Todd Sumamno
The craze for t-shirts and personalized merchandise is unparalleled across the USA. T-shirts, for example, are universal! People can wear them from all age groups and backgrounds, and on all occasions. Don’t be surprised when we tell you that the global custom t-shirt printing industry is expected to be valued at USD 10 billion by 2025.
The merchandise market, on the other hand, is growing as well. The reason is apparent: personalization – an element liked by both individuals and corporates alike. According to BusinessWire.com, this industry will be worth USD 3.47 billion by 2022.
Thanks to the rise of custom product design software solutions, it has become easy for printing companies to source materials from a range of vendors and sell them on the web-to-print solution storefront to their customers.
If you have decided to give your t-shirt and merchandise business the much-needed push and arpae looking for digital marketing services, look no further. In this article, we will share six game-changing SEO strategies that you must apply.
But first… what is SEO, exactly?
Simply defined, Search Engine Optimization is the practice of growing the quantity and quality of a website by boosting its visibility through many methods such as on-page/off-page, guest posting, link building, and more.
Why does SEO matter to printing companies?
SEO is vital as it helps them reach new customers organically and consistently. If your target audience can’t find your design studio online anywhere on the first page in a web search, they might discover your high-ranking competitors instead.
Implementing SEO strategies will help you printing company increase:
- Quality website traffic from the target audience
- Drive more sales on your web-to-print solution storefront
- Credibility in trusted search engines
But since search engine algorithms keep changing, you need to deploy these six SEO strategies to ensure your t-shirt and merchandise business’ inbound traffic never stoops low:
1. Increase quality lead traffic to your t-shirt design software website
First things first: set up Google Analytics for your storefront and keep analyzing the website performance. Study metrics like the type of audience that visits your website, bounce rates, most popular web pages, etc.
Deploy heat mapping tools such as HotJar to study how your target audience interacts with a page. It can give you numerous insights on the flaws and glitches on the site and help you make the user experience smoother, thereby giving incredible repeat traction.
Alternatively, start your weekly or monthly newsletter showcasing the new t-shirts and merchandise you are selling on your web-to-print storefront. Develop a referral program so that your existing customers are tempted to recommend your printing company to potential customers, and thus increase website footfall.
2. Stay up-to-date on SEO best practices
Pay attention to on-page SEO. Ensure each of your webpages (including product pages) are optimized properly with a conscious mix of long-tail and semantic keywords. Use tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs to list keywords with the lowest competition. Revise keywords periodically to ensure the online traffic of your web-to-print solution storefront is consistent.
Regarding off-page activities, please get listed on online directories such as Yelp and GMB so that your target audience can find you more efficiently using the keywords.
3. Blog every week to develop page authority
You are the expert in the t-shirt and merchandise selling business. You know it. Your existing customers know it. But your target audience has no idea about who you are and that you have a brilliant t-shirt design tool they can use!
So, set up a blog and ensure your marketing team posts consistently, and over time, you will see your blogs ranking high in search engines. If you don’t have an in-house marketer, you can always hire an agency that offers digital marketing services.
You can cover a wide variety of topics for your merchandise and t-shirt business such as how-to’s, a long-form guide on personalization, t-shirt design ideas, merchandise gifting tips, and even interview influencers and print leaders on the blog.
4. Syndicate and become a trusted website in search engines
Don’t just publish blogs; instead, distribute them across channels. Leverage social media and promote your content and offerings there. You can even build community engagement on Twitter and Instagram, where people are more personal in general.
You could also create a poll on Facebook for t-shirt designs and ask your followers to vote on the best one. Upload the design with the highest number of votes on your t-shirt design software. It’s a great activity to boost your UGC content and increase the online footfall in the process. Plus, this increases the faith of your target audience in you, which is great for your brand identity.
Secondly, submit your guest posts on leading websites for printing companies to build your authority and to showcase your product designer tool on a larger scale. You can try your hand in answer marketing on Quora and Reddit, leading to an increase in website traffic.
5. Utilize a paid form of marketing
Of course, organic marketing is essential to growing the sales of the t-shirt and merchandise business. But if your budget permits, you could also invest in paid ads. Depending upon where your target audience is most active, run monthly campaigns to boost traffic and drive sales. For instance, Instagram and Facebook are two ideal platforms for you.
You can even run Google Adwords, although they are a bit expensive and can cost you a fortune if you don’t use the right keywords and write a compelling ad copy. Since your ads will always appear first when they search using your keywords, make a good impression!
Do your research to see how many of your competitors are involved in paid marketing. If they are heavily into it, then perhaps you should budget accordingly. Develop a strategy to analyze your ads periodically and gain website traction steadily.
6. Drive more in-store traffic and sales with retargeting
You can even retarget the potential customers of your custom product design software. The thing is only four percent of site visitors are ever looking to make an actual purchase. The rest just click on your ads, browse through the site, add a few things to the cart and then vanish! To ensure they come back and complete the sale, you can retarget and reach out to such customers with relevant messaging based on their past activity on your custom product design software.
Summing it up
Growing an online t-shirt and merchandise business is exciting. If you have implemented something as good as a product designer software, you must aggressively promote your USP on all channels.
At the end of the day, the business is yours and you have to ensure that your target audience flocks to the storefront despite the fierce competition. Once you get a hang of running a website optimally, driving sales will be a no-brainer.
Hopefully, with these six SEO strategies, you can cover the basics and start attracting the right kind of audience on the site. If you are searching for a web vendor of print html5 editors, please contact us at [email protected], and we will sort out your requirements.
Author Bio:
Abhishek Agarwal, CMO of Design’N’Buy comes with a huge experience in Web to print solutions & IT. With a mission to deliver the best and innovate new ideas in w2p he and his team always deliver challenging and exciting results. Delivering the best and with utmost perfection has always been his life’s motto.
Website link: https://www.designnbuy.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/determinedabhi
LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/abhiagarwal2000
Brittany Maslo