Fortune Small Business Magazine:
Q: My friend and I are getting a small online T-shirt business off the ground. We plan to sell our products on eBay and advertise by wearing our products and passing out business cards and fliers. Can you offer any other suggestions?
Verne Harnish, CEO, Gazelles, Ashburn, Va. answers: As Seth Godin says in his book, All Marketers are Liars, you need to do something that will get customers to remark on your product. Free word-of-mouth advertising is the most cost-effective way to generate sales.
If eBay is going to be your major sales channel, pay close attention to how successful merchants on the auction site are selling their wares, and consider how their approaches might apply to your startup. Keep your mind open to the feedback you get as you start selling your products, and that should give you good ideas, as well.
Photo by MSDesigns.
Randy on October 29th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
You may want to consider printing name card size calendar with some catching words or colour to capture people’s attention and give it to who ever you come in contact with.
This is just my 1 cent suggestion.
Randy
Canucklehead on October 31st, 2007 at 8:48 am
You’ll have to forgive me but this does not sound like much advice. By wearing themselves, they are limiting the geagraphical exposure. Unless these are ‘I LOVE (hometown) shirts, then this is not the best means of exposure. Of course, if they are then eBay is likely not the best place to sell. Ideally you want the product in front of as many people as possible. I would suggest giving some shirts away in a contest - which they promote the heck out of online. Then again - I’m no expert.
(as Jack Handey once said: I sometimes think that the so-called experts are in fact the actual experts (paraphrased))
Robert on November 6th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Why not get some celebrity behind the effort? That always works.