How To Get More Customers Into Your Quilt Store

The competition for quilt shops has reached a whole new level. Without knowing how to navigate this environment, shops are struggling. We will break down four key areas to help you succeed.

Friendly & Helpful Service

To get the best ratings, you need to be known as having the highest level of friendly service to everyone. Do it! Period. You may have to replace some employees, but this is paramount.

New Products

If every time your locals come into the shop, you have nothing new, they will stop coming back and you will fail. Have end-of-bolt sales, get rid of your old stuff, and put in new stuff frequently. Do it! Period.

Local Advertising

I know some shops look at advertising and for some reason or another tune out. I will tell you for certain this is key. Every single shop that has closed this or the above two points.

Local advertising is meant to keep your locals coming back. This involves engaging your locals to keep coming back (and bringing friends) with events, Facebook posts, and other local advertising. Post on Facebook new stuff in the shop, finished customer quilts, finished class projects, new classes, and anything else to bring them back in. For finished customer quilts, tag the person by name so it appears in their feed. They will share it with all their friends, which grows your following and thus your business.

Make arrangements with other local stores and restaurants to advertise each other on the door or the cash register. Have each talk about the other.

Advertise in local papers, business fliers, events, and event websites. Talk to your chamber to find groups in your area designed to help you grow and plug in.

National Advertising

Quilters who travel will often spend a lot of money in quilt shops. You will want to advertise your shop, shop hops, classes, and sales where these quilters are looking.

Ideally, make sure your local quilt guilds are advertising their next show on QuiltingHub.com, then you advertise a sale on QH during the same period plus and minus 1 day. If you can get all the other shops in your wide area to have a sale and post it on QH at the same time; quilters will STAY in town longer to partake in all of it. Your local restaurants and motels will make more money too from the tsunami of visitors. You will become popular with them and it becomes easier for the cross-advertising mentioned above and then all of this grows.

Now, if any one of you says you do not want to spend 27 cents a day to advertise and grow your business, you have lost the concept of growth and what it means. The QuiltingHub Network is the largest advertising network reaching more quilters than anything else. It is also the only one with the Travel Maps these quilters are using as they travel. If you are not willing to invest two coffees a month on YOUR business; you have already lost your business to those who have. Do it! Period.

QuiltingHub Advertising Tips:

• Have a great logo with your shop name in it.
• Post a sexy shop description.
• Post four sexy shop photos (including fabric in the center two photos). First photo should be of the outside of the shop, and the last should be happy students in a class, if you teach them.
• lYou have unlimited events including every event type, but you do not need to add all of them. The events with the most impact are shop shops and sales. The next are classes, but you do not have to add all of them either. Just add the short ones that are all in one day so visitors can stop in while visiting friends in the area. Ideally one that repeats so you enter it only once. Put in the text that you have more events on your website.ll
• You are entitled to on-call marketing advice from QuiltingHub with your monthly membership, so call if you have any marketing questions at all. For many shops, this is one of the key reasons as to why they joined.