So you decided upon starting your own Spreadshirt store? Great! But you have found that despite your many great designs you have not yet been able to make many sales? Spreadshirt understands this and that is why we are putting together a weekly series to help you make the best of your shop. Our first blog entry in this series will be how you should go about building your brand.
Remember, on the internet you’re just one store of many and it can be very hard to get your message out there. The first thing you should consider is what your store is about. Are you a fun or serious store? Are you about telling funny jokes or promoting a particular political campaign you care about? The very first step to marketing yourself is developing a clear idea about what you are about. We call this building up a brand identity. How do you want your customers to know you?
After you sorted out what you want to say you need to figure out how you’re going to say it. Let’s say you decided that your company is about funny t-shirts targeted towards teenagers. You are going to have to build your brand entirely around that. Think long about what your target audience wants and how you want to present yourself to them. Think of an enduring name then build a nice logo around it. Remember, you want it to be simple and to tell your audience exactly what you do at a glance. Make it overly complicated or unrelated to what you do, you will lose brand identity from the start. When someone looks at your shop name and logo they should have a good idea what you do. Furthermore, your logo should be interesting and should provoke some sort of emotion.
From here, you need to cultivate that identity. You need to engage with your customers actively and to promote products that showcase your brand identity. If your brand is about funny t-shirts remember to promote those first. You should join social networks and communities about funny t-shirts and you should generally promote yourself with your targeted audience. Build up your own content and actively engage with your customers. You want to cultivate an identity with your audience; you want them to know your quality and your close association with what you do.
This may seem simple but many people neglect this when they start a new shop. You cannot just be anybody, you have to be a brand, and you have to be somebody. You have to set yourself apart and putting a little bit of thought into how you present yourself to your audience will pay large dividends in the future. Focus on quality and on presenting a clear message to your audience and you will build up a great brand.
