The eCommerce world has indeed moved on from the days of simple advertising strategies. For example, you don’t get to see catchy jingles or flashy promotional banners to convey a brand message. Businesses have changed their technical games to boost online sales and build credibility. Companies have tried various marketing campaigns to increase their online conversion rate, such as offering discounts on products and sponsoring trending events. They have only one aim: to cement their brand in the customers' hearts.
In today’s day and age, promoting your merchandise is one of the most effective ways to boost your online sales. If you understand how to make your own merch, you have reasons to propagate your business. Branded merchandise refers to any kind of merchandise that has your brand name and logo. The main objective of this merchandise is to convey your brand message to the consumers and promote the brand products. If you are a beginner struggling to promote your merchandise, you couldn’t have come to a better article than this.
Importance of Making Merchandise
1) Revenue
If you are selling merchandise according to your brand management plans, you must know your product pricing strategy. You cannot go over the top when you sell your products or become too casual with your prices. For example, if you put a low price on your products, you will attract many customers but won’t be able to make a lot of revenue. Similarly, a high price would bring a lot of income to the table, but you will fail to attract customers. Therefore, you must have stability and maintain your business growth.
You will increase revenue and online sales if you bring stability to your product pricing plans. If you make your own merch with a brand or a logo, it will stay in the hearts of your customers for a long time. Imagine when as a personal marketer, customers recognize your brand on their social media accounts. Even if they just glimpse your branded products, you can safely say that you have achieved your target.
2) Customer Engagement:
If you understand how to make your own merch, you will easily engage with the target audience. When you create merchandise, you help identify consumers with the brand. You allow your customers to showcase their love for a particular brand by owning exclusive merchandise. If you cannot engage with your audience, you will struggle to retain them.
If you want to attain the benefits of branded merchandise, we suggest that you should start making your own merch. Make sure that you fulfill the demands of your audience and don’t make them feel discouraged after opening your eCommerce website. If you are a beginner or don’t have any association with this field, you may back out from this. It is very easy to do that and look for alternative plans. However, we promise you that you will be motivated to make your merch right now if you look at the six points we will discuss below.
Tips on Ways of Making Merch
1) Identify Audience
Before you kickstart your plans to make your own merch, you must know to who you will be selling your merchandise. If a product has your company logo on it, it can be classified as your merchandise. When you sell merchandise, you must conduct customer segmentation to identify your product's best possible audience segment. If you just promote your merchandise to an entire audience, there is a possibility that you will find people who cannot be bothered about your promotions.
Image taken from Strikingly
Apart from identifying the proper segment, you must analyze your selling products. You should only sell those products that are relevant to your target audience. Strikingly provides its users with a built-in feature of website analytics. This feature gives you an idea about the number of incoming customers to your audience. Most importantly, you will know about the customer behavior as you will be notified about the web pages on which they prefer to stay for longer.
2) Brainstorm Ideas
After understanding the feedback you get from your target audience and the established objectives to make your own merch, brainstorming is the only way forward. As a marketing person, you must brainstorm new ideas to make your brand prominent within your customers’ hearts. Regardless of your business idea, you should never disregard the importance of brainstorming. To know how to sell merchandise, you must focus on specific elements that coincide with your audience's demands.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
As a marketing person, you must focus on the tone and textual styles you consider in your merch. The right choice of colors brings emotion to audiences and gives a personality to your design. By simultaneously studying the demands of yourself and the target audience, you can create quality designs that become attractive in the eyes of your customers. If you want to make your merchandise unique with respect to your competitors, make sure to add a logo, a catchphrase, or simply an image.
3) Mockup
If you are in the world of designing or have done IT degrees, you would likely have an idea about some of the best designing softwares in the world. Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator are two of the most common examples that create quality designs. If you feel that Adobe is not your thing or find it difficult to create designs on that platform, you can do graphic editing through GIMP. GIMP is an open-source program that you can install on Windows or MAC.
If you want to make your own merch design and are struggling to do so, there is no harm in handing these responsibilities to a professional. You can hire the most suitable person for this role and ensure they create wonderful designs for your merchandise. Apart from being highly qualified, your partner must be trustworthy. When you sell merchandise online, you must have an excellent design to match your selling skills, which is why this hiring is of utmost importance.
4) Production Partner
If you want to make your own merch to the best of your abilities, you must collaborate online with trustworthy providers. Through online collaboration, you can erase some doubts while promoting, packaging, or even selling your merchandise. If you are a beginner or have just started your professional career, collaboration with other entrepreneurs is even more critical if you are a beginner or just starting your professional career.
You don’t have to worry about your merchandise because you actively participate in the production. Speaking of online collaboration, the most significant collaborator will be the printing service. Through quality printouts, you will bring your merch to life.
5) Product Pricing
As a business owner, you must know why you have decided to make your own merch. Even though you are making and selling merchandise with your respective branding objectives, you shouldn’t invest more than what you get in return. As we have discussed previously, you must find stability within your pricing strategies to simultaneously see a surge in online sales and revenue. When you sell your merchandise, you should always go for the prime price, i.e,. a price that contains the first cost and the profit margin.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
When you calculate your prime cost, you must know the targets you have set regarding your earnings. You must also know the number of customers who would prefer to buy your merchandise. The best thing to do in this is to conduct a crowdfunding campaign before making your merch. The funds you receive from this campaign can be allocated to the production and marketing of your merchandise.
6) Platform to Sell
When you understand how to make your own merch, the most critical next step to take is the platform where you are selling it. When you surf the Internet, you will find many top-quality eCommerce platforms, such as Amazon. Amazon is one of the biggest selling platforms on the Internet and is pivotal to the eCommerce trends in the market. However, we suggest relying on an effective website builder, such as Strikingly, and making life easy for yourself.
Image taken from Strikingly
Strikingly is a free website builder, which allows you to integrate all your merchandise and other eCommerce products. By organizing your eCommerce products in the form of categories, you can display your merchandise to your customers effectively. When you add the products, you can also attach a quality description for them alongside the price. As a result, your customers won’t have to spend much time deciding if they want to buy or not.
Conclusion:
If you have gone through all the tips we have provided above, you will likely understand how to make your own merchandise. It is one of the biggest trends in the eCommerce industry today and something everyone seems interested in.
If you want to make the most out of this interest, it is important to put your plans into perspective and build a quality eCommerce website on Strikingly. If you are struggling to develop your website or integrate the website features, you can chat with our Happiness Officers and they’ll be happy to help. So, make quality merchandise and sell it at the best possible price with the help of your Strikingly website.
