The Matter of Merchandising: How to Design Business Merch
When branching out your business or looking to gain more exposure, there are a myriad of things you can try. Traditionally this would involve print, billboard or television advertising. There can also be more modern tactics such as social media, content creation, or even printing merchandise with your brand’s logo.
The best thing about printing your brand’s logo on various items and distributing these items for free or at cost is that you’re essentially getting walking billboards and advertisements from your customers. These ways of branching out business are very effective and can often be overlooked. In this article, we will outline how are the ways we can design business merchandise so you can look to expand your marketing methods.
Select the Right Merchandise
We must first consider the kind of merchandise we want to produce for our business. It’s not enough to make shirts and lanyards. We need to consider what type of business we operate and what things our consumers would use or wear daily. This consideration is essential because one of the main driving factors of producing merchandise is the fact we can advertise our brand. The merchandise won’t be of much use if nobody wears or uses it daily.
You’ll need to consider what kind of taste your customers have, their age and buying preferences. Younger crowds might likely like stickers as they can decorate their belongings, and older groups might like convenient items such as lanyards or coffee mugs. There is so much we can produce that we must consider these things. The right merchandise can bring an unbelievable amount of awareness to your brand.
Choose the Best Colours
The colours of everything in a business play a more significant role than most people think. There are fields dedicated to the psychological impacts of particular colours on the human brain and what colours make more people inclined to buy. The amount of research into the subtle marketing details can be pretty mind-blowing.
Just like selecting the right merchandise, you need to consider our customers’ wants and tastes. What are they usually wearing, what colours are they drawn to, and what colours do you think best represent the business. If you already have a logo (which most companies do), it’s advised that you just follow the existing colour scheme with respect to your newly printed merchandise. This will ensure that your branding is consistent through all avenues.
Ensure Your Logo is Visible
Now, making sure that your logo is in the best locations and easily visible is paramount. After all, who will even notice your brand if they can’t see the name of your business in the first place? Hopefully, you already have a simple font for your b, so we need to ensure that your logo is in a good location on your piece of merchandise.
The location depends on what you’re printing; if printing shirts, for example, you need to have the logo on the top half of the shirt and in medium to large font so people can see it. If you’re printing smaller items, ensure that your logo takes up at least 80% of the thing, and you can include minor details if you wish.
Create Meaningful Messages & Call To Actions
Now when designing our merchandise, we don’t want to simply design our logo and nothing else. If potential customers see our beautiful designs and are interested in learning more, we want to provide them with that option. This could be anything from a phone number to a Facebook page or an address. The main thing is that we give them someone to go to if they want to request our services.
This will be harder if we are using tiny pieces of merchandise, but in those scenarios, use common sense and try out more straightforward methods of communication. Just a small print showing the phone number could suffice. It’s also important to show some personality of the brand and put in some sort of slogan that represents the brand’s values; this creates a connection with the potential customer and will hopefully be reciprocated down the line. If you have these two things, it should elevate the number of leads you get and bring you a magnitude of new customers.
Conclusion
There is much to consider when creating merchandise or marketing for your business. The marketing considerations that go into websites or products will often be the same going into inventory. Keeping a consistent brand image and making it easy to contact or get in touch with you for your services is essential. If you follow these steps, you can’t go wrong.
