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.
Hey everyone,
I was just wondering if some of you who have been more successful with getting your clothing line out there would be willing to provide some info on what you did to successfully market it as well as keep it going.
Best marketing you can do is word of mouth networking. Online social sites, blogs (your own and others), events and trade shows.
Then SEO optimization, so people can find you online.
At least that's what I've found so far, although I'm still figuring it out myself.
Everything this guy said plus make an awesome product and have a niche. The best marketing is making an awesome product and having everyone ask it's owner where they got it.
The niche is the key and marketing the niche is the unlocking of the door...Threadless capitalized on this...Jake Nickell is a genius and is profiting hand over fist for his ingenuity and marketing abilities. To me, his key to success is in the marketing to his niche market. He has maximized his expenses by building his brand over almost 10 years (I believe) and doing it through word of mouth and social media. Also I think any good business plan/idea can capitalize on ingenious niche marketing. I wish I could hang out with Jake Nickell to watch him work his magic! (**I dont know Jake Nickell or anyone at threadless/Skinny Corp***)
Check out Gary Vaynerchuk - He is a young wine fanatic who has taken his sales from $5M/year to $40M+/year through an online TV outlet. Stellar guy, inspiring entrepreneur.
The other key is to HUSTLE. Too many people sit back and see the success stories of these young entrepreneurs and desire to achieve similar goals without similar effort.
So in short, find your niche, use social media and word of mouth to market, create buzz, take calculated risk, break the rules (think outside the box, legally of course) and HUSTLE. Connect with your target market on a personal level.
We started advertising our company by simply wearing our work! We started designing shirts and sweatshirts for my nephews basketball team last year when we opened and everyone started asking where the apparel came from and the rest is history as they say!
Word of mouth advertising is simply the best as well. You get one or two happy customers and they immediately start telling others. This has been another key to our success.
Be active, don't just sit back and expect the customers to come to you. Push your business every chance you get. We have a retail location on a very busy street in our town and we have signs out by the road advertising different items almost every week. This gives people a great idea of all the services we can offer since we don't just do apparel!
Share your business cards, talk about your business every chance you get and promote yourself!!
The niche is the key and marketing the niche is the unlocking of the door...Threadless capitalized on this...Jake Nickell is a genius and is profiting hand over fist for his ingenuity and marketing abilities. To me, his key to success is in the marketing to his niche market. He has maximized his expenses by building his brand over almost 10 years (I believe) and doing it through word of mouth and social media. Also I think any good business plan/idea can capitalize on ingenious niche marketing. I wish I could hang out with Jake Nickell to watch him work his magic! (**I dont know Jake Nickell or anyone at threadless/Skinny Corp***)
Check out Gary Vaynerchuk - He is a young wine fanatic who has taken his sales from $5M/year to $40M+/year through an online TV outlet. Stellar guy, inspiring entrepreneur.
The other key is to HUSTLE. Too many people sit back and see the success stories of these young entrepreneurs and desire to achieve similar goals without similar effort.
So in short, find your niche, use social media and word of mouth to market, create buzz, take calculated risk, break the rules (think outside the box, legally of course) and HUSTLE. Connect with your target market on a personal level.
I hope this is helpful.
I don't know if you can really call it a niche. They kind of print everything, it's a huge site that caters to everyone.
If I would have to say what made threadless popular it is poor artists. All artists have wanted to see their work printed and make some money so they put their design up to vote and told all their friends about it. Really a brilliant way to get traffic.
The niche is the Crowd-sourcing...the creation of a product by the consumers...thats the niche. I dont think all of their art is stellar 100% of the time but thats what is so neat. The consumers choose what they want to wear, see and display. Its ingenius...Jake Nickell just marketed this the right way.
You are 100% correct when you say this was a brilliant way to get traffic...
Im going to agree with all the word of mouth stuff. ALong with that I've never been a big fan of using bands since its not my market. I have done traditional stuff from advertisements on blogs and such. The best though has been what other people said in getting blogs to write about you. Find something unique about your company and pitch the hell out of it.
I agree with jakefry, Im not saying they always have the best art but their niche was giving these small time artists exposure and a paycheck. Its like a tournament, you pay to get in, and if you win you get a prize. If their design was chosen they received a check and if it wasnt they bought a shirt then they try again tomorrow.
When I first started selling tees, I decided that they would be product led, rather than marketing led. My rationale being that if I had to hype the product to death,then the product wasn't right. I concentrated on the designs and let the business fail or prosper on the merits of its products.
I now sell my products all over the world, with no marketing other than search engine listings. I went for multiple niche markets and looked for voids that I could fill with products.
The precept of marketing is simple. Have the right product, at the right time, at the right price.
With the Internet there is no 'place' as such. It's anywhere and everywhere and accessible to everyone.
Placement is more geared to bricks and mortar retail outlets. Many of those operate on a sale or return basis, where you make the products, give them to the shop and if they sell them you get paid (eventually).
Yes you're right about place being more for B&M but at the same time, wasting time on sites that people aren't very active on would we taking away from time spent marketing on sites where there are active people. For example, I have plenty of friends on myspace, but all my friends are active on facebook. So whenever I would post a bulletin on Myspace I wouldn't get any responses but once I switched over to Facebook and posted the same things the responses kept coming.
Pretty much, don't advertise a hip hop brand on a pet food forum.
Successful Ways of Marketing? 
Re: Successful Ways of Marketing? 
