In today’s fast paced and highly competitive business world, standing out is the key. If you can’t garner the attention of the masses, then you’re not going to get the eyes you need to drive your business, which means you will soon be out of business. However, the good news is that there are more ways to reach people than ever before in history, and if you’re willing to think outside of the box and pay attention to your clientele, you can strike the right chord and practically have customers flooding your doors in a matter of days.
Graphic design?
Once of the hottest ways for attracting customers to small businesses these days, particularly when the clientele are under 35, is through graphic design. Graphic design might seem a bit unusual, but today’s generation is all about being unusual and standing out.
Taking advantage of professional graphic design can help you market your business and build a brand that is both approachable and recognizable, which paves the path for future success. Here are some ways you can leverage your creative abilities in graphic design to get your startup off the ground.
Custom t-shirts
New business owners are always looking for ideas to make them famous and get their businesses in the eyes of the public. Unfortunately, a lot of business owners get off to the wrong start when they start by believing that they need to spend a ton of money in order to get their band promoted. Others think that spending lots of money is really necessary so they can keep their business in the limelight once they have arrived there. However, this is neither necessary nor sufficient.
The reason why you don’t need to spend money and why spending money won’t give you the results you’re looking for is because people in today’s younger generations aren’t driven by the old school ad campaigns that used to work.
Sure, there’s nothing wrong with spending lots of money on billboards and such if you have the cash to spare, the way some of the largest fast food companies do, but if you had that much money at hand, you wouldn’t be a small business, would you?
Since startups generally don’t have deep pockets, you really need to plan ahead. That means you should start by trying to be creative from the very beginning. One of the tactics you can try is to use t-shirts that are cheap and custom made. You can’t do much better than a good run of t-shirts if you’re trying to get the public wise to your business, what you do, and why people should come to you.
Clichés can work
It might seem like a cliché idea to start using a t-shirt printer and spreading out t-shirts. However, sometimes the most obvious things are the most effective. Lots of businesses, with small businesses in particular, tend to look toward t-shirts as a marketing tool of choice because it gives them the results they are looking for at a budget they can afford.
Remember the discussion on billboards above? Well, a t-shirt is like a billboard that walks everywhere and interacts with future customers on your behalf. In some ways, it’s even better than a billboard because of that element of personal interaction. This means that if you want success, you should figure out a way to get people to do your marketing for you through t-shirts.
The nice thing about t-shirts is that you can often find lots of printing companies that will give you a ton of money back through discounts when you order in bulk. In other words, you can get the shirt numbers you want without emptying your small business bank account. Not bad!
Tips to keep in mind
Now that you’ve been convinced of some of the benefits of using t-shirts, here are some tips to keep in mind for effectively using them.
First of all, don’t be lazy. You still want to be creative, which means you still want to stand out with your shirts. Use graphics, use colour, use size, use whatever you can. Take advantage of any avenues of distribution you can think of. If you have employees, for example, all of them should be wearing your t-shirts everywhere they go.
Think simple. Your design should be easy to figure out visually, but at the same time, you should make it stand out so it sticks in the mind. And finally, you want your t-shirts to be packaged with your products so people are likely to pick them up when they pick up your products.
In conclusion, there are a number of reasons to look toward promotional t-shirts when it comes to small business marketing. T-shirts are cheap and effective billboards that reach people personally. Just keep things creative and you’ll start racking up customers before you know it.
