This is a Guest Post by Cathy Presland. Cathy Presland teaches entrepreneurs to grow their business doing what they love. She specializes in helping you get known and generate income online. You can also follow her on Twitter.

Selling creative products isn’t the same as selling a business or a financial product. While we know that people buy on emotion and justifies with logic sometimes we creative entrepreneurs find it harder to find a language or a sales process that suits our product.

You’re often selling an experience. You’re creating joy. Art. Beauty. Inspiration even.
And I know from working with creative entrepreneurs that we put more creative energy into what we create – the products or services – than we do into the sales part of the business – the part that actually gets your brilliance out into the world.

We either see the business as something separate – maybe even less important? Or we are pulled by the urge to create that we move on before we perfect the business process – that all important sales funnel.

So we think it’s enough to have an online shop, a sales page, a buy now button.

But it’s not. And there is always more you can do to sell more of your stuff.

So I want to give you three areas where you can focus your creativity on the sales and marketing – and in a way that fits your creative spirit, not what you might have been taught in the business books (if you’ve even read any!).

Ways that aren’t just about monitoring conversion rates and optimizing your sales pages – not that these aren’t important – but I suspect they are not what inspires you day to day? Here goes:


Tip One: Always be making offers

Wherever you are, always be making offers. Ask yourself, what can I offer to this person, this organization, this space.

Can I offer to create a bespoke piece of work, to consult or partner with them, to train them? Can I offer a party, a demonstration, an event? Don’t be bound by your regular products or services. Just make an offer in as many situations as you can.

Why? Well two reasons: first of all you will get used to making offers and this is a critical business skill. You will become comfortable with the idea that people say no and it doesn’t reflect on you. Although you’ll also get better at it!

And secondly you never know what your market is looking for and when a great idea might strike. Maybe there is a market for your original work rather than your print? Maybe people are more interested in being trained than being served by your ebook? You don’t know until you try.


Tip Two: Put as much creative energy into your marketing and sales as you put into the creative process

The thing about creative works is that they are best seen and experienced – not just on a sales page on a website. So be creative about how you offer your works for sale. Make the sales process itself an experience. Make it a reflection of the work rather than medium you’re selling through.

Can you do live demonstrations – parties, shows, events, exhibitions?

Can you use online engagement through teleseminars or webinars? It’s not unusual to get conversion rates in excess of 20% on a teleseminars or webinar – much better than the 2% you might get on your sales page. Worth a thought?

And how can you be creative in your marketing? I think video is such a fabulous method of making the creative process more real. Let your potential customer experience how you work and what you create. Look at the Theo Jansen’s work for example.




Or maybe you can go the humor route like the ‘Will It Blend’ videos for the blender company Blendtec reportedly increasing web traffic and sales by 700%.



So think about the experience you can create when you are making offers to customers and bring your energy here as well as to the product itself.


Tip three: How can you get others to promote for you?

One of my colleagues used the phrase recently that “Selling ‘we’ is easier than selling me”. And for creative entrepreneurs what better acknowledgment that to get others to help us spread the word about what we do and make money while they do it?

This could include getting an agent, working with partners, using affiliate, going wholesale with your business rather than selling direct to the customer.

But the dream of getting others to sell for us isn’t always as easy as it looks.

And if you do affiliate marketing through e-junkie especially, then I’m going to recommend you pay some attention to your numbers. Do you know what percentage of traffic to your sales page converts? Have you optimized it? Because now you are selling your process to affiliates rather than selling your products to the end user.

So – think about it: where can you:

- make more offers?
- make your offers more creative?
- get others to sell for you?

I’d love you to leave a comment below on what’s sparked your interest – what you already do that you can share with the community here and what you want to try out next.