Marketing Your Market: Tips For Happy Vendors

My advice as a business consultant based on my experience as a vendor.

In the past 20 years I have attended, vended, worked, and organized more market style events than I care to remember. Since I have started working markets regularly in this burgeoning market market I have seen a lot of really great work by organizers, and a lot of missed opportunities. So I am making a short list of tips, trick, ideas, and resources that can help make a market a success.

My little disclaimer is that I am a business consultant, not a lawyer or accountant, so verify with the relevant certified professional on those type of matters.

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE HOW MUCH WORK THIS IS: Creating a community resource is rewarding, but also a whole undertaking on its own. You will not be able to run a successful market alone. You will need a community of support. This is also an event planning operation which requires logistical, communication, and marketing skills. Without even one of those elements, you will be spending your time burning yourself out without real benefits.

Get a website: There are so many free ways to put together a basic one-page site with your market information. If you are serious about building something lasting, invest your time in this. Not everyone you want to reach will be on the platform you prefer, so make the information accessible to anyone who might want to be a shopper or vendor. Of course, if you need help with building a site, I am HERE for that.

Know your draw: Is you market depending on available foot traffic? Are you conveniently located? If not then you will likely need to have a draw aside from your amazing vendors. Live performances, contests, community events, whatever aligns with your market niche. Make it worth it to the shoppers to come and to leave wanting to come back even if they didn’t leave with merchandise. You aren’t just attracting today’s customers; you are building a long-term relationship with the community. If you can find an established community event that is interested in hosting your market, that will benefit both of you.

Manage your time: Make sure to schedule out all of the logistics of your event, including when vendors will be notified of acceptance, the deadline for vendor fees, notifications of map layout and day of schedule. Let your vendors know this schedule. Your vendors are all juggling their own business, including the logistics of other markets. The more scheduled and streamlined your contacts with them are, the easier it is for them and the more they will want to be a part of your market. There are free and paid apps to help you with scheduling your workflow. I use Asana and Google Workspace. And for goodness sake, blind copy the vendors on emails if you aren’t using an email marketing platform.

Get day of help: I have seen a lot of really great ideas flounder because market organizers run a one person show AND vend at their own market. If you are vending at your own market, make sure to have at least one person available during the day BESIDES yourself to deal with vendor issues as they come up, including watching for vendor communications via email and text, and to walk the market making sure the shoppers are finding their way. This may mean a volunteer if your market is new, but if it is a volunteer, make sure that you are a cause worth contributing to. Consider offering your volunteers merchandise gift bags or some gift in kind to help them feel appreciated. And if at all possible, PAY THEM. Check with an accountant to find out if they can be paid under a 1099 as an independent contractor.

You have to attract vendors AND shoppers: I have seen so many markets that are great at attracting vendors, but the day of there are no crowds. You have to dial in on who the market shoppers are, and it IS NEVER EVERYONE! You have a target market, you have a niche whether you know it or not. You are wasting your time trying to attract everyone because that sort of marketing attracts no one.

• Curate your vendors: A good mix of experienced and new vendors is a good thing. Curate for quality of product, style, aesthetic, variety, whatever will help you attract your market. Make space for emerging artists and those from historically oppressed groups.

• Know your competition and market position: What other events are happening on the same days as yours? What similar markets happen on other days? There is always an opportunity to collaborate. Market shopping is new to some customers, and collaborating with other markets helps build the habit of shopping local. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Leverage your vendors to reach your shoppers: A lot, a LOT of market organizers expect the vendors to do their marketing and then don’t give them the tools to do it. You have to create a plug and play marketing plan and educate your vendors about how to use it.

• Provide printable flyers in a PDF file. If you are doing quarter sheets give them a file that is letter size with 4 images on it, ready to print. Make available a color option and a black and white option. The file should should be accessible, so put it on a website for easy download, so they don’t have to go searching back through their email chain to find it. Encourage your vendor to only post in designated areas with permission. Community bulletin boards are still everywhere and many could use some interesting flyers.

• Facebook: Create a page for your market and create a Facebook event for each market. Your vendors can share this on their business and personal pages, and every time a person marks that they are interested your event then has the potential to be seen my that person’s connections.

• Instagram

  • Make sure your market has a professional profile.

  • Create easy to read graphics and share them on Instagram.

  • Follow your vendors: share their posts in your story, but don’t tag them in posts unless it is a featured post. That’s my own social media etiquette preference, I feel spammed by massive tagging, and others may also, which can get you blocked, etc.

  • Feature your vendors: Have them share with you the images THEY want so they can feel best featured. Make sure to tag them in featured posts and give plenty of context in your caption. If they have hashtags, they regularly use include those in a comment on your featured post.

  • Collaborate on posts: Instagram has a feature called “Collaborate” which makes a post

Screenshot of Instagram Post

Screenshot from Instagram

show up in the feed of all the collaborators who accept. You can find by going to the “tag people” option, tagging the accounts of people who you want to collaborate with on a post. The invitation will show up in their notifications, and you will be notified when they accept. You will likely have to teach your vendors how to use this feature and may want to DM them to let them know they were featured and tagged. Once they accept your post will show in the feed of your followers AND their followers.

• Use a social media scheduler.

  • If you are using Facebook and Instagram, Meta Business Suite is free and allows you to schedule most kinds of posts.

  • Pay attention to the timing of your posts.

Have realistic set up and takedown times: For example, if parking is limited, vendors will need extra set up time to manage parking and waiting to unload. I can’t list every possibility but run through what that will look like and consider obstacles and how to overcome them.

If you are operating without permits have a plan: I would of course not endorse this, BUT if you aren’t permitted, your vendors need to know this. It is unethical to take vendor money without them knowing the status of your event. If they are paying you in advance and you get shut down on the day of for whatever reason you need to have a plan to manage that, how to deal with refunds, etc. Best practice is to be permitted or operate in a private space that has insurance to host events. But I am not a lawyer, so proceed under your own judgement, not mine.

Learn the laws:

• If you are having giveaways or raffles, there are state laws in California that set out guidelines about how to operate them.

• Make sure you know your liability in organizing a market, what that means for legal and insurance responsibility.

•  Look online and ask around for any local ordinances you might not have thought of. Regulators love to regulate.

Benefits and Fundraisers: Promising proceeds to a beneficiary such as a charity or operating as a fundraiser is great, but make sure your vendors know what it is so they can decide whether they want to participate or be affiliated. If it is a cause that people don’t know about or understand, then in addition to the regular promotions, you will need to take the time to help your potential shoppers understand why they SHOULD care. This will benefit your cause and increase the likelihood that it will motivate attendance.

Again, this is not an exhaustive guide to being a great market. If you do know where there is one, drop it in the comments. If you are a vendor, leave a comment with something great a market organizer did that made you want to keep working with them. And this isn't a forum to complain about my advice, I will just sweep you away.

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