Using Special Offers To Sell More Tee Shirts

As a whole, humans are programmed to avoid loss and danger. Without this basic instinct, the human race would have a difficult time surviving. Subconsciously, humans are constantly watching for cues that might suggest danger or the possibility of experiencing dramatic loss that lead them to flee or evade the problem as quickly as possible.

In fact, our nervous system is fine tuned to make us react quickly when signs of danger or loss present themselves. There are many stories of mothers who have exhibited nearly superhuman strength and lifted whole cars off their babies who were caught underneath. How could this happen? The idea of the loss of their child was so unbearable that the nervous system kicked in to give them the boost they needed to overcome that problem. It made them act in more extraordinary ways than normal to take action immediately.

Obviously, losing money or an opportunity can never be compared with the potential loss of a child, although the same dynamics are at play. A possible loss of money or opportunity can create a sense of urgency. The greater the potential loss, the more the nervous system kicks in to take immediate action. That’s why most financial experts warn that people are risk adverse and shouldn’t watch the stock market. If they do and see their investments drop substantially, they pull their money out instead of waiting for the market to correct itself. This is because the loss triggered a subconscious risk that caused them to take immediate and emotional action, rather than to think the situation out.

This works in the sales arena because if you give your prospect time to think about other options, odds are they’ll either think up more objections or decide to buy from someone else. It may not even be a better t-shirt, just better marketed. If they aren’t given a reason each time they come into contact with your brand as to why they shouldn’t walk away and give it some thought, it can become the most damaging of objections to your sales effort simply because once you are out of sight, it’s guaranteed you are out of mind.

Taking Advantage Of Human Programming

Your offer will have to invoke a sense of urgency since over the internet you do not have your prospect in front of you as in a physical store location. You can push this as much or as little as you like. You can simply call prices “introductory” and not say anything about whether the price will change in the future or not. But, the word implies that something can change later down the line. On the other hand, you could clearly state that it is a one-time or a limited time price to create more of a sense of urgency.

There are even more creative ways you can invoke a sense of loss and they have nothing to do with a time element. This is what can make them very effective. You really aren’t rushing anyone, but you give the implication that if a potential customer doesn’t rush themselves, they will experience a loss. An example of this would be if you offer a specific t-shirt as a limited edition that will not be printed again after the current inventory is sold. Well, there is not an actual time frame that you’ve mentioned or a time limit on the offer, but you’ve very effectively lit a fire under most visitors due to the potential for loss of the chance to get that t-shirt in the future.

Another way to invoke a sense of urgency is when it’s a matter of style or status. When is the best time to get something that really sets you apart from others? When the product is first released. If it is going to be a sought after t-shirt design, then your potential customer will have to get one before they are all sold. This is a powerful marketing strategy that can even help with pre-sales, so that prospect can reserve a t-shirt before it is even printed.

This type of logic is also used when marketers say:”Be the first to own this fully loaded cell phone.” Or, whatever the product might be. They are hoping to increase your sense of urgency by getting people to jostle for being the first in line to buy their product. After all, once everyone has one then it’s not such a big deal anymore and the urgency is lost.

Making your offer in a way that creates an impulse to take action and buy is very important to online sales. If you can’t get that urgency across, people will drift off to some other site or activity and be gone for good.

You want to make sure that your visitor understands why it is important for them to make that purchase now and know that you are offering a great deal that they shouldn’t pass up!

Anthony Marsh is the owner of Popular Threadz and Crack Smoking Shirts. He runs the online resource TeeBiz.com and the t-shirt community TeeBurb.com.

Creating A Viral Marketing Campaign For Your Brand

The focus of viral marketing is the fact that it has the ability to replicate itself without any outside assistance. A viral marketing campaign is one which allows and motivates customers who are exposed to the campaign to actively help spread the word themselves.

Your customers pass on the word to other potential customers either because of their excitement about the clothing brand, because of what you are offering, or worth sharing as the result of a gift or award option associated with the campaign.

Having such a built-in replication capability, viral marketing has the potential for exponential growth and can quickly spread a message to thousands or even millions of people from just one simple starting point. Urban myths are a good example of exponential growth. Even though many of these myths have been proven fake, they continue to circulate. Many people forward them to others even though they’ve heard them already and know they are false. It doesn’t take long for an urban myth to spread fast and far.

A great case study of viral marketing is Hotmail. Hotmail.com, was one of the first free web based e-mail services. They recruited members by first giving away free e-mail addresses, then requiring that every e-mail sent by their service include an advertisement at the bottom for their free e-mail service.

This strategy had their free service quickly spread through exponential growth and grew a large member base to be tapped for marketing other services also.

Some viral strategies are obviously going to work better than others. The Hotmail campaign in which free services are offered with no cost for the users, are positioned to grow fast.

The key to success for viral marketing is delayed gratification. The company may not profit today or even tomorrow, but can generate a groundswell of interest. Eventually the profits will come and hopefully for a long time afterwards. Investing up front by providing something for free will attract attention that can be redirected to other items you are selling and eventually earn money.

In the real world a virus only spreads when allowed to transmit from one person to another. Likewise, your marketing message must rely on existing mechanisms through which the message is just as easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, social networks, etc.

Viral marketing works so well on the Internet because of the ease of instant inexpensive communication and because people like to share things. From a marketing standpoint, your goal is to simplify your message so it can be spread easily and the shorter the better. As with the Hotmail example, broadcasting that it is free and telling where to get it is about as simple as it can get.

If you expect your message to spread virally, then the method of spreading it has to be easily scalable. This was one of the few problems of the Hotmail case study. By offering free e-mail services, they needed their own mail servers. When they became successful, they needed more mail servers and had to add them very quickly to support the rapid growth. Without doing this, the service would have come to a halt and lose all momentum.

Just like real life, if the virus kills its host, then it just won’t spread. Planning in advance for the potential growth and building any necessary scalability into your viral model is vital for success.

A clever viral marketing plan will take advantage of common human motivations. A hunger to be popular or to be liked stand out as driving human factors. The resulting urge to communicate based on these basic human needs can produce exponential growth. When you can design viral marketing that builds on these common motivations and behaviors you have a winner.

It is a fact that most people are social. In fact, scientists tell us that each person in the modern society has a network of anywhere from eight to twelve people in their group of close friends, family, and associates. If you factor in a person’s broader network that may increase to hundreds, or even thousands of people with whom they interact with. A person running a blog may reach tens of thousands of people on a daily basis. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its reach.

The use of others’ resources is what makes viral marketing unique. In traditional marketing, you must identify a niche, design a campaign that appeals to that target audience, and then pay for and otherwise promote to reach that group of people. Viral marketing, on the other hand, creates its own promotion and is at least partly self-targeting. People who are interested in your message will most likely to be communicating with other people like themselves. They do the work for you by reaching your target audience without having to do the preparation yourself. Even more important it removes your cost for contacting a specific group.

Viral marketing isn’t always predictable. You could be wildly successful or may only have a small percentage of interested people spreading the word. On the plus side, when compared with the costs of traditional marketing you will always come out ahead.

Anthony Marsh is the owner of Popular Threadz and Crack Smoking Shirts. He runs the online resource TeeBiz.com and the t-shirt community TeeBurb.com.

Designing a Hot Selling Tee Shirt

You know how you’re going to print your shirts. You have the equipment yourself or you know a printer that will give you a good rate. What you need is a design that will sell.

The first thing you should do is research, shop for tee shirts. The kinds of shirts you find for sale retail represent the kinds of shirts that sell well over all. Retail has a tight profit margin, there’s little room for risk.

Now generally there are classic categories of designs that almost always sell well. The local pride design, for your state or local community. This sort of thing is a dependable seller. As are cute designs and masculine designs like those based on rock album covers. License artwork is also more of a sure thing, the commercial promotion of the cartoon or TV show will sell a tee shirt.

Next are the niche markets. The alternative band the Misfits has a very dependable selling design, being their logo. Beer drinking and marijuana smoking are popular counter culture themes and will sell shirts. Funny or sardonic ideas expressed on t-shirts will sell a t-shirt.

When it comes to niche markets, it’s good to go with your gut. If you’re a Christian, your Christian themed t-shirts may simply be better – it’s something you know. It doesn’t matter who you are, you are part of a subculture. If you love dogs, that’s a subculture. If you’re an Atheist or a Republican or Democrat – all of those represent niche markets that will sell t-shirts.

Now, it’s quite likely you don’t have the money to buy a license for commercial artwork. If you had the money to pay for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or Disney Snow White license, you would be less inclined to read this article.

So what do you do? Look for a vacuum, an idea that SHOULD exist, but doesn’t – it’s only a matter of time before someone else does it perhaps. That’s what you want to design around.

There’s a fella that’s made millions off a stick figure and a funny platitude. Anyone could’ve done it, if they thought of the platitude and followed through.

Now, since you’re making an investment you can’t afford to take a great chance. But you can still innovate. Remember the popular themes for t-shirts are : civic pride, cute, masculine, commercial, and counter culture. If you can work one of these themes and create a fun twist to it, you can sell your shirts.

Yes, the idea is more important the the execution. The challenge of design is that you can only know it’s good if YOU love it, but just because you love it doesn’t mean anyone else will. So you should work up several ideas for tees, draw them out and test them on people. They’ll tell you which ones are good, you’ll know for sure when they offer to pre-order a design they want it so bad.

So, I’m a graphics professional. An idea that’s strong enough will sell even a poorly designed t-shirt – but a well designed t-shirt with the same idea – will sell more.

So, let’s say for sake of argument, you’re an artist and have decided to create a Snow White design, but not the Disney version – the version you might find at an erotic dance club, a rated ‘r’ Snow White – maybe work in a street interpretation of ’snow’ and imply a drug habit too . It takes a classic theme and gives it a counter culture twist. It could sell to hip boys and girls. After all, ‘Snow White’ is a public domain fairy tale, not the property of Disney.

That’s as close as I can come to explaining commercial creative process to you. Take something that’s already popular, and do something different with it. Such concepts could hit critical mass and make lots of money. One designer has gotten very wealthy from selling shirts with pictures of cute dogs on them, but drawn in a distorted style close to the tradition of Japanese Animation. Cute dogs are always popular, and this designer added a small twist to the theme is all.

Now, if you’re not an artist, you could do the design by using a photograph of a model dressed as an erotic dancing Snow White. Just keep in mind public standards – of course. You want to sell a lot of shirts, not limit the scope to adult bookstores.

So when the photo or drawing is going on the shirt, can it just go anywhere? Is the rectangle of the photo or the paper the drawing is on – part of the design? Can the design go on any color shirt?

There are rules of thumb for all those questions.

First of all, get rid of the rectangles. The rectangle represents the medium the image is on, paper. When the image is on a t-shirt, the t-shirt is the medium the image is on. The image almost always looks best with the t-shirt itself as a border, or some shape that doesn’t fight the fluid shape of the shirt – a circle perhaps. Sure some designs work well being in rectangles printed on tees – that’s why this is a rule of thumb.

Where should the design be placed? The design should fill as much space as possible- usually. Left chest and center chest designs should be small of course, but otherwise, bigger is better. Designs need not be front and center, but front and center is always safe, if not front and center – to the left or right on a shoulder can look cool. Designs should generally be near the center or top of the shirt, but there are always exceptions.

Should the design go on a color shirt or a white shirt? It’s usually less expensive and easier to print on a white tee. But color tees are also very popular and people will pay extra for one. The color of the tee should not be arbitrary if possible. This is the difference between a generic tee shirt and a designed garment – a designed garment, the t-shirt itself is part of the design. People know this, just not consciously. If you use the color of the tee shirt as a design element – the ocean is the blue of the shirt, the red sunset is the red of the shirt, the black line is the black of the shirt..etc – ties the shirt into the design and the total effect suggests a superior quality to the shirt – especially in comparison to shirts that don’t take this into consideration.

There is also color theory. A blue design will be harmonious on a green shirt, loud on an orange shirt, and pleasantly contrast on a warm yellow shirt. That’s how one design can become three different designs depending on the color of the shirt you put it on. The shirt itself is part of the design. Remember that warm colors (red, orange, yellow) are ‘energetic’ and cool colors (blue, green, violet) are generally calming.

A white shirt with color bands on the collar and sleeves are great to work with. Echo the color of the band in your design and the design really looks like it was meant specifically for that shirt. These shirts are easy to print on too, white after all.

Should you buy three colors of shirt and print them all? It’s been proven that too much choice can paralyze decision making, so you don’t risk much in limiting customer choice. In practical terms it’s likely to be easier to buy the bulk quantity of the one color of shirt. So choose one color that suits the design best.

There’s no sure thing in the t-shirt business. But people will always want t-shirts they feel express something that will allow them to feel a little less like everyone else. So do your research, find what’s selling and create something a little different that can capture that same market. And good luck!

Michael Robin Cooke kitschcore.com nyctshirtfactory.com

Article Source: Michael Robin Cooke EzineArticles.com