How to Design a Pattern That Will Sell | Podcast Episode #84

Do you design patterns or create content?

If so, I’m sure you can relate to the struggle of figuring out what to make! Before you invest time, effort and energy into creating a pattern, blog post, video, or any other type of content, it’s wise to know what your audience actually wants. This is easier said than done!

Special Guest

Marie Segares is on the podcast again today! This time she goes in-depth to help us figure out who our audience is and how we can use that information to create the patterns, blog posts, and/or videos they want to see. If you build it they won’t always come but if you ask them what they want, you’re serving your audience and making great use of your time!

Episode Transcript

Brittany:
Hello and welcome to episode number 84 of the Be Hooked podcast. It’s a real pleasure to have you here today. If you’re brand new to the show, welcome. This is the place where I strive to inspire and educate you in both knitting and crochet. And if you’re a seasoned show listener, well, hey there, friend. I’m so excited to have you and I can’t wait to share today’s episode with you.

Today is a great show for those of you who are designers and even content creators to some extent. Now back in episode 20, I had Marisa Garez on the show and she talked all about different business structures for crochet. You know I have a sweet spot for business, especially when it comes to my passion of crochet and knitting. So Marie and I really connect in this way, and she just knocked my socks off once again. She always brings the goods.

Well, that first episode, episode number 20, by the way, if you haven’t listened to that and you’re curious about the different business structures, definitely go listen to that episode. But today, we’re going to shift gears a tiny bit and talk a little bit more about how to promote your projects, and more importantly, how to determine what to make, so that once you do put all that time, effort, and energy into creating something, you actually have an audience to share it with.

Before we get into that though, I do want to mention one thing that’s going on over on my website. If you haven’t checked that out, by the way, BeHookedCrochet.com is the hub for all things that I create, including this podcast. You can find video tutorials for crochet patterns, for knit patterns, different techniques, blog posts, you name it, it’s there. There’s something like 400 posts and videos and it’s just crazy. It can be overwhelming. I’ll admit that. But if you’re ever looking for something specific, you can always just type it into the search bar or shoot me an email. I’m right here on the other side of the keyboard and I want nothing more than to help you and to serve you. So check out BeHookedCrochet.com if you haven’t done that already and I’ll see you there.

Okay, so before we get into my chat with Marie, and this is a good one, so I promise it’ll be well worth the wait, I want to mention one more exciting thing. There’s just two more days left for the Hooga Lifestyle Cowl, a crocheted blanket that I made using my sponsor, Red Heart’s brand new yarn called Hooga.

Now, Red Heart is a sponsor of today’s show, and I do want to thank them for that and also encourage you to check out this CAL if you’re looking for a project. Even though there’s only two days left, you can still have access to the pattern as well as the tutorial even after the CAL has concluded. However, the one change that will occur is that the Facebook group that’s assigned for this CAL, I won’t be monitoring that so much after the CAL has concluded.

So if you’re interested in that, you can head over to behookedcrochet.com slash hygge. That’ll get you access to that cowl, the free pattern, the tutorial, all the goodies. And even if you don’t participate in this cowl, I really hope that you’ll give hygge yarn a try. This is one of the softest yarns I have ever felt. It is so incredibly soft. It’s really easy to work with.

So if you look at hygge, and how the yarn comes together. It looks like it has sort of a halo, like you have a smooth piece in the middle, but there are some sort of like fuzzies that will come out from that and it gives it that halo. Well, I know as a beginner, I used to steer clear of yarns like that because I figured it would be hard for me to see my stitches. Well, because a hygge does have that sort of smoothness in the middle, It’s really easy to see your stitches. You don’t have any of that issue that you run into when you’re working with really fuzzy or novelty yarns.

So I have personally seen hygge. This is a brand new yarn just at the shelves not long ago. I’ve seen it at my local Joann’s store. So you can check that out the next time you’re in that area, but you can also order it directly from redheart.com. If you go to redheart.com slash hygge, then you’ll be able to see all the different colorways. And while you’re there, go ahead and sign up for their email newsletter.

If you’re looking for inspiration on how to use their yarns, if you’re a real Red Heart fan and you have some yarn in your stash, well, that’s sort of what this email newsletter is for—to inspire you, to share some discounts and coupon codes with you, and to let you know about brand new yarns like hygge.

Whew, okay. Got that out of the way. I’m really excited about hygge if you haven’t heard. And it’s just fun to say, by the way. But now I really want to get into my chat with Marie. I got so much out of this. You know I’m planning for 2019. I’ve been doing so for the past couple of months, really since August. And Marie just released… brand new book that I believe can help me personally in my 2019 planning strategy, and I know it’s going to help you too.

So here it is. Let’s give Marie a warm welcome back to the show. Marie, hi. Welcome back to the show. How are you doing today?

Marie: 6:54
Great. I’m looking forward to it.

Brittany: 6:57
Yeah, me too. I know there’s a lot of really great information in the book, and I’m excited to be able to extract some of that so people can take a more educated approach in what they design so that they’re not putting effort into something that their audience doesn’t want. Because, I mean, let’s face it, if we don’t put that amount of effort into it, well, we’re doing all this work for pretty much nothing.

Marie: 7:21
Yeah, which is sort of depressing.

Brittany: 7:24
It is. I feel like we’ve all experienced it at some point. I know I certainly have because it took me a while to learn this lesson and I had to learn it the hard way. Not necessarily from, well, I’ve experienced it from a pattern writing perspective, but also as a podcast episode creation, also a blog post, also a video. I mean, it’s just… one piece of content right after the other, it all sort of follows this principle that if you create something, they won’t necessarily come to consume it. You really have to create what they want.

And that’s sort of like the moral, I think, of our chat here today and your book. So definitely excited about that. Let’s start, though, with what you’ve been up to since the last time we spoke. It was a little over a year ago since you were on the show before. And I know you’ve been a really busy lady. So what have you been up to?

Marie: 8:16
Well, besides my usual stuff that I have been doing since our last interview and before, Underground Crafter in terms of, you know, I usually self-publish a free crochet or knitting pattern every week. I also have a full-time job, which I think some people know, and I’ve been teaching and all those good things.

But I’ve also have two bits of kind of changes since last time we spoke. First of all, I’ve gotten much more involved as a volunteer with the Crochet Guild of America. So for about six years, I had been doing blog posts for them, usually book reviews on their blog, and now I’m editing their member newsletter. It comes out quarterly and yeah, and if you subscribe to Crochet! magazine—that’s the one with the exclamation point—and you’re a member, you’ll get it actually in your edition of Crochet! magazine. But you can also get a digital version.

So that’s been kind of exciting. It’s given me a chance to get to work with some people that I only knew of, you know, by name in the crochet industry a little bit closer as part of this committee that does the newsletter. So that’s kind of exciting. Yeah. And if you’re a member, anyone that’s listening, and you have an article or picture or something you want to share with the newsletter, please feel free to reach out to me, and I’m happy to talk about how to get you into the next newsletter. It’s got several thousand members, and they seem to love it, so I’m happy to do that.

And then I’m also volunteering with the Association for Creative Industries, which is kind of the industry… And we actually met, you and me, Brittany, at their trade show earlier this year in real life.

Brittany: 10:43
Yeah. Yeah, that was a really great experience too. It was the first like real trade show, honestly, that I had been to. I didn’t really know what to expect, but it was, I want to say overwhelming, but in a good way because it was walking into a gigantic room with booths of just crafts of all sorts. There was a lot of yarn companies there, but scrapbooking. I visited like a cake decorating table and we got to play with fondant and eat it and it was amazing.

Marie: 11:11
Yeah.

Brittany: 11:12
I know at the time they were keeping it to, like you were saying, creators like us. Is there a chance that perhaps somebody listening maybe doesn’t have some content, but they do want to experience that? Do you have any insight as to whether they will be opening that up to the public anytime soon?

Marie: 11:33
Sure. So that particular event is a trade show. So it’s only open to the industry. So you do have to have an established business. And I know in our last, when I was on your show before, we talked about having a formalized business versus an informal business. To be a member of the Association for Creative Industries, you do have to have a somewhat formal business. You can’t just be selling stuff and not having registered with your state or what have you.

But that particular show that we went to in January, which will be happening again in January in Phoenix, is not open to the general public. But they actually are hosting an event that is open to the general public. By the time this episode airs, it will have already passed. But it’s called In the Making, and it’s in upstate New York, and it’s a creativity festival for, you know, all types of crafts—just like the show that we saw—but for the general public. So people can come and take classes and see some of the new products and interact with their favorite crafty celebrities and so on. So they are starting to do more consumer events.

Brittany: 12:37
Okay. So we’ll have to keep that in mind for next year, perhaps, if they do that again.

Okay. So I’m thinking now… Moving forward into our chat here today, I’m thinking a good precursor to creating patterns and understanding what our audience wants. At the heart of that, I feel like we need to understand the changes that the knit and crochet industry have gone through over the last decade. I know you have some insight on this, so let’s start there. Yeah,

Marie: 13:07
Absolutely. So maybe a little over 10 years ago, basically, the industry was much more oriented towards a freelance model. So there were more print magazines and books that were kind of published by traditional publishers. And most people that were designers would sell their patterns to these various companies to publish them. And usually they would also sell the rights to those patterns. So the designers didn’t own the patterns anymore. Once they sold it to the magazine, they weren’t able to then sell it later.

And that was interesting—more of the standard model. And then of course, most of the yarn companies had their own in-house designers or a team of freelance designers that they worked with to produce their free patterns. Some of them had websites then, but some of them didn’t, so they might be just on the back, you know, the yarn ball band.

But about 10–15 years ago, the industry started to become a little bit more digital. So we started seeing Etsy popping up and more people that might be indie dyers, let’s say, selling their own yarn. Some people had already been publishing free patterns online since the early 2000s, so that had already been in place—but that wasn’t necessarily something where you could make money. At that point it was more a labor of love. People just wanted to share their patterns or maybe build recognition for a book they were trying to sell or something like that.

And then at that point, Ravelry started getting traction. And when they opened their pattern marketplace, I think that was probably the one biggest event that was a key shift, because it allowed designers to sell patterns as instant downloads. While you could have sold patterns on Etsy, those of us that were on Etsy in the early days, you actually had to email the person the pattern after they bought it. So you basically had to always be available or people would be leaving you bad reviews that they didn’t get the pattern fast enough.

So really, when Ravelry started offering that instant download option, that made a big shift where a lot of designers were able to basically sell their patterns directly to the consumer without having to rely on these third-party publishers. And that’s pretty much the biggest shift that we’ve seen in terms of more designers becoming independent, I would say.

Brittany: 15:36
Yeah, and it probably brought in a whole new wave of designers because it is relatively easy to get into.

Marie: 15:43
Absolutely, right. So it was much easier to get into. In the past, even to get those freelance gigs done, yes, you could pitch to magazines, but sometimes it was hard to find out their editorial calendar. And a lot of it was still done face-to-face. So if you didn’t go to those industry events like the ones we were talking about, the publishers might not know who you are. They might not pick up your designs.

So even to get into that freelancing world was a lot harder. And so once more and more platforms offered the opportunity for instant downloads, we started to see many more designers selling patterns. And then similarly, as it became easier to monetize websites, we started to see more and more people setting up a website and deciding if their patterns might be free, but monetized in some other way—through advertising, through affiliate links, or what have you.

And so that is also a big shift too, because most of the people now that are offering free patterns online are not just doing it because they love crochet or knitting. Many more of them are doing it to make money and in a sustainable way.

So that’s a big shift too. Probably for your younger readers, they probably can’t believe this, but in 2006, 2007, 2008, bloggers used to actually have buttons on their sidebar that said things like, “This blog doesn’t accept advertising.” And that was kind of a badge of honor for a lot of bloggers. So it’s a really different idea about how to make money from this industry.

Brittany: 17:23
Yeah. And advertising is, like you were saying, it can be a sensitive subject for some people.

I know for myself as a content creator—my readers and listeners know that that is the route that I have decided to go with. And that’s because I like to be able to provide free resources for people who are on a budget or can’t afford to pay for a pattern.

But like you said, it’s a way for me to be able to make money in a sustainable way. Having a website costs money. Running that, managing that. Not even my time. Let’s say I’m giving my time completely for free, which by the way, I’ve done quite a bit for quite a while. The advertising there really just covers the cost of having that website up and running.

So yeah, I think it’s important for people to see that side of it as well. Because if you don’t have a website of your own, then you may not know that. You may not know that it costs a decent amount of money to have a website and to manage that and keep it running. So yeah, advertising is one way that a lot of bloggers choose to monetize their site.

And I think it’s great because it can keep the patterns free for the readers as well. But I know that there is a lot of value in being able to offer a paid pattern as well because there’s skin in the game at that point, right?

If somebody pays for something—whether it be a pattern, whether it be a course or anything like that—if you physically hand over your hard-earned dollars in return for something, you’ll be more likely to take action on that thing. So you’ll be more likely to finish the pattern.

So I know a lot of my listeners have some… they struggle a little bit with motivation and finishing a project. Well, I think that is one way—actually a way that I haven’t touched on before—where you can stay motivated to work on it. If you have exchanged money, not only have you helped a person who has designed that, you’ve supported them, but you’re also giving yourself that sort of physical push to say, okay, I have to finish it. I paid money for this.

Marie: 19:45
Definitely. I think that’s definitely true. And I think, you know, the main key is that the change has been that there’s more ways that people can get into the industry, and there’s also more different ways that people can easily make money from it from home.

It may not—you know, just because that’s being said, I think the opposite needs to be mentioned—which is, it’s not like all unicorns and rainbows. That, you know, I just put out a design and then suddenly I’m, you know, living pretty and I don’t need to work anymore and that kind of thing.

And I think that’s also been an unfortunate side effect, is this kind of “Hey, everybody can do this and it’s so easy.” And I think the reality is that not everyone is able to launch and sustain a business that makes them money over a long period of time. And there’s a lot of people that get into it with a lot of excitement and then kind of fade out.

And then, like we said earlier, there’s people that, you know, they have really high hopes, but they’re not necessarily based in reality. And then they can feel really depressed because these are things we make, right? So we put our love and our heart into it. And when our audience doesn’t respond, that really makes us sad a lot of times.

You know, I’m sure you have a pattern, Brittany, that you love. And maybe that one isn’t your most popular. And it’s like, but why? You know, yeah, it’s so pretty.

Brittany: 21:14
I could name several, I think. And I could name several patterns where I just put them together because I thought, oh, this is cool. I like this yarn, or I know I need to design more hats or something like that.

And I’ll put something together not thinking anything of it. I’m not excited about it any more than some of the other patterns that I have. And I go into it with the mindset that, oh, this will be okay. This will be very useful for a handful of people. And then that pattern blows up and I don’t even know what happened.

So clearly I can learn a lot from your message here today too. I think it’s a learning process too.

Marie: 21:54
Absolutely. And things change over time. So, you know, trends shift and people need to be aware of those also. And as designers—just like any business—you know, should be responsive to the environment.

Brittany: 22:06
So it sounds like the digital wave is really the biggest takeaway from the changes that have occurred in the industry. And as designers, as bloggers, as freelancers, as whatever you relate yourself to, it’s probably important to go back to that realization in order to propel you forward so that you’re not getting stuck in the past.

Marie: 22:31
Yeah, right. I do hear that too—a lot of designers who’ve been in the industry for a longer time kind of bemoaning the old days when it used to be this way or that way. I don’t think it’s likely to return to those old ways anymore, you know, anytime soon.

I think if anything, it’s going to become more digital as we move forward. So I think that’s something we should be keeping in mind as indies in this industry.

Brittany: 22:55
Definitely. So let’s talk a little bit about how we can execute a pattern, knowing that it’s something that we’ve proven. We’ve sort of taken the concept and we’ve proven it as something that our audience needs or wants.

I think probably the prerequisite to all of that is to figure out what the audience wants. So how on earth do we even do that?

Marie: 23:22
Well, I think before you figure out what the audience wants, you have to even figure out who is your audience. So we don’t all have the same audience. You know, it’s funny because I know a lot of designers that are, you know, bigger than me. You know, they have a bigger following. They have more site visits, more downloads—but some of my followers haven’t heard of them, you know? And just like some of their followers haven’t heard of me.

So even though we may think of our audience as everyone who crochets or everyone who knits, there’s probably a smaller group of people that you’re more specifically looking at. And so in marketing, that’s called targeting. The different groups of people are segments, and we pick the segments that we want to work with.

So for instance, most of my readers—although they’re international—they’re predominantly in the U.S. So all of my patterns use U.S. crochet terms because that’s who most of my audience is. I want them not to have to translate the pattern in their mind, right? I want them to be able to read it as easily as possible.

But if most of my readers were from the United Kingdom, I would use U.K. terms, right? Or if I had another audience, I might only use chart symbols because maybe that’s the type of way that they read patterns. So even though it could be the same design for a hat, how we present it might be a little bit different based on who is in our audience of people that we’re trying to reach out to.

Brittany: 24:58
So what is like one thing that somebody could do today to zero in on what that is?

And let me just give you a little bit of explanation for this particular question. As you know, as my readers and listeners know, I am very much into entrepreneurship and learning as much as I can about things like this—finding your avatar. That’s how you would typically hear it on maybe like a business sort of podcast, just an entrepreneur podcast.

And everybody talks about why it’s so important to have an avatar and to figure out who your avatar is. But I’ve yet to find a really good resource that really tells you how, like in a way that’s easy to implement. Do you have any insight on that?

Marie: 25:47
Yeah. So in my new book, I do go through a bunch of questions that designers should ask themselves. And in the PDF and the print edition, there’s actually questionnaires. So you can, you know, write in your answers if you’d like.

But basically, you know, it’s a lot of—you know, it sounds scary—research, where you have to find out some things about them. So, who are these people that have already bought your patterns, if you’ve sold any? Or who are already visiting your website, if you’re giving your patterns, if they’re free?

If you don’t have anybody yet, what are the types of groups that you feel comfortable communicating with? And I think that’s important because a big part of being an indie is organic growth, which is usually using social media to reach out to your followers without paying for advertising.

And so, the followers that can understand what you’re saying, that can relate to you, that you can communicate with them best—that’s really the audience that you’re most likely to have the greatest reach. So even if I never designed a pattern yet, but I’m in a Facebook group for crocheters, for instance—who are some of the other crocheters in that group that I’m able to communicate with easily, that I could imagine myself talking to them a lot about my designs?

So once I kind of understand those people, then I should start thinking about what do they want? Do they want patterns in a PDF format? Would they rather read them online? Do they like symbols? Do they use U.S. or U.K. terms? Do they need videos? Are they more visual learners? Are they more likely to be newbies, so I have to give them a little bit more detail? Or are they super expert and I can really shorthand it because they have all the skills already?

So even if I don’t have any customers yet, even if I never sold a pattern, I can still learn a little bit about all these different types of people that crochet and knit. And then I can sort of use that to build—like you said—your avatar or your typical customer, kind of a person that you could imagine as this ideal customer that you’re talking to, so that all of your conversations are almost more personal because you’re imagining this one specific person that you’re connecting to.

Brittany: 28:12
And so you’re finding this information from—like through some of your analytics. So let’s say you do have a shop already and you do have some customers. You should be able to pull some analytics from that to find some demographic information.

Or if you’re like me and you have a website, you have access to Google Analytics, which does break down the demographics. So is there a way to determine what somebody wants based on their demographic? Or do you need to dig even deeper and maybe ask some of these people questions—in an email or wherever—exactly what it is that they want?

Marie: 28:47
I think that’s a great question. I think, you know, obviously there are some things you can figure out—like I was saying, you can usually tell their language and those kinds of things from demographics, right?

So we’re going to assume most crocheters or knitters in the U.S. use U.S. crochet/knitting terminology—not U.K.—just as an example. But that doesn’t really tell us about what kind of projects they like or anything like that.

If you have analytics, like on your website, or you have an Etsy shop—which has pretty good analytics—you might be able to see what they’re mostly looking at. So that’ll give you some ideas. Is there a certain type of project that they seem to be more interested in?

And you can sort of look through what’s similar about the project. Is it the same—like, let’s say it’s all hats, right? You mentioned the hat earlier, Brittany. Is it like all your hats are super popular? So something about hats really gets your audience excited. Or is it like all of your easier patterns? Or is it all of your blue patterns, right?

That’ll start to give you some idea of things that they’re interested in through analytics. But if you want to get really deep into their mind, you probably have to ask them some things. And you can do that if you have an email list, by sending out a questionnaire.

You can do that if you have any account on social media—most places you can do polling or ask a question of the day or the question of the week. And you can get some ideas: What kind of projects do you like to make?

Every summer, I send to my email list: What are your favorite projects for summer? Because I know that crochet and knitting is a little bit seasonal. People don’t always make as much in the summer. So when they tell me the types of projects that they like to make in the summer, those are the types of patterns I like to release in the summer. So I can get that information directly from them. And then, you know, I’m giving them more or less exactly what they want.

Brittany: 30:41
That’s really good advice, too. Now, I’m curious—do you have any way of organizing this information? Or do you read it and just take mental notes?

Marie: 30:50
So I have—for my Underground Crafter newsletter—I have a birthday club. So when people sign up, I send them a couple of different emails. For those of you that know more about the business side of stuff, those are called autoresponders. So I don’t personally send them. They kind of automatically happen, you know, the next day after they sign up and so forth.

And in one of those emails, I ask them to fill out a Google form. And the form asks them a bunch of different information, including their birthday—because on their birthday day, I send them a special email with coupon codes and other goodies in it.

But I also get other information like: What are their favorite yarns? What kind of things do they want to see more of on the blog? Is it crochet? Is it knitting? Because I do more than one craft. So do they want to see sewing? Do they want to see Cricut stuff? Or do they just only want to see free patterns?

And so all of that comes back to me in a form. And I can sort that form and get different information from it. I can look through that form—and it’s got a pretty good response rate. It’s like one out of three people that subscribe to my newsletter, which, you know, is decent.

So I have a pretty good idea that my most dedicated fans—that’s what they’re interested in. And so I can try to maybe use some of the yarns that they prefer, or the types of projects that they have.

I’ve also done stuff where I just ask them questions, and I don’t have a really good way to organize it, you know, and then I just have that list on a sheet or something. And I might cross it off as I go through each thing. So, you know, how many people for the summer like to make hats? And then I might just keep adding a number as more people say hats—that kind of thing.

Brittany: 32:35
Yeah. Have you ever found a situation where you couldn’t identify a clear outlier—like it seemed to be evenly distributed? Or perhaps you got just all kinds of different answers and then you really didn’t know where to go from there?

Marie: 32:52
Not in that particular thing. I usually see some pretty good clusters.

And the thing is to remember that whenever you poll your audience, everyone is not going to respond. So it’s not going to be exactly what all the thousands of people that visited your Etsy shop think. It’s going to be the top 10 or 20 or 100 or 1,000 or whatever it is.

But you can still get some idea that the people that are the most engaged with you—that’s what they’re interested in. And so you can still find some kind of direction from that, I think.

I think one of the things that a lot of designers say is, you know, “I don’t want to make just what my customers want.” This isn’t to say to suppress your own creative desires and your creative interests. Because I think many of us feel like, “I’m in this industry because I like to be creative. So I don’t want somebody else, quote unquote, telling me what to do.”

But it’s more like, how can I channel my creative energies into something my audience will also appreciate? So if they prefer hats, I mean, I can use the stitches I want, the construction techniques I want, the yarns I want—in a hat just as well as in a shawl, right?

So it’s not that I’m not getting to do things that I want. It’s just that I’m maybe doing some of those things more often in a way that my customers want to see it.

Brittany: 34:15
Yeah, so that way you’re getting a return on that time investment. We all know how much time it takes to finish a design. And it really is a shame—like you said—it’s heartbreaking when you release something that you’re so in love with and your audience doesn’t feel the same about it.

So we can avoid all that. First of all, by knowing who our audience is. And you’ve given us some really great tips on how to identify that, or how to maybe put a face to our audience in the form of an avatar.

You mentioned briefly about questionnaires. I want to dig into this a little bit. I read a book recently called Ask by Ryan Levesque. Have you heard of that?

Marie: 34:58
I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard of it.

Brittany: 34:59
Oh man, it’s a wonderful book. You should try it. It’s a really quick read. And he has some pretty great bonuses as well—basically downloads of templates of ways that he asks his questionnaires to his audience too.

And he’s coming from a completely different industry. So I believe—let’s see—he dabbled in selling… I think he did courses for a little bit. So anyways, he used this technique to be able to figure out what type of product to make and had a lot of success from it.

But through all of his experiences, he sort of collectively brought them together in one really quick read that explains exactly how you should ask for what your audience wants in a way that you’ll get answers that aren’t sort of off the wall or in however many different categories.

And I know this is a big part of obviously his business. It sounds like it’s a big part of yours. It’s something I’m implementing as well as a result of reading this—because I really want to be able to give my audience what they want. That’s why I’m here.

And the only way for me to do that, I think from this point on—because I’ve done the research, I know the demographics, I know the big buckets or the big umbrellas. I know that my audience is primarily beginners. I know here on the podcast, they’re primarily makers and they sell their goods.

But from there, I feel like you can even take that out definitely a couple more places so that I can really give them what they want. Is there an approach that you take with your questionnaires that may have some kind of formula to it, or something that we can try and implement?

Marie: 36:50
You mean my questionnaires that I send to my audience or the ones that are in the book or, or both?

Brittany:
Either or both. Yeah.

Marie:
Okay. So the ones that I send to my audience—I don’t, I personally, I don’t open the floodgates because that is how you get those outliers. Like if I were to say, What are all the things you like to do in the summer? you know, they’re going to start talking about, let’s say, woodworking, which I don’t do. So that’s not going to help me because I’m not going to be able to make a woodworking project, for instance.

So what I like to do when I ask them questions is to have more like categories. That way it’s still kind of bounded by my capabilities of what I can offer. And then also that limits the kind of number of responses, so it’s a little bit easier to tally what people are actually telling me.

So if I say, Which of these projects do you enjoy?—even if I put an Other—more people are going to pick from a category that already exists. So that helps me. If I don’t make garments, let’s say—right?—which a lot of designers don’t, I don’t want to open it up to Hey, what’s your favorite project? and then they’re all going to say sweaters. And now it’s like, “Oh man, I don’t make sweaters. What do I do?” Right?

So I’m still going to sort of say, Hey, what do you like to make? Hats, scarves, pillows… whatever it is that’s within my realm. So I think by offering options where it’s more like a checkbox, that usually helps you to narrow the responses more to what you’re able to do.

Same thing—I ask my readers about different crafts. I only list the crafts that I actually do. I don’t list every craft under the sun. So they can only answer with the kind of crafts that I offer, right? So that’s, I think, helpful in that sense.

But in terms of in the book, a lot of my questions in the book are opposite to that. So instead of giving you closed answers, I’m giving you space—an open-ended question where you’re going to kind of dive in and think about something. And your answer is not necessarily going to be a yes, no, or checkbox kind of answer.

And part of that is for the designer to start thinking through. Because a lot of designers, I think, they’re limited by these kind of checkbox answers. But once you start thinking about it, you realize you might know more things about your audience than you think.

And if you have kind of an open response where you can write anything you want, it helps you be a little bit more creative and think about the answers in a way that applies to your specific business. So that’s why I have a sort of completely opposite approach in the book, which is really for designers and not for customers.

Brittany: 39:34
Gotcha. Okay. And that was something that was running through my head as you were saying that. We can take these tips here, whether we’re a designer or whether we’re a content creator, but maybe perhaps the approach is a little bit different.

Marie: 39:47
Sure, sure. And the same thing if you are a maker that’s selling your finished projects, right? So let’s say I’m selling at craft fairs. You can still ask yourself a lot of these questions about your customer in the same way.

You know, who are the people that consistently buy from your Etsy shop, or they’re on your newsletter list, or you see them every year at the holiday craft show? Those are like your ideal customers—or your avatars, or whatever you want to call them. What is it that they’re looking for? What are they interested in?

You can ask them the same way: What colors are you into this year? Who are you buying gifts for? Whatever it might be that can help you to know what to pack up for that next craft show.

Brittany: 40:30
I think the people who sell at markets, they have such an incredible advantage—and that’s to be able to speak to their customer one-on-one, face-to-face.

Marie: 40:42
Yeah, that’s true. But you know what? A lot of them, they don’t see it that way because they also see face-to-face all the people that, you know, we would consider trolls online. So all the people that walk past your booth and say, I can make that myself, and all those kinds of things—that can be a little bit deflating. But those are not your customers, you know?

So don’t spend time on those people. Just be like, “Okay, have a nice day,” and, you know, focus on the people that are buying your stuff and what they’re interested in.

Brittany: 41:13
So true. That’s really good advice. Now, you mentioned using Google Forms for the questionnaires that you do. Is that the primary tool that you use—sort of like the vehicle for these questionnaires?

Marie: 41:27
Yep. So I use Google Forms because it’s free and because the responses go into Google Sheets, which is like Excel, and that’s a program that I’m really comfortable using.

But you could also use a survey tool like SurveyMonkey, for example, and that will actually analyze the data for you. So it’ll make pie charts or whatever that show you all the responses in a more visual way.

Over a certain number of respondents, you do have to pay for those subscriptions. So for people that are just starting out, that’s why I usually recommend a free tool. Because, you know, as your business grows, you can invest more in a paid tool. But when you’re very first starting or when you’re not profitable yet, you probably want to, you know, lower your costs. And that’s why I would say Google Sheets.

But really, anything that can do some kind of survey and gather the responses for you. Ideally, if the responses are identified to the person. Some of the free survey tools online, they just will give you this sort of anonymous answers, and you can’t necessarily connect back—Is the person that likes hats also the person that likes to knit? Or are they the person that likes to crochet?

So having the ability to look at each individual person’s answer all the way through to all the questions is something you want to see if that survey software offers or not.

Brittany: 42:49
Yeah, I have a little bit of experience with SurveyMonkey. I know it is that freemium plan. That is the software that Ryan Levesque talks about in that book. So that’s really—I was like, “Okay, I trust you. You’ve got this. You’ve done it before. I’m just going to follow what you’ve done.” There’s no reason for me to reinvent the wheel.

And I definitely do like all of those visuals. Now, I could go in and create those pie graphs and those visual cues in Excel. But I mean, let’s be honest—I don’t. That’s not time well spent for me.

Marie: 43:21
Absolutely.

Brittany: 43:22
Yeah. So I love using SurveyMonkey. I’ve yet to send out—I have it in the pipeline to send out a big survey to the sections of my audience because I really do want to find out more about them.

Because I’ve gathered a lot of information just by watching and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Productivity and spending my time well has been really top of mind for me. It’s something that I want to improve on going into next year.

And this is one way that I can really easily do that—by not focusing on the stuff that people don’t want, and only focusing on the things that people do want.

Marie: 44:02
Yeah, that’s true. But again, with your own creative spin and your own unique spin, so that you don’t feel stifled—I think that’s important as an artist or creative person.

Brittany: 44:15
Exactly. Yeah. I feel like when you feel forced to create something because somebody tells you to, it—one—takes all the fun out of it, but I swear it takes all of the creativity out of it too.

I feel like I have to power through a project that I didn’t come up with or that it wasn’t my idea. It just—it kind of removes that element out for me. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who experiences that.

Marie: 44:46
Yeah. And I think that that’s also something that can be sort of demotivating for the makers. So definitely, you know, not forgetting those things that you like.

I mean, you can also take the opposite approach, by the way, where you can make things that you enjoy, and then you have to find the audience that happens to share the same interests as you. That might be a little bit more work though.

So it’s not to say that that way can’t happen. It’s that you then have to do—kind of like reverse engineer—the research.

Brittany: 45:20
Yeah. Sort of attract your audience rather than serve them.

Marie:
Yeah.

Brittany:
Yeah. Definitely a different approach. Man, we’ve covered so much here. This has been so insightful for me—I know for sure—going into some of those surveys to dig in.

I want to talk a little bit about your book here, because I know it’s going to have a big impact on—well, me, first of all. So thank you for providing me with a copy. I know I’m definitely going to use it and take a lot of information from that and use that for my 2019 strategy.

But I know so many others can use it as well. And like we said before, it’s great for designers, but I feel like there are some tips in here that makers could follow as well.

So first of all, tell us again what the title of the book is and when and where the listeners can have access to it.

Marie: 46:15
Sure. It’s called Design It, Promote It, Sell It: Online Marketing for Your Crochet and Knit Patterns. And basically, it’s available in a few places. It’s available on Amazon, so you can just search for it on Amazon as an e-book, and it will shortly be also available as a print book there.

And then it’s also available—you can find it through my website. So you can go to creativeyarnentrepreneur.com/designit and you would be able to find how to get it there as well. I have a PDF version too, so for people who prefer to have it where they can easily print out the checklists and the worksheets, that’s an option also.

Basically, what the book does—like you said, Brittany—it starts with just kind of an overview of marketing. A lot of us are creative folks; we don’t necessarily know that much about marketing and the different terminology. So it kind of breaks down all the things we’ve been talking about: about your customer, but also about your company, your brand—all these different things.

And then it talks a lot about how to promote your patterns online. So looking at different venues online—whether they’re social networks or other kinds of places online—that you might want to promote your patterns, and why promoting patterns might work in each of those different settings, and also how it might work in those settings.

Then there’s a section on what to actually post online. A lot of people know that when they have a new pattern, they should say something about that—but what do you do the rest of the time?

So there’s a whole list of things. These are the kinds of things you can post online, and here are some examples that are all specific to crocheting and knitting. People can sort of say, “Okay, these are the things I can do.” I can post—like you said—we can poll our audience, I can share news or a funny story, I can do a behind the scenes, Here’s where I crochet at home, you know, that kind of stuff. So there’s a bunch of examples there.

And then a whole section on analytics, like we talked about today—really digging into that information so you can figure out actually how to find out if what you’re doing is working. So do you need to change something or keep it the way that it is?

And that section I think is helpful for folks who have never really checked under the hood to see if all the things that they’re doing are working.

And then in the PDF edition and in the print edition, there’s a bunch of questionnaires and checklists. In the Amazon e-book, there’s not the questionnaires, but there are some checklists as well.

Those are things that are going to help you ask questions about your own business, but also checklists like all the things you can do when you have a new pattern out to try to promote it. You know, which Facebook groups you should or shouldn’t post to, what are the rules of different groups—that kind of thing.

So there’s different checklists that you can use that just make it a little bit easier to get into the routine of doing the same stuff every time you have a new pattern out.

Brittany: 49:18
Wow. So it’s very comprehensive. It sounds like a great roadmap or tool for somebody to use going into the new year saying, “Okay, it’s October, we’ve got three months to the end of the year to plan out our strategy for 2019.”

And if you’re like me and you need to have something either in hand or something that you can take notes on or with, this sounds like it’s going to be the tool to sort of help you plan out your entire content calendar for the year.

Marie: 49:51
Yeah, I think it could definitely help with that. I mean, that’s—because I work full time and I don’t have so much time that I can devote to my pattern life—I do use a lot of checklists.

Because, you know, if I have a busy day at work, I might forget to do something. So I want to make sure I know that, okay, first I’m going to do this, then I’m going to do this, then I’m going to do that.

Because otherwise, in the past when I kind of winged it, what would happen is I might make a great pattern and like never post it to Pinterest or tell anyone about it. And then I would wonder, “Why is nobody visiting this pattern?” And then, you know, like a year later, I’ll realize I never shared it, you know?

So for me, the checklist—it’s helpful. And I think people that are, you know, parents or they just have other stuff going on in their life that isn’t only pattern design, it helps to organize it so you can make sure you’ve done all the steps that work for you.

Brittany: 50:44
Yeah, I can totally relate to that. I live by checklists. I have checklists everywhere.

I use Google Keep for like my personal stuff or like if I’m going grocery shopping or running errands for the day. I use CoSchedule to be able to give me a checklist for every project type—whether it be a podcast episode or a pattern—and that’s worked really well.

If I didn’t have my checklists, I would—first of all—not be very productive, but I would forget so much. I just can’t trust my memory. I’ve got so many things running through my mind at any given point. And I know a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, can really relate to that.

Marie: 51:21
Yeah, definitely. There’s just so many things and it’s like—did you do them all, or the ones that are most important? You know, I think that’s why checklists really help.

Brittany: 51:30
Very much. Well, Marie, thank you so much. You—I mean, honestly—you’ve blown my socks off again.

I know this episode is going to help so many people, but also be very pillar content-like, so that people can listen to this in the future and still get some great value out of this.

So I appreciate that so much—your time and the effort that you put into this book and being able to share it with my audience, because I know it’s going to help them. So thank you.

Marie: 51:59
Thank you. I really appreciate you having me on again. And it’s always a pleasure to talk with you and your audience.

Brittany: 52:06
All right. Now, I hope you are as jazzed and energized as I am about what you just heard.

Even if you’re not planning an entire year ahead, just take it one month at a time—or perhaps even one quarter at a time.

Do you know the types of projects or the content that you’ll be creating in January, February, and March of next year? That’s one quarter out, and I challenge you today to think ahead and figure out the types of patterns that you want to create in those three months.

First of all, figure out what’s doable for you. Can you do one pattern a month? Can you do two patterns a month? Once you get that squared away, then try some of the strategies that Marie mentioned here on the show and in her book to figure out exactly what your specific audience wants, what they expect from you, and use that to guide your creativity to figure out the projects that you’re going to create in those three months.

Alright? Good.

Now, Marie and I mentioned several different resources throughout our chat. A couple of them that came up were SurveyMonkey, Google Sheets—all the things. Well, don’t worry, I have those over on the show notes page.

And for this episode, it’s BHookedCrochet.com/session084.

And by the way, I will also have a link to where you can get a copy of Marie’s book on that show notes page because I know this is something you’ll probably want to get your hands on.

And lastly, a big thanks to Red Heart again for sponsoring today’s show. Perhaps in your planning strategy for January, February, and March—Q1 of next year—perhaps you can incorporate Hygge into that strategy.

I promise you, this is a yarn that is so, so cool, so soft. You have to try it. Even if you just check it out in stores, you definitely want to give this yarn a squish.

I’ve seen this yarn over at my Joann store, but you can also, of course, order it directly from RedHeart.com.

And another great reason for you to check it out on RedHeart.com is because on that yarn page, they have a collage of different patterns that use Hygge. So you can sort of get some inspiration on the type of project that this yarn is good for.

So once again, you can check out Hygge at RedHeart.com. And if you have any questions whatsoever about this yarn, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email. I’ve used this yarn quite a bit. I’ve worked a fairly large project with it, and I’m very well versed in Hygge.

Okay, so that’ll do it for today, guys. Thank you so much. Once again, it’s always a pleasure. I look forward to seeing you in another episode next week. I’ll see you there. Bye for now.