With the advent of ecommerce sites, selling your clothes online can be a great way to make some extra cash. Marketing your clothes, however, can be a real hassle, especially with so many different platforms to do it on. you should have some great automation tools like Poshmark Pro Tools if you are on the Poshmark world.
One possibility that you should never forget is through social media. It’s a free and interactive way for you to promote the art and clothing that you sell. When done right, social media can increase your clothing sales beyond anything you thought possible.
This guide will walk you through 7 great tips to take full advantage of social media to sell your clothes.
1. Design for the time
The first tip to engaging your audience on social media is to design for the time. The design for the time is pretty simple: it’s easier to market your clothes when you’ve created seasonal trends and are selling at popular times.
Let’s tackle these timely sales ideas one by one:
- Design seasonal trends. That simply means that the colors, styles, and patterns that you use should all match the season in which you are selling the product. For example, using dark orange and maroon in the fall versus pastel colors in the spring is an easy way to spot seasonal trends. Look for styles that change every year for even more creative inspiration.
- Sell at the right times. When you have a sale, try to make sure it ends on a Sunday. Sunday is the day people most often check their social media accounts and spend time on the internet in preparation for Monday’s school or workday. Hence, ending a Sunday sale creates an urgency that drives sales.
- Design for an event. Check the news for events that may be related to your mission as a company. For example, if you want to comment on a particular political or social movement, you can design a T-shirt especially for the other supporters of that movement. Lots of people check the news on social media, so correlating the event with a piece of clothing is a great way to appeal to those who have strong opinions.
Timely promotion on social media is a great way to reach your followers who are already following your social media account. They will be closely monitoring your organization’s pages to showcase the latest trends and sales.
2. Optimize mobile content
Nowadays, social media is most commonly accessed through a cell phone or mobile device. It was created and customized so that it can be viewed from a smaller screen.
Have the “mobile-first” mentality! You should make sure that your buying process is customized for a smaller mobile screen too.
For example, let’s say you sell t-shirts. A customer sees an opportunity on your Facebook page to order newly designed shirts in bulk for their church’s upcoming missionary trip. It follows the link from your Facebook page to the online t-shirt order form, but the form is too confused and complicated to fill out from a mobile device.
Chances are, under these circumstances, you lost the customer. Make sure the platform you use to sell your clothes online has a cell phone-optimized checkout experience. Bonfire designs mobile first – precisely for this reason. To optimize a page successfully for mobile use, you can optimize a page:
- Minimize the required information fields.
- Omit the “fluff” text.
- Make sure the pictures on the phone are clear.
- Increase the page speed as much as possible.
- No account or password is required to purchase.
Social media encourage mobile users to buy online directly from their cell phone. Make sure you have this option with a cell phone-optimized shopping page or order form.
3. Hold a poll for a look contest
If you are an artist, the Vote for a look activity might be perfect for your social media strategy. This strategy encourages your donors to get involved in the design process.
How does this strategy work? Create two or more t-shirt designs and ask your social media followers to vote on the one they like best before a specific date.
The voting process for this strategy can be different for each social media platform. For example, you can choose to use:
- Facebook offers voting options for use. Hence, you can create a poll within the social media platform and ask people to vote right there.
- On Instagram, you can choose to juxtapose design photos and ask people to “like” their favorite design. Whoever receives the most “favors” wins the vote. You can also use the new voting in Instagram Stories to let people vote on their favorite design.
- Twitter. Twitter is the perfect platform for asking people to vote for the saying or message you put into the design of your clothes. Create a poll where people can vote on the funniest clothes signature.
If you are not an artist, ask your followers to submit designs to participate in the competition. The winner will have their work of art displayed on their t-shirt for all to see! You can even throw in a free t-shirt for the winning artist as an added incentive.
4. Use enticing subtitles
If you sell your t-shirts online, write product descriptions so people know what they will get when they buy the shirt.
However, when you’re promoting a t-shirt on social media, the text you put in the post is very different. Your social media subtitles act as product descriptions.
This doesn’t mean that your text should be the same from your ecommerce store to your social media page, but that your caption should entice your readers to buy the t-shirt, just as a description would. Think about how you can use these captions to entice your viewers into buying your t-shirt.
Try subtitling strategies like:
- Humor: For example, show off a Halloween skeleton t-shirt that said “We hoped you would find this humerus t-shirt “.
- Empathy: T-shirts with a compelling mission about children that read, “For only $ 20 you can make a child have dinner tonight”.
- Inspiration: To promote sales promoting life’s betterment or active clothing, try a headline like, “Never settle for the ordinary; only you can make your life extraordinary”.
- Customer Appreciation: Use the caption to show your customers that you care about them. For example, “Thanks to everyone who has supported me so far! Check out our latest style today!”
- Discount Offers: When you have a sale you can add a headline like “Get your BOGO t-shirts for today just with our special code: Facebook Friends”!
Your caption is incredibly important to the sale of your clothes. For examples of killer subtitles, look up your favorite brand on Instagram or Facebook. They could spark some inspiration for your own campaign.
5. Hold a photo contest
Photo contests are the perfect way to engage your audience in your social media strategy. By running these contests, not only are you marketing your t-shirts online, but you’re also encouraging your supporters to join you on social media.
A photo contest is a competition between your backers to see who can submit the best or most creative photo using your organization’s products.
The steps to run a photo contest among your social media followers are as follows:
- Choose a platform. Choose a social media platform that encourages the use of images. For example, Instagram or Facebook would likely be the first choice over Twitter, which primarily uses text in the posts.
- Create a hashtag. Choose a relevant and unique hashtag for your competition. When people post a picture tell them to include that hashtag in the heading of their post so that you can easily find and view all of the pictures that people post.
- Define a timeline. Define a time frame for the start and end of this competition. If you have an upcoming event, it is an effective practice to end the competition just before the event. This will allow you to market both the event and the competition using social media.
- Pick a winner. You can either choose the winner of the competition or allow your other supporters to vote on a winner. For example, you can define the winner as the one whose picture gets the most likes on Instagram.
The benefits of photo contests are incredible. The images that your supporters post serve as marketing material for their own personal networks. Also, encourage them to engage with your organization online. You will be constantly checking your social networks to see who is ahead of the competition (or who has won).
If you want to make the competition even more interesting, consider a topic for your supporters to follow when posting the images. For example, you can choose to make the contest a “goofy” contest with funny faces from your followers.
Conclusion
Marketing your business on social media is easy (and free!) Way to maximize your online clothing sales. And these 7 tips for promoting your clothing store on social media can help you get the most out of your social media. Just imagine how your sales will skyrocket with that extra marketing!