Direct Mail
Direct mail gives advertisers an efficient means of targeting audiences as broadly or as narrowly as the sender deems appropriate. With proper planning, you can determine your own deadlines. You’ve also got lots of room to show off your staff and satisfied customers and tout your products, services, convenience and other reasons why people should buy from you. Direct mail is often referred to as junk mail, because so much of it is. But intelligently targeted and executed, direct mail is among the most cost-effective vehicles there is for generating leads from custom apparel decision-makers.
Business-to-Business and Other Targeted Audience Events
Displaying your lines to prospective business buyers present highly qualitative marketing opportunities. In addition to business to-business events, similar exhibition at venues for coaches, teachers, organization leaders, and other special target audiences present huge opportunities to move your company forward. Selecting appropriate trade and professional events at which to exhibit can be done by researching trade publications online to see schedules, projected, attendance, and booth details for exhibitors. Though your results from a particular show might seem disappointing at first,there may be other long-term benefits that don’t manifest themselves until weeks or months after the event, such as attracting good reps or gaining a huge account from a buyer who spent only a few moments in your booth.
Newspapers and Other Print Media
Advertising in local newspapers can be an effective means of creating awareness of your company and keeping your name visible. The most effective newspaper advertising for most custom decorated apparel companies is a “tombstone ad” a trade term for an ad that rarely charges. It gives a basic message of who, what, where, hours, a phone number, and a positioning statement or tag line. “Sale” ads generally don’t work for apparel decorators, because buyers of our product categories tend to buy primarily near the time when they’ll need them.
Telephone Directory Advertising
Telephone directory advertising was an affordable ticket to steady lead-generation. It was the one medium that virtually all custom apparel decorators used in their advertising programs, and for many of them, the only medium. The primary strength of telephone directories also is their greatest limitation. Their advantage always has been its value to those close to making a decision about where to buy — not in reaching out to people who either aren’t currently interested in buying, are satisfied with their current situation, or haven’t thought much about buying your products as opposed to others’. It is strictly a reactive medium and the antithesis of a proactive form of advertising.
