This past summer, Campus Ink moved to a new location and opened a new retail shop. As we were cleaning out our old shop, I came across boxes of blank shirts and various merchandise we’d kept.
We didn’t have a use for it – but it was some really nice gear.
My immediate impulse was to throw it into a donation box. I didn’t want any of it. No more clutter, finally!
Luckily, my business partner Jedd stopped me in my tracks:
“We’re going to print Campus Ink on all of that. Then we’re going to put it in the new shop, and give it away like candy. Any customer that walks in gets a Campus Ink shirt.”I thought I was the marketing expert!With several decades of experience in the printing industry, I realized 57-year-old Jedd had a great idea borne from his first-hand knowledge.
We had printed some business cards and flyers, but we had never really focused on our own branded apparel. It became crystal clear:
we have to use the same tactics we recommend to our customers to boost our own shop's visibility!
The power of merchandise
How could I overlook branded shirts? We’re in the printing business! We do this all of the time for our customers – and know the true value of your brand on a shirt!
That summer we printed our logo on everything we could. I realized we had to get the word out, and never let a single customer leave our shop without giving them a piece of our business to take with them.
So how did we take this marketing tactic to the next level?We decided to dedicate a few thousand dollars to this project. We wanted to give out really cool merch to go with the shirts we would give out – and force the community to take notice of Campus Ink!
We didn't want to limit ourselves to gimmicks or chintzy crap – we needed high-quality, high-value products that would keep Campus Ink at the top of our customers' minds, put us out into the community in a constant and visible way, and convert customers into advocates.
8 ways we're marketing for our print shop with custom merchandise, read the full article here:
https://www.printavo.com/blog/8-ways-to-market-your-print-shop-with-custom-merch
