[caption id="attachment_1805" align="aligncenter" width="468"] Image source: Lincolntimesnews.com[/caption] A person who's willing to wear around a custom shirt with a company logo is like a dream come true for business owners. These customers will implicitly support your business as they advertise your brand to friends, family, and complete strangers. Getting people to notice an eye-catching custom article of clothing with your company logo is the easy part -- the hard part comes from actually persuading customers to wear your brand. So, if you're trying to give your business a marketing boost, follow these tips and you'll create a miniature army of word-of-mouth marketers. 1. Make Your Clothing a Commodity Without doubt, the most common strategy for getting customers to wear your brand is to simply make your clothing available and slap a price tag on it. Huge corporations like Nike and Coca-Cola, which have ingrained themselves in pop culture, sell shirts by the truck-full. Obviously, most companies won't ever reach the same level of success as Nike, but shrewd business owners can still capitalize on marketing custom clothing. [caption id="attachment_1801" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Image source: Fighterxfashion.com[/caption] Restaurants are probably the best example of this. If you go to a local diner or bar, you might see a handful of custom t-shirts and hats on sale. Fans of the restaurant are often willing to drop some extra cash on the clothes and wear it around town. This is a foolproof strategy because you make a profit whenever you make a sale. Also, you can be certain that customers intend to wear the clothing around town -- why else would they buy it? The only catch is that it isn't a very aggressive marketing strategy. If you're really trying to put your company's name out there, then this passive approach isn't the best option. 2. Hand Out Free Clothing People get kind of crazy when you use the word "free." A while ago, a particularly astute reporter noticed that people were standing in a 30 minute line just to get a free slice of pizza. He did the math and concluded that if somebody makes more than $6 an hour (which is a safe bet), standing around for half an hour for a $3 slice of pizza is a waste of time. [caption id="attachment_1803" align="alignnone" width="4256"] Image source: Image.sportrider.com[/caption] It's just part of our nature -- free stuff is practically irresistible. This might sound counterintuitive, but people will overpay for free stuff. That is, they're willing to invest more time and energy into obtaining free stuff, even if it's not really practical for them to do so. Give away clothing with your logo, and you can tap into that natural human love of free stuff. 3. Give Customers an Incentive to Represent Your Brand There's a restaurant close to where I live that's absolutely packed every time I go there. They're often ranked within the top five restaurants in my city and the food is absolutely to die for. While the delicious grub is more than enough to bring back repeat business, last time I was there I noticed a clever marketing strategy. [caption id="attachment_1804" align="aligncenter" width="425"] Image source: Foodfrenzy.ocregister.com[/caption] On the menu, it says that the restaurant will hand out free bumper stickers to anybody who asks. If you put the bumper sticker on your car, you automatically get a free $10 gift certificate to the restaurant. Brilliant! You can use this same strategy for your business, especially during large local events like festivals or sports games. Hand out free t-shirts or hats, and tell customers that you have people walking through the crowd handing out gift certificates to people wearing the free clothing. This should be enough to turn a complete stranger into an eager participant. My last bit of advice is to know your audience. Spend a little bit of time learning about your customers before you invest in new marketing campaign. This might give you insight into which marketing techniques will be the most successful.
Open an employee swag store in minutes
Open an employee swag store in minutes