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.

VIDEO: Interview With Threadless

An interesting interview with Jake (co-founder) and Jeffrey (early employee) of threadless were they talk about how the company came about and the community they have built around t-shirts.

Vintage T-Shirts – Where Old Is Gold!

T-Shirts in today’s world have carved an irreplaceable position in our closets. Right from button-less ones to the collared variety, from graphic T-Shirts or designer wear, they have become a part of our life. In this maze of designer wear and graphical imprints, if you open your closet to find something matching with your dress, you may suddenly get hold of a long lost tee, which was once your favorite.

In the bygone years there was very little information, if at all any, about vintage t-shirts. However, slowly and surely collectors and T-Shirt aficionados have realized that there is a whole new collector’s item out there waiting for them. Unlike other collectibles this item can also be worn. This is, of course, only if the condition of the shirt is such that it is wearable. Popular T-Shirt companies are coming out with vintage T-Shirts because the demand for these shirts is booming. So what are these vintage T-Shirts any way?

Vintage T-Shirts are categorized as those T-Shirts, which are not necessarily old, but are produced in such a fashion that their overall look gives an antique impression. So when you find a relatively old T-Shirt in your closet, get happy because you just got your hands washed in treasure. Everyone has his or her own description or understanding about the term vintage, but in regards to tees, it depends upon how old it looks. Thus, sometimes your 5-year-old tee in good condition is deprived of its vintage badge.

Vintage T-Shirts appear in various forms and graphics. The only concern is that the theme should necessarily be old, yet fashionable. The most popular tees in this category are the concert tees. The price of these shirts also depends upon the theme that has been printed upon the T-Shirt. If it gives an authentic vintage aura then you are in for a lot of money.

In the case of vintage T-Shirts it is not necessary that they be old. You can have a T-Shirt that dates back to just a few years and it can be called a vintage T-Shirt. Do remember, that we are talking about the world of T-Shirts. Here anything that is about two months old gets slotted as an antique piece. It’s funny but true.

There are cases wherein people come and complain that the tees look spanking new when they were expecting them to have that worn-out vintage look. Another facet to this is that if you search long enough then you will definitely find vintage T-Shirts dating back to 60’s, 70’s and the 80’s. Vintage T-Shirts are basically offshoots of the billion-dollar T-Shirt industry. They are niche products that at times do not have any aesthetic value but are frightfully expensive. So if you are looking for vintage T-Shirts then be clear as to what you expect out of them.

Find Vintage Tshirts at uneetee.com

Article Source: Henry DeGuzman ezinearticles.com

Get Graphic with Your T-Shirt

As the name, evidently suggests, graphic T-Shirts are those whose design is markedly enhanced by the use of graphics. It was the emergence of skilled graphic designers that saw graphics being used in T-Shirt designs. It was an artistic revolution that changed the face of T-shirt designing.

It was in the eighties, that artists found an extraordinary canvas in the T-Shirt. Graphic designers, who were on the look out for a new medium to display their talent, found an innovative new way to showcase their work. The eighties were the beginning of the extraordinary graphics craze. Earlier, graphics were secondary and the shirt was primary. Now, it was the graphics that sold the shirts. The price of T-Shirts has soared day by day, owing to the fantastic new graphics developed by designers. It was right after the graphics boom of the eighties that companies woke up to the fact that T-Shirts could be used as vehicles for advertising their products. The very fact, that people would not only display their company’s name on their chest and actually pay for doing so, was just too good to be true.

More and more people like event promoters and others had a realization that underlined the fact, that they could increase their bottom line by merchandising. They did this by marketing customized T-Shirts graphically designed to advertise and promote their events. The business of licensing is now a billion-dollar business and is still growing by leaps and bounds. This gives you a fair idea about the demand of graphic T-Shirts.

Graphic T-Shirts are an integral part of the billion-dollar T-Shirt industry. The unique designs that range from plain to absolutely spectacular, from cute to downright rude have taken a strangle hold on the apparel market. Buying a graphic T-Shirt is very much like going to a movie. Just like a movie tells you a story, the graphic T-Shirt tells your story to the viewer. It gives them a fair idea of the kind of person you are, your likes and dislikes, your views on a particular subject and so on and so forth.

Designing the contemporary graphics T-Shirt calls for a lot of expertise. Customers have increasingly become more demanding, as they are getting more and more aware of everything around them. They have strong opinions about the environment that they are living in. T-Shirt designs are a medium that gives full vent to their feelings. This is why graphic designers must be in-sync with whatever is happening around them and of course the needs of their customers. It is only then that there is an output of an extraordinary graphic T-Shirt. As can be seen, both the customer and the designer have to walk hand in hand on this one. Therefore, it can be said that a unique graphic T-Shirt is a product of the accumulated input of both the customer and the designer.

In the end, it can be said that graphic T-Shirts are potent vehicles of expressionism. May they survive and flourish!

Find Graphic T-Shirts at Uneetee.com

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Run a T-shirt Business on a Shoestring Budget

Low on cash? Learn how to do everything from producing to promoting your clothing line with little or no money.

Sell online. It’s easier to reach a world wide audience and there are plenty of free advertising methods. Online is becoming a standard for businesses.

Go with a fulfillment service. They’ll handle all the small things like packaging, shipping and keeping track of orders. You can start a shop with no money and still make a profit.

Do your own designs. You can’t afford to pay designers yet so just learn how to use design programs like Illustrator and Photoshop. Or you can stick to slogan tees.

Practice SEO techniques. Free advertising at it’s best. Learn to master the search engines. Pick keywords that aren’t overly searched and try to appear on the first page for those keywords.

Do something newsworthy. Your main advertising methods are gonna consist of doing things that’ll get others to write about your business.

Use social bookmarking sites. Bookmark every page of your shop on sites like StumbleUpon. The more your site is bookmarked the more likely it is to get visited by random targeted people.

Be in the school newspaper. You might become a local celebrity and everyone from your school will be asking about your line.

Get friends to model your shirts. Models are too expensive, but you still need them for your website to get that professional look. Just get some friends to model for you for free.

Wear your shirts and get your friends to wear them. You and your friends can be your best promotion tool. Always wear one of your shirts, especially to a big event. Wear the most catchy one to get people asking about it.

Start a blog. Talk about things your target audience would be interested in and feature your latest t-shirts every week. Get a fan base and it’ll be easy to convert those visitors into customers.

Tell fellow bloggers to blog about your line. If you know anyone who owns a blog get them to write a post about your clothing line. If they have a fan base alot of those people will be sure to check out your line.

Participate in forums and have a link to your website in your signature. Your signature is an ad space so you should make sure theres an ad for your line in it. Post hundreds of times and you have hundreds of ads on the web for free.

Promote on myspace and facebook. Create a myspace or facebook page for your line and add friends and send comments. Get a free friend adder program for myspace and add 50 new friends a day.

Make videos for youtube. Create mini commercials for your line that’ll spread virally. Make them funny or controversial to get alot of views. Post them on your blog, myspace and facebook too.

WHAT LOW COST METHODS ARE YOU USING?

About the Author:
T-Shirt Magazine is the premier source for everything surrounding the t-shirt culture. Visit T-ShirtMagazine.com for more.

Article Source: Articlesbase.com

T-Shirt Printing – Direct To Garment Is Superior To Screen Printing

Printing tshirts using Direct To Garment (DTG) printing, the process of printing to cotton based fabrics (i.e. tshirts) using a large format inkjet printer, is far superior to screen printing, the process of pressing inks into fabric through a stencil. It is more environmentally friendly, less time consuming and more cost effective for smaller runs.

DTG tshirt printing is more environmentally than screen printing. DTG uses water-based inks to printing directly onto clothing, this means that there are no excess inks used in the actual printing and the only waste that does occur is from the occasional print head cleaning – it should also be noted that head cleaning does not involve any external materials only ink. Of course, major head cleaning can be avoided by regular maintenance of the printer, and thus one head clean a day – a matter of millilitres – is usually sufficient. Then as long as waste ink is disposed of correctly, printing tshirts using the DTG method should have almost no environmental impact. Screen printing however has excess inks from parts of the stencil not printed to the tshirt and when screens are cleaned these excess inks are then washed down the drain.

The process of screen printing involves creating a stencil and then pressing inks through said stencil onto fabric. The stencil can be created by hand or photo emulsion, and for each colour of a design a new screen is needed. DTG uses only software and a computer to send a design directly to a printer and this can take a matter of seconds with all colours being printed at once. (On darker fabrics there is a white layer printed first and then the remaining colours). DTG is far less time consuming with regard to setup, and this is particularly useful when printing small runs of tshirts.

Smaller (less than 50) runs of tshirts are far more cost effective with DTG printing than screen printing. Minimal setup with DTG printing means that tshirt runs as low as 1 can be produced for a matter of $5 – $10 in materials (including tshirt) and for a print on white can take as little as 2minutes to produce. Screen printers may claim that on larger runs they can produce a much more economical print however with multiple colours, and then drying time this seems unlikely.

Printing tshirts using Direct To Garment printing is far superior to screen printing. Whilst both methods produce an excellent quality, DTG is far more environmentally friendly, is less time consuming, and more cost effective for smaller runs. Whilst screen printing is a tried and tested method of printing onto tshirts it seems that DTG printing is the way of the future.

Mark Barnes is the owner and founder of a href=”http://www.putitonatshirt.com” target=”_blank”>Put It On A Tshirt.

Got Something To Say? putitonatshirt.com

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

T-Shirt Design

The fashion industry woke up to the importance of T-Shirt design, sometime in the last decade or so. Till then nobody had cared to give the designing of T-Shirts much forethought. If there was a great idea that could be put on a T-Shirt, then well and good, but if not, then no sleep was lost over it. T-Shirt design emerged as a major component of the fashion industry when the designing world saw the coming of skilled graphic designers. Over the years this trend has gained in popularity and T-Shirt design is fast becoming a major money-spinner in terms of the designing business.

By using innovative graphics to design T-Shirts, graphic designers found a new medium to showcase their wares. Using spectacular artwork, they made T-Shirt designing a whole new form of art. Moreover an increasing focus on personalizing items that were used daily, saw the popularity of T-Shirt designing gain by leaps and bounds. The inherent desire to advertise your thoughts, desires, likes, and dislikes on articles of daily wear has meant that we are seeing highly innovative, fantastic, and sometimes scandalizing T-Shirt designs entering the market. Today, you not only see customized T-Shirt designs but also get to see personalized car graphics, accessories and even mobile phone covers.

You might just be of that generation when ‘sloganeering’ was very popular. This was the time when you wore your slogan on your tees, also called ‘slogan tees’. Though simple in nature, a witty slogan was generally printed on these T-Shirts. These T-Shirts are now not in-sync with what is usually termed the ‘generation next’. The limelight is now being stolen by more adventurous and complex T-Shirt designs.

The popularity of T-Shirt design can be gauged from the fact that it has now evolved into a venture that is community driven. There is extensive collaboration between consumers and designers, whereby a kind of non-formal product testing takes place before the products are finally produced for the market. The latest technology has enabled specialized people to undertake the designing and printing of their own T-Shirts.

Many companies have now formed online communities. The purpose of these communities is that members can contribute their personal designs to a particular product. T-Shirt aficionados have also got into the act now and have created blogs that cater to the specific needs of the consumers. Here, ‘expert consumers’ guide other members as to what design they must go for and what is hip and what is not.

Moreover, these experts have industry contacts and are in-sync with the latest brands available in the market today. They have their own networking groups and also have an idea about the latest T-Shirt designs that are available in the market. T-Shirt design is a million dollar industry today. If you are looking for a great T-Shirt design then you definitely will be spoilt for choice. So go buy your T-Shirt that has a design suited just for you.

Find T-Shirt Designs at www.uneetee.com

Article Source: Henry DeGuzman EzineArticles.com

T-Shirt Artwork and Copyright Law – Who Owns What?

For starters, just because you have paid the artists to make you a unique design does not mean that you actually own the design – you haven’t (yet) purchased the rights to the design – you’ve only paid for work performed; kind of like a license.  What you want is to own the copyright to the design, so ensure that you have also including this language in your contract with the artist – and yes, get a contract, particularly in this area.  It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, and you can do this yourself, but just ensure that the language states that you also own the copyright to the design created.

A copyright protects artists, authors, composers and creators of ‘works of art’ involving published or printed materials from unauthorized publication of their works without their permission.  The copyright process is actually much simpler than a patent and only costs $30 in processing fees.  The copyright is actually created from the moment the work is done.  And there’s not necessarily any requirement for actually filing the paperwork  – but it does make it much simpler to sue anyone using your design without your permission.  You could still sue and perhaps win without having the copyright filing, but you would have to otherwise prove that you came up with the design first and establish that date.  The copyright filing establishes the public record of your copyright, so it makes it a whole lot easier to prevail in the event you took someone to court.

As to the little copyright symbol © – that’s also not a requirement but again, this makes it known to others that you have a copyright on file and that others cannot use your copyrighted design without your permission.

But back to the question of hiring an artist to do work for you.  An artist working on as an independent contractor (i.e., not your employee) does by default retain ownership of the copyright unless the copyright is transferred, and this transfer must be in writing.  On the other hand, if your employee produces the design, then you as the employer own the copyright.

As to damages, in the event you have to sue someone over infringing on your copyright, first of all it’s not an easy process tracking down people who may be using your design, particularly in the T-Shirt industry, then hiring an attorney to pursue them, but if you do decide to sue, then if you have registered your copyright before the infringement occurs, then you damages potential is higher (statutory damages) and recovery of attorneys fees are possible.  If you did not register your design prior to the infringement, then your damages are limited to actual damages only (i.e., the money you lost because of the infringement).

This is of course just a primer on what can be a grey area of the law but you can find out more information at the government’s website at copyright.gov

Bryan Johnson is the President and Co-Owner of BlueHeavenTees.com

Blue Heaven Tees offers innovative and unique Christian Tee Shirts, Christian Hoodies and Sweatshirts and other great Christian gift ideas for the holidays.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com