sale. However, it allows you to get their contact information for future marketing. Our goal with anchor products is to reach a more significant percentage of the buyer’s market than if we only sold bridge products or high-end products.
Supporting Products:
Supporting products are the next higher price point bracket. These items are usually in the range of $70-$250. Customers who have taken an interest and decided to buy an anchor product will also start considering a supporting product. The leap to a higher price point is not that far of a jump after they have already decided to spend their money. This technique has been used for years to upsell people on various items ranging from groceries to cars. Once the customer has agreed to spend, they have entered into an understanding of trust in you and your product. You have overcome a significant hurdle in sales.
Bridge Products:
As I said earlier, Bridge Products are your main products. They are the artwork you love making and have your style, creative growth, and message. People who buy these products are your collectors. They are the people who love your work and want to be part of your personal brand. These products are also more expensive than the anchor product and the supporting products. They range from $300-$800. They can also “bridge” the gap between high-end items such as customs and one-of-a-kind and limited-run products.
High-End Products:
The high-end products are typically $850 and up to thousands of dollars. Our goal is to get the right people into this category and not waste time with those not qualified to be in this category. We will discuss how to better understand our customers later in the course.
If your price points need to be adjusted lower or higher for the type of work you are making please do so. These prices are based off of what has worked for me and your prices may need to be adjusted to reach your goals.
How does an anchor product work with online selling?
An anchor product acts as a “hook or a sales entry point” to catch the attention of potential customers (fishing reference). When marketing online, the hook is used during the awareness, desire, and action stages of marketing to help refine our audience into people who will go to a website and buy a product. Again, the anchor product is an affordable useful product that will garner attention to your website and lead to them purchasing other products in the future.
As it pertains to our anchor product, the hook is an item that is interesting, solves a problem, creates a pattern interrupt when the viewer sees it, or is familiar yet unique. The objective is to get people to stop and look at the website where you sell your work.
Let’s look at the stages of a customer’s journey online.
Understanding the customer journey
The customer’s journey is seldom a straight line. Most customers’ journeys look like a fly stuck inside a house, flying around in circles and occasionally slamming into a window and then flying around some more, and maybe that fly finds an open door and makes it outside. The fly is the potential customer in this scenario and getting outside would be a sale for you.
Each potential customer is on their own journey, which is frustrating, but the good news is that we can identify the stages leading to a purchase. There are five significant steps: awareness, interest, desire, action, and post-action. You will see variations of these terms, but for the most part, these are the steps people go through when they finally buy an item.
Understanding these steps will help determine the marketing strategy, considering when + how + where = marketing tactics. (This will be covered later in the course.)
Let’s break down what each part of the customer journey looks like.
Awareness: This is where we introduce our product or service to our target persona. This step describes the product and what it can do for the client.
Think of this as your business saying, “Hello, nice to meet ya.”
Interest: This is where the customer is aware of your product, and you can present the key benefits of the product or service. Also, list the key differentiators of your offering. Differentiators are the things that make your product better or unique compared to other similar products or services. The interest step is a time to give viewers more information about how your product will improve their lives. This is when we build a rapport with the new potential customer.
Desire: The customer is aware of your product, they are interested in the benefits that it offers, and they are starting to consider buying the product, but they need a little nudge toward actually purchasing. In the desire stage, you should again list the benefits and give them a reason to buy. A reason to buy may be a discount, improved status, sacristy, fear of missing out, wanting to belong, trust and customer loyalty, a product’s perceived value, or another type of emotional promotion. People’s purchases are driven by emotional triggers far more than the need for something new. Give them an emotional reason to buy from you.
Action: The action stage is where the decision is made to purchase the product.
Things to consider:
- Payment: The action stage needs to be a smooth process. The price should be clearly stated, and a payment method must be set up to efficiently accept credit cards, cash, or online sales. Do your best to remove all obstacles that could ruin the deal.
- Thank you: Always have a thank you email ready immediately after the sale. If the sale is made in person, have a thank you card ready to add during the purchasing action, or if you have their address, send the thank you card the next day. People received less fun snail mail than they used to before the internet. It will leave a positive impression.
- Reinforce the benefits: List the benefits on another card that matches your branding. This list will reinforce the customers’ purchasing decisions and help prevent buyer remorse.
Post action: This action that you take after the purchase. This action can be a friendly note saying that you hope they enjoy the product. It could also be news about your artist’s business or info about similar products. The post-action is often overlooked in the customer journey; however, this step will help you stand out from other artist businesses. Most customers are surprised that someone would follow up with them, and they will have increased respect for you for doing so. And, hopefully, they will purchase from you again.
I often think of this stage as the artist inviting the customer to be part of their intimate club. This club is only open to those who have purchased, and it builds rapport with customers and gives them exclusive information about what you are working on, your creative process, and more. This action can raise your customer’s status with other art collectors. Let them be part of your club; they will do most of your advertising for you when they talk to their friends.
Recap peptalk:
Okay, so I have given you a great deal of information in a short period of time and I want to make it clear why I am talking about this technical stuff.
It is important that we are all speaking the same marketing language and that you understand the important steps and terms that need to be understood to have success in marketing online. I also have seen many get rich quick tactics that leave you wondering why it didn’t work when someone tries it.
We have a few more marketing terms in this course but rest assured that I will tie it back to the business of selling artwork. You can download the glossary of terms HERE to help you keep everything clear and definable.
Next up, How to research and develop an anchor product. 