Discuss the fun task of marketing a t-shirt shop. Where to advertise, link building, word of mouth, press releases, search engine marketing, keyword advertising, magazines, etc.
1. Be Unique. Do something different. Have an angle.
2. Know your market.
3. Advertise in front of your market in many ways (search engines, offline ads, banners, newsletters, links, word of mouth, flyers, press releases, sponsorships, giveaways. be creative)
4. Make sure your site is both search engine and people friendly.
5. Never stop finding new ways to market your products and get people seeing your stuff. As cliche as it sounds, think outside the box.
I happen to write one, but I won't link it here because that's against the rules (but it is in my signature). If you don't like mine, there are a bunch of others in my blogroll that I consider to be the best and most consistent t-shirt blogs currently. And they cater to different types of t-shirts, so make sure you look at a bunch of them. I'll pm you a link to an article I wrote about how to get a t-shirt blog to write you up.
Getting listed on sites like the one I mentioned above will bring you also more traffic and help your search engine ranking. If you want to get listed in directories just make sure you pick the right ones and not just "link dumbs".
A link dumb directory is a directory that has not much text and basically just links to various sites.
We dont sell t-shirts ready made...we are a custom shop and what has worked for us
#1 Networking and networking events
#2 Teaching current customers about our product and what we can do for them
#3 Specific direct mailings (no postcards, flyers etc)
#4 Banners and sidewalk signs, frequently changed outside the shop
#5 Give aways...I was at a networking meeting and one of the women mentioned how ugly all the new shopping bags were for the grocery stores. So I made some pretty flowery bags, and gave them away at the next speednetworking meeting. It worked, I was remembered as the "bag lady" The point is......I was remembered, and so was my business.
Best of all, like Rodney says........Think outside the box! Dont be afraid to think big, and outrageous either.
We have a brand new blog, and have had a facebook account for about 2 months, its too early to tell if its working for us. I dont bother with myspace, simply because I have a bugger of a time getting anything to work in there.
The key to success is to have a brand label that will catch the eyes and ears of peoples imagination.
choose carefully while brand labeling or choosing a logo.
names and logos are very important
right now im in the proses of starting a clothing line
In essence promoting t-shirt sites is like promoting every other site online (and that is/was my job since a couple of years).
Be remarkable. If you jumped into creating your brand without sitting down and thinking a lot about your unique selling point aka what makes you different you will have it way harder to be remarkable.
Compared to amount of online user and how the habbits of most people will change in the coming years you are still early in this game and have good chances to make something out of it. But the idea got to be right and if possible unique. Can't find a unique idea or you are already too far down the road to change? Give your theme and brand a different twist and never compete on price.
In the long run everyone who wants to compete on prices will have to face extremely strong competition that doesn't need to make as much money with each shirt than you have to. Focus on improving the perceived value of your brand that people believe it is worth buying from you.
Another major mistake many people do is that they fix for ages on their site instead of spending time promoting it. Yeah of course your site got to look professional but that cool flash gimmick and the innovative skip button you just built for your flash mp3 player won't make you more money. Sign up for google analytics and get to know the behaviour of your customers on your site. You can follow their click paths and also set up some paths and monitor on which point people "drop off" aka leave your site or the path. Think about reasons and try to improve it.
A great looking site is not much worth if they don't make people buy and if you don't have people coming to it. If you get many people to your site and it looks ugly and unprofessional you loose credibility and that's why people won't buy. If you get people to your site, your site looks great but the usability sucks you won't make money either because people drop off at some point.
All I do is link to my blog from my facebook account... and I have a facebook widget on my blog... I think it makes it more personal and puts a face behind the company... ideas... t-shirts...
All I do is link to my blog from my facebook account... and I have a facebook widget on my blog... I think it makes it more personal and puts a face behind the company... ideas... t-shirts...
Hiya Jacob, what is a facebook widget and how do I get one? If its what I think it is, Ive been trying for days to find it, and figure out how to get it on my blog.
Anybody ever incorporate a banner, that a registered customer can put on their myspace page, that keeps track of when someone clicks through the banner, buys a shirt and then provide credit to the registered customer who has the banner on their myspace? I thought it might be a good marketing tool to provide incentive to people to advertise your site.
Anybody ever incorporate a banner, that a registered customer can put on their myspace page, that keeps track of when someone clicks through the banner, buys a shirt and then provide credit to the registered customer who has the banner on their myspace? I thought it might be a good marketing tool to provide incentive to people to advertise your site.
Yep, that's called an affiliate program. There are companies that can manage it for you or there is software you can install on your site to handle the tracking.
Re: The 5 best ways to market t-shirts 
The point is......I was remembered, and so was my business.
