Last updated on March 7th, 2024
In the modern highly competitive business world, T-shirt marketing is a boon for small companies that work under a tiny budget. They can take their brand to the masses using this marketing tactic despite their financial limitations. If done properly and in a strategic way, T-shirts can generate brand awareness among target customers. How? In this post, we have shared what is t-shirt marketing and how it can play a big role in your business.
T-shirt is one of the comfortable kinds of casual wear passed from generation to generation. Today, it has become an important part of marketing promotion and brand awareness. It’s termed as a new marketing avatar.
It has been considered as a perfect strategy that marketers as well as entrepreneurs are determined to have a separate budget for t-shirt marketing. They want to take advantage of people’s liking for these clothing by putting advertisements on them. In this way, people wearing such t-shirts become a walking billboard ad for brands.
What is T-shirt marketing?
T-shirt marketing is all about selling brands using T-shirts as a means of advertisement. In this method, an advertisement comprising an image, message, or a slogan is printed on T-shirts. When people buy full sleeve t-shirts or other t-shirts and get them as gifts, they tend to wear them very often as casual wear while strolling in markets or other crowded places.
So, the person wearing a T-shirt with an advertisement printed on it while roaming around becomes part of a brand promotional campaign. We can say that marketers turn people into a walking billboard advertisement under a t-shirt marketing campaign.
The Marketing Power of T-shirts: Role of T-shirts in Business
No marketer can today deny the power of t-shirts in reaching out to an audience. Not only do thousands of people see advertisements on T-shirts daily, but the conversion rates are also high. The marketing power of these casual wear can be gauged from immensely successful t-shirt marketing campaigns from history.
For instance, Coca Cola’s t-shirt giveaway machine generated a tremendous amount of awareness for the soft drink brand in 2015. Other such immensely successful t-shirt campaigns include Mailchimp’s 1,000 free tees, Breast cancer fundraiser in Spain, Single Grain’s t-shirt giveaway, and O2’s rugby shirt giveaway.
Under all these campaigns, the companies gave their T-shirt free as a gift to the people. They wore it very often, which in turn generated brand awareness amongst the masses overnight.
Sounds great, right?
What did they keep in mind while creating such campaigns and t-shirts for their brand promotion? Here is your answer.
Tips To Design A T-shirt For Brand Promotion
Like many business owners, you should also think about launching a T-shirt marketing campaign to promote your upcoming brand. If so, then you need to plan your campaign to get the maximum results carefully.
Here Are Some Key Tips
01. Know Your Market Niche Well
First, research the market to find out which niche is profitable. For instance, fitness merchandise may be popular among young people in your locality. In that case, fitness merch t-shirts may be your niche.
Similarly, college students love to flaunt funny tshirts having quotes or graphic designs. So, research the market extensively to know which niche you should be targeting more often.
After all, you will be spending a lot of your time and money on creating T-shirts. You can then concentrate more on creating t-shirts for people in that niche.
02. Pinpoint Your Target Customer
Who is the ideal customer of your t-shirts? Answer that question precisely. For instance, according to a study, women wear a branded t-shirt more in public than men. In that case, if you are targeting women, prefer creating branded t-shirts.
03. Use Colors Carefully
The success of your t-shirt marketing campaign will depend a lot on how appealing the colors, typefaces, etc elements are to the people.
Once you know your niche and target customers, pick the elements to appease them and not yourself. For instance, younger customers like bright and bold colors, and typefaces, etc elements. Older people, however, generally prefer conventional, subtle and quiet elements.
How is T-shirt Marketing important for your business?
01. Market Your Business At A Low Cost
T-shirt marketing is amongst the most affordable tactics for brand promotion. Other marketing means such as TV ads, billboards, newspaper and magazine ads are costly for small businesses.
As compared to these, the cost of creating, producing, printing, and distributing the t-shirt is minuscule. Even a new entrepreneur can adjust the costs of making a t-shirt easily.
There are many ways to reduce further the cost of creating t-shirts for marketing campaigns. You can go to the print-on-demand sites and order the printing of your t-shirt design. The site will not only print it for your campaign but deliver the clothing to customers on your behalf as well.
But to lower your custom t-shirt printing cost, make sure that you choose only up to three colors to create your t-shirts. Also, note that a simple design will be less costly to print as compared to a cluttered and detailed design.
02. Long-Lasting Promotional Material
Billboards will be taken down, newspapers are recycled, radio and TV spots are for a brief period of a few seconds. This implies that you need to spend more on advertisements. Now compare this with the t-shirt custom marketing duration.
T-shirts are the apparel that people like to wear for many months. This means that they will carry your brand logo, icon, and message for a long time on their chest. You do not have to recreate another t-shirt every time to promote your business.
However, you should opt for branded t-shirts if you want the campaign to last for months. This is because people like to wear high-quality fabric when they buy custom hoodies or t-shirts or get it as a gift.
03. Improve Your Brand Recognition
One of the biggest advantages of t-shirt marketing is that it helps build solid brand recognition. When the target audience wears your t-shirts they display your company logo and its brand colors and elements to others. So, a person who moves around in a public place wearing a t-shirt with your brand logo catches thousands of eyeballs daily.
Since t-shirts are worn for months, people continue to see your brand logo for a long time. This consistent brand visibility, in turn, helps them recognize your brand immediately.
The main reason for t-shirts helping build brand recognition is their visual appeal. Studies have pointed out that the human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Additionally, it has been proved that text content with visuals attracts 94% more total views.
Considering this, if your t-shirt design has a professionally designed logo plus a catchy tagline, it will help even more in visually stimulating your target audience. In turn, this will go a long way in increasing brand recognition.
But promote your products or services using high quality branded t-shirts. People like to use and remember products more for their great quality. With branded and custom tee shirts you can further improve recognition of your brand.
04. Ensure Brand Loyalty
Customers’ loyalty is important for the consistent growth of a business. T-shirt marketing is a great tool when it comes to making customers loyal to your business. This is because people wear t-shirts and feel apparel closely.
These clothing has become part of their life for at least a few months. During these days, they are in touch with your brand as they are wearing your logo also with the shirt.
Such closeness with your brand makes people think of your business more often. Consequently, they return to your brand for repeat purchasing of products or services.
As a tactic to improve loyalty, give them t-shirts as a gift. People get a positive feeling for brands when they receive gifts from a company.
05. Build a Sense of Community
How about starting your t-shirt marketing from your own house, which means your company? Make your employees wear your company’s t-shirts with its logo. As your employees come wearing shirts from their homes all along the long route, they promote your brand.
But most importantly, by wearing the same t-shirt, your employees develop a sense of community. This creates a closer bond and workplace professional relationship amongst your employees.
How to get your t-shirts printed for your business?
Now that you know the major advantages of a t-shirt marketing campaign for your small business, it is time to get it started. But, the major concern here is about how to get your shirt designs created and printed in a hassle-free way and at an affordable online printing cost.
At this stage, you can depend on print-on-demand platform PrintShop, which is owned by Designhill, a leading creative marketplace. You can open your online store to sell and promote your t-shirt and other merchandise as well.
Then, when it comes to printing your design on your choice of t-shirts, just place a printing order with the site. PrintShop will print the design on your t-shirt as per your specifications. The site will also ship the shirt to customers on your behalf.
Wrapping Up
T-shirt marketing is amongst the most effective and result-oriented tactics for brand promotion. With this marketing method, you can ensure better brand visibility, brand recognition, and customer loyalty. Your conversion rate also goes higher when people get t-shirts as gifts and feel emotionally connected with your brand. There are a host of other advantages why you should opt for this type of marketing.
