# [CLOTHING LINES] Share your marketing ideas to drive traffic and sales



## Shapeshift (Jun 9, 2010)

Hi Guys 

Our website has been going little over a week and while we have had some interest and traffic to the site we still have not made a sale.

We feel this is directly linked to the lack of marketing we have done (as we have only used facebook to market it hus far).

I'm just curious as to any ideas you mave have of different marketing techniques we could try, i.e is handing out flyers a worthwhile form of marketing?

Look forward to your Replies 

Regars

-Mike


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## IYFGraphics (Sep 28, 2009)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*

Give it more time, a week isn't very long at all to expect sales, what's your target audience/market?

A link to the site so folks can look at what your selling might get you a few more ideas also.

Hope this helps.


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## Shapeshift (Jun 9, 2010)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*

Hi IYF

Yeah i agree with you that it has only been a week and it's not going to happen over night. however this post was aimed more at helping me out with some worthwhile marketing ideas

Our target audience is the alternative music (Rock,Metal,Punk ect) and skate culture/scenes

There is a link to our website in my sig should wish to check out the website.

Thanks for your feedback 

-Mike


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## IYFGraphics (Sep 28, 2009)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*



Shapeshift said:


> Yeah i agree with you that it has only been a week and it's not going to happen over night. however this post was aimed more at helping me out with some worthwhile marketing ideas
> 
> Our target audience is the alternative music (Rock,Metal,Punk ect) and skate culture/scenes


Mike,

You only have three designs?, while I like them your need more choices for your potential customers, that said, you need to connect with your target customer, visit forums that cater to those groups post a friendly link to your site (if allowed) and ask them to check your shirts out. Go to clubs in your area that your music customers frequent pass out discount cards, flyers, even some free shirts to get your brand out there, same with the skate crowd ....first I would design a few more choices for your customers to choose from, there is a fine line between too many and not enough...IMHO 8-12 designs would be a good starting place.

Hope this helps.


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## Shapeshift (Jun 9, 2010)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*

Hi IYF

Thanks for the great feedback and we are always looking to add more designs (unfortunatly it's all dictated by money as the buisness is all self financed)

Also we are going to be giving away some free shirts when we get 100 "likes" on facebook and we have some flyers coming soon to hand out at gigs ect.

We are also looking into "endorsing" bands and skaters. would like to know people's opinions on this?

Thanks again

-Mike


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## nosymbolrequired (Jun 29, 2009)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*

Hi, 

I personally think that any marketing is good marketing. (under the old adage that all news is good news). However, endorsing bands shows that you value the beliefs of that band, and therefore I would be very careful on who you choose. Not all bands subscribe to your ethics, and you dont subscribe to all of thiers. 

This brings up another line of thought and its mainly about ROI, (return on investment). If you believe that by sponsoring a band with your clothes will actually bring people to your website to buy your stuff, just because a small band they saw last night was wearing it, then its probably worth it. However, if your band then starts asking for you to pay for their transportation between gigs, new equipment etc etc, then its porbably not. The same goes for proffesional sports people, they might be happy to wear your tees at first, but if, (and its a big IF) they make it to the big time, they will require equipment, travel, competition entry fees, etc etc. And, IF they have made it, you would automatically get bounced out of the sponsorship deals by the bigger brands, such as DC, Earth, Girl etc, because they will offer more to the sportsperson (shoes for example, new shorts, decks, etc etc, which the sports person would have to take, as its better for them). 

Its a fine line, if you have some local skaters and bands, that only require wardrobing, then it might work. But I like your idea better, of handing out flyers at gigs, and maybe free orange juice at the local skate ramps for a day. They wioll appreciate it at the ramps, and you get your name out for next to nothing....just an idea...

anyway, hope it helps..

mark


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## ReThink Clothing (Jan 15, 2008)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*

First thing to remember, no marketing silver bullet. No one thing will bring you prolonged results. What will though is constantly working at it. Seek out your brands target audience and then tease out the influencers and get in touch with them. Send them a shirt or whatever you can to get them to be an ambassador of the brand. This could be bands,bloggers, people on twitter, and even your friends.


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## Shapeshift (Jun 9, 2010)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*

Thanks for the feedback guys.

On the endorsement subject at this point in time it would only be aimed at bands/athlete's that are quite small and I know on a personal level. I can totally see where your coming from in the respect to bands/athlete's wanting to get as much as they can from an endorsement deal and that is something to bear in mind.

Also thanks for the tip on the free orange juice/drinks, That's a great idea


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## TeesForChange (Jan 17, 2007)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*

i agree that you should give it more than a week to start seeing sales. as far as marketing, what about doing giveaways with blogs that cater to the same audience as you? that can build some traffic to your site and gather more interest. 

i also think that if you offered more options for designs/colors/styles, then you might make more sales.

good luck!


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*



> We feel this is directly linked to the lack of marketing we have done (as we have only used facebook to market it hus far).
> 
> I'm just curious as to any ideas you mave have of different marketing techniques we could try, i.e is handing out flyers a worthwhile form of marketing?


Without strong marketing, there will be no sales. 

Doesn't matter how great the t-shirt is, if you don't advertise it to let the right people know it exists, it will just sit on the shelf.

Did you have any other marketing plans that you were thinking of before you launched the business?

When I started selling online, I just had 1 t-shirt design, but it was the t-shirt design that my market wanted, so it sold OK.

My suggestion would be to start thinking about where your target market shops, eats, sleeps, reads and find ways to *advertise* in those places.

This thread has some links to some topics that have great ideas to get you started:
http://www.t-shirtforums.com/t-shirt-marketing/t20419.html


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## grunt482 (Aug 26, 2008)

I agree with the previous posts. Sales are not going to pour in at first, but be persistent with marketing your clothes. You will need a lot of patience and a lot of time an effort in your part. Just stick with it and use every means possible to talk about your shirts. Flyers, post cards, ads, word of mouth, and social media will be a great help. 


Sent from my iPhone using TShirtForums


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## susanralf (Mar 1, 2010)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*

what about festivals that is a great place to sell your stuff and you will get such a wide audience and so much feedback and food for thought


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## maXmood (Oct 9, 2008)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*

One method that i used in my eariler business is, stickers...

i printed around 100 copies of small stickers that says my motto and URL to my website. i've passed this to family, friends and friends of friends.. and after about 1 week, i started getting orders.

this method is cost effective and works (worked for me). you might wanna give this a shot.

GL


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## moneymaker0404 (Jul 15, 2010)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*

I'm an internet marketer and I know all there is about marketing. I'm starting my own clothing line and thats where I need help. PM me and I will tell you what you should start with, and maybe you can give me some pointers to starting my clothing line


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

*Re: Marketing Ideas*



moneymaker0404 said:


> I'm an internet marketer and I know all there is about marketing. I'm starting my own clothing line and thats where I need help. PM me and I will tell you what you should start with, and maybe you can give me some pointers to starting my clothing line


Please feel free to just share the information here so that the information isn't hidden in a private message between two people. That's what makes forums great, the shared information can help hundreds instead of just one


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## moneymaker0404 (Jul 15, 2010)

Yes of course sorry about that

First thing you do once you have website up and business ready to launch 
you figure out all your keywords.

Just use Google's free keyword tool. See link below

https://adwords.google.com/select/*KeywordTool*External

In this case you are making shirts about rock/punk and metal music etc

So you put in the keywords that potential buyers will type
to search for their answer. You want to have you website
optimized to make it most relevant to your targeted niche
specific keywords or what we call seed keywords.

Using the keyword tool you will find out how many searches
each keyword or phrase is receiving each month. Make sure
you look at the "exact search"

Tip: If "metal t-shirts" is too competitive try finding
a "long tailed keyword" to use

like "buy cheap metal tees"

You want to use keywords that are
searched between 1000- 10,000
so you don't go too competitive and the
keywords are enough searches to make it worth
your time.

Once you establish your keywords for your
clothing line. Make sure you have 2%-5% keyword
density in all content. Underline , bold and italic the
keywords.

Make sure you also use LSI(Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords in your content.
This are just relevant keywords to your main keyword.

So if your main keyword is "buy cheap metal tees"
Your LSI might be "buy cheap t-shirts"

The cool thing is Google tells you want your LSI
keywords aere when you use their keyword tool

it's all the other keywords that show up besides
the main keywords you searched for.

You can also use the "wonder Wheel" for this

Click Here For Example

I would pay someone to do your SEO(search Engine Optimization)
for you. It can be complex if you don't know what your doing and
your On-Page SEO is most important.

I can help anyone with that, since marketing is my business

After your site is ready and you know the keywords you are 
using to drive traffic then thats what you do you drive traffic.

From...

SEO- it's crucial you get your site on the first page of
the search engines for your keywords

Write tons of press releases. This will not
only give you many backlinks to your main site
but will drive targeted traffic.

Write articles on your keywords and
submit to top directories like

Ezinearticles
Goarticles
Ariclebase
isnare

Do lots of video marketing
and syndicate videos using software
like traffic geyer

Create a special blog about tshirts
and ofcourse have awesome content
with backlinks all to your main website

Also you can do PPC for your keywords

That is the fastest way to drive traffic

Use Google or Facebook

and that leads to one of the most important and that is Facebook
and twitter

If your not on FB and twitter then you might as well pack it up

Social media is the way to go to promote business and it's free

Now I can sit here and write forever about how to market your
clothing line. So just ask me any questions you want and I will answer
them. There is not too much I don't know when it comes to marketing online
or offline

So I have a question... Where do I find designer who will create my ideas for
tees at a good price. haha I'm a rookie to the t shirt game

I hope this shed some light on the steps you should start with

Thanks and awesome forum!

Tim


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## lincolnapparel (Nov 21, 2009)

> Social media is the way to go to promote business and it's free


Social media is NOT free. I think that is the biggest misconception out there. It uses up lots of time, and you have to spend lots of time filtering out noise to find the people who are interested in your work. Think about it as if you were paying yourself to mess around with those sites. It gets pretty expensive then. I've gotten far more attention with my line by using simple local marketing.

For some people social media might work but not for everybody. I get sick of hearing "if you're not on <social network X> you're in the stone ages!!!!" They said the same thing about Geocities in 1998.



> Just use Google's free keyword tool. See link below


Don't rely on the traffic numbers given by the Google keywords tool to estimate the amount of traffic you'll get from a particular keyword. Remember that the tool is designed for AdWords, not organic Google searches, so your traffic will likely be much smaller (less than 1/10) of what the keywords tool says. Google ads are placed on lots of sites (like parked domain pages), this is why the traffic estimates are inflated. This blog post has lots of helpful info:

Why The Google Keyword Tool Is Useless For SEO, Even With Exact Numbers | Smackdown!

My site is #1 in Google for a phrase that gets 1500 searches a month according to the keywords tool. I don't even get 1/10 of that supposed traffic on my site from Google for that keyword. If there's one thing I've learned about Google tools, it's that they tend to lie.


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## moneymaker0404 (Jul 15, 2010)

Trust me my friend, its a good start for the novice. Is anything really 100% accurate on the net? I have made a killing in several niches with what I just laid out. I can get more advanced for everyone like use Market Samurai for all keyword research.. didn't know I had a marketing guru lurking Have a great day


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## Reinhard (Dec 30, 2008)

Tim,

Great post. The information is very helpful. Any suggestions on how to drive traffic to a site like Etsy.com and how to effectively build a fan base on Facebook?

Did you find the info you were looking for on t-shirt designers?


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## grunt482 (Aug 26, 2008)

Interesting info. Got give it a shot. But seems a bit confusing. I always figured SEO wasn't really worth it. I guess you got to know what u are actually doing. Thank for the info. I'll try it and see what happens. 

How can you measure if it actually works?


Sent from my iPhone using TShirtForums


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## Reinhard (Dec 30, 2008)

grunt482 said:


> Interesting info. Got give it a shot. But seems a bit confusing. I always figured SEO wasn't really worth it. I guess you got to know what u are actually doing. Thank for the info. I'll try it and see what happens.
> 
> How can you measure if it actually works?
> 
> ...


Oscar, 

We've found that using Google analytics helps to identify where our hits are coming from, which keywords are being used, which immediately bounce, how much traffic we're getting from facebook, etc. It is quite easy to set up an account and it seems like some site (like etsy) actually allow you to set up a link to your google analytics.


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