How to Reach New Customers

If you want to grow your business and increase sales, you'll need to reach new customers and educate them about your product(s). Here are some tried and true suggestions to help you reach new customers.

Social Media

Social media accounts are a great way for you to advertise your product(s) for free. Whether it's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, ArtStation, or any number of other social platforms, you can draw on a network of connections to see and share your posts. 

• Engage with your audience. If they have questions, answer them. If they compliment you, say "thank you". You can even repost or share their posts as a way of building positive, lasting relationships.
• Utilize hashtags strategically. When someone falls down the #3DArt rabbit hole, you want to be sure that you are right there with them (but only if your product is related to 3D Art). Add relevant tags to your posts so that they appear in searches and hashtag galleries. Not sure what some good hashtags would be? Look up products similar to yours and see what other creators are using.
• Include beauty renders or videos in your posts. A lot of people are on social media to be inspired or entertained. Including visuals either as the post itself (as on Instagram or ArtStation) or as additional content, may gain you some new views, followers, Blender Market shop visitors, and, ultimately, customers.
• Keep your message and branding consistent. If your avatars and wording are consistent across platforms, customers will be sure that the product they saw on Instagram is the same thing they saw on Twitter. This approach helps to build customer trust and confidence in both you and your product(s).
• Inform viewers about your products. A pretty picture may not get a customer to visit your Blender Market shop, but if you explain what your product is, how it might benefit them, and where they can find it, they will be more likely to click through.  
• Post regularly, but be sure to mix it up. Not every post should be focused on your product(s), front and center. Share sites or articles that your followers might find useful, give shout-outs to creators or platforms that you appreciate or use. Provide value to your followers by giving them juicy content that doesn't just encourage them to buy-buy-buy. This approach will also help your audience get to know you a bit better, and vice versa.

Affiliate Marketing

Are you familiar with affiliate marketing? The premise is that another person (the affiliate) directs customers to your product(s) and, in return, when a sale is made based on a referral that they sent your way, you share a portion of your profits with them. It is essentially a finder's fee. Affiliates can add links to your products anywhere they post—social media, blogs, YouTube, etc. Using affiliates to spread the word about your product(s) can be a great way to reach new customers.

News Sites

When you come out with a new product or update existing products, submitting a news item to a site like BlenderNation is an effective way to let a lot of people know. Think of it as a press release that goes out to a large group of people—tens of thousands, frequently—who are interested in products like yours. What should you write in your news item? A brief description of your product or product update and why it's unique. Some sites will also let you include images or videos. Be sure to link back to your product page on Blender Market so that interested readers can explore your product in more detail.

Donate to the Blender Development Fund

Have you seen the little red hearts next to product names? Those hearts mean that a portion of that product's proceeds go to the Blender Development Fund. All things being equal, some customers lean towards purchasing those products over others that do not share their revenue with the Dev-Fund. If you want to learn more about how to donate, and the difference that it makes for the software that you love, read What are the hearts about?