Creating Merchandise for Your Business

Merchandise for your business is an excellent way to create a revenue stream while marketing and promoting your brand. It is one of the ways you can use to bring awareness and a collective immersion of your brand’s image into the public’s sphere. 

If you have a well laid out design and a catchy branding portfolio, it can also help grow your audience and help attract brand ambassadors. So here are some steps you can take to start creating a merchandising strategy for your business;

1. Know your Target Audience
2. Select Products that Match Your Brand
3. Design 
4. Promote 
5. Sell Your Merchandise

We can look into these steps in more detail:

1. Know Your Target Audience

This is naturally the most crucial step in not only creating merchandise but also in starting a business. You have to know what section of the population your business seeks to serve. Knowing the demographics and the needs that your services or products are aimed to solve will help you narrow down your focus into what needs to be worked on.

For example, if your business is a coffee shop, your target audience could most likely be people who need a cup in the morning before work. This can help you know what items that may be useful for them, and how those items could be an avenue for you to advertise your brand.

2. Select Products that Match Your Brand

Once you identify you target audience, you can start selceting the products that match your brand’s image. For most cases clothing such as t-shirts is an easy go-to solution to help your brand awareness expand, but don’t limit yourself to the basics.

You can help you brand grow even more by creating products that specifically call attention to the kind of services that your business provides. 

Tapping into the wants and desires of your target audience helps you produce merch that fans  want to buy, and fosters a sense of connection to your brand, bringing your name and logo into their everyday lives.

3. Design 

This is the next crucial step in merch making for your brand. A great design is in itself a great pull to call the attention of people to your business. So invest in a great design that captures the essence your business in full glory. You can choose to outsource by hiring a graphic designer if you do not have a logo and brand color and image pallete or you want to improve on the already existing one.

It’s advisable to create a few mock-ups, get people’s opinion through a social media poll, then choose your final idea from these mockups. Once you’ve finalised which mock-ups you’d like to turn into the final product you can go ahead and produce. There are many services that create customised merch:

VistaPrint

Printify

Printshop by DesignHill

4. Promote

Once you narrow down to the design, it’s now time to promote and get the word out on the products you are selling. You can have ads on your social media pages for starters. Or you can choose to have a brand ambassador who has an already existing following to  market your products.

5. Sell Your Merchandise

Make sure that your merchandise can be bought from as many possible platforms as possible. This will help make your brand more visible and bring in more customers who will resonate with your brand’s image. It will also help if you use a platform such as  the eCommerce platform like Lightspeed eCommerce, you can: 

• Select a theme from a range of mobile-responsive and customisable templates
• Let shoppers add their favourite items to a wishlist for future purchase
• View, edit and organise your shipments from your eCom back office
• Keep customers up-to-date on the status on their order with shipment tracking codes
• Make your webstore available in up to 14 languages
• Serve an international clientele by adding multiple currencies
• Connect social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to your online shop
• Make use of built-in tools to boost SEO and drive traffic to your online store