Everywhere you turn, marketing is staring you in the face. From billboards to smartphones, our environment is saturated with marketing tools. This presents a unique obstacle for any business looking to promote their brand awareness. You don’t want to follow in everyone’s footsteps and essentially be ignored, so you search for the hottest trends to stay on the edge. One of the trends more companies have been using recently is utilizing shirts as a promotional tactic. Businesses use these because they are inexpensive to make, people will actually use them and giving a shirt helps to build relationships with clients.
Inexpensive Marketing Tool
Businesses not accustomed to using shirts as promotional tools may be scared of how much it will cost to start printing shirts simply to give them away. One of the first things you’ll discover as you start seeking information about how to make a shirt is just how inexpensive it is to print shirts. The initial cost of having a shirt made is the highest, because the company has to set your design but after that, the price plummets. When you consider the cost of traditional marketing techniques, printing a few hundred shirts pales in comparison.
If you are worried about making shirts just to give them away, you can give them to your employees instead. Give away the shirts to employees for a job well-done, or as a giveaway at a company function. Some companies have even taken to printing on sleeves or on the part of the shirt that gets tucked in. It does not matter where you print on the shirt, as long as the brand can be seen by those you are trying to market to. According to Entrepreneur, this is a great way to market your brand without breaking the bank.
Everyone Needs another Shirt
Your shirts will be worn by whoever you give them to. Where the shirts will be worn will depend on the quality of the shirts you’re giving away. High quality shirts may be worn by professionals in the workplace if they look professional or they can work with a suit. Think about the crowd you’re giving the shirts to and where they might be used. This will help you to determine whether you want to create a design on regular t-shirt or you want to make a shirt of higher quality.
Regardless of who your clientele is, making t-shirts is always a good idea. Working on the car or in the yard is something you generally don’t want to do in a nice shirt. When you’re faced with mundane activities, you generally grab the shirts you don’t mind messing up a little bit. If the shirt was given to you free, you will have no qualms in wearing it. Your free branded shirt will make appearances not only for those engaged in less than glamorous activities around the home, but also for running chores on the weekend. This puts your brand in front of anyone your clients, or employees, may come into contact with. This is more than you can normally hope for out of a newspaper ad since the shirts will continue to market long after the shirt is paid for.
As is demonstrated by Econsultancy, your shirts may even end up in social media. If you have a large social media following, you can snap a picture of the shirt, or you wearing the shirt, and send it out to all who follow you. You can even offer the shirt for free to all who like or retweet your post. This helps you to engage more through popular online marketing techniques.
Shirts Help Build Relationships
Another thing to keep in mind when you’re looking into how to make a shirt is the fact that giving your shirts away helps to build better relationships with clients. According to Jerry Drussel, giving away a shirt is more than just a great way to promote your brand. This is also a great way to establish better relationships with your clients. It is less about what you’re giving your clients and more that you’re giving them something. The view your clients will take is you value their business so much you’re willing to show them how much you care by what you give them aside from what they’re paying for. The shirt may not be the only thing you give them, but as a part of a package you give. Reserve packages for top clients, but you can offer the shirt to all your clients as a way to say thank you for doing business with you. Those who have given away small gifts like this in the past have seen a marked ROI, better than other forms of outbound marketing, because of the psychological effect it has on the client.
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