7 Creative Ways to Promote Your Printables

Creating and selling printables is one of the best ways to build an online business. Most printables are quick to create, especially if you know hacks and shortcuts to use.

However, selling printables is a different story. If nobody knows about your products, you’re not going to make money selling them. It won’t matter if your products are beautiful and useful or if your Etsy shop has the best name. No promotion equals no sales.

The good news is that there are tons of interesting and creative ways to promote your printables. Here are 7 of my favorites for you to try.

#1: Create a Product Roundup Post

If you’ve got an online shop, then you may want to consider creating a product roundup post. You should choose a type of product (say, journal pages or educational worksheets) and do the legwork to find the best products available. Of course, you should include your own products and link to them.

Once the post is complete, reach out to the shop owners whose products you’ve featured. Explain that you’ll be publishing the post. Ask if they’d be willing to share it with their followers. The chances are good that some of them will say yes – and just like that, your printables have reached a whole new audience!

#2: Go Hang Out with Your Audience

One of the mistakes I see people making is marketing their products in the wrong places. It might be fun to hang out with other printables creators online, but you should remember that they’re your competition. You can share war stories, for sure – I do it too! – but you shouldn’t assume that they’re going to buy your products.

A better way to promote your printables is to find the places where your target audience hangs out. If you’ve got a bullet journal to promote, join a bullet journaling group on Facebook, create a bullet journal board on Pinterest, or comment in a forum for people who journal. They’ll be far more likely to buy your products than other publishers will. My favorite thing about this technique is that it’s free.

#3: Run a Contest (the Right Way)

Everybody loves a contest or giveaway, and hosting one is a great way to get people to buy your products. However, it’s important to set up your contest the right way.

Since only one person will win the big prize, I suggest the following:

• Make it very easy to enter the contest: leave a comment, like a post, etc.
• Create and post clear rules
• Designate a top prize
• Provide a discount code to everybody who enters

The last item is important because it’s a huge incentive for people to enter. There’s still a grand prize winner but ultimately, everybody gets something they want. And people who get that discount code are going to want to use it, making it a huge win for you.

#4: Create a Pre-Launch Event/Video

If you’re selling products on Etsy, you’ll have a better chance of being seen if you have a big sales launch. One of the best ways to accomplish that goal is to get people excited and curious about your new product before it launches. Remember, people often need several “touches” from a company or product before they buy it.

Research shows that most people prefer to learn about new products from a video, so I recommend including video as part of your pre-launch event. You can also offer sneak previews of your product, give away a freebie, and blog about your new product before the launch. The goal is to get as many people looking forward to your product as possible.

#5: Allow Pre-Orders

This promotion tip is related to the last one and I suggest combining them for the best results. When you allow people to pre-order your new product, it drives sales and increases the chances that your product will be featured on whatever platform you’re using to sell it.

If you create a pre-launch video, put a clickable call to action at the end where people can pre-order your product. You can also blog about and include a link to the order page, send an email to your list, and share it on all your social media accounts.

#6: List a New Product on Etsy

Not every new product needs to be a new release – and releasing a new product on Etsy is a great way to sneakily promote to people who have liked your products in the past. You probably know that when you favorite a shop or product, you’ll see their products in your Etsy feed.

Well, if you list a new product in your shop – even if it’s just an updated version of an existing product – your item will be shown to everybody who has favorited your shop and products. Etsy doesn’t allow direct promotion, but this hack makes it possible for you to do an end-run around the lack of advertising and promote your products. (One quick way to make a product new is to take an existing product and make it evergreen. For example, you can take the dates off your journal pages and allow people to fill them in themselves.)

#7: Recruit Brand Ambassadors

When people love a product, they’re likely to recommend it to their friends. A brand ambassador is somebody who receives a free product in exchange for recommending it to their friends. You can recruit brand ambassadors and get them to talk about your products – and I think this is one of the best ways to promote printables.

For example, say you have a customer who has purchased dozens of your educational printables. When you launch a new product, you could reach out to that person and offer to send your new product for free in exchange for their help promoting it. This is a low-key form of influencer marketing and it can be very effective for promoting your printables.

Conclusion

Printables can be a highly profitable product to sell since they have low overhead and you don’t need to worry about shipping them. The 7 promotion ideas I’ve listed here will help you to get your printables in front of a new audience, increase your sales, and grow your online empire.