Tips for Marketing T-Shirts with Banner Advertising and Affiliates

I thought today I’d finally dive into a subject long overdue for coverage on this blog – using ‘display’ advertising (banners) to effectively market your t-shirt site. I work both sides of the coin, publishing sites like this one and, in my ‘day job’, helping small- to medium-sized businesses more effectively use the web to market their businesses.

As a publisher I use a variety of affiliate programs to help monetize my online efforts. I sift through hundreds of banner ads a month. In doing so I consistently come across the same problems – lack of quality and lack of appropriate sizes. Time and again I discover sites I would like to promote through affiliate marketing, but they literally have no usable banners to integrate into my sites.

I preface my criticism by saying I completely understand that just because you’re an effective business person or t-shirt designer it doesn’t automatically make you a graphic designer or marketing expert. Agreed. All the more reason for a post such as this. Store owners are wasting their efforts by not having commonly used banner sizes and effective messaging. The information that follows talks in terms of affiliate marketing, but the same principles apply whether you’re promoting your site by running display ads through Google Adwords or offering banners for people to post on their MySpace pages.

Ad Size Issues
Let’s tackle the first issue. Banner ad sizes. The problem is that many shop owners are not familiar with current marketing trends in display advertising. The days of the standard banner (468×60) are long gone. Experienced web browsers ignore this unit without even thinking about it. It takes an extremely effective placement by the publisher to get that size and shape noticed on today’s sites.

The most effective, and commonly used unit sizes in today’s market are the 300×250 (Medium Rectangle), the 160×600 (Wide Skycraper), 120×600 (Skyscrapper) and the 728×90 (Leaderboard). Take a good look at any major media site today and you will find them running these three units almost exclusively. That’s not say they won’t at some point become ubiquitous, but for now they’re standard, and if you’re serious about marketing online you must supply these unit sizes – at the minimum.

Visit the IAB (Interactive advertising Bureau) for a run down of industry standard sizes. Any effective affiliate marketing efforts should include most, if not all of these options. This gives publisher’s no excuse not to try out your ads.

Call to Action
Second issue – quality. This is not as cut and dry as creating extra banner ad sizes, but is in part related. The first thing to do is offer each ad style or ‘campaign’ in as many of the standard unit sizes as possible. If you’ve got an ad that features a male model with a particular shirt, or in a certain setting, create banners in all sizes for it. Nothing bugs me more than to find a t-shirt, or ad messaging, that I think will be effective on my site and then find that there isn’t a banner available in the size I need to run. That’s a lost opportunity for both the advertiser and publisher. Take the time to create multiple sizes with each ad style you develop.

Content and messaging are what is going to make or break that banner ad. It takes more that just putting your logo and name on the banner. Unless you’re the Gap, Old Navy, or perhaps one of the big guns like Busted Tees, no one knows your name. There is little or no brand equity to draw users in.

There are two ‘must haves’ as I see it. 1) an image of a person wearing the shirt, 2) a call to action or strong enticement. I can tell you from literally 10’s of millions of ad views – the ads that get clicked the most feature people. Beyond that, faces as well. Take the time to get the right photography. Whether it’s a professional or a friend with a point and shoot. I know you think that the shirt should sell itself because you’re designs are the best. Take a look at every clothing catalog and Sunday’s newspaper ad inserts. What do you see. People wearing clothes. I know this is a basic one for many of you, but it’s so important it’s worth driving the point home.

Second, if you’ve got the real estate of a larger ad unit, add some form of call to action. Promote a coupon code. Tease free shipping. Tout your tees as the funniest or most unique. SAY SOMETHING! This issue of a call to action is key, and revolves around a lack of brand equity. I run banners on one of my sites that are purely ‘display ads’. They frequently have no call to do anything – and they hardly get clicked. But, the advertisers are big brands, and the value to them is repetitive exposure to a brand, or product, that viewers are already familiar with. Small t-shirt shop owners don’t have this luxury. If a user has never bought your shirt before, or is not familiar with your brand, repeated exposure without any motivation to CLICK isn’t going to do much for you. Entice them, tease them, taunt them.

And the issue compounds – if you’re not getting people to click those ads, they’re not seeing your site. And if they’re not seeing your site you’re not selling t-shirts. And if you’re not selling t-shirts you’re not offering a return for your affiliates – and they are not going to continue to run your ad units – pure and simple. Publishers have limited space and inventory, if an affiliate is not producing a smart publisher is not going to continue to waste that bandwidth.

To get the most out of your affiliate banners take the time and effort to supply a wide range of common sizes. Create messaging that effectively uses photos and text to entice users to click and explore your site. You’re sales will go up, publishers will earn their share and everybody wins.

Stay tuned. Next time I’ll tackle the how you can gain super cheap display advertising through affiliate programs – and why a exactly why a savvy publisher will hate you for it.

Thursday, October 11th, 2007 | File under Marketing T-Shirts Online