How To Convince People To Buy Your Clothes

Convincing someone to buy something as a small business owner is a major challenge. Whether you’re running a small family restaurant that has to compete in an industry full of multi-national juggernauts or you’re starting a clothing brand that is competing with brands that have been around since the gold rush, getting people to buy your product instead of your competitor’s is not easy. But it’s not impossible. In this article, we’ll give you some strategies to get people to buy your clothes. While you probably won’t be overtaking Levi’s or Fruit of the Loom, these strategies can help you increase your sales.

To convince people to buy your clothes:

Bring Something that No One Else Has

Improve Your Targeting and Marketing Efforts
Have a Sale
Don’t Forget Kids

Don’t Just Sell Online

Table of Contents

Bring Something that No One Else Has

If you go into business because you just want to sell shirts or some other sort of clothing and haven’t thought much further than that, you’re not going to have an easy time. There are a lot of places that sell clothes. There are many big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Target that sell clothes made by multiple companies. There are outlet stores that sell clothing at a discount for people on a budget. There are stores in malls or with their locations that sell specialty clothes for different hobbies and lifestyles. Bass Pro-Shops has a lot of clothes for people with outdoor hobbies like hiking and fishing.

Go online and you’ll see more examples of competition. Amazon has every brand you compete with in retail stores and brands that sell clothes exclusively on Amazon. Etsy has small clothing makers just like you who are trying to make money in a crowded market competing with each other and the established brand.

To have any measure of success, your clothing line needs to have something unique or at the very least, can’t be easily replicated.

Some people try to add unique features to their clothing. You might consider adding pockets to dresses since the lacking pockets have become something of an internet meme. If you want to reach an often-ignored market, try making clothes that are adapted for disabled people.

Some clothing makers try to add funny slogans or unique designs. If you decide to go down this route, you’ll have to do some product testing, preferably not with people who tell you what you want to hear (like friends and family). Your sense of humor or artistry may not be the same as the market you’re trying to appeal to. But if your design is unique or the joke is funny, you may have a way to improve your sales.

How to Come up With Brand Names for Your Clothing Line

Improve Your Targeting and Marketing Efforts

When it comes to selling clothes, a shotgun approach is usually the worst way to do it. Pick a market and focus on it. If you’re making clothes for outdoorsmen, you have to advertise your clothes differently than clothes meant for regular use. You also have to keep in mind where you advertise. If you’re making clothes for women, having your advertisements be on a site geared towards men doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The biggest way to improve your sales is to target your customers. Who is your primary market and what are they looking for when they’re shopping for clothes? Answering this question is the biggest key to increasing your sales,

To target properly, you’ll need to do some market research. You may not have the ability to hire a market research firm or have focus groups the way the big brands do but there are other ways to do research. One major way is to look around you. What are the people in your target market wearing? Look online. Go into stores that sell the type of clothes you’re trying to sell. and see what is selling and what isn’t. If something isn’t selling, there’s probably a reason. Many higher-end stores have people on the sales floor that can direct you to the best-selling clothes and they can give you a rundown of why they are selling well.

Surveys in Newsletters

A major way to connect with your customers to understand what they want is with a newsletter. Many smaller clothing companies use e-mail newsletters to inform customers of new deals, new products, and the general goings-on in the company. That’s not the only thing these newsletters do. These newsletters use surveys to better discern what their customers want.

These surveys can be about many things. A big one is demographic information. Knowing things like the general age range of your customers can help you tailor both your clothing lines and your marketing of those clothing lines to better suit them. The location of most of your customers can be a big piece of information to have, Gender can also be an important factor. If more men are buying your clothes than women, you can tailor future clothing lines to suit their needs. Even marital status can provide you with good information. A lot of people buy clothing as gifts for their significant others.

Another good survey is location information. If most of your customers live in areas where the weather is hot most of the time, it doesn’t make sense to do a line of winter clothing.

Knowing what your customers can afford is another common and helpful survey. Some people spend more on clothes than others. If your typical customer is the type to spend a lot of money on clothes, you can charge a little more. If your typical customer is lower-income, you may have to adjust your prices or make clothes longer-lasting so your customers can justify a purchase,

What your customers do in your clothing is another good question to ask. Customers do different things in different kinds of clothes. Knowing what your customers do in your clothes allows you to adjust your advertising. It also allows you the chance to plan for future products.

Creating surveys isn’t hard. There are services like SurveyMonkey that you can use to create surveys and link them to your newsletter. Many of these sites let you create basic surveys for free.

Nothing Beats Talking

General surveys can give you a good idea of what your current customers are, but getting future customers means talking to people. Go to wherever they are, go to social media groups where the people you’re trying to market to. Ask them what they’re looking for in the clothes they wear. Don’t stick to one group either. Many interests have multiple pages Meeting the people you’re trying to market to does a lot for your research and is often cheaper in the long run.

Have a Sale

If you have some backstock to get rid of, that’s the perfect time to have a sale. A lot of people don’t try new brands of anything until there’s a discount. After all, if people don’t know a new thing, they’re less likely to pay full price for it. Having a sale allows you to not only get rid of backstock and make some profit on it, but it also creates brand awareness. Customers are always looking for deals. Introducing them to your product via a sale means they’re more likely to buy more of your clothes at full price. If your sales increase at a significant rate, that may mean your price is too high and needs adjustment.

Don’t Forget Kids

If you’re marketing clothes for multiple age groups, you’ll want to aggressively target kids, particularly around Christmas. Parents may publicly say that they won’t get their kids a certain product or item of clothing to prove that they’re in charge or to get cheers from people in their parenting groups. But many of them fold and end up buying the product anyway. Do what you can to make kids want your products if you have them as a demographic,

Don’t Just Sell Online

As a small clothing maker, you probably don’t want to go directly into retail immediately even if you have the resources to do so. Retail outlets have a lot of rules for what they put on their shelves and there’s no guarantee your new clothing will meet them. Additionally, they often require you to buy back any unsold stock. While this makes sense for them but it’s not a good thing for you.

There are ways for you to sell in the real world to expand your businesses. Many communities have events where you can set up a table to sell clothes. If you’re selling clothes that market for a particular hobby, pay attention to when conventions for those hobbies come to town and get yourself a vendor’s table. Be sure to give customers information about where to buy your product online.

When you do this, you have a chance to get recognized in your local community and create the word-of-mouth buzz that small businesses thrive on.

How to Brand Yourself as a Fashion Designer.