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.
I have years of experience with web marketing/advertising, but NOT in t-shirts...
On average for every 1,000 HITS on a banner, I get usually a 4-6% click-thru ratio. This is because I test my banners very well and pull those that suck ASAP. So if I have 10 banners running and 6 are earning a 1% or less CTR, they are history very quickly.
My problem is I'm going into the "t-shirt biz" like, well, everyone else on here... I'm about to begin advertising on a website that I believe will serve me well... They have 4.5 hits a month (with about 1.3 million unique), for a price of around $500/mo in advertising... They charge a flat rate... So my question is... Will my t-shirts sell at all? Should I be able to get a decent return on my advertising costs? I plan my shirts to cost just under $4.00 from a local company (featured on this website, actually), and another $5-6 in advertising costs per t-shirt. With the remaining $10 being used for reinvesting into the company...
But if I receive ... ah... 1 million impressions with a 4-6% CTR, that's 40-60,000 visitors to my website... Surely a good % of those visitors would be willing to buy my product if it directly relates to them?
So I wonder if the $500/mo in advertising would be worth it? I'd have to sell 25 shirts to earn that back, and I estimate 100 t-shirts in order to be on my way to expanding my business and earning better revenue.
Anyone have any input? Should I just "risk it" and try it? I hate taking risks, but hey, it may just work! Except I have to promise the site/company 3 months of advertising, so I have to cough up $1,500 at the door.
I think it really depends on whether this site relates to what your selling, like say if it was a real estate site, chances are you are not going to find people to buy t-shirts. I would try to make sure the site has something that would relate with your product to have a chance at good sales from it. hope this helps
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there are a lot of alternatives to spending $500 a month to draw in customers
many of those alternatives are free, and can land you a relative client base
contacting the owner of a t-shirt or fashion review blog and getting them interested in your product enough to make an entry on it... lands your designs on a very relevant website and is free... just a little time investment
also conducting good SEO for your website... use appropriate and popular META tags and keywords in your site...
there are more ways... self promotion over the web can be productive and free...
and if all else fails then you can start spending the big bucks on advertising, but give the free stuff a shot first...
Yes I'm a member of several forums and post my info in my signature, being a web designer I have about 5 very popular websites with thousands of weekly visitors who are the core of my customer base, my products relate to them so well that, well, I couldn't make the link between the two any better... So I will run ads on the sites I've partnered with, I plan to do a lot of link swaps, banner swaps, and much more. So for the $500 I spend a month in advertising, I will probably work 20+ hours a week being active on forums, emailing websites to run small stories about the site on their blogs, etc...
By no means will this be a "hobby" for me, it is pure business, and in order to run a business you need to attack your customers from every angle. I'm good at that.
Within the first year I plan to purchase a new truck and trailer setup where I can travel to/from events that I can sell my shirts at, these events have 60,000+ people a night each Saturday for 6 months straight.
I also will have my girlfriend, who will possibly come on fulltime pending the success of the business, to help with marketing, PR, etc... Her 10 years of experience at Microsoft will pay off greatly very fast.
I know this will be hard, and a lot of work. I picture selling 100 shirts within a year, but I cannot imagine selling 1,000 shirts a year... However, my goal for 2008 is 5,000 shirts, and 10,000 for 2009.
Shawn, sounds like you know some advertising online, i think thats a great way to attack, however i think usability of your shopping site is the largest part of the equation which is sometimes overlooked.
When it comes to designing and understand what the "customer" wants, I can hit it on the head, but coding the site in a way that is very secure, I suck at.
Don't just pay for banners on websites. Get creative and pull some publicity stunts and relevant blogs will link to you or your promotional material (that should again link to you).
don't put all of your eggs in one basket, there's severally free marketing avenues out there. Banner advertisement isn't the best form of advertising. Alot of people have add blockers and other such software that blocks banners. And the greater majority simply ignore banners. So shop around first before investing your money.
Advertising online? Worth it? 
Re: Advertising online? Worth it? 
