How You Improve Your Marketing With Merchandising

Whether it's the fan scarf from your favourite club or the band shirt from the last concert: Merchandise comes across us again and again in everyday life. Maybe you regularly drink your coffee from a Star Wars mug or wear your Pokemon socks not just secretly with pride?

Merch products are indispensable for many of us. But what exactly are they and what added value does merchandise marketing offer to brands and companies? We'll explain to you how merchandise can advance your marketing and which tools can help you with it.

What is merchandise marketing and what types are there?

Merchandising initially encompasses all sales-promoting measures of a company. The term itself has several meanings. It takes place, for example, in retail in the form of visual merchandising, i.e., the optimal visual presentation of goods. However, merchandising is probably more well-known in relation to products such as fan articles or promotional gifts. As an important part of a company or brand's marketing mix, these types of merchandise can contribute to achieving a wide variety of marketing and sales objectives.

This form of merchandising marketing usually takes place either self-organised or as a licensing business. In the latter case, service providers produce and distribute fan articles under the licence of a brand. Perhaps you have already seen T-shirts related to well-known series or films hanging in regular clothing stores - these are usually classic licensing businesses. Higher profit margins are achieved by companies with the self-organised distribution of merch, but this is also associated with greater effort.

Depending on the occasion and the objective, there are different types of merchandise, between which distinctions are made - regardless of whether they are self-organised or as a licensing business:

1. Community Merch and Fan Merch

The most well-known type of merchandise marketing is Community or Fan Merch. This refers, for example, to products from famous personalities, bands or clubs. But also on specific topics such as films or series, fan articles are often produced.

The advantage of this kind of merchandising lies primarily in the very specific target group, who already identify strongly with the people, clubs or content in question. This, in turn, makes it easier to target potential buyers. Especially influencers or content creators benefit already from their communities. It even often happens that followers proactively approach creators asking explicitly for merchandise from them. This can then even give rise to entire brands.

We often can't help but come across merchandise from famous films like Star Wars or series like Friends. Source: Jonathan Cooper via Unsplash

2. Moment Merch #merchofthemoment

You've probably heard of Corn Boy. If not, it might suggest that you don't spend all your free time on TikTok and Instagram. Corn Boy, then seven-year-old Tariq, went viral in August 2022 when he expressed his love for corn in an interview with the online format "Recess Therapy" in a more than impressive way:

(YouTube watch tip at this point: The Pickle Girl from the same format.)

Corn Boy is a perfect example of Moment Merch, i.e. merch referring to an immediate event or internet phenomenon. The production of such articles usually involves little effort, as the creatives are already available. Especially with internet phenomena, however, the relevance is usually only of short duration. So if you want to profit from the sale of Moment Merch, you have to be very fast.

On the Recess Therapy website you can buy matching merch for the interviews

Also, distressing or moving events often give reason for the production of such merchandise items. When the Ukraine war broke out in early 2022, many people solidarised with the country's population through messages of peace on T-shirts, hoodies, and accessories. And the revolution in Iran was reason enough for many people to support the movement in this way at least.

Merch related to significant or political events is especially suitable for the following occasion.

3. Fundraising Merch

Merchandise marketing is also suitable for collecting donation funds or capital for crowd fundings. With this type of merch, companies and organisations can often achieve several goals at once:

• Generating attention (for themselves and/or for important issues)
• Conveying clear values
• Binding target group
• Earning revenue

Especially NGOs can often make good money by selling fundraising merch. With campaigns, they convey their values and this spreads them externally in the form of merch. The revenue or profits made from such fundraising products are often donated or used by the NGOs themselves for their purposes. This way, the target groups have the opportunity to support initiatives without much effort. Apart from straightforward donations, they can also more easily publicly identify and sympathise with a movement or organisation.

How does merchandising support your marketing?

Selling merchandise can be an important part of your marketing mix. Depending on the goal you want to achieve with your marketing measures, you should consider using merchandise articles.

Good for branding

Merchandise marketing can help you build your brand and get your brand name out there. Depending on how you use them, the products provide a great foundation for your Corporate Branding. If your community identifies with your brand or its theme, cool merch can naturally attract more attention. For example, in the form of User-Generated-Content, when your customers exhibit their merch on social media. Or simply in public, when they wear it with pride.

Good for Community Building

Especially if your brand represents clear values or if you already have a loyal community, merchandise marketing can help you expand this community and tie it closer to your brand. If your fans or customers identify with your brand or its purpose, they feel closer to it and the community itself through merchandise. Here too, User-Generated-Content often arises, which can give your brand high reach.

If your community can identify with the purpose of your brand, they will gladly wear your merch in public or even show it on social media. The Hamburg-based Tomorrow Bank, for example, benefits from a close connection to their community.

Good for your finances

At the end of the day, both brands and companies and NGOs need to earn money to survive. If your fans identify with your brand, they're usually willing to spend money for your merch without any further benefit or use.

If you want to start a new project or build a company with the help of fundraising, merchandise can help generate additional income. This way, you also start building a strong community from the start and contribute to your branding.

These are the benefits merchandise marketing offers you

• Increased Brand Awareness including transference into the offline world
• Easy Targeting thanks to the specific target group
• Community Building and increased engagement
• Generation of User-Generated-Content
• Low financial risk when using on-demand services
• Direct refinancing of the marketing measure

Merchandise marketing can be an important pillar for building your brand and its community. Thanks to numerous service providers in the field, the effort and setup costs are usually low. This means you can quickly start producing cool merch for your company or your brand.

If you opt for print-on-demand or made-to-order services, you won't incur any storage costs. Instead, the merchandise items are only produced when purchases are made. This, in turn, prevents overproduction and ensures more sustainability in this area.

These software solutions support you in merchandise marketing

If you, too, want to focus on merchandise marketing with your brand, you can achieve your goals with the help of software solutions without much effort. So-called Print-on-Demand tools offer the advantage of only producing merch when your customers buy it.

As this also involves classic Dropshipping, you don't even incur storage costs. The Print-on-Demand software solutions can usually be easily integrated into your online store or website so that you can get started right away.

Spreadshop

Spreadshop offers you a free full-service shop system with which you can produce and market your merch directly. On the platform, you have the opportunity to set up your own shop and choose from over 250 different merchandise products to create.

While Spreadshop takes care of the entire production, payment processing, logistics, and even customer service. All you have to take care of is the design of your merchandise and your shop. And you even decide on the prices for your products yourself. Spreadshop only sets a basic price to which you add your desired earnings.

This is how you open your own Spreadshop for your merch in few steps:

1. Register for free
2. Upload designs for your merch
3. Add designs to products
4. Design the shop from ready-made themes or build it yourself
5. Promote the shop

You can also easily integrate your Spreadshop into your website or your online store. For this, the platform offers practical plugins for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

SPOD

SPOD stands for “Spreadshirt Print-on-Demand” and is an integration for various shop systems. With the tool, you can easily present and sell your designs from the Spreadshirt marketplace via your own online store. You still benefit from the convenient print-on-demand service and the entire dropshipping logistics provided by SPOD. However, as you take care of your shop yourself, you set the prices and shipping costs individually. Also, customer service and hence all of CRM is up to you. In addition, with SPOD, you have the opportunity to offer your merchandise in other shops, on social media or multiple marketplaces at the same time.

You can integrate SPOD by API into your own online store and into the following shop systems and tools, and get started with your merchandise marketing right away.

Shopify

WooCommerce

Magento Open Source

Squarespace

Order Desk

Conclusion

Merchandise marketing is a great tool to gain attention for your brand or topic. Therefore, the sale of merchandise is particularly suitable for NGOs and initiatives as an additional marketing measure and can help to generate donation income.

Merchandising marketing can also be useful for the building and strengthening of your community: If your fans or customers can identify with your brand, they will present your merch in public and on social media, which in turn impacts on your brand awareness.

In order for your merchandising marketing to take off properly, you should first consider what goal you want to achieve with the measure and how merch can help you with this. In the next step, you then determine the producer suitable for you. Providers of print-on-demand services like Spreadshop and SPOD are particularly suited to this. Some of them take care of the entire fulfilment and you don't take any financial risk, should your campaign not run as expected. As a result, your designs remain the only thing you need to take care of.

In addition to handy tools for your merchandise marketing, you can also find more software solutions on OMR Reviews that can take your marketing to the next level.