If you’ve decided to make the leap to start your own candle business, or you’ve been in the craft for some time, you’ll need to stay on top of marketing in order for your business to grow. The candle industry is super saturated, worth about $7,162.83 million in 2020, and projected to reach $10,656.05 million by 2028. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a marketing expert to make your candle business stand out in such a bustling market. Success is attainable with the right marketing method. We’ve compiled a list of the most effective marketing strategies for candle businesses and gathered tools and resources to help you get started. Let’s jump right in.
First Thing’s First: Know Your Customer
The very first thing you need to consider, if you haven’t already, is your ideal customer. What’s their lifestyle? Where and how do they shop? Are they on social media? Build out customer profiles based on your target customer or customers, getting as granular as possible. By understanding your customers thoroughly, you’ll be able to develop a super effective marketing strategy that helps grow your business exponentially. With such a deep understanding of your customers, you’ll also be able to hone your offerings and serve your customers better. It’s a win-win!
Marketing Strategies for Candle Businesses
Here’s our list of the most effective marketing strategies for candle businesses. Keep in mind you don’t have to use all these methods to see results. Even if you just utilize one or two of these strategies, your efforts won’t be going to waste.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is by far one of the most powerful marketing channels today. Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube all have about two billion active users each, with TikTok closing in with a little over one billion active users. Those are massive potential audiences!
Beginning a social media campaign can feel a little overwhelming, especially with constantly changing algorithms and fickle followers. However, you can build a strong customer base using certain strategies on social media. The key to a great social media marketing strategy is engagement.
By engaging with your followers, whether you’re replying to comments, making polls in your stories, or sharing user-generated content, you are creating a conversation with new and current customers. Southern Elegance Candle Company, a long-time customer, boosted their sales and brand awareness by engaging with customers on their social media profiles. Southern Elegance displays a genuine interest in their followers, whether they have been around a long time or just started following that day. That type of engagement with their audience fosters a positive association with their brand and establishes a connection with consumers that goes beyond a mere purchase.
Start small with social media marketing. Share pictures of finished products, your workspace, and any relatable content related to your business. Instagram Reels are an excellent way to get in front of users who may not follow you, so start by sharing videos of your candle-making process. Developing a cadence or schedule for your posts is one of the easiest ways to make sure you’re sharing content regularly. Tools like Buffer and Hootsuite allow you to create and schedule several posts at a time, which means you can spend an hour or two compiling content once a week instead of worrying about it every day.
Content Marketing
Your website is one of the most important marketing tools in your belt. If you don’t have a website already, hit pause on this blog and go get a website! Seriously. Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify are all fantastic, easy-to-use platforms that can help you create a website in no time.
Got your website? Great. Now it’s time to add content.
Add content to your website in the form of product pages, an about page, your blog, and of course your homepage. Make sure the content is well-written, informative, accurately represents your brand, and is of course search engine optimized. Content with great search engine optimization (SEO) means that it is more likely to appear on the first page of Google. So, when potential customers are looking for candles, they’re more likely to find your company.
Here’s the thing: writing content is hard. And writing content that also appears in search results can be even harder. If you’re a decent writer, there are tools out there that will help you create fantastic content for your candle business that brings traffic to your website. Apps like Grammarly not only correct your grammar mistakes, but also suggests ways to improve your writing so it is clearer and more compelling. Semrush is another invaluable tool that will audit your site for SEO and suggest improvements. Semrush also boasts many other tools, like keyword research and management, traffic analysis, and more.
If all that sounds a bit complicated to you, you’re not alone. The good news is that there are many SEO and content experts out there that can help get more traffic to your site.
Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing boasts a huge return on investment if done correctly. In fact, Litmus recently reported that email marketing has a ROI of $36 for every $1 spent! There are a number of ways to use email marketing for your candle business, each with their own benefits. Use email marketing to promote your candles or your content, build relationships through sharing exclusive content, foster sales by offering subscriber-only discounts, and more.
Cantrip Candles has a fantastic bi-monthly newsletter that showcases specific candle offerings, hints at new projects in the works, shares discount codes, and more. Best of all, they keep the emails simple and straightforward, omitting flashy formatting and HTML. The Cantrip Candles newsletter is a great way for the company to connect with their customers who are already members of the strong tabletop roleplaying community.
Numerous email marketing platforms exist to help you in this endeavor, like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and Klayvio to name a few. Most email marketing software should allow you to customize the look of your emails, organize your audiences into specific groups, and track open rates so you can gauge the success of your campaigns. Prices range for each software, so shop around to find the best email marketing platform for your candle business.
Great Packaging Design
The best way to stand out in a crowded market, whether in-person or digital, is to have amazing product packaging. In general, candles help make people’s spaces feel comfortable and look beautiful–an ugly or plain label will absolutely counteract that effect. Attractive product packaging, on the other hand, motivates customers to buy your candle and likely keep the vessel as a decorative piece.
The quality of the packaging itself also adds both interest and value to your product. High-quality label materials, like Black Vellum or Holographic Plastic, are beautiful canvases on which you can showcase your candle label design. A candle carton adds an extra layer of protection to your product while also showcasing an elevated dimension to your design.
You don’t even have to be a graphic designer to create beautiful product packaging. You can use programs like Canva to create stunning label and carton designs, or you can hire a designer to help with your design needs.
Great Success Awaits
With these super effective marketing strategies, your candle business is sure to see incredible growth. At Sttark, we love watching the success of businesses big and small, whether they’re startups or large operations. We can’t wait to see your candle business benefit from these marketing strategies.
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