A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Promotional Merchandise and Clothing
December 5, 2024
Regardless of your business type, customers love it when you give away branded merch—especially if it’s free (but many will also be happy to buy). Plus, the benefits for your business are numerous—it can help boost brand loyalty, increase brand visibility, and improve brand recognition.
With endless options to capture your brand, knowing how to create promotional merchandise and clothing that will excite your customers is essential for achieving your marketing and revenue goals.
If you need help standing out from the crowd, the team at Brand Services is here to make it happen. We offer a wide range of unique promotional merch and clothing that will connect your brand to your customers for a lasting impression.
What is Promotional Merchandise and Clothing?
This refers to products that a business uses to build or promote its brand. They could be anything, from t-shirts and hats to pens and confectionaries – but no matter what the item is, it will be emblazoned with your brand logo, colours, and other characteristics specific to your business. These products are often given away, rather than sold, to advertise the business and create brand awareness.
Use our step-by-step guide to ensure that you’ve created promotional merchandise and clothing that your customers love to receive.
Step 1: Hone Your Brand Identity
It’s important to take the time to develop your brand identity, including your logo, slogan, tone of voice, and visual persona (among other characteristics). If you haven’t got one already, put together a brand guideline that contains a list of rules surrounding the tone and style of your brand. Define your target audience and identify your unique value proposition (UVP) to set your brand apart from your competitors.
Step 2: Create Product Ideas
Brainstorm some promotional merchandise and clothing ideas that align with your brand values and personality, but don’t forget to consider the customer experience. Try also to focus on ideas that complement your marketing efforts – if you’re running a campaign encouraging customers to sign up for your new loyalty program, for example, think about some ideas that may incentivise them to do this.
Step 3: Design Your Merch
Develop a design for your promotional merchandise and clothing per your brand guidelines. If you don’t have an internal design team, we highly recommend finding a company that can do this for you.
The design should use approved brand assets only and should be consistent with your brand guidelines, even when it comes to more subtle elements (like font and spacing). Where possible, create mockups or even prototypes of your design so that you can test it out, as well as seek feedback from employees and customers.
Step 4: Find a Supplier
Once your design is good to go, it’s time to produce the merch. We highly recommend finding a reputable promotional products supplier for this step. While this will be more expensive than a print-on-demand service, you can rest assured that the final result will be of premium quality. Plus, you’ll be able to take advantage of the supplier’s wealth of knowledge and ability to access unique, custom products.
Step 5: Distribute Your Merch
There are myriad ways that your promotional merchandise and clothing can be distributed to your customer base. They could be in-store gifts, part of an online promotion, given away at trade shows, or even sent directly to loyal or long-serving customers. Promoting loyalty programs and new product lines are both great opportunities for doing a giveaway that both delights your customers and incentivises them to take action.
Step 6: Monitor Your Inventory
Ensure that you keep an eye on your merch inventory. This can be achieved via a visual inspection or even an online system. Some businesses like to only order a set number of products and offer giveaways “while stocks last” to create a sense of urgency, but if your giveaway forms part of a welcome package or some other long-term strategy, it’s important to ensure that your inventory is stocked to avoid disappointment.
Step 7: Measure Your Effectiveness
It’s also important to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of your promotional merchandise and clothing campaign. This will help you to determine whether you’re achieving your desired results or whether adjustments need to be made. This can be achieved in a variety of ways depending on your campaign and its ultimate goal (such as tracking sales and revenue, social media engagement, and customer feedback).
The Elements for Success in Promotional Merch
Creating promotional merchandise and clothing that achieves both your marketing and revenue goals can ultimately be broken down into three essential elements – strategic planning, creative, design, and effective distribution. By following our step-by-step guide and choosing to partner with Brand Services as your premium merch supplier, you can have peace of mind that all of these elements are covered successfully.
