Getting Your Tee Shirt Line Sold Without A large Social Media Following

I recently spoke with a client with a great t-shirt idea along with a great marketing plan to get some exposure for his t-shirt concept. The problem here is, it was just an idea that hadn’t been proven and he lacks a large social media following to get his followers to buy his t-shirts.

There’s a lot more work involved in selling t-shirts online especially when you’re a new clothing brand with little to no social media following.

I’ll share with you the quickest way to confirm your idea and start selling right away even if you lack a social media following or fancy e-commerce site.

I’ll briefly cover how you can use a few resources and fundamental rules we’ve tested and have worked for us without a website or large social media following.

I’ll also share with you some ways to have your shirts printed at no cost with no inventory and shipping to keep track with a small investment to get you started.

These are some of the most important steps in getting your t-shirt brand out in front of people and quickly validate designs, ideas and concepts without spending thousands of dollars and time on something people won’t buy.

I’ve learned these lessons the hard way and by also studying successful tee-shirt brands that are making noise and producing large numbers in sales, use what works for you and ask questions below if you would like more information.

 

1. Find Your Niche

Ask yourself these questions before you start investing in your idea. Who’s going to buy my shirts?

What is my brand’s message I want my buyers to identify with?

What’s missing from other popular brands that I can offer?

Let’s take FUBU, for example, one of the famous case studies in the apparel game.

The niche FUBU focused on was hip-hop, Damon John cleared all other genres of music from influencing decisions on where to focus his time, energy and resources that went into creating and building the FUBU brand.

Look at your interest, you’ll usually figure who your t-shirts are for by taking notes on your personal likes or the industry you’re familiar with.

Once you prove who your clothing line is for, focus all your efforts on posting and being everywhere those potential customers are at and open up a conversation to lead people on discovering your brand organically.

The trick is to follow other clothing brands in the same niche as your t-shirt line and begin a conversation with other followers of that brand and follow the followers as well. We are naturally curious and look at other people’s profiles if we are tagged, followed or happen to make an interesting comment.

You’ll soon realize if people like your idea or not. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get any positive feedback go back to the drawing board and create another design.

 

2. Remarkable Design

You ultimately want your design or idea to be so badass that people/strangers begin commenting, sharing and tagging friends on social media.

The more activity the better, this is how Facebook works with posts by moving the post with the most engagement and activity up to the top.

Shares, comments, and tags are a great indicator that you have something special. To make this buzz happen you’ll need a clever idea and a cool design that potential customers will talk about and share with others.

A professional designer will help you create interesting and appealing designs that incorporate composition, layout, color, texture and other technicalities that make a plain t-shirt stand out with an awesome font style or design to entice your target customers to buy.

There are thousands of professional designers online that specialize in creating t-shirt designs, a good rule of thumb when coming up with designs is to look at the top competition to see what colors they’re using and the style of fonts that are clear and easy to read.

Find the style you like best and add your own unique touch, but be careful not to blatantly rip off another brand’s design or style. It’s not nice plus people will recognize the obvious similarities and brand your shirt as a knock off.

The key is to find that designer who can not only create the look top brands have but more importantly creates a new unique style and looks that’s appealing, this is where I recommend investing your money before printing.

You can find plenty of talented designers on linked in, Fiverr, Odesk and other creative platforms if you can’t find any go on Instagram and look for the designers that have the look you like.

 

3. Reaching Thousands

You have your niche and your message is clear. You found a designer that produces quality work and you’ve got some good feedback from strangers on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media.

Now, let’s talk about teespring.com and how this site can help you cut the need of having a large social media following to sell your shirts.

Teespring.com lets you create a campaign where you can upload your design and promote your t-shirts without having any inventory or worry about sizes, shipping and color choice.

It’s truly a great way to get your shirts printed without having to spend your savings.

The very cool part about teespring.com is that you can integrate Facebook ads to your campaign and target your ad to a specific group in a very detailed way that can work if all elements of design, target group selection, and Facebook ad budget are aligned.

Using Facebook ads that lead to your teespring campaign is another way to cut the need for a large social media following.

And since Facebook keeps track of all its user’s information it’s easy to find groups with the interests, activities, likes, and connections you are looking for to sell your shirts. By using Facebook ads combined with teespring.com you’ll be able to reach a larger group of people who are most likely to buy from you.

The challenge in this is finding the idea and design that will appeal to the group so start today and let us know if we can help you get started with setting up your teespring campaign and your Facebook ads. Give us a call or email us at info@laprintanddesign.com.