In our last marketing message in September we mainly gave you a few tips as to how you can brush up your shop to be more customer-oriented. If you think your shop is up to scratch now, it is time you capitalized on placing it on the market!
Campaigns for your shop!
There will be a few sweet campaigns in October that will help you to attract customers for your shop. Special discounts and offers suitable for the season will you brace yourself for the big run when starting a clothing line. Please don’t forget: you need to spread the word and tell your customers (and friends and family) about the period of the campaign. When the time is ripe, you will find all necessary info in your user area.
How do you raise awareness for your shop?
First you need to find out where your customers like to go. Do they participate in a certain community? What festivals and events do they attend? Is there a bar or a club in your area where these people go? It will help you open the right channels if you find out who exactly who these people are that could be attracted to what you offer. In addition to feeding Facebook groups and posting on online forums, you can also use flyers or fun stickers for promoting your shop ‘out there’.
Shop marketing – online
If you spot an online community or any other place where your customers hang out, why not promote your shop right there? Of course, you should not do it too excessively so as not to alienate potential customers. As a rule of thumb, your marketing will be successful as long as it isn’t considered spam. And if you are active in a community of any kind yourself, consider writing an interesting article on a blog to which you can add a link to your shop.
Search engine optimization
Sometimes customers come straight knocking on your door. This does not happen out of the blue, but by the assistance of search engines. To achieve this, you need to make your shop visible. There are a few simple tricks that will help make your shop searchable (i.e by Google). Find out about a few easy steps to optimise your online shop for search engines.
Pics for your shop
Download Spreadshirt product or model images from flickr to use them in your shop. You can use them as a teaser or background graphics, whatever suits you best. You can also add graphics files to your shop in the user area, or watch Pixeldmon’s video clip to find out what you can do to improve the look of your Spreadshirt shop with just a few simple changes.
Shop marketing – offline
You want to attract real-world customers to your shop? Good plan! Flyers and cards work wonders! You want to attract real-world customers to your shop? Good plan! And are you already familiar with our co-operation partner Moo’s offer? Here you can print flyers and postcards offline until the end of December, and you also get a special discount on your MOO order! You can always ask at local businesses whether they are okay with you putting up some of your flyers on display. Or hand them out after a gig, in a shop or at an event that you find suitable!
Little strokes fell big oaks
It’s worth trying. A lot of our shop partners have started from scratch. It pays to constantly keep your shop in tune with new developments, and it is well worth expediting your own marketing. On the long run, those that operate like this are the most successful shops, and they receive great feedback from their customers as well as their community.
In case you need more assistance, please refer to the t-shirt business guidelines our partner Wordboner (a very successful operator from the US) offers some great tips on starting an online business.
