The print-on-demand market size is estimated to increase by $15.26 billion by 2027, making it one of the fastest-growing markets nowadays.
While tapping into the POD market is a great opportunity, to do it right, you should focus on the right print-on-demand strategy that will help you grow.
Unsure where to start?
Read on as we share the hottest POD strategies to make your business scalable.
Let’s dive in!
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5 Main Elements of a Successful POD Business
Running a successful POD business goes above and beyond high-quality designs. It includes other factors that contribute to its success:
- Niche selection – Choosing a specific niche or target market can help you stand out and appeal to a particular audience. However, it’s important to conduct research to find a profitable niche with high demand.
- Product selection – Once you’ve picked your niche, consider products your audience will find relevant, and include new products over time.
- POD Platform selection – Go for a reliable POD platform that allows you to create and sell custom products, manage sales and fulfillment, and run your POD business smoothly.
- Marketing – Effective marketing strategies such as social media, email, and influencer marketing can help you reach a wider audience and drive traffic.
- Customer service – Providing excellent customer service can help you build customer loyalty and increase your chances of repeat business.
8 Print-on-Demand Strategies To Grow Your Business Quickly
Scaling your business isn’t only about implementing a certain print-on-demand strategy but actually combining more of them seamlessly to leverage their maximum.
1. Present Your Products Professionally
Showing your product in the best possible way is a must since it is usually the only way for your customers to “feel” your product.
Thus, make sure to provide clear, high-quality product photos taken from various angles to give a sense of depth.
This will make it easier for customers to visualize the product and the ways to use it.
While the photos are great, organizing photo shoots, picking the right photos, and polishing them for the website takes time and money.
The alternative is to simplify this process and get the same, if not better, output, which product mockups allow you to.
They represent a quick and easy way to demonstrate different product features and functionalities, helping customers understand how the product works and its benefits.
💡 ProTip:
Imagine you are selling 100 designs of T-shirts, hoodies, and mugs in 3 different colors. That’s 900 mockup variations.
With Dynamic Mockups, you can create mockups in bulk by uploading multiple designs and color combinations.
So, instead of creating them manually, Dynamic Mockups automatically creates all variations of mockups with a few clicks.
2. Optimize Your Product Listings
So, the time has come for you to list your products and start selling them.
But, here comes another challenge – how to make potential customers know about your products?
Writing catchy product descriptions, finding the right keywords, running Ads, or learning about SEO can feel like learning a whole new language.
Luckily, some tools can help you focus on the right keywords for your niche to rank higher.
For example, Google Trends allows you to find popular keywords people are searching for across various regions and languages.
This way, you can find the keywords related to your products to optimize your eStore content for search engines and increase the chance of it appearing in search results.
In addition to the keyword search, you can also use Google Analytics to track your performance, user behavior, and traffic and see what happens on your website.
3. Advertise on Multiple Platforms
Although you’d probably use primarily one social media channel to advertise your products, it doesn’t mean you should stop there.
Social media can be a valuable tool for promoting and growing your business. Leveraging platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and Twitter can help you not only build your brand but also:
✨ Build a Following – Creating social media for your business and posting regularly can help you build a following of people interested in your products.
You can use social media to showcase new designs, offers, and drive sales.
✨ Expand Your Reach – Social media allows you to reach new potential customers through targeted advertising and hashtags easily.
You can also use paid advertising to target specific audiences based on interests, demographics, and behaviors.
✨ Gather Feedback – Being on social media provides an opportunity to engage with your audience and gather valuable feedback about your products, pricing, and marketing campaigns.
📌 Note:
While on social media, make it fun and interactive for your audience.
Encourage your customers to interact with your brand and post quizzes, polls, and other interactive stories.
For instance, ask them to choose a favorite from your new products or to vote on what new product you should add to your store.
4. Leverage The Power of Influencers
It goes without saying that incorporating influencers works best if you already have established a niche.
Influencers are great brand ambassadors who can spread the word about your brand and expand your reach.
Therefore, choose influencers who align with your brand values, design, and style rather than their number of followers.
This way, it’s easier to stay true to your print-on-demand strategy and enhance its effects.
For example, Tpop offers a wide range of sustainable apparel and collaborates with influencers to promote their products.
5. Go Viral By Creating Challenges
Jumping on the viral trends bandwagon enables you to turn viral challenges into a fun and engaging way to expand your reach and promote your products.
Take TikTok challenges, for example, which usually include dance moves, special effects, sounds, etc.
So why not explore these and ask your audience to participate while wearing or using your products?
If you sell apparel, for instance, viral dance challenges can be a great way for your buyers to jump around and have fun in your clothes.
You can even provide special discounts, incentives, or free products for the funniest, most creative, most original videos.
📌 Note:
A great advantage of TikTok is that the viewers can see your videos on the For You page, which is just one big scrollable page.
In other words, they don’t need to go to your account or follow you just to watch your content, making your content more easily discoverable.
Although following and using trends to your advantage is a must in many ways because it helps you gain visibility, remember to stay genuine to your brand and voice.
Moreover, see which option will contribute best to your overall print-on-demand strategy.
Therefore, you can choose a viral trending sound but opt to do something original in the video, and vice versa.
6. Minimize Cart Abandonment
Nothing worse than the thought of an abandoned cart, right?
Just when the customer is about to finalize the purchase and boom, they’re gone.
Although these things happen and you can’t fully prevent them, you can still minimize them with the right tools.
For example, Meta Pixel allows you to track your website visitors’ journey and the actions they take.
This gives you a powerful insight into their behavior, enabling you to adjust your marketing campaigns and a print-on-demand strategy accordingly, and retarget customers via retargeting campaigns.
📌 Note:
Cart abandonment strategies can help you recover or retarget customers who add items to their online shopping carts but don’t complete the purchase.
The most common ones include:
- Abandoned cart email campaigns – Enable you to automate and send an email sequence reminding a customer of the item in their cart.
Usually, the first email contains an incentive or discount to nudge a customer to buy the product.
In addition, the mail can also recommend similar or complementary items or even show testimonials or reviews of the product.
Then, after 24 hours, you can send another email that creates urgency and offers a limited time for the customer to get a product at its current price.
- Exit pop-ups – Appear on the website when they “feel” the customer is about to leave and provide an incentive or discount code to change the customer’s mind.
- Targeted ads – Enable you to retarget customers by providing tailored ads that address the main reasons for your customer’s cart abandonment. Again, include certain incentives, discounts, etc.
7. Expand Into New Markets
When choosing your go-to products, it’s always a good idea to check how they perform in other regions and markets.
By keeping your eyes open, you may tap into more opportunities and, consequently, new customers.
📌 Note:
In addition to exploring new markets, don’t forget to add new products every now and then.
It will send a message to your customers that you are always active and listening to new trends and demands, and ultimately, your audience.
One of the most popular platforms to find trending products is TikTok, with more than a million active users per month.
Using and following hashtags can help you discover your niche-related content while helping potential customers discover your brand, too.
If you are unsure how to start or join a current trend, you can find the top 100 TikTok hashtag trends on the Trend Discovery page of the TikTok Creative Center.
For example, below are the hottest hashtags for the apparel and accessories section.
In addition to “jumping on” a current trend, you can also create a custom hashtag featuring your brand name and combine it with the top trending hashtags for maximum exposure.
This way, your audience can easily find content related to your brand.
Overall, when you use hashtags, not only can you increase your visibility and build a community, but you can also:
- Check on your competition,
- Discover relevant influencers,
- Stay on top of trends, etc.
8. Boost Loyalty
You need to attract new customers, that’s for sure, but don’t forget about the customers that have been there for you along the way.
It is easier to retain customers than to acquire new ones. In addition, the “old” customers are the ones who’d do word-of-mouth advertising that is super effective.
Therefore, offer special coupons or discounts, small gifts, or incentives to reward them for their loyalty.
📌 Note:
Have you ever thought of using user-generated content (UGC) as a part of your marketing strategy?
The greatest power of UGS lies in having your customers or even employees tell the story about your brand.
The content can include:
- Product photos,
- How-to videos,
- Customer reviews,
- Social media posts, etc.
One popular UGC strategy for eCommerce stores is to encourage customers to create and share photos of themselves wearing or using the products.
It is a good way to showcase your range of products and demonstrate how they look in real life.
Implementing UGC content increases trust in your brand because people tend to trust your brand more when they can see it in action and when they can see other people using it.
Actually, 79% of people say UGC highly impacts their buying decisions, making UGS a potent tool to explore and use.
🎁 Bonus: Top Products and Designs for 2024
The evergreen product has always been apparel, with T-shirts being the most popular.
Other popular items include leggings, hoodies and sweatshirts, tank tops, etc.
The next on the list is jewelry, followed by fashion accessories and home decor.
When it comes to design, the most popular ones include the following elements:
- Text and quotes
- Animals and pets
- Couples
- Words repeat, etc.
Last, but not least, 2024 trends seem to revolve around funny designs, minimalism, black and white, vintage and retro, etc.
Wrapping It Up
With the print-on-demand market growing rapidly, and not showing any signs of stopping, it is definitely a market worth checking out.
In addition to enabling you to start a business cheaper compared to regular brick-and-mortar stores, it allows for enormous customization and personalization options.
As such, it provides a great help in catering to your audience’s needs.
Furthermore, it reduces carbon footprint by eliminating the creation of too many items that will collect dust in a warehouse.
And there is a tool to help you streamline the process and manage your business as you scale – Dynamic Mockups. 🚀
How Can Dynamic Mockups Help You Scale?
Dynamic Mockups is an automated mockup generator tool for print-on-demand businesses that helps you automate POD operations.
Besides our stellar Bulk Edit feature, we provide more tools to transform your business:
✨ Design Library
Our latest feature that makes your process quick and easy by allowing you to:
- Store all your designs in one place, so you don’t need to re-upload designs for different projects.
- Use the same design assets across various mockups effortlessly, ensuring consistency and reducing manual work.
- Quickly find and apply any of your previously uploaded designs to new mockups.
Besides adding files from their local files, you can connect your Google Drive, DropBox, and OneDrive to transfer designs from external storage to Dynamic Mockups seamlessly.
✨ Our Evergrowing Library
If you look for a variety of mockup templates for T-shirts, Hoodies, Wall art, Pillows, Blankets, Tote Bags, Phone Cases, etc, our Library is a place to go to.
All templates are customizable and come with an easy-to-use interface with multiple editing tools, such as rotation, blending filters, print layout options, a color picker ribbon, etc.
✨ Open API to automate the creation of your mockups.
Thus, you can create mockups from your custom Photoshop templates or by using our Public Mockup Library.
Actually, it doesn’t have to be a mockup – any Photoshop template with a Smart Object will do.
And with our new features about to see the light soon, Dynamic Mockups provide a robust solution for your POD needs.
So, what’s cooking in our little kitchen?
🔥 Integrations with eCommerce platforms, starting with Etsy and Shopify.
🔥 Integrations with Zapier and Make so you can integrate Dynamic Mockups into your workflow and interact with other apps.
Ready to give our tool a go?
Start Dynamic Mockups for free, and start scaling your business in no time.
Start creating for Free!
Showcase your E-commerce products like big brands, without costing a fortune
