One of the most popular activities that people do nowadays is to shop online. Long lines at the department stores and boutiques are now being replaced by online shopping carts and packages in the mail. More people prefer digital shops over physical stores, and the trend won’t seem to stop anytime soon.
This cultural phenomenon has created a gigantic boom in the e-commerce industry, which attracted entrepreneurial spirits more than consumers. The internet is filled with thousands upon thousands of shops and sellers for just about anything you can think of buying.
From food to cosmetics, and fashion to household products, anything can be sold in the digital sphere. That’s why now is the perfect time to penetrate the industry with your t-shirt business. But to be able to compete on a leveled playing field against your potential competitors, you will need more than just your wits or top-notch heat press equipment alone.
The rules of brick-and-mortar stores no longer apply to online shops because they exist in different dimensions. Instead of physically communicating with your potential customers, you need to let your products speak for themselves. And to do that, you will need these tips and tricks below:
Create a Business Website
Since everyone is online, having a website for your business is crucial to establish your credibility. Your website will act as a physical store but in virtual form, which means that you need to design and decorate the pages to become attractive to your potential customers.
A simple picture of your best graphic shirt in the middle of the web page won’t suffice, even if the artistry and high-quality are evident. You will need to set a stage where your products can be highlighted, such as a gallery or a digital catalog where all the details are included.
The website design depends greatly on your brand image and overall message, so make sure that it manifests through the visuals. A good website is coherent, has good flow, easy to navigate, and geared towards user experience. Keep these qualities in mind when you create your website.
Use Social Media to Reach More People
Social networking sites are useful beyond maintaining personal connections. You can use these platforms to widen your business’ reach and communicate to a broader audience who can become potential customers.
Utilizing social media to market your products is a great digital marketing strategy, especially if you can apply the same principles of traditional marketing. The goal is still to get your business’ message to the people who will buy your products, but the main difference is how you disseminate the information.
Before the internet, business owners used television commercials, billboards, printed flyers, and newspaper advertisements to let people know about their products or service. But now that you have the whole world at your fingertips, marketing is no longer the pain it used to be.
Invest in Paid Advertisements
Even though you don’t need to spend a fortune on printed advertisements to market your products today, you will still need to spend some money to advertise in the digital sphere. Instead of in magazines, newspapers, or televisions, the advertisements will be on social media sites, web pages, and video sharing platforms.
However, where your advertisements appear depends on how much you’re willing to spend on marketing. Using paid advertisements can be strategic because you can choose where and when they will appear to your target audience.
You can analyze the usual online activity of your target market and use that information to create your advertising campaigns. For instance, you can pay for your advertisements to appear on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Google search results, depending on the people you want to connect with.
Maintain Regular Online Activity
The main purpose of creating social media accounts for your business is that you can become more accessible to your potential customers. You won’t need accounts for every social media platform because that can be overwhelming. Instead, you must choose one or two that you can maintain.
It’s not enough to have dormant accounts because that will be counterproductive. Social media websites are made to be constantly updated, whether it’s about your new products, methods of how people can buy from your shop, or showing the creative process of making your shirts.
The important thing is that your accounts stay active. This isn’t to say that you should post every single day, but you should at least interact with your followers every week to notify them that your business is still open to serve them.
Also, just because you’re busy with maintaining the social media accounts doesn’t mean that you can neglect your website. An effective strategy to keep both platforms active is to link your website to your social media posts so that it can get organic traffic.
Doing all these functions by yourself can be overwhelming, so you should pace your tasks over a period. You don’t have to do everything all at once; remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. By creating a marketing schedule that you can stick to, your graphic shirt business will soon become a force to be reckoned with.
