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 read through some other facebook advertising threads which all seem to come to the same conclusion that facebook is not a viable way to sell your products.
Since it is free, I still plan to give it a shot, but have a few questions I have not seen answered. I have created a facebook page. I am planning to promote it with an add now. My question is do you think it would be better to advertise the page, or should I have the link on the add send people directly to my website?
I think people would be more inclinded to click a link if it took them to a facebook page and they were not actually leaving the site. I also plan to make it so that potential customers can click on the designs on the facebook page and go right to the site to order them. It would sort of be an inbetween step that I think may get more people to click.
Thanks for any suggestions or help you can offer!
Last edited by sunnydayz; February 12th, 2009 at 12:26 AM.
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I am using facebook successfully as almost my sole source of advertising.
I started with the free ad coupons (250 worth), and used that to help me guide my ad designs till they started working.
I then created several gift apps based around my designs and my new venture of printing on thrift clothes. All these apps are pushing over 1000 gifts a day, which is good.
My next move is to create some linkage off my site that will allow for people to post a particular shirt to their facebook profile and beg their friends to buy it for them... It's gonna be the "I'm Broke" viral link...
Joplin, that is good that Facebook is working for you. How do you create gift apps and such? I'd be interested in also creating some type of viral link that gets exposure for my shirts.
I kind of run across the gift apps on accident. I accepted a gift item from a friend and noticed there was a link off the gift app to "Create your Own Gift Apps". A little searching around through this and I found it was quite easy to create a customizable gift application through this "Create your Own" link.
Here's a facebook link to my "Bootleg Tshirts" app: Facebook | Error
This app was my first run, and so far I think it's in the thousands now on gifts sent and recieved. It gives a breakdown of app use for analytics if you want, ie: men women, ages, blah blah... use it for what it is worth.
There is no limit on the number of apps you can create, so with time you could send out viral ideas and slowly hone your way into the ones that are getting the best responses. Right now I just use it for promotion of the next wave of thrift shirts I put up. There is no crosslinking to sites or any other references to your "Brand" other than what you create in the shirts themselves.
Peace out, and good luck, and please let me know if you find an avenue on facebook worth exploiting. I'm into that.
How did you get the free 250 ads? I dont know if directly advertising in facebook is the best choice. There are affiliate networks that can populate your ads in facebook for cheaper. I would love to try it if it were free though.
So after you created your gift app what did you do? Do you have to invite all your friends?
Instead I would like to link it with my store's facebook page, so that if you can just send a "gift" of a shirt you like to one of your friends. I don't want to send all the gifts or the app to all my friends from me instead of from my company's page if that makes sense.
That does make sense to implement Facebook "tools" into your website... give the people who are into those things the ability to use your brand as a fun thing.
Another thing I will be implementing soon is a:
"Please buy me this shirt" begging link from each shirt on my site. It will post that shirt to your facebook profile so you can beg your friends to buy it for you. Serves 2 purposes, being able to find someone else to buy what you want, and advertising on the profile itself as it posts the links you post to the home page of all your friends. More viral-ness.
Facebook has tremendous capabilities to blast a message out inocuously. You just have to find avenue's that aren't normal to make it past the "point of no return".
I found the $250 in credits by searching google for:
Free Facebook Ad Credits.
The first big one is a Visa Business Network Group, you have to join the group, state your business name, and then they send you an email with the credit code. As of 5 months from doing this I haven't received any spam or any unwanted contact from Visa.
The others I picked up in small 20 - 50 dollar pieces. There were over a hundred sites I dug through, but only found the ones that worked on the top 10 pages from google. All the rest were out dated or used up.
You may find 250, you may find more or less. If you find one that works.. drop it here. I'm sure everyone wouldn't mind the ability.
I have used Facebook advertising for about a week now and have already generated 10 sales. I used the free $100 coupon you get when joing the visa business group on facebook, made up a quick ad and picked the different areas I wanted to throw the ad in.
i chose the pay-per-click method and ran them at what I thought would be peak times in the specific areas.
I don't know that I would pay for the advertising at this point, but if I start getting more like 50 sales a week, then it would make sense.
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