This answer was originally written on Quora
Work hard and see which technique that has worked in the past will work for your situation.
You’re not the first person to ask this question, and you will be no means be the last. There are classes, books, seminars, videos, tutorials, jokes, lives, napkin sketches, corporations, societies and essays all built around your question. The first thing, if you really care about your product, is to go out and read and learn everything you can about what people have succeeded and failed at when it comes to generating traffic which ultimately will help generate sales. Funny thing about that model that I described is that it can be applied to 98% of life. Hard work and your devotion is what separates people who get shit done in life. Anyway, enough of the preaching.
First thing I would scope out is your target market, you may thing your products are awesome, but is that what the public/target market thinks? If you ever want a good read I would suggest, The Lean Start Up, by Eric Ries. In it he says, don’t try and ask your customers what they want, have their behavior tell you what they want. You may not be that far along with a customer base but my point is to look at past trends of customer behavior in response to different marketing techniques and try and model after them for yourself and your brand/company.
Here are a couple methods I like:
Viral Video– Make a funny video about your struggle to sell products - Dollar Shave Club
Charitable Cause – Tons of products will create awareness for their brand by pairing up with a charitable organization. “A portion of sales will go to X” “Buy a shirt from me and I’ll give a shirt to X” Check out TOMS - One for One Shoes & Eyewear or OMNI
University Reps – Get students on different college campuses to sell your shirts for you. This route doesn’t always work but its a nice grass roots movement to try and get support.
Cultural Influence-r Support – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joh… got a lot of traction by having a popular band wear his shirts. This route is going to be tough but could work out.
Social Media Outlets - Like it was said before, you need to make sure you’re a master at all of the social media outlets out there. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Pintrest..etc.
Photography exposure (my favorite) - I would really enjoy taking a product and doing photography experiments with it and using post production to turn the clothing into works of art rather than just a shirt/pair of jeans or something. Example: My buddy is great at design and came up with some really cool stuff, Arian Behzadi. Turn your clothing line into an art/culture statement and try to talk to others about it
For more information this is a great source: Startup Advice and Strategy: How can I generate website traffic with $0 marketing budget?
Cheers and good luck. Let me know if you want to talk more about ideas. @gregkamradt
October 24th, 2013 5:54pm
Written by
Greg Kamradt
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Thu Oct 24 2013