How T-Shirts Can Bring You More Customers & Boost Sales
Has a client ever approached you and said “something other than just T-Shirts”? Most likely you have, but do you know how to explain the benefits of a well executed T-Shirt campaign to a client?
Winning new customers comes down to knowing how to market yourself or your business. All areas of marketing: social, digital, direct mail and in person all aim to gain awareness, visibility and gaining customers that will grow your revenue.
Often overlooked, T-shirts actually have more marketing impact than given credit for.
They are a great way to boost your business and grow your customer base. Here is how an effective T-shirt campaign can benefit your business.
Visibility
T-Shirts are extremely visible, so your brand can always be seen when someone wears one with your logo on it. Once of the first things you notice when you see someone is what they are wearing, which is to say that your T-Shirt will be the first thing people notice when they see a person wearing it. Its not like a business card or flyer that will just get tossed in the trash or an online ad that we’ve become desensitized to.
Loyalty
T-Shirts are great for reinforcing brand loyalty. If someone is wearing your shirt, they are knowingly doing so to be seen in it. If they are choosing to wear your brand’s colors or logo, odds are they can identify with you or your business in some way and are proud to do so. i am sure that most of you reading this article owned some form of promotional T-shirt at some point that you wear time and time again because it fit well or was comfortable or was just a good shirt for every day use. That’s just what you want from a promotional item.
Perceived Value
People are used to paying $20-$30 for a novelty T-shirt at the store, but they don’t always realize that it cost much less to buy shirts in bulk . When you give someone a T-shirt, they automatically put a $20-$30 value on it, which allows them to appreciate the value of the gift that has just been given to them, even though it may have only cost you $10-15 per shirt.
ROI
The return on investment (ROI) is the amount of revenue generated in relation to the amount of money you spent to get it. A successful marketing campaign is not only about gaining exposure to your brand but making sure that your exposure translates into profits.
The metrics for calculating the ROI of a T-shirt campaign are clearly not as refined as a those of a digital ad campaign, such as click through rates or impressions. There are still ways however to gauge the impact of a T-shirt spend.
Cost per Impression
A recent industry study show that the average promotional T-shirt is worn approximately 4 times per month and generates 365 impressions per month. An impression in this case, meaning every time the T-shirt is seen by someone. Assuming that you keep your T-shirt for a year, that comes out to 4380 impressions per T-shirt. If you order 100 T-shirts with a 1 color imprint, your cost will be in the $8-10 range and your cost per thousand impressions (CPM) will be roughly $2-3/shirt. Compare this to Facebook ads, where according to a recent Revealbot study, the average CPM across all industries was nearly $15, up from $11.50 in 2021.
This is a critical data point you should be sharing with all of your potential customers. From an impressions standpoint, T-shirts seem like a very appealing value proposition at the very least. Since there is no clear way of track how someone gets from seeing your T-shirt to becoming a client of your product/service, its a bit of a creative effort to measure revenue. tHere are however some ways to go about it.
Promo Codes
IF you are giving away yourT-shirts at a trade show or event, you could offer a promotional code to recipients. When people redeem that offer code online, you can then directly attribute any new customers who used the code to your T-shirt campaign. You can also go a step further by creating a special landing page for them to go to, and assign a unique link such as yourcompany.com/conference2022. This actually works in more ways than one. First, you can cater the content of that page specifically to them, you can track any sales coming from that link and you can also capture the contact information and gain a lead out of it.
Website Lead Generation
Marketing is all about generating leads to fill your pipeline with as many leads as possible then convert them from when they see your brand to making an eventual purchase. Incorporate a Free T-shirt pop-up on your website after maybe 15-20 seconds after someone visits your website. Simply add a form for them to complete their email address or basic contact information and you collect that lead and send them a Free T-shirt. If you don’t want to give out too many, change the pitch and offer a chance to win a Free T-shirt. Then pull your list of leads and hand out as many as you feel comfortable.
A tech company for example hired a designer to put together a cool shirt design together, then added a simple pop-up asking people to enter their information to enter their ballot to win a Free T-shirt. They received so many entries that they built a full marketplace of branded items. Not only was it successful, but they are now selling their T-shirts online. So rather than paying for leads, people are paying them to become a lead. Its a win all around!
Leverage
Its no secret that T-shirts are an effective marketing tool – they always have been, but what elements of the T-shirts actually optimize your ROI?
Simplicity
The the advancements in digital printing equipment, you no longer need to worry so much about cost per colour when setting up artwork. Keeping your design simple and easy to understand is key to making wearables a long lasting impression generator. The key for a strong marketing T-shirt is one that’s recognizable, but still stylish. your design needs ot be a balance of being recognizable in relation to your brand but also more than just your logo.
Quality
Make sure that you decide to go with a soft comfortable material for your T-shirt, made from quality fabric(s). The success or failure of your T-shirt lies on whether or not people will want to wear it, so make sure that you get the right shirts to make your finished product worth it.
In summary, T-shirts can truly be a reliable and scalable way for you to win new business. The key is knowing how to properly communicate their value to your customers. Apply these points to help upsell this concept on your next T-shirt campaign.
Contact one of our account managers today to get started on your T-shirt campaign. Our people are well qualified to guide you and provide pricing on any item you want to bring to market.