eCommerce ERP CRM | Digital Marketing Agency -
I want to create an eCommerce store but was confused and stuck at the point what business to do? Which product, timeline and what budget? What to sell, how much to spend on paid advertising and many more questions was coming in my mind.
But then after a lot of time invested in thinking, I discovered that the most vital part of building any business is the ideation stage. Once the idea is finalized, from here one can begin to move towards the product. But bridging this gap is a very tough task.
From my experience I can say that it is better to sit down with someone and discuss ideas, their pros-cons, etc., to start generating ideas for a product.
I too follow the same process when I was in the discovery phase of starting a new online business. I too wanted to sell something that is easy to catch up in the competition and at the same time, could be an exciting business that would be fun to work and have great future too.
Besides this, I also don’t want to invest more (say not more than a few hundred dollars) before being able to turn on the profits. The reason is simple; I want to spend more money on marketing and less money on inventory.
After all this homework, I decided on selling t-shirts. The reason for choosing selling t-shirts online is that it is a simple, easy and efficient business model. It is the most used casual wear, worn by both men and women. Building and launching a new t-shirt online store is inexpensive and quick.
With various apps and integrations in Shopify App store, your t-shirt store can be functional in few hours. You can also connect your t-shirt store to drop shipper, t-shirt printer quickly.
But as it is a very competitive segment, I must have to take care of designs people love and quality they trust. Let me tell you now the process of how to sell t-shirts online with my personal experience. I am going to share with you a strategy and plan on which I worked and which proved magic for me. Let’s get into the depth of what are the steps involved and what are the key factors to getting success.
First, Ask Yourself
What kind of t-shirts did you want to sell?
What sort of business was it going to be?
How can your t-shirt business come up as a brand in minimum time and investment?
How can you turn visitors into customers and wins trust?
For this, you need to do some market research.
How To Do The Market Research For Selling T-Shirt Online?
First of all, if you want to setup a store quickly, then search and join a community or trend that already exists. If you don’t want to spend more time in creating content, market it and after that sell the product in the community, then search for a community like Reddit as per your outlook.
Finding out, What Is In Trend?
Take a proven concept, redo it, market it better and repeat. For this, find out what is in trend, what’s going on in the market, which product is selling much. By this redo, your actions, sell the same products but with a different and unique concept.
For example, when you search on search engine “stylish and creative t-shirts with slogans”, you will get certain options. Among this maximum options are average or of no worthwhile very few options are good and up to the mark.
But, as they are coming in search so for sure a community is existing for it and from here your work begins of doing the same thing in a different manner.
Like here, few noticeable things about these t-shirts are:
Some are inspirational, motivational; some have funny quotes,
Some are subject specific and consist pictures too.
Some promote a certain lifestyle.
By keeping this thing in mind, figure out how will you produce and print the t-shirts.
The Key Elements To Success
If you want to become successful t-shirt entrepreneur, there are various elements you need to consider for getting success in your business.
Niche
First, you are needed to choose a niche. For being a successful t-shirt entrepreneur, you have to stand different from the crowd and other competitors. The best way of doing this is choosing and catering a specific niche.
For example, a category like t-shirts with funny slogans is very broad in itself. You make it a little concise to attack in the developed market. Go with the most specific niche like t-shirts with funny slogans for doctors and nurses, t-shirts with funny slogans for professional, t-shirts with funny slogans for teenage girls, etc.
This way by being more specific, you will stand out from others without blowing your budget.
Design
People are so choosy these days. They love to experiment and always look for trendy and fashionable t-shirts. The majority of citizens are looking for design, slogans and graphics that suits their personality, connect with them and reflect their opinions. The other thing people want to see is your catalog which has the copy of t-shirt designs.
Quality
It is the next most important key element for success. If you want to sustain long in online t-shirt business sell. Don’t fool anyone. Build trust with quality. The t-shirt print and quality should be of top-notch.
Brand
The brand is a promise. A promise of maintaining high-quality, design under specifically chosen niche. In the present competitive era, customers have more choices; it is imperative for online stores to make a distinctive presence for attracting the audience and then converting them into consumers.
T-Shirt Quality
All t-shirts are different and so as all print jobs too. So, choose the blank t-shirts wisely. Either purchase them directly from the market or first purchase the fabric and get stitched it on your own, is your decision. But quality is the foundation for your success. Quality is going to affect consumer mindset and decision, so never compromise on it for higher profit margins. If you want your former customers, repeatedly purchase from your online store, then always keep in mind the quality factor.
The quality of t-shirt includes various factors in it like fitting, size, softness, material, and weight.
T-Shirt Printing Quality
Currently, there are three popular methods for printing on t-shirts is available. Each method has its positives and negatives. It depends on you that how much time you want to invest in product creation and which method you want to choose for product creation. You also have to choose a printing partner too.
Let’s know about all the three printing methods, their process, positives, negatives, etc., to have a better understanding of each process.
Method 1 –
Screen Printing
Screen printing is a traditional and old technique that has stood the test of time. It is one of the most popular methods for printing on t-shirts. The result of screen printing is long lasting and durable too. It is also very cost effective when you are printing in bulk. But when you want to craft any design with more than four or five colors then it will increase the cost and production time. It also has certain issues when the design is complex.
Pros
Volume discounts.
Cost efficient for bulk production.
Cons
Not very much cost effective for multiple colors.
Cannot print complex images and designs.
Method 2
Heat Transfer
Heat transfer method exists in several forms and for a long time. You must have seen basic heat transfer paper. In basic process, you are capable of printing the design from your home computer and transfer them with an iron. But if you are running a business, the basic method will not work. For selling t-shirts online, you need to use advanced heat transfer method. The advanced form of heat transfers is called plastisol transfers. The transfers are printed by professional printers on special, high-quality heat transfer paper. The advantage of this method is that it is able to order a mass of prints from your local printer and transfer them to your t-shirts as you receive orders with a commercial heat press machine. Heat transfers method can produce full-color images onto T-shirts quickly and easily.
Pros
You can “print” t-shirt on demand.
Cons
Lower quality and less durable when compared to the direct-to-garment and screen printing method.
Large upfront investment into a heat press machine (cost varies as per your requirement and budget).
The do-it-yourself approach means additional time input from yourself.
Method 3
Direct-To-Garment (DTG)
The operating process of the direct-to-garment printing method is much like an ink-jet printer you would have at home. DTG prints ink directly onto the t-shirt and can produce full-color images with accuracy.
DTG printing produces quality printing when compared with screen printing and heat transfer method because it operates just like an ink-jet printer. There is no requirement of setup costs. So, if you want to print small orders, this is going to be not only simple but cost effective too for you.
But the lack of volume discount for large orders is the major disadvantage of direct-to-garment printing method. The reason is it requires the same amount of time to print each t-shirt.
Pros
Unlimited color options.
Great for small orders.
High detail accuracy in printed design.
No set-up costs.
Cons
Not cost effective for large production.
No volume discounts.
Creating Your Designs
Find The Niches And Best Selling Designs: If you are stuck for t-shirt niche design and ideas, start with popular niche and designs and also consider what is selling well currently.
Hire A Designer: Once you are ready with an idea for t-shirt designs, get your ideas designed and executed. If you have Adobe Photoshop like similar programs, you can produce simple designs on your own. However, you can also take help of graphic designer for creating designs. And also, there are a variety of tools available to help you with your design.
Design Communities
Dribble - Dribbble is a fantastic designer community having lots of unique talent. You just need to message the designer for taking your project as freelancing after searching and selecting the style.
Behance - Behance is another great designer community to search and assign work to freelancer t-shirt designer.
Freelance Networks: Freelancer and Elance are some other great options you can try.
Buy Designs
In case if you do not want to hire a designer for designers, then you can also purchase pre-made designs. But make your mind, if you are following this route, probable chances are there that other people are already selling the design. So, make this decision after thinking hard. You can also check out some graphic marketplaces like Designious, T-Shirt Factory, Creative Market, and Graphic River, etc. To access these marketplaces you need an accessing license too.
When you have final designs with you, then you can get some mockup images of them on actual t-shirts. This is important because your customers want to see the final design and how will it look on the t-shirt when printed.
There are several ways with the help of which you can get images of your final designs on t-shirts including ordering samples and taking product photography on your own or else with the plenty of t-shirt templates online. This way you can opt to create a 100% digital mockup.
Look the image below, to understand it in the better way.
Adobe Photoshop’s free trial t-shirt templates are the most common types of mockup files. The template allows previewing quickly how your designs will look once get printed on a t-shirt. The majority of the Photoshop templates comes with multiple layers that allow you to change the color of the t-shirt and apply your design that will blend with the creases, folds and contours of the t-shirt.
GraphicRiver T-Shirt Mockups, Design Inspiration Magazine – 40 T-Shirt Mockups, Design Blots – 50 T-Shirt Mockups are some of the resources to help you find the best possible mockup file for your project. You can also search more by yourself. There is various mockup which is available on a certain charge. You can opt for this option too.
Validating Your Designs
No business can be done without money. So, if you are also spending a lot of money on your new t-shirt selling the business, first verify the interest of people and market for your designs.
Now you might be thinking how to validate the market and interest of people?
So don’t worry about this. There are many ways by which you can go about validating the market for your design ideas.
Some of the most common and popular methods for validating your ideas can be below mentioned:
Personal Social Networks – Post your few designs to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social networks. Your initial customers exist in your social networking friend list. Take the opinion and advice of your friend.
Reddit – Reddit is huge, and it is very easy to find a highly targeted niche of potential customers and ask them first hand their thoughts on your designs before launching.
Kickstarter – Kickstarter is a crowd funding website. You can also search other crowd funding websites like this one and can make it easier to test, validate, and collect money for your new business idea. Launching a crowdfunding campaign although can be time-consuming and also requires a good preparation, when we talk about benefits, they are huge. The benefits include full funding of your project before you have spent a dime.
Open Test Store – Finally, with eCommerce platforms like Shopify, it’s never been easier to set up a fully functional online store in the matter of few hours to validate your business idea. Sign up for free 14-day trial and check out some of the free themes to get started.
Setting Up Shop
Now till here you have your t-shirt designs, made your mockups and validated your idea, this is the time to build your online store for selling T-shirts. And setting an eCommerce store on Shopify eCommerce platform is very easy and quick.
There is few print-on-demand t-shirt drop shippers that directly integrate with your Shopify store. They allow you to get up and to run in no time. These printer/drop shippers will print and ship your t-shirts to your customers on your behalf every time you receive an order, automatically.
Some of the Shopify printer/drop shipper apps are as follows:
Printful
Print Aura
Teelaunch
Merchify
Printify
What Is Your Business Name?
You set-up a shop, but what about your business name? After all your business name is the identity of your business. It is a fairly important step in building your business.
So, keep few things in mind while coming up with your business name.
Business name should be simple, creative and easy to remember
Emphasis on .com availability.
All social accounts must be readily available.
Keep the list of the names combined as per your liking. Get a second opinion on it and finalize the best one.
Sign Up For 14 Day Free Trial Of Shopify
Once the name is finalized, start by signing up for 14 days free trial of Shopify and get down to business. Shopify makes it very easy to buy and set up a custom domain. All the configuration is done for you, and your custom domain setup is completed automatically.
And this way your online store to sell t-shirts is created.
Logo And Storefront Design
This part comes in existence when things start coming together. There’s nothing more exciting than working in a store for a few hours and watching, piece by piece; your store comes to life.
The Logo
Keep the logo more approachable but it too must be exclusive, classy and of high quality. Include the name of the business in the logo creatively.
Great! You are done with the logo too. Now for what you are waiting for? It’s the time to start setting up the online store.
Setting Up the Store and Picking a Theme
Go with Shopify paid theme. This is good for selling a single product. If you want to minimize the cost you can also opt for a free theme.
There are plenty of options in the Shopify Theme Store (both paid and free options for themes).
After designing the theme for your store. It is the time to start filling up the store with products.
Beginning Of T-Shirt Design Process
What is important here is your resourcefulness. If you are resourceful, you can do anything and can throw winning designs. We already discussed resourcefulness in early paragraphs.
Now it is the time to get working on the product page.
Effective Product Page Essentials
Few things that you must consider on product page are as follows:
Product Title
Size options
Price
Shipping times
Description
Garment description
Related products
Product shot
High-Quality T-Shirt Mockups
The high quality mockup is required to convert the visitors into the prospective customers. We already discussed this in early paragraphs.
Determine an Appropriate Pricing Strategy
Apply psychological pricing tactics to encourage sell. Keep a reasonable, consistent profit margin of about $10 per t-shirt sold. Take a look at a few different resources online to see how to price the t-shirts accordingly. An example is T-Shirt Magazine. This kind of resources makes things easy for you.
When you keep scrolling and researching at these resources you will find that the unofficial average price range for the majority of t-shirt brands is ranging in between “$16 to $24.
If you too are starting in the same way, you can afford huge orders, good enough margin if you place small wholesale orders.
But yes, initially work in a little low cost.
Launch, Social Account Setup And Make Your First Sell
This is something like launching your online store.
At the time of launching the store, keep in mind the quick wins. Start small and grab the low hanging fruits. So for this, validate the work, you had done so far.
Make a checklist of the things you could do quickly that were free like mentioned below:
Setup social media accounts and invite friends.
Setup exit intent email popup
Post on Reddit
Setup social accounts especially at Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter. Start inviting all your friends on the Facebook page. Don’t connect your personal Facebook account to the Instagram account, and better don’t add family and friends there. Later setup the Pinterest and Twitter account.
Be careful with your approach. Simply using the Reddit does not guarantee that your t-shirt will get sold. So make sure to only share to specific communities.
On the launch day of your store, you can share on subreddit. Chance of getting a sale through this channel are very high. May be it is not your target audience by any means. The only advantage of sharing here is that every member of the community wants to spend money. It can prove to be the golden ticket to an unexpected blast off, and if you get success in making your first sale, then this validates all the work you had done so far. It will show that someone is interested in your product. And slowly and gradually order starts coming your way.
If your product is funny, quirky, or offbeat, it might just be a good spot to try and validate your product. Even if you don’t get any sales, but you do get traffic – it means there’s something there, and you can start bringing these visitors into your sales funnel.
The Reddit Effect Brings A New Referral Source
One of the great things about the subreddit is that product blogs often take it.
Facebook and Specific Groups
Next, head to Facebook and join specific Facebook groups.
This is the same premise as posting to specific subreddits, but, to a more engaged audience on Facebook.
Your post on Facebook can be turned more effective and converted into sales if you actively participate in the discussions before sharing a link to your online store.
Email Capture and Exit Intent Popups
Use the apps to capture email addresses from potential customers to use as a remarketing method. Using apps is the easiest way to get this setup. So it is advisable to consider using popups on your online store. They work extremely well. They provide a conversion rate from visitor to an email address.
Content Curation and Blog Building
Various store owners overlook the importance of the blog. But in real, building out the blog for your store is very important. It let’s you start building a relationship with visitors, who, after sometime will purchase your product and become your prospective customers.
Only creating a blog is not enough, but the marketing of the content must be done in an effective and efficient way. Blog writing is a long-term process, but if done with patience and consistency, it will give massive benefit in the long term. This way you could get someone to visit the blog, they might click through to the homepage and see the products you are selling.
Once, sell starts and you are the expert of using free advertising methods; you can think of jumping into paid advertising.
Moving into Paid Advertising
T-shirt business is associated with low upfront costs so that you can think of paid advertising. First head towards Instagram. As your first plan and attack through Instagram, find some larger accounts, and see if they had been willing to work with you or not.
The reason behind hitting Instagram first is simply because it is the platform very much familiar. There is an audience that exists there already, and for sure there are massive related Instagram accounts that may be willing to work with you.
This will give you an almost direct sales channel that wouldn’t require much keyword research, demographic research, or anything else. It is the quickest way for you to get started with paid advertising, and the rewards could be huge.
Instagram Marketing Basics and Building an Audience
You can grow your Instagram account quickly effective use of paid sponsored posts.
Here are some things that you make sure that you will cover every time you setup an Instagram account. Consider applying these methods to your business account as well:
Get a username. Keep your username exactly your business name or something very close to your business name
Keep your profile picture visually very strong. Keep it like that it will capture everyone’s attention when they’re scrolling through their feed
Keep your biography funny and cute with the use of emojis
To track clickthroughs, and sales, of your store, use Google’s UTM parameter generator
Use a Google URL shortener to send visitors to a specific product or page on your store
After this, you are ready to roll.
Growing an Instagram Account from Zero
The simplest way to grow any Instagram account is to be active, and post content on a regular basis. Try to post news, picture, information, etc. on the regular interval. Likewise, post a picture in the morning or a newsfeed in the evening.
Started by scouring Instagram for different accounts related to your business. You’re your strategy of finding a bunch of different accounts, and repost the images to your account providing credit where you could.
Also, do more research into posting schedules.
The best way to find relevant Instagram followers is to search simply for hashtags related to your demographic, and like, follow, or comment on their accounts.
You can also use the tool “Top Hashtags” to find the popular tags related to your business. Although some of these don’t apply to the users you are trying to reach, that’s fine. You can search for any hashtag that might be relevant to your demographic too.
Finding Popular Accounts in Horizontal Markets
Aim for those massive Instagram accounts that post pictures of something related to your specific t-shirt business.
Try to find someone with an Instagram account that had a few hundred thousand followers and also who is willing to promote our products. The only problem was finding accounts that were willing to do that. But if you could find someone to promote your products, it would be great.
The easiest way to find popular accounts that could potentially be willing to promote the product is through piggybacking off people who are already doing it.
You can also use the service called, Webstagram. This will be the easiest way for you to do that. Simply search for slogans, funny slogans, emotional slogans, motivational slogans, etc. and it will give you more list of accounts that were related to those specific keywords.
You can also consider the following criteria’s afterward:
The account should have 100k+ followers
The account should have an email address in their biography
The account should charge less than $100 for a post
Each picture should have a few thousand likes
The less expensive the post, the better.
Once you have few emails ready, you can go to your work. Start sending the emails.
You will find that in a week or two, you will start receiving the responses. Not all of the accounts you emailed were willing to work with you. But that is also fine because some of them are willing to promote products on their accounts.
The process is very fairly simple. Email the account owner, ask how much they charge, how to pay them, and when the picture could be posted.
Once you get a few bites, it was game on.
Running advertisement on a sponsored account is simple, straightforward but effective. You can also include a specific coupon code for your paid shootouts to add a layer of tracking to see who ordered from this post. Also, make an account for the sole purpose of promoting this t-shirt.
By seeing how many coupon codes were used, you can know how many click through you receive on your Instagram account. You can also know how many people clicked the bio link, or, they directly entered thinkpup.com into their browser and then purchased.
If you use Google’s URL Shortener for the profile link, people will straight go to the product page and this way you can track how many people clicked through and conversion rate.
This will be your good start at Instagram. But you can do much better than this because there exist many bigger fishes. You just need to search them and target them.
Repeat the above process to try and find more relevant and specific Instagram accounts.
Afterthoughts on Instagram Marketing
Instagram marketing proved to be a very successful sales channel for the store. No wonder, every time you make a promotion, at least, one sale came from it because Instagram is a very visual platform. You know that the things displayed are exactly the one which is displayed.
Somehow, if your campaign is not always profitable, the too it will certainly extend your reach and proves to be a catalyst for growing the Instagram account further.
In some instances, the account also grew in respect to “increase in followers”. You can also see the growth if you get featured on Pitbulls of Instagram.
With Instagram marketing proving to be a successful sales channel, there’s plenty of room to scale. Your account will grow slowly sky is the limit regarding the audience size.
If paid shoutouts are working for you, then you can also take Facebook marketing next.
Facebook Marketing: A New Channel For Growth
To some, Facebook marketing might be a total breeze. But if you want to make it work, provide your time and dedicated effort. Also, keep a modest budget set aside to make it work.
Make a plan for paid advertising on Facebook and get straight to work.
The Plan for Facebook Campaigns
As your online store for selling t-shirt is new, and you are new to Facebook advertising, there will be a lot of room for you to experiment. Fix a budget for Facebook advertising and use that budget creatively and efficiently to attract the audience and convert it into customers.
You can make a plan something like this:
1) Setup a Facebook retargeting pixel to stay in front of prospects by showing advertising targeted directly to people who had visited the store before
2) Setup a Facebook retargeting pixel for visitors who added a product to their cart but didn’t checkout
3) Experiment with different campaigns and targeting for different t-shirts
4) If you did not get a conversion after $10 ad spend, better to kill the campaign
5) Rinse and repeat if an ad resulted in a conversion
The First Ad Campaign
Keep your first t-shirt ad simple. You can post just a picture of the t-shirt with a clear call to action. Keep the modest budget in mind and let the ad run.
Perform the exact targeting methods. This is your first test, and a lot more tweaks could have been done here to reach a more targeted audience.
You can evaluate that your ad is creating impact or not. If your ad is getting good engagement, some comments, some likes then you are going in the right direction. If no one is buying, call to action is not clear, the content copy is not good, still you are getting the fair engagement, then there is nothing to worry about, as it is your first ad. There is a lot more you can do. You can try various campaign styles with the different target audience and different budgets.
Advanced Targeting with Facebook
Spent some time in researching different successful campaigns that people had ran in the past. If you do a quick Google search for case studies on t-shirt campaigns on Facebook, you’ll find a lot of different people with huge success through Facebook advertising.
Try to find out what they are doing or what they already did, and you are not doing.
Here’s a key takeaway to implement into your Facebook campaign strategy. What you’ll want to do is target things like:
Specific Websites
Specific Forums
Specific Magazines
Specific Associations
Specific Clubs
Specific Newsletters
Specific Events etc.
By targeting these more specific groups of fans – you know that they’re already passionate about the subject matter.
With that in mind, go back to work. I got to work. Run a new ad, with a new t-shirt design, more targeted audience, and a higher ad spend and again evaluate the results.
Afterthoughts Of Facebook Advertising
I must suggest that if you have more time and a large budget, Facebook can be a good channel for a few sales.
Blog Outreach And Free Promotion
One of the best marketing tactics is reaching out to relevant blogs and asking them if they’d be willing to feature your product.
But if your product is unique, then chances are there that the average product blog would probably not feature a t-shirt. In this case, go more specific. What were the types of blogs that would feature a slogan t-shirt?
Here are some ideas with which you can begin with to start your search:
Specific blogs
Specific fan blogs
Associations that would want to do cross promotion
Tumblr accounts with big followings etc.
Setup An Email Marketing Campaign
Next, setup an email marketing campaign. It would be a good way to sell products to people who were on the fence about purchasing. You could send an email blast to them who:
abandoned their checkout
who submitted their email address in the exit intent popup form
Email marketing is very important for encouraging sell. The best part is, it did not cost anything, and many times won sell.
Create An Outstanding Experience
Although in t–shirt sell, there is not much room for experiment. But if you add a flavor of out-of-the-box thinking, it will go to create a huge difference for your business.
For example, with the help of printful, you can make customer’s experience, a little bit more personal. Here, you will have the option to edit and write a personal note on the packing slip that gets sent out with every order. This personal note may ask for customer’s photo with t-shirt purchased from your store, thanks giving the note for making the purchase or something else.
You can go this way to have customers share their orders and t-shirts with their friends and family on Instagram. It is totally a free marketing channel, provides you more free exposure.
Conclusion
It is kind of interesting that the most sales came from free promotional methods, and paid marketing campaign is also incredibly appealing.
Some key takeaways from these results are that mobile traffic proved to be much more popular than desktop traffic. So, it’s a good thing that Shopify theme store is providing mobile responsive themes.
It is also interesting to see that Instagram too drove huge traffic. If you UTM setup parameters, you would be able to track Instagram traffic. After experimenting with various resources for promoting your online t-shirt store, over a period, focus on the channels that provide the best return on investment. Also, with integrations like Pinterest Buyable Pins and Facebook Commerce, the opportunity for growth is endless for your online store. Additionally, explore Google AdWords, more PR, and Twitter, etc.
I hope you have found the post informative and valuable. If you liked this post, please let us know in the comments below!
eCommerce ERP CRM | Digital Marketing Agency -