Everyone knows that everything they do, from music, blog, or hobbies to merchandise, must be exceptional. And it's no secret that the "excellent" component is elusive and tangled up in personal preference. However, only some are aware of the various strategies for selling their merchandise. There are so many more options available today for selling merchandise than simply placing it out at a gig, in a store, and
Don't worry; this article won't bother you about producing high-quality merchandise because it will sell on its own. Not that high-quality product is less critical in selling your product, but if you know the proper techniques, they will sell like hotcakes.
What is a Merchandise?
Merchandise refers to the products or things you are advertising or selling. You must use a procedure or method known as merchandising, whatever you decide to do. Businesses employ merchandising to boost product sales through product design, selection, price, displays, and packaging. To maximize sales and profits, companies can display their products to customers by knowing when, where, and how to sell their merchandise.
Why You Should Produce Custom Merchandise?
Make sure you understand why and for whom you are designing your product before you start planning and selling merch. With personalized merchandise, you can hit three birds with one stone: grow your brand, strengthen relationships with your audience, and raise money for your upcoming endeavors. It's a triple-win situation. Your customers will be thrilled by the opportunity to personally support you and receive fantastic perks from your brand.
Things You Need to Know Before You Make Your own Merchandise
1. Define your brand.
Are you known for your brand identity? You most likely do if you've been selling yourself for some time, but your brand identity may still evolve if you're just getting acquainted with selling merch. In either case, it's beneficial to take some time to consider what distinguishes your brand from others. By doing this, you can ensure that your clothing designs appropriately represent your business while clarifying your vision and overall look.
Selling merchandise is an excellent option if you want to increase brand recognition for your company. This is particularly true for ready-to-wear merchandise, where your followers can incorporate your gear into their personal sense of style.
With the help of Strikingly's Simple Store feature, selling merch or building a website with e-commerce functionalities has never been simpler. Whether you're a startup trying to get in the world of making and selling merchandise, we have the feature you need to sell merch online.
2. Recognize the needs of your customers
After establishing your brand identity, it's crucial to concentrate on and get to know your audience better. Your following, admirers, supporters, or customers make up your target market for your personalized merch. Even though you might think you know your audience pretty well, learning more about who they are and what they want will help you create merchandise they will buy.
Let's begin by asking these questions:
- Who's your target market for selling merch?
- What do they like about your brand?
- Do you need a theme, seasonal or otherwise, for selling merch?
- Where do you usually engage this audience, and how?
Consider asking your audience questions to learn even more once you've answered these for yourself. Creating a survey form to know what your customer wants will help you in gathering data to make your merchandise.
Think about questions that ask respondents to choose their favorite between two possibilities at a time.
Example: Which color do you prefer? What typeface do you like best? What kind of clothing do you wear?
Image taken from Strikingly
Strikingly's Custom Form section can help you achieve that and more. Use the Custom Form feature to create your forms with various form fields, such as checkboxes, radio buttons, and dropdown choices.
Bonus in your Audience list, see and filter form replies.
In addition to helping with unique merchandise design, gathering information on your audience's preferences will help keep your audience engaged for extended periods. The time you take to get to know your audience will be appreciated, and they will be grateful for it.
3. Boost your online community
Why is involvement in online communities so crucial? Because deeper ties lead to more devoted patrons of your brand. Repeat business is the most significant amount of your future revenue and comes from loyal clients.
You can do a few things to increase selling merch:
- Give your fans personalized merchandise
- Conduct contests on your website or on social media
- Promote your merchandise by creating a short video and embedding it on your website
With Strikingly, you can add videos to your website in different sections of the site editor: video background, the Gallery section, the Big Media section, and other sections that allow video embedding.
If you want to create a commercial-like video to promote your merchandise, it is encouraged to embed the video as your background and make it your landing page. Follow the simple steps below to embed a commercial video to promote your merch:
Image taken from Strikingly
1. Choose the section's "Background" settings in the upper right corner.
2. The "Video" tab can be found by clicking "Background" first.
3. Pick a video from our library or enter your own by clicking "Embed Video."
4. Enter the video URL area with your video's URL (only support YouTube and Vimeo.).
5. Finally, hit "Save."
How To Make Your Own Merchandise
1. Look for ideas and develop a concept.
The most well-liked custom merchandise categories overall among consumers are these three:
There are three fast-moving merchandise in the market right now:
- Personalized ready-to-wear clothing (custom print shirts, hats, hoodies, jogging pants, shorts, etc.)
- Accessories (phone cases, stickers, grocery tote bags, laptop skins, etc.)
- Home furnishings and décor (pillowcases, bedsheets, wall art, coffee tumblers, mugs, etc.)
2. Design your merchandise
Once you've identified your niche product, you can go on to the enjoyable phase of designing and making merchandise! These are your three choices to design and make your own merchandise at a lesser cost:
- Examine resources for free images (royalty-free)
- Utilize free software and design resources
- Employ a self-employed graphic designer
3. Manufacturing
You've done your research about how to make merch, and you also know what your customer wants; now what?
It's time to think about manufacturing your merchandise. There are two typical choices:
- Print as needed. You can automate production, shipping, and fulfillment with a print-on-demand partner. This is less expensive, less risky, and simpler to set up and manage. The trade-off is that your product options and personalization possibilities are constrained depending on the service you select.
- Make it from scratch. You can locate a producer for the particular product you want to create, get it made, and keep your own stock to sell (or work with a third party for shipping and fulfillment). Naturally, you'll have more freedom and alternatives to design the exact product you want, but it will cost a little bit more.
Depending on your budget, you can choose different methods or partners to making merchandise and start selling.
How To Sell Your Merchandise Online
We have a merchandise now, but how do we start selling merch? Stay tuned to learn more!
Image taken from Beauty in you
1. Set up an online store.
We can't sell our merch if we don't have a store. With an online shop you have a fantastic opportunity to reach out to a broad target audience, raise brand awareness, interact with your audience, and establish an unbeatable brand presence.
Having a strong platform that can help in promoting and selling merch is essential to your company's success. Get the most out of Strikingly's Simple Store and build your shop with us. To know more about setting up your store, check out this article with frequently asked questions to help you in selling merchandise fast and easily.
2. Include your brand merchandise in the video material you create.
If you are an influencer, another obvious location to promote your merchandise is through the content you produce. Wearing your merchandise while filming videos, directly advertising it in social media postings, or incorporating it into the idea for your upcoming piece of content are all effective ways to do this. Plug your merchandise in your video content shamelessly -- because, why not?
Image taken from Strikingly
By integrating your store whenever you engage with your audience, you can sell your things more readily in your content if you build your merchandise store online.
3. Hype the opening of your online store.
Your online store is just one stop on the buyer's journey, which also includes social media marketing and online advertising. To increase interest and traffic to your space, let your audience know that you're working on a new project, such as an online store website, if you've been teasing them with a first-time product launch on your newsletter, for instance. Promote, promote, promote!
4. Keep your followers informed.
If you include e-commerce into your website, advertising your online store will only keep them interested for so long before they may lose it. A temporary website under construction page can be added as a stand-in if you're still getting used to your online shop builder. This can increase interest in and traffic to your website while it's still being set up.
You have to provide details that your customers can consume to. Inform them about special offers, discounts for referrals, and other delights. You will definitely get their attention if you give them what they need or want.
5. Schedule a presale
A presale campaign is the best way to generate buzz for a new product. When you offer your audience the chance to buy your goods before it goes on sale, they will be the first to receive it when it does.
Why is it a good idea to run a presale? Before buying stock, you can assess demand, and you can even instill a sense of urgency or scarcity to entice customers.
Now that you know how to make merch, have you decided which one to sell? Don't worry about building the website; our Happiness Officers are available 24/7 and will be pleased to guide you in building your online store. Chat with us anytime!
