5 Powerful Strategies for Promoting Your Fall Merch in 2023
Now that you’ve selected your fall products and designed and launched your merch, it’s time to promote your seasonal collection!
How you promote your fall products and apparel can determine how much traffic you bring to your store and how many sales you make.
We’ve gone ahead and outlined the best strategies our top performing creators use when promoting their fall merch. Implement these tactics to make this your most profitable season yet!
1. Share on social
This step seems self-evident, but it’s more involved than just adding a link to a post. Some extra steps to consider before we go deeper:
- Run a fall promotion on best-selling products
- Use fall hashtags to attract holiday lovers
- Boost engagement with interactive posts
- Hold a fall-themed event to showcase your products
- Have a fall giveaway (especially for Halloween & Thanksgiving, or both)
Social Media is a powerful tool. So it’s worth an even deeper dive. Let’s get into the weeds with some additional tips on how to use your socials to your advantage.
Provide stellar customer support.
Selling merch to fans brings you profit, sure, but also creates responsibility. When customers spend their money, they expect customer service. To keep them happy, you’ll need to deliver. So how does your customer support help you promote? It happens in the comments for all to see. This is both good and bad. How you react to it is what can make it good. Customers will usually come to you to:
- Get more info
- Inquire about products
- Give feedback
- Interact with you or engage with your content
- Give perspective on what they want
Here’s where you get to show off your gold as a brand and creator. When you respond in a positive way, it creates social proof and that creates a positive reputation for all to see. When these interactions are visible, sales go up because you are displaying to your public that you know how to handle complaints and that there’s integrity behind your products.
Start social listening.
Wouldn’t you find it helpful if you knew who was talking about you and your brand outside of the comments? That’s exactly what social listening is. On social media, all of that data is available to you. This “Social Listening” offers insights, including:
- Which products customers love the most
- Problems or issues that occur
- The overall feeling about your brand
This is pretty invaluable information. Armed with this data, you can pivot your message to meet their needs/wants, address issues, and jump on opportunities. If you’re interested in social listening tools, here’s a list of some free ones.
Collaborate with others.
A few of the most effective social e-commerce marketing tactics are social proofing products, expanding your reach, and winning new followers. BUT…collaboration has become equally important. Partner with brands and/or other creators who have similar audiences. When you partner, some tactics include promos or high-value giveaways to your respective followers, which will validate your services & products, and multiply sales to a larger social media audience.
Couple more key tips on collaborating with others:
- Find influencers that align with your brand and values to collaborate with.
- Send them samples to show to their audience. This can amplify your reach and make your merch more relatable and authentic.
Use videos!
Video is the way of the internet now, making it a very effective promotional tool as it’s how most customers decide what to buy. Consequently, Instagram and TikTok are two of the biggest platforms where paid and organic video content is the best way to engage users. Your video need not be pricey. Don’t go for the special effects or that Hollywood production value. Just speak to your audience, show your personality, and the value of your merch. And bonus points for heading out into nature to enjoy autumn with your fall-inspired merch!
Use samples in photos and videos.
Order samples and take fans through the purchase process. First, demonstrate unboxing your merch and give your initial thoughts. Second, start wearing or using your merch so fans can see it come alive outside of a boring product image. For example, creator Indeimaus launches a Halloween store called Shocktober every fall and orders samples to show off on social media. Last year, he drove $225,450 GMV From October 2022 – November 2022!
Post user-generated content.
One simple way to promote your merch on your socials is to repost user-generated content. Examples include fans discussing the items they purchased and giving user reviews as well as unboxing your products. Give your fans as much opportunity to share your merch photos and videos on social media as you can. Cultivate it. Encourage it. Ask them to tag you.
One fun example on how to showcase UGC would be to ask fans to snap a pic of themselves wearing your fall merch and “tag me for a chance to win XX”. Reshare their post to your own profile, which means now your content has been social-proofed! This will also show your fans you hear and value them, and make them feel more connected with your brand.
Be strategic about when you post and do it often.
You want to be prolific when it comes to promoting on social media. It helps you build that following, gain the traction you’re going for, and learn what works. Create a consistent posting schedule (Hint: early morning weekdays are typically best for most platforms).
2. Use email marketing
Fall is a good reason to try to convert store traffic to sales. There is a great tool to help you do this—Spring’s Boosted Network—a service that helps boost sales by as much as 15% through enhanced promotional efforts, like email marketing. We’ll help keep on top of traffic to your store by sending out product recommendation and cart abandonment emails to past purchasers. To learn more about our Boosted Network click HERE.
3. Create promo codes
Promo Codes are always a great go-to for any campaign, as they provide incentives for fans to purchase right away or else they’ll lose out on a deal. For a refresher on how to create promo codes, click HERE.
How do you create FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)?
- Limited time promo codes make fans want to act before the time runs out. This especially works when promoting holidays, like Halloween.
- Limited-edition merch can create an extra sense of urgency. Check out DonMarshall72 and his incredible Lord of the Rings calendar. He lets his fans know he needs to tell his distributor how many calendars to make, so they should join his email list in order to secure one for themselves! (Watch TikTok his video here)
- Free shipping promo codes also do really well!
4. Create emotional connections through storytelling
Don’t just post your merch on social media with “buy this.” Tell your fans the meaning behind your designs and product choices. Connect with your audience on a personal level through relatable tales.
Take a look at Spring creator Trafficconesaxman. He created a shirt that his true fans knew the meaning behind. When promoting it on his socials, he just states, “For those of you who have been following me for a long time, then you know what I’m talking about.” (Watch his TikTok video here)
You can also use fall themes to create narratives that resonate with your audience. For example, explain WHY you created a pumpkin spice latte hoodie – you wanted to capture the warm, delicious feelings you get when you indulge in your favorite fall treat – rather than just posting your design and telling fans to go and buy it.
5. Use Spring shelf integrations
We could have easily put this one under social media, but it merits its own section. Integrating your digital store with your social media pages nowadays is a must. No other tip on this list will be as important. You want to make it simple for your fans to bounce back and forth between your site and social platforms. And Spring makes it simple for you.
You can use the Integrations Tab on your Dashboard to activate and customize your products on Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, and others. This way, fans will be able to see the items on your merch shelf within the platform. And it’s just one click for them to get to your store to purchase.
Need a basic refresher on how? Click HERE, or also HERE.
And here’s a fun fact: Creators who use the YouTube merch shelf integration earn 20xs more on average than those who don’t. Once you connect your Spring store to YouTube, you can also tag merch directly in your Shorts and Lives to make it easier for fans to shop!
Fall is upon us and we’re here for it! Happy promoting and have a Fall-tastic season!