9 Reasons Content Marketing Can Help Your T-Shirt Business
Owning your own t-shirt business is a lot of work. You have to wear a lot of different hats – bookkeeper, production, marketing, sales, IT, etc. Of all those responsibilities, what would you put as the most difficult? If you said marketing your business and gaining more customers, you are in the same boat as a lot of other t-shirt businesses.
Gaining more customers is something that most businesses focus on and spend a lot of time and energy doing. It is not easy to do, but is mandatory to thrive and survive. It is the lifeblood of the business.
Content marketing is one way to grow your t-shirt business. You may have heard of it. There is a lot of information out there on this subject.
One way to think about content marketing is that it’s all about storytelling. It’s a way for brands to share their story.
When done effectively, it can have a lot of fruits, such as:
- Helps people find your site when searching for related content
- Helps people along the buying journey
- Inspires people
- Educates potential customers
- Builds an audience
- Builds loyalty and trust
- Creates conversation
- Helps search rankings
- Helps convert into sales
If you are interested in doing any of these things, content marketing may be for you. It isn’t a magic wand for marketing, but over time, if you stick with it, can have big rewards.
Content marketing is a part of all of your marketing efforts. But for this post, we are going to focus on using a blog on your website as a “hub” for your content marketing.
A blog is a place on website where you can host your content. There is a blog these days for just about anything you want to read or learn about. A blog that focuses on one subject, such as custom apparel, can result in an increase of customers.
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The more you write content for your blog, and in this case custom apparel, the more information that is out there on the internet about the subject of custom apparel, and consequently, your business.
Be careful how you use your blog. It’s not a place to just post ads. People don’t want to read ads. They want to learn. In fact, more people are self-educating before they even contact a company to do business with. They’ve already done their research. This is eliminating a lot of the sales process of teaching potential customers about your products and how they can solve your customers’ problems. This can be a problem if you aren’t in the midst of their learning.
The way people are self-educating is with content on the internet. You want customers to learn from your content. The more people that read on your site and learn, the more they will trust you as an industry thought leader. They will trust your solutions to their problems.
When you write content for your site or blog, make sure you write for all stages in the buying journey. When people come to your t-shirt business, every customer is in a different place in their buying journey. Some are pros when it comes to ordering custom apparel. They know exactly what they want. They’ve ordered custom apparel many times, and they are looking for specifics.
Others come to your site knowing little to nothing, except that they want some shirts with a custom saying printed on it for their group. In this case, this customer will need different information than the previous customer. They need to learn the basics first.
Your content can (and should) answer questions for each of these types of customers in their respective places in the buying journey. That way, when people find your site and are reading, they are finding information that is tailored to them and their specific needs.
By having all this content on your site, people will be more likely to find your site in search engine results. It can help boost your results in search engines, also. Overtime, you can become a go-to source for custom apparel decorating.
Building an audience is one of the results from content marketing. People begin to follow your content because it is useful to them. They can follow by subscribing to your blog. Make sure you have a subscription box for them to sign up!
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Making content useful is the key to building an audience. Like we mentioned above, people don’t want to just sift through your advertisements. Give them educational content. Inspire them with photos and stories. Help them solve their problems – in this case, custom apparel.
Content marketing engages people. Building an audience comes with valuable content, and listening. It creates the opportunity for conversation. In this conversation, you can build loyalty. In turn, once you have done these things, you will start to see more sales conversions as people engage with your brand.