Welcome to Business of Craft, a show designed to help entrepreneurs with fabric or fiber businesses become more successful.
This is our 8th season of BOC and today we have another solocast to cover one of the topics in our new book, Marketing Magic for Savvy Craft Businesses. I’m super proud of this book which my whole team wrote in 2025. The book is available for sale in Kindle and print version (and soon to be audio) on our website or Amazon.
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Hi friends, it’s Leanne, and I’m back with another episode of Business of Craft. Today, we’re opening up the next chapter in our marketing spellbook to explore a little concept we call… Brand Magic — and one of the most powerful tools in that kit: the Know, Like, Trust Loop.
If you’ve listened to any of our other podcasts or you’re a Stitchcraft Marketing regular and you’ve read our blogs, our newsletter or heard me speak at h+h americas or BERNINA University, you know that the Know Like Trust Funnel is a fundamental concept that I preach about all the time.
Let me start by being real with you — your brand isn’t as unique as you might think. I know, ouch. But hear me out.
In a world overflowing with yarn shops, handmade jewelry sellers, kitchen dyers, and your local quilt store claiming to be the one place in town that has the best classes and top of the line machines, your business can start to blur into a sea of sameness. And with the internet, you’re not just competing with the shop down the block — you’re up against everyone with a Shopify site, an Etsy page, or an Instagram feed.
So how do you rise above the noise?
How do you make magic that actually sticks with your customers?
Here’s the secret: it’s not your price. It’s not even your product.
It’s your customer experience.
Marketing right now is about how people FEEL when they engage with your brand. It’s about whether or not you solve their problems, inspire their creativity, give them a sense of belonging… It’s not about the cheapest fat quarter or the skein with the most yardage.
This is where the Know, Like, Trust Loop becomes critical to understand— and if you’ve ever built a great relationship, you already know the basics. First, people get to know you. Then they start to like you. And eventually, they come to trust you. But in our digital-first world, that linear journey has transformed into something more circular, more dynamic — a loop that also includes TRY, BUY, REPEAT and REFER.
So let me give you a really high level view of the concept.
In the Know phase, your brand pops up on someone’s radar. Maybe it’s a booth at a fiber festival, a post that went semi-viral, or a tag from a customer on TikTok. This is your moment to shine. Not with a hard sell — but with clarity, personality, and a little magic in your message.
Then we move to the Like phase. Someone’s been exposed to your brand and they’re intrigued. This is where your website, social presence, and email content start to build a rapport. Think consistency. Accessibility. Authenticity. That “Hey, I think I’d like to hang out with them” kind of vibe.
And finally… Trust. This isn’t something you earn overnight. This is where you prove that you walk the walk. With thoughtful customer service. With real human stories. With content that reflects their needs, not just your features.
But the loop doesn’t stop there. Once someone trusts you, they’ll try you. They’ll buy from you. And if you deliver, they’ll come back to repeat — and even refer you to others.. We go through the full loop in depth in our book, Marketing Magic for Savvy Craft Businesses. There’s even an awesome graphic you can copy and pin up above your desk to give you a visual reference.
Let me give you a quick real-world example.
We had a client — a small indie yarn dyer — who was struggling to compete with some of the bigger names on Instagram. Her yarns were beautiful, but her sales were stagnant.
We focused on the Know phase first — optimized her social media bio, encouraged her to share behind-the-scenes dye videos, and had her start telling the story behind each colorway. Her customers needed to start learning what she stood for as a brand.
Then we layered in the Like phase — she launched a newsletter series that wasn’t salesy at all. Just little love letters about color, creativity, and the messiness of the creative process. Her audience started responding — replying, sharing, tagging her. They were RELATING to her in a way that starts to develop what I call “affinity markers”– I talk more about those in the book as well.
By the time we reached the Trust phase, she had a waiting list for her launches. Why? Because her audience didn’t just like her yarn. They liked her. They trusted her. And they wanted to support her business journey. They wanted to be a part of something much bigger than just a means to an end (ie, the yarn to make a project).
That’s the first part of the loop in action. Remember that there are 4 more steps to really mastering the whole loop from start to finish and then back around again…. remember it’s a loop so it turns back on itself.
Now, let’s pause and turn this toward you for a moment.
Grab a notebook or open your Notes app — I’ve got a few reflection questions for you:
Where in the loop are you strongest right now: Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, or Refer?
Where are you weakest?
When was the last time a customer referred you — and what prompted it?
What can you do this week to strengthen one phase of your customer experience?
Even small tweaks can be powerful. One brand I worked with simply added thank-you videos to post-purchase emails — 30 seconds, recorded on a phone — and their repeat customer rate jumped within a month.
Now, as you think about implementing the loop, I want to leave you with this gentle reminder: you don’t need to do it all at once. Start with what’s authentic to you and sustainable for your bandwidth. Magic doesn’t have to be flashy — it just has to be real. It has to be authentic. It has to represent YOUR brand story. YOUR differentiator.
In the book, Marketing Magic for savvy craft businesses, we go through this loop in a much more extensive fashion– what I’ve given you today is just a taste of the concept. In the book you’re going to find lists and charts that outline exactly what actions you can take for each phase of the loop. From this, you can create your own strategy to make sure you’re hitting each of the sections in all the marketing activities you do.
And before we wrap up, here’s a quick challenge for the week — your Action Step from this episode:
👉 Choose one of your existing customers and walk through their experience using the Know, Like, Trust Loop.
Where did they find you? What content moved them forward?
Where could you have made it even better?
Use that insight to tweak just one step of your customer journey.