Soap marketing starts with a clear buyer, a useful offer and a plan for following up. Choose activities you can track through to product enquiries and orders. If a new launch also needs a production plan, compare our manufacturing options for your next soap line.
Soap Marketing Strategy: Thinking Before Doing
Planning for Everything
Business plans are indispensable and a must. Marketing plans are separate from business plans. They’re also a must. The ways in which marketing plans can be expressed and applied are numerous. The plan itself can be reduced to three things:
Use a soap line launch plan to connect your marketing budget with inventory and production.
- Generating leads
- Following up with leads
- Being consistent with #1 and #2
Vision Takes Shape
If you’ve done your work in order, you began with a vision of who and what you want to be. You developed that vision to the point that you know where your products should appear and how they should look. Now it’s time to get those products into your customers’ hands.
Lead Generation
Part of any business is nurturing sales. If you’re selling your soap at a crafts fair or farmers market, you’ll find that some people buy from you right away and some people take their time. Some will come back the next day. Some will wait even longer and look you up online (which is why it’s necessary to be online). Leads are people who express interest in your products and represent potential sales. Not all leads are immediate sales.
For those who aren’t, you need a way to follow up. You need contact information. For small businesses, lead generation without lead capture is the same as no lead generation at all. Without incentive, though, most people are cautious about giving out contact information. Incentives help. Offering potential customers the chance for an online coupon to be used on their next purchase is one example.
Understanding lead generation means you don’t have just one chance with a customer. Not making an immediate sale isn’t so bad if you have the ability to follow up.
Follow Up
Here’s some sobering news. No matter how much you love your product and your business, no matter how hard and long you work, it’s frighteningly easy for people to forget you. Even if you’ve made a good first impression, once people get back to their lives and businesses, without follow up you’ll become an ever more distant memory.
You’ve already determined how you want to appear in your marketing. This knowledge will guide how you follow up, whether it’s through email or a hand-written thank-you postcard. Don’t underestimate the power of the personal touch. Personally written emails can make a big difference. If your email list is long and you rely on an email service (MailChimp, Constant Contact, Infusionsoft), make sure your emails don’t sound automated. Make sure they sound like you. Capturing and following up on leads is at the core of your marketing. You need to do it, but you also need to do it well. Like any aspect of your marketing, individual follow ups are an opportunity to convince them you’re the one.
Consistency
This is the key to the whole process. Keep at it. Don’t Stop. The often-cited Rule of Seven says that customers need to see your message seven times before they buy. Whether or not seven is the magic number, transforming prospects into customers takes time. And, in truth, it’s more doggedness than magic. Knowing this gives you an edge. Being aware that marketing takes time means you won’t question yourself unnecessarily when it does. You won’t pull the plug on your marketing, convinced it’s not working. You’ll be prepared, and won’t be distracted from the most important thing, keeping at it.
Soap Branding: Setting the Values and Personality
Before you develop marketing materials and sales strategies, you need to answer these questions: Where do you see your brand appearing? Where do you see your soaps being sold? Who are your customers?
Answers Lead to Clarity
When you answer those questions, really answer them, you’ll know how your marketing should look and sound. You’ll know how your product should be presented. You’ll know the venues and sales channels that are best for you, and you’ll know how much you should charge.
For natural soap business name ideas, start with the customer and the part of your range you expect to grow. Shortlist names that are easy to say and read on a small label. Check domain and trademark availability before you commit to packaging. Avoid a name that promises a treatment your product can’t support.
If you’ve already done your research and homework, you’re ahead of the game. If you haven’t, there’s lots to do, but there’s plenty of help out there. Many people have been where you are, including us, and there are lessons to learn from their experiences.
If you’re just beginning, if you know what you want to do, but not how to do it, here are some places to start:
- Look online for how soap is sold. Search for organic soap, natural soap, and herbal soap. Look at the images associated with your search.
- Look at packaging and logos, look at images and typefaces.
- If you see online as a sales possibility, make sure you know what you’re in for. Selling a product online that people are accustomed to smelling and holding presents unique challenges. Many of those challenges have been met before, and there's advice on how to start. Rebecca Dillon’s “Soapmaker’s Guide to Marketing Soap Online” provides precisely that kind of advice.
- If you’re convinced to pursue online selling, look at Pinterest and Etsy. Follow the links to soap sellers with an online store. You’ll probably see much that you don’t want to do, but you’ll get some good ideas, too. And it’s all a part of who you become.
- Make sure to look in natural food stores and skincare stores to see packaging and brand examples in person.
Ultimately, how you want to appear to customers will determine the images and text, even the colors you use. Whatever the details of your vision, marketing organic soap is different than marketing commercial products. You can’t just say things like “all natural ingredients” or “skin friendly” and expect your customers to believe you. They’ll be doing their research, so you better do yours.
We’ve learned that organic marketing has to start with the truth. Your mission isn’t to carpet-bomb the market with your soap. The purpose of your marketing is to find the people who should be buying from you, and who should keep buying from you. For organic marketing to be effective, several things need to be true. These three are the first among them.
- You need to be invested in your marketing.
- You need to love it in order for it to work. Love shows through.
- You need to be you. Genuineness is hard to define, but customers know it when they see it. Being flashy when it’s not who you are isn’t genuine. Neither is being earthy when that’s not you.
Selling organic soap gives you a great platform for marketing, but there isn’t just one way to do it. Some customers will find you at natural food stores and farmers markets. Others might find you at high-end skincare stores. They’ll find you in those places because that’s where they shop. The bigger the sales channel, the bigger the competition, but don’t underestimate the competition at any level.
Soap Marketing Ideas
Time to get practical. And creative! We're talking marketing, right?
Choose soap marketing activities around the buyer and the next order you want. Give each activity one offer, one audience and one result to track. Use a small test before you commit more budget. Use the plan below to decide what to prepare and measure.
| Activity | What to Prepare | What to Track |
|---|---|---|
| Retailer sample follow-up | A product sheet, case quantity and confirmed supply details | Replies, sample requests and opening orders |
| Ingredient education email | A factual explanation of one ingredient or certified claim | Product visits and orders from the email |
| Bundle test | A price checked against product and fulfillment costs | Money left per order after those costs |
| Reorder reminder | A message based on the customer’s purchase history | Repeat orders and unsubscribes |
For an Amazon launch, check the requirements for selling beauty products before you plan the campaign.
Bundle
A bundle can raise the value of an order, but check the money left after costs. Four bars priced at $5 each cost $20, so a four-bar bundle at $20 isn’t a discount. Compare the bundle price with product, packaging, payment and fulfillment costs. Use those figures to decide whether a discount is affordable.
Test the offer before applying it to the whole range. Compare the money left per order and the time needed to pack it. A larger order doesn’t automatically produce a larger profit.
Don’t Be Subtle
Too often, business owners think their customers are getting the message. In actuality, many times they’re really not. Next time you drive through your downtown, look at the various signs that local business have in their windows or on their sandwich boards. Do you really notice them? Can you actually read all the details? Usually, the signs just blend into the scenery.
So be simple and bold. Try to limit your sign or your email offer to one item only, and let it fill all the space. You’ll notice a difference in your sales when your marketing is simpler and bolder.
Educate Your Customers
Teach customers what’s in the soap and why those ingredients were chosen. Describe the scent, intended use and certification accurately. Organic certification doesn’t prove that a product will be better for every person’s skin.
Use claims you can support for the finished product. Avoid broad statements that synthetic ingredients are harmful. Keep disease-treatment claims out of ordinary soap marketing.
Use Video to Answer Product Questions
Use video when it helps customers understand the product. Show the actual bar size, packaging or use instructions. Check the date and audience behind any figures you take from Wyzowl before using them to justify your budget.
- Show the product and its packaging clearly.
- Answer a question customers ask before ordering.
- Track whether the video leads to useful product visits or orders.
If you’re looking for inspiration, check out our Botanie Soap YouTube channel.
Page Experience Affects SEO
Make sure shoppers can read the product information and complete an order on mobile. Use Google Search Console to review search performance. Check the store itself for slow pages, broken forms and checkout problems instead of relying on an old page-experience score.
Quality Links Matter
Choose retail and referral partners whose customers fit your products. Record which referrals produce enquiries and orders. A relevant partner relationship can be useful without making promises about search rankings.
Customer Service Keeps Clients Coming
Let’s face it: There are hundreds if not thousands of soap businesses operating in your region. Because of this, your customer care has to be straightforward, communicative and effective. No matter the quality of your product, if a customer has a question or concern and they can't get in touch with the brand owner, they'll get frustrated and spend their money elsewhere. A good way to ensure timely customer care is through conversation marketing like a live chatbot. Some soap business owners are active enough on social media to be able to handle their customer care through tweets and direct messaging. However, we suggest adding additional forms of contact, like an SMS text line, a phone number or a contact submission form on your business’ website.
Shift Your Focus Away From Content Length
As previously mentioned, user experience is becoming increasingly popular with Google’s algorithm updates. Since the focus is now shifting to the overall experience of the user, it's becoming less important to have the user sift through paragraphs of content and more important to give the user exactly what they came for. For example, a person doesn't need to read an 800-word article to learn how to tie a tie, and Google is beginning to recognize that. Google is becoming more concerned with the quality of the content the user is given, making content length less of a priority. Generally, there are other SEO strategies that are worth focusing on instead.
Here are four questions you should ask yourself when creating content for your soap business:
- Does it provide value?
- Is this article grammatically correct? Does it contain spelling errors?
- Are there proper keywords?
- Does the article value the reader’s time? Do they need this much information to get what they asked for?
Once you've accounted for these considerations, then you should consider your content’s length.
Marketing Tips From Botanie Soap
For soap marketing examples that present products and answer customer questions, visit our YouTube channel. Choose a format that helps your buyer decide what to order.