T-shirt sales advice

[Fatasiancowboy]

Hi, I'm doing funny t-shirt sales to a college/high school audience. My sales are ok and I haven't paid a dime in advertising. I'm lucky, my audience thinks my site is funny, so it's been word of mouth completely.

 

My question :

 

Is the Christmas rush worth investing in some advertising? I know some websites which reach my target audience and get an enormous amount of traffic. I just wonder if there's anyone else who sells t-shirts (or anything similar) and notices a large spike in sales during the holidays, which would warrant the extra advertising to get the word out.

 

Thanks!

 

Vance

[gillamb]

Hi,

 

I, like you, hadnt advertised before, relying on improving my rankings and word of mouth for sales.

 

As a test, i created a google adwords account 2 weeks ago. Sales shot up by about 300%. I havent tried it personally, but a friend tried a magazine advert for their site and it gained very few customers.

 

I would try google advertising for a day or two, see how it goes, and if it doesnt work for you, try something else. Definitely worth advertising though!

 

Good luck!

[rebugger]

Depends on how long you've been running. If the word of mouth is strong enough and if it's not just local you should see your sales pick up anyway.

 

The bid prices in Adwords are a bit ridiculous now, especially in retail. Though, if you can find a relevant keyword for a good price, give it a shot.

 

You may have left the run a little late, but you may want to consider advertising in college paper/radio, and the local papers.

 

good luck.

 

j.

[Mav666]

I run an ad agency and get questions quite frequently from our clients - the answer to your question is "it depends". Generally in retail, the Christmas business should be much stronger than the rest of the year, depending of course, on the product. A lot of it depends on your average purchase, frequency of purchases and largely on how much you make per purchase.

If a magazine ad costs you $500 and you'd have to sell a t-shirt to 50% of their readers to make a profit, you would likely lose money. AdWords work in similar fashion - how many visitors to your site on average turn into buyers? What is your average profit per buyer? If you make $20 per buyer and 10% of visitors buy, you should be willing to pay up to one fourth of that per visitor - meaning $.50. This is short-term strategy, quick-fix stuff though - not talking about long term planning.

Oftentimes it also pays to try to re-activate or cross-sell existing clients, not sure how much of that you are doing. I.e. sending existing customers a $5 off coupon for their next $25. as a christmas e-mail gift, may drive them to a 2nd (3rd, 4th) purchase sooner, and you should still make some money. If they buy more than $25 you make your normal profit beyond that (or free shipping, whatever). The advantage here is that the out-of-pocket expenses are lower and you already have an existing relationship with those buyers.

 

Enough of the rant - hope this helps ...

 

TCW

[Fatasiancowboy]

Thanks to everyone for the advice, this has been really useful input as our site has only been up for a couple of months. I liked the idea of contacting past customers with deals a lot.

 

All of your suggestions are much appreciated and we're considering each one and how they could relate to our store. Thanks again!

 

And by all means, to anyone else -keep the input coming!

 

Vance.