Discuss the fun task of marketing a t-shirt shop. Where to advertise, local marketing tips, word of mouth, press releases, search engine marketing, keyword advertising, magazines, etc.
We did our first appearance last night. We got some good response from a few people. We did hand out a lot of marketing pieces for our products and a couple of people manage team sports for a league their kid is in.
We figure after 8 weeks of doing this, including the 3 playoff games and the championship game, we will be picking up some business.
I was at a marketing seminar a couple weeks ago, and a fella in the back row told us his company name (which I still dont remember) but his tag line is "We fix what your husband repaired" He is advertising on the radio, and it's his tag line I hear every time and remember how funny it was to the room full of women he initially introduced himself to. BUT, I still dont remember the name of his company!
The age old problem of ads; "I can remember this great ad but can't remember for what it was for". In this case has the ad worked or not? I would say the later but it's can on going debate.
We really don't care about the radio spots. We wanted the exposure at the games which is what we wanted. There, we can hand out information with our company name and number on it and display out products.
Can you give us an update on if this increased your business? We are just starting out in the same market here I am very interested to see if this worked?
The radio station breached the contract. They were supposed to give us 4 league games and the 3 playoff and the finals. They never secured the playoff games or the finals and didn't want to pay what the league was asking so they cancelled the last 4 games.
Lesson here is to get a copy of their contract with the league to make sure they have the rights to do the games. We had everything worked out between us but they didn't do their job.
Did you happen to get any successful leads from the first three games? Or do you feel you handed out a lot of marketing material and freebies with no return?
we did make valuable contacts at the games we were at. but the real payoff was the playoff games that have more people at one game than all the others put together.
Just in case my 2 cents could add anything here.... I just got my business up and running 2 months ago. We started radio advertising about 2 weeks ago. Have we made back what we're spending? No. Will we? probably not. For new businesses, however, any amount of exposure is key. what happens now, will have an effect on what happens later. We've probably gotten about half a dozen hits off of the radio spots. We've gotten maybe the amount of one ad's worth of money off of them, but I believe that the ads are helping get our name out and getting people familiarized with our name. Then later, someone will say, were did you get that done? The person will reply, "at Davis Custom Apparel", the first person will say, "oh yeah, I heard about them on the radio".
What I'm saying is don't go into advertising thinking that you're going to immediately see results. It takes a lot of repetition to get people to remember your name.
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Hard labor kills, make t-shirts instead.
In my radio and tv ads it never payed off unless you have a give away of something that has a value of say $500 or more then they will come in and register and look around. Were I'm at we now have way to many doing embroidery and screening and the market is falling apart. What I use to sell for $35 now the going rate is about $20 and I can no longer advertize. Its cheeper and more efective to give a way a shirt with a print on the front and my advertizing on the back. And I found it brings in alot more people. And I also have bought a bill board at the local hockey rink and have had people tell me that they seen it at the rink. That cost me $200 for the season and will be up for 12 months for open skating and other events.
We were not interested in the Radio spots. The idea was to be at the games and meet the booster club folks and the parents. That was our audience and our target.
Sounds like you made a good deal. If you had just done the radio ads and nothing else, I would have been in the probably wouldn't work crowd. What you did, however, was also ensure your presence at the games, where the ads will be broadcast and also ensured you will get some cross promotion.
Of course, no advertising method is ever a sure thing, but I would bet this will bring in at least some business. I'll be interested to hear how it turns out.
Re: Local Radio Spots? 
