Getting shoppers there

Most of your crowd will come from your vendors' followers, not yours. Ten vendors with a thousand local followers each reach far more people than one organizer account. Your job is to make sharing easy and give everyone a steady rhythm of posts.

Build the vendor social kit

Send the kit the day you accept a vendor, not the week of. The earlier they post, the bigger your crowd.

• A square post with the market name, date, hours and address.
• A vertical story graphic with space for the vendor's own logo.
• A short caption they can paste, with your market handle.
• A one line ask: post once when announced and once the day before.

Make the kit easy to use on a phone. Export the graphics as JPEGs, put them in one shared folder link, and paste the caption straight into the email so vendors can copy it without opening anything. Include your market handle and a short hashtag, and ask vendors to tag you so you can reshare their posts to your stories.

A simple posting plan

• Four weeks out: announce the market and the first vendors.
• Two weeks out: post the full vendor list and the food vendor.
• Final week: one vendor spotlight a day, with a product photo.
• Day before: a reminder with the hours and a map pin.
• Market day: live stories every hour, tagging vendors.

Vendor spotlights that work

A spotlight is one vendor, one great product photo and two lines about what they make. Use the photos from their application. Post in the morning or around lunch, tag the vendor, and ask them to reshare. Short vertical videos of a vendor packing their booth or showing a favorite item often travel further than a flat graphic.

Keep a simple content calendar so nothing slips. One row per day, with the vendor, the photo and the caption, written in one sitting two weeks out. Then posting each day takes five minutes. Rotate categories so the feed does not show three jewelry spotlights in a row, and save your strongest two vendors for the last two days, when shoppers are making plans.

Beyond social

Local community calendars, neighborhood groups and a few printed flyers at nearby coffee shops add foot traffic. Ask before you post a flyer anywhere. Free event listings on local calendars take ten minutes each and keep working until the day.

• Submit to two or three free local event calendars four weeks out.
• Post in neighborhood groups once, two weeks out, and again the day before.
• Leave flyers at five to ten nearby shops that said yes.
• Put a yard sign out front a week ahead if the venue allows it.

Word of mouth still does a lot. Ask friends, family and past customers to share the post and bring one person each. A text to 30 people who already like you can fill the first hour.

Paid ads, if you use them

A small paid push of $50 to $300 can help, but only after the free posts are working. Target a few miles around the venue, run it in the final 7 to 10 days, and use your best vendor photo, not a text graphic. Stop any ad that has not drawn clicks in two days and move the money to the one that has.

Give shoppers a reason to come early

A free gift for the first 25 shoppers, a limited drop from one vendor or a raffle that closes at noon all pull people in during the first hour, when vendors need early sales to feel good about the day.

Tip: Make sharing easy. Send the social kit the day you accept a vendor, not the week of. The earlier they post, the bigger your crowd.

Track what worked

Track where shoppers heard about you. A simple tally at the welcome table, with four or five choices like vendor post, our account, flyer, friend and event calendar, tells you which channels worked. Pair that with the sign-up sheet count and your rough shopper count, and you know exactly where to spend time before the next market.

Ask each vendor to post at least twice: once when they are announced and once the day before. A short reminder in your acceptance email is usually all it takes.

Previous: Your eight week plan · Course overview · Next: Market day