TexasActual
Aaron Lawvere - Lawvere & Son Knife Co.
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2020
- Messages
- 14
I originally got into knife making as a personal desire to make my own. That expanded pretty early on to making knives for others in hunting and cutlery. I'd taken the leap to buy my mentor's knife business, and switch to a model where most of what I make is my own designs, and the rest is furnished by custom work.
Here's the thing. I got way more business doing purely custom work than my own designs. As a result, I've wanted to bolster my online presence to float my products to a wider audience. This is what I've found:
1. Google is VERY selective about what ads they'll approve for knives. If it has anything they deem a "weapon" you can count on it being rejected.
2. Facebook does not allow ads for anything except cutlery, and if you attempt to market your FB page, under review it'll get rejected if you sell anything but cutlery.
3. You may be able to fly under the radar for awhile, but if you advertise anything that they find against their TOS, they shadow ban you. What was a steady stream of followers trickled to nothing overnight. The only passive subscribers are by networking.
4. Most FB groups do not allow any type of cross posting from your FB page, providing your website link, or selling of any kind. The groups that do, are overly saturated and oft list personal manufactured knives over handmade.
All in all, there is definitely a large market for handmade or custom knives out there. It feeds the beast. But, with all of these avenues for marketing and advertisements drying up, what's surefire anymore? It appears to me that the only one is word of mouth anymore.
Have you encountered any of the same type of issues? How did you overcome it?
Here's the thing. I got way more business doing purely custom work than my own designs. As a result, I've wanted to bolster my online presence to float my products to a wider audience. This is what I've found:
1. Google is VERY selective about what ads they'll approve for knives. If it has anything they deem a "weapon" you can count on it being rejected.
2. Facebook does not allow ads for anything except cutlery, and if you attempt to market your FB page, under review it'll get rejected if you sell anything but cutlery.
3. You may be able to fly under the radar for awhile, but if you advertise anything that they find against their TOS, they shadow ban you. What was a steady stream of followers trickled to nothing overnight. The only passive subscribers are by networking.
4. Most FB groups do not allow any type of cross posting from your FB page, providing your website link, or selling of any kind. The groups that do, are overly saturated and oft list personal manufactured knives over handmade.
All in all, there is definitely a large market for handmade or custom knives out there. It feeds the beast. But, with all of these avenues for marketing and advertisements drying up, what's surefire anymore? It appears to me that the only one is word of mouth anymore.
Have you encountered any of the same type of issues? How did you overcome it?