10 Best Ways to Market Your T-Shirt Business
T-shirts are one of the best ways to get started with a profitable e-commerce business. You have endless selections for designs and lots of ways to promote them. People always love t-shirts and can never get enough of them. Once you've selected a niche, chosen a platform for designing t-shirts and created some designs, it's just a matter of promoting them. Let's look at the 10 top ways to market your t-shirts.
- Start a blog. If you have a blog on a topic related to your t-shirt designs, you make it easier for potential customers to find you. You'll have lots of keyword-rich content for the search engines to index. Try to use the same keywords in blog post titles and in the content as you use in your t-shirt designs.
- Promote them on social media. Showcasing your t-shirts on social media sites is free and gives you access to a large audience. Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook are especially good for showing off your designs. Don't simply advertise your shirts. Market yourself as a brand. Add content relevant to your niche as well as promoting t-shirts. For example, if you specialize in dog t-shirts, post images and articles related to dogs on your social pages. This makes people more likely to follow you and share your content.
- Sell them locally. While there are countless ways to sell t-shirts online, don't overlook ways to sell them the old-fashioned way. As farmer's markets and other types of markets get more popular, it's easy to find places to set up booths. Or you could ask local businesses if they'd be willing to carry your t-shirts.
- Make videos. Showcasing your t-shirts on video lets you create what are essentially cheap TV commercials. It's even better if you can show someone wearing your t-shirts in the videos. Upload your videos to YouTube, feature them on your website, and share them on social media.
- Give away t-shirts as prizes. Hold contests on Facebook and other social media sites. You might also partner with businesses, either online or in your area, to give away your t-shirts as prizes in their own contests. Radio stations are a good market for this as they often hold daily giveaways.
- Create an email list. Once you sell a t-shirt to someone, that person is a likely future customer. Over time, you can build up a list of customers. This makes it easy to promote your latest designs. Offer people discounts in exchange for joining your list.
- Use paid advertising. You can use pay-per-click ads on Google or Facebook or try one of the many other online advertising platforms. Target customers in your niche and look for long tail keywords so you can advertise affordably.
- Sell your t-shirts on multiple platforms. There are now many ways to sell your t-shirts, including your own website, Shopify, eBay, Amazon, and Cafe Press to name just a few. It's usually cheap or free to list items, so you have nothing to lose by selling your designs far and wide. You don't have to sell on every single platform but choose at least a few. This lets you reach a wider audience.
- Target businesses. Selling t-shirts to individuals is great but businesses are more likely to buy in bulk. Look for businesses in your niche and suggest your t-shirts for their employees or marketing campaigns. You might, for example, contact local schools, sports teams, restaurants, retail stores, or nonprofit organizations.
- Sell related items. Once you have the design, it's a simple matter to place it on all kinds of items. If you can sell t-shirts, why not expand into sports caps, mugs, carrying bags, and other items. This is a way to reach a wider audience and get bigger sales. Offer bundles, such as a t-shirt and cap for a discount to encourage people to order more than one item.
