Lucrative Revenue Stream – Selling Promotional T-Shirts

By Clinton Courier | February 13, 2020 |

Even in our digital world today, promotional t-shirts are a powerful money-spinning and marketing strategy, whether you use them to promote your ideas, a new product, or a team spirit among the employees. Studies show that people usually keep promotional items for an average of eight months. So, t-shirts are one of the smartest marketing tools to promote a brand, as people will use them for much longer.

Promotional t-shirts present you with a great opportunity to expose your brand and get attention. So, selling promotional t-shirts is a wonderful opportunity to generate a lucrative revenue stream.

However, there are some best practices to follow if you want to build a thriving promotional t-shirt design business.

How to Create Effective Promotional T-Shirts?

1. Be Mindful of Your Client’s Needs

For your promotional t-shirts to bring a lucrative revenue stream, you need to be open to some mindset changes in the first place. in other words, to build a thriving promotional shirts business, always put your client’s needs first. Be open to their ideas and try to gather as much information as possible. Don’t limit the communication on shirt colors and logo styles.

To create an effective t-shirt design, and to deliver your service professionally, always make sure to:

get a clear picture of designs your client would like
come to an agreement regarding colors and styles at the beginning of the process
get the complete picture of the type of promotion your client is looking for
inquire about the specific target audience
be clear regarding what is possible and what is not
learn what they are striving to achieve with promotional t-shirts
inquire about the turnaround your client expects
sketch some basic ideas on the spot, so they get a better picture of the finished product.

2. Stick to Your Client’s Logos

A company’s logo is much more than just an image. A logo is a staple of their brand, the values they stand behind, and ideas that they endorse. Even if you might have to channel and restrain your creativity, your client’s logo needs to be presented exactly the way they want it. So, discuss the colors, size, and layout before you send it to printing.

Of course, don’t shy away from showing off your talent and skills. There is nothing wrong with sharing your ideas as long as you are sure that your client understands that they make a decision on a t-shirt design choice.

3. Choose the Right Fabrics

It is very important to choose the good fabrics for your promotional t-shirts from reputable brands like real thread because low-quality fabrics can ruin your design. For example, if you’re going to use transfer printing, then polyester is the most suitable fabrics. On the other hand, if you are going to use screen printing then buy cotton shirts.

Meanwhile, direct-to-film printing is used best with fabrics that are carefully selected to ensure optimal results. To achieve vibrant and long-lasting prints, it is advisable to choose high-quality fabrics like cotton or polyester, depending on the requirements of your design. Additionally, investing in the right printing machine such as the L2 DTF printer can further enhance the outcome, guaranteeing precise and professional prints on your promotional t-shirts.

4. Keep the Expenses Clear

Before you send promotional t-shirts to printing, make sure to let the client know about the costs. Even if they find your services expensive, most clients will value your openness and appreciate the heads up.

5. Be Honest About Your Services

Honesty is always welcome. Let your client know upfront whether you are experienced or not in specific printing techniques or other features they want to achieve when discussing things such as printing formats, colors, printing tactics, images, or font types. At the end of the day, it is better to have your potential client go with another printer than to fail their expectations regarding the finished product.

6. Advise the Client about Your Printing Process

Your client may want to use a different printing format from the one you normally use. This is something you’ll have to figure out before you begin the printing process. If you have the right Pantone codes, your printer may do the job without issues, but it may also turn out into a total disaster.

To avoid unnecessary stress, show the client upfront the earlier projects that you did in different printing techniques, so they can visually see the difference.

Also, make sure to save the design in the correct file, whether it’s PDF or some other format because you want to ensure high-quality samples.

Finally, it is a good idea to order a sample, so you know how the promotional t-shirts will turn out. When creating promotional shirts, it is important to clarify all the segments of the printing process, to reduce the risk of problems and have the shirts designed as effective as possible.