# Opinion: Best Marketing for the buck



## Sthomson4 (Jun 7, 2010)

Hi all,

I've recently started up a screen printing shop.. Trying to go out and get orders and well... Struggling! I have a few orders and they are coming out GREAT. 

If you had to spend your own money - How would you market a local T-Shirt business?

I'm open to contract printing, custom apparel for the locals, internet sales, anything!

Trying to keep the budget low is key


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## iCreate Graphix (Mar 28, 2011)

Welcome! Glad things are going great so far. I'm in the same boat as you. I'm looking into my options for marketing, advertising, etc. The past couple years, everything has just been word of mouth. We also get business from Facebook and we have good reviews on Yelp. But I just feel like we're really ready to grow, so we've got to do something different. 

I've spoken to Yelp about their paid advertising program, and it sounds great...but...all the reviews I can find of people paying for Yelp advertising say its a big waste of money. 

I looked into advertising in our local paper....because several of our neighbors at the shop have done it...but I just feel like newspaper is soooo old school.

I'm most interested in SEO, because it is fairly affordable...and being at the top of search engines is key in this day and age. But I feel so stupid because I don't understand how it works. I mean, I kind of understand it....I just want to see it in action, and it takes 3-6 months to see results.

Anyways....hope my opinions help you. What types of marketing/advertising have you looked into? I'd appreciate your 2 cents too


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## JeridHill (Feb 8, 2006)

Referral bonus.....

There's more than one way to do it, but you can print small cards to hand out on every order. If you refer someone to us and they order, you get xx% off your next order. They can accumulate, i.e., if it's 10%, if they refer 3 people that order a minimum of $XX each, then they get 30% off their next order. It would most likely need a limit of percentage off per order, but the customer becomes your sales person. If you do good work, it won't be hard for them to refer your services.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

While you're waiting for more answers in this thread, you might want to check out these tips as well: 

local marketing related topics at T-Shirt Forums


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## Flagrant-T (Nov 11, 2009)

I've never found paid advertising to be that successful. Word of mouth was always by far the best, but it is a slow way to build a business.

Instead of paying money for advertising, what I've found to be extremely successful, is find smaller local businesses, bars, bands, clubs, etc that either don't currently have apparel or have boring designs. When you are a little slow, come up with an awesome shirt with their logo, print it, and go introduce yourself and give them the shirt. It doensn't have nearly the reach of an ad, but the success rate when done with some thought and timing is huge.

Good luck,
Nick


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## EnMartian (Feb 14, 2008)

If your business is new, do a press release about it and send it to all the local media, television, radio and newspaper. Many local media outlets are always looking for local stories, and you can pick up some free publicity.


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## printingray (Apr 4, 2012)

I'll promote by my own. Because I'm now expert in promotion not locally but online. So first off all I prefer social media for promotion then SEO for my site. This is the rule of online promotion you select some keywords on which high traffic present then optimize in the search engines for the sake of SR (Search Rank) then automatically you got traffic as well the sales. This is the best way to get a company brand.


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## Gcanno (Nov 16, 2010)

I think in this Economy and the way the Marketing and Advertising world is changing you have to be more proactive.

Your potential customers are probably sitting there thinking the same thing about the current selection of services they can use to Market,Advertise and generally promote their businesses.They will most likely end up doing nothing for lack of the certainty the money they spend will bring them results.

In a way you have to take the role of essentially what your looking for yourself . Example

A printer i know approaches Gardeners asks for a business card and many times it is very poorly designed and made of the cheapest card stock. To top it off they overpaid or didn't get value for their money. He uses readily available program to whip up a quick design and outsources the printing to a local digital printer for a low cost better quality
card, which he makes money on too. 

You may say my business does not do cards! and what do cards have to do with Screen printing?. Well many of the Same gardeners do not have Uniforms let alone Shirts to identify themselves. Explaining and showing to a customer how a professional appearance goes along way in conveying trust and confidence and how that can generate business usually closes the deal.The card is great starting point. 

All it took was one Gardener to order shirts and Uniforms which he then used as an example to show what others can achieve and now he made another revenue source that keeps reordering.

It is just an example of being pro-active and of potential possibilities,yes you may have to stretch yourself and do things you have never done before but what is the alternative. 

Tip Their are many bright Students/Workers out there who instead of hiring to spin a sign; have the skills to throw together a snazzy card and pull off a friendly pitch. The sale of Cards will offset the the cost of your employee and provide someone out there with an opportunity for Employment something our Country needs more of


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## v8in240sx (Jul 23, 2012)

There are different tactics that can work good or bad for whatever way you are trying to go with your business. And from what you are saying it seems like you are going for a "one shop does all" storefront aproach. But with the different angles involved with your strategy, marketing would have to be played differently with different product services you offer.

In my case I started a Clothing label mostly geared towards womens swimwear. I had to obtain website rights for my name (godaddy.com) and obtained the Trademarking behind my label. I started out by making a Facebook page for my Label and had 40 of my friends originally "like" my page, and through that well over 12,000 people (friends of friends) had seen my postings under my label name with product release dates, website unveiling, and so on. I designed the Facebook page with custom vector images using free Inkscape vectoring software (just as good as Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw but free instead of $600+). I then designed my website using free website templates and then used a good locost company to host my webpage (linked through my godaddy registration.) The facebook thing gives you demographics on ages of people interested in your products and allot of other free business consultant type tools. I used local female friends as models and contacted friends good with photography to do the shoots and product pictures for the site for next to nothing because the girls were in it for the fun and the photographers were young students wanting a little extra cash on the side. And that took care of the website aspect of my marketing. 

But what about the street level work of mouth? I don't know your business strategy as far as age, style, angles, etc. you are going for but I was targeting ages 16-30 females. So I used modern underground marketing with stickers portraying my business logo and website, passed them around at a few local campuses and universities, car shows, etc. and my logo was everywhere (street signs, frat houses, skate parks, cars, trucks, city busses, buildings, etc.) It's the modern public "business card". I set up booths at different young demographic events with my product (with free stickers and business cards on the tables too)

But that is all Clothing label ideas for modern sales. I also ran into people wanting me to make stickers, tshirts, etc and at first i didn't do it but after a while I thought, DUH, extra income. Now side jobs allong the lines of what you are doing make up a large percentage of my income and it was just a brainfart idea to involve myself into.

I have a few ideas that may help you with your angle just PM me with a better description and I think I could help you come up with some good business strategies for your angle you are going with that are low cost and modern age effective, yet less agressive as the strategy for mine (i.e. no stickering up the neighborhood)


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## Sthomson4 (Jun 7, 2010)

printingray said:


> I'll promote by my own. Because I'm now expert in promotion not locally but online. So first off all I prefer social media for promotion then SEO for my site. This is the rule of online promotion you select some keywords on which high traffic present then optimize in the search engines for the sake of SR (Search Rank) then automatically you got traffic as well the sales. This is the best way to get a company brand.


And what if you are someone who doesn't know how to do any of that? Becomes expensive hiring someone doesn't it?


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## ryan barker (Jul 21, 2011)

youtube has videos on how to do your own SEO. even if they worked to the extent that it puts you on top or near the top of the page when people search out local screen printers, people will see it. if you can get the local work, you'll stay plenty busy, so you probably don't need to be #1 on the list nationally. 

too, i would like to come up with designs for local businesses and just give them the shirt to wear (i would do this, but the female i'm currently technically married to doesn't see things my way, which is why i'm going to angle things where i walk away with the screen printing gear). and don't give them away to some employee without any decision-making power, give them to the owner or manager. my personal plan would be to give them a great *feeling* shirt, too, not just whatever jerzees had a sale on that day. in other words, give them the floor model with all the bells and whistles. 

don't forget that screen printing has a huge range of applications other than just shirts, too.


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## printingray (Apr 4, 2012)

Sthomson4 said:


> And what if you are someone who doesn't know how to do any of that? Becomes expensive hiring someone doesn't it?


Try to learn you just need to know about basics, this is very easy and also interesting to do.


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## poezoe (Jul 10, 2012)

Don't be afraid of SEO! Its not hard to do and if you know your way around your own site, you can do it. Don't pay anyone, they will kill you with charges, do it yourself and if you only get a 25% improvement then it was better than doing nothing.

There are a billion ways to do marketing, be creative and use social media...research until your eyes bulge out of your head!


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## ddtk (Jan 27, 2013)

What has worked for me: 
As regards online promotion for me it's working this method I developed over the years:
From my logs:
First Post in Blogs, you need blogs, Tumblr, wordpress, etc.	
Link blogs to fb stumble upon	Digg Pinterest Twitter
Create profiles in your niche related sites and link to your work.
Link T-Shirts on shop to fb	stumble upon	Digg	Pinterest	Twitter	Heart it, svpply, My artpage	Google+
Link Pinterest to	fb	stumble upon twitter
Tweet Often Create more than one account, one for you as an artist and some with keywords in its username ;-)
Comment on ... Blogs with tees
links in about.me	
PINTEREST PINTEREST PINTEREST !!! (Create boards related to your brand or niche and you'll get followers if you pin often and good stuff, and add descriptions to your work saying it's available for sale!)
and everywhere you can add many tags, think of what the customer would type in the search box, and what combination of long keywords you should use, for instance I use "cool vector retro vintage" a lot, cos in Redbubble (where I have my store) those are filters they use to showcase work ;-)
Let me know if you need extra help! 
I love online marketing and helping with it, it's not easy and I had nobody to teach me, so if I can be of any help....


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## ddtk (Jan 27, 2013)

But if I want to pay for traffic, then I recommend Stumble upon Paid Discovery!


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## tshirtcreature (Jan 15, 2013)

signature dGOOGLE ADWORDS! Being at the top of google for local screen printing comapnies has brought me new customers and made 100 times what i spend. If no other screen printer is using it in your city you can be at the top of google for as low as 10Cents. AND YOU ONLY PAY IF SOMEBODY CLICKS YOUR LINK! I'm willing to pay 10 cents to get a new customer. Great SEO and Google adwords has worked great! After that---Word of mouth. You do a great job for somebody and they will tell other people.


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## lalmeida (Jan 17, 2010)

I need help


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## Mosaicthreads (Feb 5, 2012)

What are you thoughts on sponsoring events to get your company name out there? Does this work?


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