5 Strategies to Stick Out In A Saturated Candle Market
Gaining the attention and trust of your ideal customer seems impossible at times. The candle making niche has grown substantially over the last decade causing many to wonder how they’ll stick out in a sea of wax melts.
Understanding what it takes to be heard requires understanding two key points about the market:
A saturated market isn’t inherently a bad thing. Consider the alternative – a completely untapped market. If you go around trying to get everyone’s attention with your new basket weaving products, you may get nowhere.
Why?
Basket weaving isn’t something anyone wants. Candles live on the other side of the aisle, available around every corner. And people are buying them like hot cakes.
At times it feels like everyone you know is making candles, especially during uncertain times when education is actively expanding and people are looking for something to do inside. This is fine, but the saturation in supply means the average skill level and product quality of a candle has diminished too.
The second key point about the market is understanding that unique and original product ideas are less important than delivering value. Nothing about candle design is new. Even with new waxes and fragrances, you’re still making candles.
While maintaining product identity is incredibly important (more about that below), your ability to create valuable experiences for a single customer is how you’ll build loyalty.
If Joe and Sue both made the exact same candle and sold it, nine times out of 10 the customer will return to whoever made their experience and time more valuable. The timer starts once you’ve made any sort of impression on the customer, which could an ad or even word of mouth evangelism.
Here’s FIVE strategies for gaining the attention and trust of your customer’s in a saturated niche.
1. Create Interesting Fragrance Oil Blends
While being unique isn’t nearly as important as adding value, you can do both by creating interesting fragrance oil blends.
Read more about blending fragrance oils here.
The most saturated part of the candle making market buys all their supplies from the same primary suppliers. While they do offer great materials, eventually it all catches up and everyone ends up creating some form of Library in their product line.
It’s not bad, especially if you present it well, but it’s all been done before.
Creating a blend that represents your brand goals immediately puts you in your own corner of the market – no one else has that scent! Instead of offering the common floral, fruits, and woodsy scents you can establish a brand line with more sophistication and character. Smells that take a second to figure out and leave allure, mystery, and intrigue with your people.
Cold throw sells, hot throw keeps them coming back. Don’t forget that!
2. Spur Community Engagement With Your Digital Presence
A lot of small shops assume having an active social media account (or website) puts them where they have to be, but they forget a key word in social media.
Social.
Posting the same candle pictures time and time again won’t set you apart, but social selflessness will!
Here’s a few tips for building an inviting digital presence:
- Thoughtfully plan out post types focused on what your work does for your customers, and trim back the amount of self-centered promotion. No one cares that much about your accomplishments. Figuring out the balance between those two for your audience is key to capturing their attention.
- Stick to a theme – fonts, colors, layouts. It can vary, but it should all tie back to a central idea. If you don’t have this figured out, start with a primary color, secondary color, and a shade of grey or white in your designs. Visiting your page or website should reveal a common design thread that extends to your products. Just visit Harlem Candle Company to see what that means.
- Engage outside your page. If you never leave your page and comment, like, or engage with other brands or customers, you’ve reduced your work to just “media”. Social media works best when you play well with others. Just remember candle making is #CommunityOverCompetition. Many customers are buying multiple candles and brands – there’s plenty of market share for everyone!
3. Foster Loyalty Among Your Tribe
If you ignore every other piece of advice but execute this one well, you’ll still do fine!
Think of the customer experience, not just customer service. You can build the customer’s journey through three stages. Each one requires a different skill set.
- Finding
- Closing
- Keeping
Finding is how you draw your customers in. The initial attention you receive from them to draw them to your service. It could be outreach on social media, an advertisement, or even a face-to-face networking event. It’s the first contact your brand has with anyone.
Closing is how you make the sale. Building an experience that makes it easy for the customer to make a decision and understand what they’re potentially getting into. How well you craft your storefront and your sales funnel is part of this.
Keeping is often forgotten or shoved behind automated emails. This leg of the journey is your brand’s personal follow-up with the customer 3 – 6 months after a sale. The intent of this interaction is to bring them back, but conducting followup actions, whether it’s a call or email, shouldn’t be done with any expectations.
“Hey, just wanted to check in and see how everything is with the candle! Give us a shout if you need anything – we’d love to treat you to a discount if you liked what you bought and want more.”
4. Build An Interesting Product Line
Although being unique and original isn’t as important as adding value, it still has a place.
If you’re pumping out Generic Candle No. 3 again, month after month, you’re doing nothing to set yourself apart. Your candles need something about them to distinguish them from the competition, especially if you’re up and coming.
Even with a magnificent scent, how will your customer’s remember where your candle came from? Consider the Golden Hour candle from P.F. Candle Co. – it has a few things going for it:
- The collection it comes from shares a theme
- Container design is unique
- Scent has an original name
- Photography is exceptional
Put your candle on a mental shelf with 300 other candles – can you even find it?
5. Tell A Story Built On A Mission
It’s relatable and inspiring if your customer knows their purchase feeds into something bigger. A story isn’t necessarily your history, but your mission. Not “what”, but “why”.
Why are you making candles? Who are you serving? When someone buys a candle from you how does it impact them? The world? Community?
You don’t have to feed the children with 10% of every sale to have a compelling mission statement. As long as your reason for existence is halfway interesting, you’ve outdone a fair number of other makers on the market that just want to “light up the world”.
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