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.
Hello all, hope your business is "booming". I wanted to ask those of you who are having a lot of success, what are you doing (marketing-wise)? My business is slowly starting to pick up after a 6 month dryspell. What marketing ideas are working for you to get your name out there? I want to use my time wisely when it comes to marketing my business. I was really discouraged when I put an ad in a local magazine for $150 bucks and got no response. Please share your tips/strategies that are working for you. Thanks, Desi
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I always advise people against old marketing methods such as ads in papers and magazines. Hardly anyone reads magazines and papers anymore. It's all digital now.
I don't do anything too creative at the moment to market my brand. The basic social networking stuff. You have a MySpace/Facebook/Twitter, right?
Also, I'm an electronic/hiphop music producer so sometimes I'll throw up a track on my blog. Everyone loves a free music download. I posted a Michael Jackson/Daft Punk mashup earlier today. It's been getting a pretty good response. Daft Punk VS Michael Jackson – Robots Don’t Care About Rock | AERES BLOG
I do have all the social networking sites, however, I need to learn how to use them more effectively. Especially Twitter, I really don't know how to use that to my advantage. Thanks for the tip though!
Desi
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It has been said that marketing is like shaving, if you don't do it everyday, you start to look bad. New methods, old methods...you need to see what works for you. What type of company are you? Are you an internet company or a physical store front? I know it's nice to always feel like your on the cutting edge of things, but sometimes you need to lay the foundation with some "old methods" like cold calling, networking in the flesh etc. I do agree that newspaper etc may not be a good place to start, depending on your situation. We still use it with some sucess, but it is part of a greater plan to saturate a market.
For example, our best account ( a university ) would never have happened if our sales guy wouldn't have called on the university bookstore cold and kept pursuing them until they decided to go with our company. The previous company couldn't deliver high-quality in a timely manner. When they failed, they called us and gave us a chance to earn their business because we were always working to earn that account. If we would have stayed behind our desks, we would still be wondering what it takes to earn their business. Even with internet business, I think this applies, although to a lesser degree. Once you lay the foundation, word of mouth takes over and that is the best, cheapest form of advertising you can get.
My advice is to devise a plan and be consistent with it and don't give up on it too early. Jay Conrad Levinson's book "Guerilla Marketing" is a good book for the basics, just don't go too "guerilla."
Marketing and Advertising is always changing. What works for one business might not work for another, but you never know until you try!
Here are some of the things we are doing to advertise our business...
We have a facebook fan page in which we post about new products, shirt designs, etc. We just started our fan page a few weeks ago and we already have over 100 fans and that is growing daily! I have also connected our Facebook page to our twitter account so that when we post on Facebook, it also posts on Twitter. So I can promote on two sites with one post by having those sites linked!
We have a retail location so we have great signs by the road since we are located on a very busy street in our town. Since we offer several services in one location, we found this to be a great way to let everyone know passing by that we do more than just apparel!
We wear shirts whenever we can with our business name and services on it so that when we are grocery shopping or at a sporting event, we are advertising our business too!
Get involved with your local chamber of commerce and meet business owners/group leaders who can use or need your products!
There are several ways you can market your business!! Best of luck to you!!
Ah, marketing...what an intriguing sport it is, constantly changing but its very essence remains the same - get people to know and want your product..
So, how can this be done..I'm no expert but we just started up the whole online thing about 2 months ago and now have over 800 facebook fans..you want to try get people to interact with your page...one thing we did was a competition where people could enter on the facebook page (its still running so I don't know exactly how useful it will be for A - fans B - sales) and the results to date are 95 entries from new facebook fans..Other things we did were to ask fans to vote for us on an online competition and we'd give them a 10% discount..this got us quite a bit of interaction and helps maintain the 5 star activity rating (which I think might have some influence on whether or not your fanpage appears in peoples profiles sidebars)..regardless of the rating though any comment posted on a page from a fan will be displayed on their profile for their friends to see - then, with luck, you get more followers...
For the twitter side of things you want to try get some RT buddies, or product zealots. People who will endorse your tweets by retweeting it onto their followers..this is what really unlocks the twitter potential I think..that and tracking down other t-shirt companies in your niche, see what they are doing, see who they are following and who is following them and add those who might be interested in your product..
Read about linkbaiting - a good title or blog or something that people want to link to, that people want to read and that people want to share..with a successful viral, attention grabbing blog you will get lots of traffic...To date my blog hasn't been linkbaiting orientated but I hope to test some ideas soon and I'll let you know how they work...on the blog I do talk about what we've been doing marketing wise..
..and then, guerrilla marketing...the likes of stickers in places or literally being in area with heavy footfall giving out buttons or flyers or pens..or even something random like bananas - something that people might tell a friend about...actually, I might go and buy some bananas myself...
Anyway, good luck with it all, its a marketing minefield out there...if you come across any gems of info do share...
new and fresh marketing ideas 
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