Independent, small businesses often have a budget to work with when it comes to marketing and professional photography. Meaning, it's either done by members of the company themselves or small details are assigned and contracted out to professionals in order to keep costs down. While we've done commercials and photoshoots, (and have a few lined up that were excited to share!) we, too typically stick to a smaller scale advertising platform.
When we say we hand make and run all aspects of our business from start to finish, we mean it.
From hand picking gems and raw material like shark teeth and sea glass, to the design and production bench, to photographing, taking inventory, and uploading the product to the website, everything is done by our small yet powerful team.
We consider our social media outlets and website to be the artistic portfolio representing Elizabeth Sarah Collections. While social media draws people to the website, the website itself is meant to make the actual sales. The viewers first impression of both should make them want to take a closer look at our product, our mission.
In order to engage potential customers, the Elizabeth Sarah Collections website must be appealing on several levels.
On the homepage, you see a general idea of what we do, the brand, and products. First seen is the logo and a short bio with a photo of the product: handmade jewelry. We offer several direct links to the product pages, breaking down collections by category and several ways to view them.
With the company's Instagram linked, you can see our interactions with customers and followers, as well as a video that encompasses the Elizabeth Sarah Collections line.
However, as one travels deeper into the site, into selecting products and adding them to their cart to then making a purchase, the more streamlined we want the experience to be for the customer.
First, the photography, which is shot and edited by or team, must show off our product in an attractive way, while portraying the jewelry in natural lighting, as it would be on the customer.
So that there's no discrepancies when the customer receives their item, we label each gemstone, type of metal and material used and add precise measurements and dimensions. We also do our best to add photos of each piece on members of our team for a realistic view of how it looks on the body.
That also goes for our small batch collections, such as shark teeth, Atocha coin, and crescent necklaces. Each tooth, coin replica, and shell-based crescent vary from one another.
Whether it's the curve of a shark tooth, metal variation of an Atocha piece, or a green-blue Abalone versus a silvery-pink one, we try to capture all of these in several photos for each style, and encourage customers to reach out via LiveChat, email or any of our social media platforms if they want a specific piece from any of these small batch collections.
We also believe that each product should be presented so that any person might feel connected it in some way.
Elizabeth pours her entire heart into each piece that's produced. She believes in the organic nature of expressing herself to, and with others. Every necklace, matching earring, ring and bracelet design was drawn from a connection Elizabeth felt with Mother Nature.
Through detailed descriptions, blogs, captions etc., that recount her take on colors, scenery, and emotions that inspire her creations, we hope to ignite the same spark in our customers.
Elizabeth has a lifetime of personal experiences that have inspired her handmade jewelry line, and that has helped the collections evolve into what they are today.
Maybe the sunset the night of your wedding resembles the colors of a necklace made with dreamy Peach Moonstone and Citrine, or our signature shark tooth necklaces remind you of your vacation to Australia and snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef.
Creating a true relationship between ourselves and our clients is how we intend to reach our global target market, as we do with in-person sales.
Reaching customers all over the world with an online presence is harder than it seems, don't get me wrong, and that's why our team takes our time with each and every product we upload to this website.
Like I said before, we photograph every piece of jewelry ourselves, and it's taken Elizabeth years of nailing down the right lighting conditions, props, and camera techniques.
We're not professional photographers, but I think we do a pretty damn good job at capturing the essence of our craft.
We play around with seasonal colors, decor, and current themes, often doing research and practice shots to nail the best image possible.
Since we use such an array of colors and material, this can take up hours of our work week for just a few product shots.
It can be difficult to take such high quality images without making them look like stock images from Pinterest, but we do our best with our combined knowledge about photography and marketing.
Outsourcing these types of jobs may be easier and more budget friendly for some companies, so that their employees can focus on the task, product, or service at hand.
However for an independent company whose employees run on the idea of passion over profit, this d-i-y style works for our multi-tasking, creative and dynamic team.
I'm not saying one day we won't have a whole marketing division of Elizabeth Sarah Collections, but right now it feels right to continue the tradition of keeping everything within the business of handmade and homegrown.
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