If you’re part of the marketing or management team at Pandora, Alex & Ani, or other top jewelry brand, you don’t need to read this blog post. It contains information you clearly already know. On the other hand, if you’re a jewelry brand or a designer working on building your brand who doesn’t yet have that level of national name recognition, keep reading.

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What makes a must-have brand a must-have? Having a great product isn’t enough. You can create the world’s most stellar jewelry, but without a concentrated effort to market and sell your designs, your brand will remain forever obscure. Top jewelry brands achieve their dominant position through a dual-focused approach: they aggressively market themselves, and they provide a significant amount of support to the jewelry retailers who carry their brands.

Why You Need To Help Jewelry Retailers Sell Your Brand

It may surprise you that jewelry retailers need your assistance selling jewelry. After all, if you’re running a jewelry store, selling jewelry should pretty much be your area of expertise. But you’re not asking a jewelry retailer to sell just any jewelry – you’re asking them to sell your jewelry. This changes everything.

Jewelry retailers have limited resources. This is especially true in terms of marketing budgets and manpower. However, some of the most necessary sales materials to promote fine jewelry take both time and money to create. The resources a jewelry retailer has available will be used to promote their own store first; individual brands are left competing for whatever scarce resources are left. The amount of support available to your brand may not be the amount of support your brand needs to make an impact in that geographic location. It’s nothing personal – it’s just math.

Types of Support Top Jewelry Brands Provide Retailers

Top jewelry brands provide their retailers with a significant amount of marketing support. This manifests in a number of ways. First and foremost will always be education: the more fully you inform your retailers about your jewelry’s features and appeal, the more effectively they’ll be able to hand-sell your line. In person support is also essential: coordinating trunk shows, especially when you send your rep (or even the designers themselves!) to the store can do a lot to drive sales of your line.

In terms of marketing support, today’s digital tools are just as – if not even more – important than traditional sales collateral materials like signage and pre-designed print advertising. Top jewelry brands provide their retailers with images, copy, and video that can be used on websites and social media. They create and share Facebook posts, Tweets, Pinterest Pins, Instagram posts and more for retailers to use; these materials may be connected to a current promotional campaign or serve as evergreen material that the retailer can share throughout the year.

If You Want to Be a Must Have Brand You Have To Do What The Must Have Brands Do

Providing your retailers with a significant amount of marketing support is an essential part of being a must-have jewelry brand. It’s the cost of doing business today – but there are definitely ways to make sure you’re getting the maximum bang for your buck. In the days and weeks to come, we’ll be sharing the smart, efficient way to support your retailers in order to boost your brand’s visibility and drive sales. Making additional use of the infrastructure you likely already have in place to promote your brand in order to support retailers will yield powerful results: the easier you make it for the stores to sell your jewelry, the more they’ll sell!