It’s Christmas time – there’s no need to be afraid….

Well there may be cause for concern if you are in the garment decoration industry.This time of year is full of festive spirit and cheer but traditionally it is a quiet time for small and medium sized print & embroidery businesses across the country – the schools orders have stopped, the workwear orders are at a minimum and production is just trickling along.

We can approach this in one of two ways to make sure that your business makes the most of the quiet period and gives itself the best chance of success:

Run a Tailored Campaign To Ensure Your Business Ticks Over…

It’s a simple one to do in the personalisation game running festive campaigns or seasonal flash sales. Of course there’s great reward but there’s also great risk, prices have to be just right and the quality ideas have to be there (after all you are competing against high street brands providing festive clothing, so the bar is set pretty high) and then conversely you compete against specialist gift stores both on the high street (or not!) or in-store.

So the value has to be there for customers, but to be successful you need more than great ideas you need a great campaign! This is where you need to be savvy and smart and not rely on an ad-hoc approach. Just ask yourself a few simple questions…

• When do I want my seasonal campaign to run? When will things get quiet?
• What do I want to sell to both my existing customers and potential new customers?
• How much I reach them? And how often?
• What mediums will I use – Email, Blogging, Social Media or Traditional Advertising?

Put together a plan of attack before a seasonal lull and watch your sales increase over the quiet period!

Alternatively, Use The Time To Grow Your Online Business…

If you don’t fancy running and online campaign and just accept seasonality on face value – then so be it, just ensure that in some way or another you add value to your business.

Throughout the year, we deal with a number of print & embroidery businesses often questioning their online efforts. The problem for garment decorators is a simple one – time constraints & prioritising. Whereas throughout the year a traditional print & embroidery company focus on prioritising, winning orders, getting the jobs in and out the ‘online stuff’ is left as a lesser priority and something that will be looked at when we are not busy or when we have the time…. so now is the time!

Prepare email campaigns, set up social media accounts, schedule posts, write blogs, create some optimised content, and create customer shops, promotional artwork and so on. Get all the things you would not ordinarily have time for in your day to day schedule done in time for 2016. Implementing just a few of these Online Marketing Techniques will go a long way in determining the future success of your online business, grow your online presence, increase your brand awareness, increase your traffic and most importantly online sales with all the hard yards you put in in the quiet period… Don’t just accept seasonality, make the most of it!

For more information on how to get more from your site & online marketing efforts don’t hesitate to get in touch via email on info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or give us a call on 029 2075 5733 today!

The fight for business in the garment decoration is always well and truly on. Customers have more options than ever before when it comes to buying their personalised clothing and decorating their garments. Give your online business the edge, make retaining them a given with an amazing customer experience; and a reason to say ‘Why would I go elsewhere when I need some personalised clothing? ‘

We have put together our five favourite tips to make sure your potential and current customers keep coming back to your site for a long time to come.

1. Have an Eye-Catching Modern Homepage: So you have done all the hard SEO & Marketing work and the customer lands on your page. For print/embroidery businesses it goes 1 or 2 ways, either customers are faced with an old-fashioned eye sore of a website which they leave as quick as they arrived or they land on a modern attractive homepage (somewhere in the middle is few and far between). Customers facing a modern clean homepage are more likely to stay on site much longer and fish around to see what you offer giving you a chance of winning and importantly retaining their business. Our sites do just this, offering customer sleek professional looking websites – seeing your homepage why would they go elsewhere?

2. Make Shopping as Straight-Forward as Possible: The customer shopping experience should be as simple as possible – click, buy, checkout, deliver. But the nature of the personalised clothing industry makes things a little more complicated, there is always a variable, a personalised aspect to what your customers buying. Most every day punters get confused by the personalisation progress when purchasing from garment decorators. But make it as simple as possible using easy to use layout and design and design tools. We have seen a whole number of different ways garment decorators try conquer this, everyone has their own view, but stick to big picture – you want your customers to buy from you and not elsewhere. Make it simple – our sites use a simple four step ordering process for customer which makes it as simple as possible for the everyday customer to order their personalised garment.

3. Be Social: Customers love a brand they can resonate with. Social Media gives your business the chance to grow its own persona and personality. You do not have to take it too seriously; it is of course just another form of Marketing, but a very fun one of that. The benefits of growing an online personality are huge, not only do current customer’s fall in love with your business, they refer your business (sharing the love and growing the sales). Social Media is a chance to interact with everyone that can be a potential customer and everyone that is a customer from a phone/tablet or PC – and with a high quality product, amazing customer service and interesting business and brand the customers are sure to come flocking in.

4. Mirror How You Work In-Store Online: Give customers an opportunity to see how great your business really is; let your customers know who you are, what you do, why you do it and why you love the garment decoration industry by any means possible – FAQs, images, blogging and so on. Shopping online customers are looking for the go-to guys for their personalised clothing, give them a bit of insight into the wonderful world of print & embroidery and improve your chances against competitors. Show off you and your businesses personality and give your business a bigger chance of winning that all important order.

5. Give Them a Reason to Keep Coming Back: Winning new business is important to print & embroidery businesses but retaining it is vital. You want to combine all these previously discussed points, great service, personality, a high-quality product and make sure that if they need personalised clothing again they are not going to go elsewhere. Offer them a reason to come back – an online mini shop loaded with their products, something your competitors can not. Why would they go anywhere else when they can order their uniforms, kits or whatever they need in just a few moments?

Combining all these tips will put you well on your way to making your customers fall in love with your online business. Beat off the online competition, go one step further and take your online sales and customer retention to the next level.

For more info on how we help garment decorators online email info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or call 029 2075 5733 

Social Media, where would we be without it?

It has become a necessary Marketing tool for businesses to grow their online presence and more importantly online sales. But with a large number of garment decorators neglecting it, they can only wonder - are they missing out?

Social Media is considered by many business owners (especially in our industry) a bottom of the list priority, something for a Friday afternoon or a quiet day. But if done correctly and more importantly consistently the effects Social Media can have on small businesses lead generation and sales prove the difference between doing OK online and doing very well online.

Social Media does not have to be complicated, a bottom of the pile Friday afternoon job. We will hopefully give you an insight and convince you that it can work for you & your business.

There are lots of Social Media sites out there but stick to the main few to start Facebook, Twitter and maybe LinkedIn and as you become more competent and comfortable branch out experiment with the likes of Vine, Pinterest, Instagram or whatever tickles your fancy.

Pick the platform that best fit your businesses objectives. Ask yourself what do you want to achieve from going online – developing an online brand, growing an online presence, improving your sales or whatever it may be just pick the right platform to achieve social success.

Facebook: Ideal for B2C Facebook is commonly accepted as a tricky one for customers to get right. But with advertising tools Facebook gives your business the chance to not just grow a following/community but to generate new customers through advertising campaigns that target potential customers for a small cost.

Twitter: The popular tool of choice for small businesses - we come across far more garment decoration, print, embroidery businesses here than anywhere else. Twitter allows you to focus on both B2B and B2C customers. 140 Characters does not sound like enough to sell your business but with a good following and product your business can reap the rewards!

LinkedIn: B2B orientated platform for the business more focused on its trade customers. Connecting and referring on here gives your business the chance to meet customers you may never come across normally ‘Online Networking’. Arguably the most credible for garment decorators looking to obtain working relationships & contracts with large trade customers.

Other Ideas: The garment decoration industry relies heavily on visual content so you would thing Instagram and Pinterest are ideal for garment decorators. These two sites give businesses the chance to meet like-minded people who have a similar interest in clothing and act as more of a brand grower than a sales tool in itself but we would definitely recommend you give it a go!

Just to wrap things up in a nice little bow here are a few little tips to make Social Media success easy for the everyday small business:

• Create a realistic action plan: Define what you want to achieve using Social Media
• Grow Your Following: Grow a following of who you think may be interested in your business/what you do
• Create engaging content: Nobody will read sales post after sales post, go for visuals, Blogs, and latest news – anything that catches your audience’s attention. The sales come afterwards!
• Pick the right platform: As discussed pick what you think would work best for your business and its brand.
• Creating Content: Realistically you won't have someone sat at a PC posting on your sites all day every day. Use planning tools such as Hootsuite to schedule a week’s worth of content in half hour.
• Lastly, just be sociable and have fun with it. Don’t take it too seriously spamming sales posts all over Social Media. Being liked and social will sell more than you ever imagined.

We hope we have won you around garment decorators with our guide to making Social Media a success for your business. Remember, if done right ‘Social Sales’ are what separate you from the rest of the crowd and take your online business to the next level!

For more information on how we can help your online business get in touch simply drop us an email us on info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or call 029 2075 5733 today!