Why Pop-Up?
To PopUp OR Not? Once we hit Spring 2022, pandemic protocols have been lifted and pop-ups and markets are popping up everywhere! If my email traffic is any indication, popup season has come back with a vengeance.
If you’re a business owner on the fence about including popups as part of your business model, I encourage you to consider doing a few. Be strategic in the pop-ups you choose to do, but take into account that in addition to making money, participating in pop-up events gives you the opportunity to:
1. Meeting Your Customers IRL
While social media is great and allows me to talk to you guys daily, nothing beats meeting IRL. Just seeing our community together and enjoying the our booth/pop-up makes me so happy.
2. Network & Meet Other Business Owners
One thing I have learned over the years is that networking is everything! You never know who is in the room, what opportunities might present themselves or who might become a your new business bestie. So, when someone reaches out to me about participating in a pop-up; I always take the call. You just never know, if something doesn’t work out in that instance, you’ve made a connection and who knows where that can take you.
Also, I love to support my fellow small business owners so meeting them IRL too is always a fun time.
3. Grow Your Brand’s Awareness
Some pop-ups tend to see a crazy amount of foot traffic. Even if the people passing by your booth are not interested in buying your products, give them a promo card. Your promo card should tell your brand story, have your URL and social media handles. This way, new and potential customers can easily follow you on social media and stay in the loop. And who knows, they may decide to purchase from you when they need a graduation gift, birthday present, Christmas gifts, etc.
As you prepare for pop-up events, make sure you brand your booth well by displaying the name of your company in a prominent place, on your shopping bags and product packaging. The devil is in the details!
4. Making Memories & Content!
While it can be stressful to plan and execute your booth; you’ll be grateful you took the time to get it right. But give yourself grace, no one has perfected any of this. There will be things that go wrong, it happens every time. The key is learning to pivot and manage the situation. Each event is a learning experience, the more pop-ups you do, the more you learn which means that the next event will be even better than the last one.
And we all know that nowadays, content is king ….. today more than ever, business owners need to show up on social media. And right now that means making a lot of videos. Believe it or not, doing pop-up events is a great way to generate a lot of content that we use on Instagram, Pinterest, LikeToKnowIt, TikTok, our newsletters, and more! I’m still repurposing content I got from our Bryant Park pop-up in May.
My Thoughts On Pop-Ups
For more on perfecting the art of the popup, check out a recent interview I did with Alisa Gumbs for Black Enterprise’s Sister’s Inc. Podcast where we talk about how doing popups can help grow your business in ways you might not be able to imagine. You can find a snippet of the interview in our IGTV/video section, but to watch the entire interview, click here!
What do you think about markets and pop-up events? Are they worth it or not? Let me know in the comments!
Stylishly Yours,
Kalyn
This post contains affiliate links and I may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. Please see my disclosures for more information. Thank you so much for your support!
