Campaign tips & advice
In this blog post, we'd like to give a few humble bits of advice and tips so you can increase the success rate of your campaign.
First of all, we'd like to address the "successful/unsuccessful" subject. This is, by all means, a way to describe technical possibilities. Here, success is quite literally defined as selling enough items for production to be possible. We'd hate to make anyone feel bad because of our choice of words. If you don't sell enough, please don't feel disheartened. We're happy to personally discuss what might be the reason behind this and what you can do to change things around. You can improve your strategy and always try again!
That being said, while we can't offer "one size fits all" advice, there are few things that, in our experience, work well. The most important one is that you need to work (a little bit) towards your goal (or not if you have a lot of supporters already waiting to buy your merch). Here's a list of things that might increase your chances:
- People are more likely to support you when you have an idea, a concept, or a vision behind your print. Think about your artwork, cause, or business. You can ask yourself questions like "Why am I creating this?" or "Why this visual" etc. to describe your concept.
- This is just blunt but be realistic about your selling goals and the duration of your campaign. If you don't have too much time to invest, perhaps start smaller.
- Consider your audience and appeal to them. Who are they? If you can, ask around and gather as much information as possible before creating your artwork and deciding on your garments.
- Share it a lot. Ask your supporters to share it. Talk about it a lot. Send out emails, messages, and letters. Sharing and marketing your campaign is an essential part of campaign success. Honestly, your print might be the sh*t but no one is going to buy it if they don't know about it. People buy it if they see it (most of the time, more than once).
- Create a branding (if possible). Doesn't have to be complicated or extensive, it can be reoccurring colors and typefaces. Use them in your social media and promotional materials. The important thing here to have some visual consistency so that things look good and people recognize you and your work. You can also consider creating separate "looks" for each campaign.
- Mention details, navigate expectations. There are important details and information bits about the whole campaigning concept. Inform people about what to expect and when. This decreases the chances of disappointment. If they're happy, they're more likely to support you with your current and future campaigns. Keep them happy :-)
We hope that these points can help out some of you with their campaigns.
Happy campaigning!
In case you have questions you can find our FAQ page here. Been there, didn't find that? Feel free to contact us and we'll do our best to get back to you as soon as possible.
Photography by Megan Bruinen
Print design "Le Rêve" by Marieke Luthart