5. Order product samples
Now that your designs are ready to set sail, ensure they meet your quality standards. Ordering product samples lets you inspect the items in person, ensuring they match your vision.
Consider this step your trial run. It’s your chance to assess print quality, material feel, and overall product satisfaction. During this step, you can also evaluate shipping speed. If you find any issues or room for improvement, you can address them before launching to your audience.
Product samples ensure your print-on-demand offerings meet the mark. This way, when your customers receive their orders, they’ll be thrilled with the final product.
Most print-on-demand suppliers offer sample orders at a lower price. With Printful, you can order one product sample for 20% off each month. The more orders your online store gets, the more monthly sample orders you can place.
6. Set your prices and profit margins
Testing your print-on-demand products will also help you with the next step: pricing them. After trying the product sample, you’ll have a better sense of your product’s value.
A good pricing strategy and profit margins are like packing before a mountain hike. Pack too lightly, and missing essentials could cut your adventure short. Overpack, and you risk staying behind the group while carrying the load.
But if you pick your pricing just right, you’ll stay close to (and even outrun) your competition to the summit.
To ensure you make a profit and don’t lose money, your product price needs to cover:
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Production costs—product blank + additional charges (e.g., embroidery digitization)
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Store costs—your platform/marketplace monthly, commission, and other fees
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Additional costs—anything extra that went into this product (hiring designers, buying stock design elements, etc.)
Read more: How to Price Custom T-shirts
7. Write product descriptions
A product description is one of your strongest tools to drive sales. Good product descriptions have the potential to:
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Attract more customers by appearing in the top Google Search Results
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Improve your review score by managing customer expectations
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Close the deal by precisely aligning your product with customer needs and pain points
In your descriptions, highlight each product’s key features, benefits, and story. Convey how owning these items can enhance your customers’ lives or reflect their style.
Source: Marshall Headphones
Think of your descriptions as enticing stories about your merch, inviting customers to join your brand adventure. When you craft compelling product descriptions, you’re not just selling; you’re narrating an unforgettable journey.
8. Get product visuals
In today’s visually driven world, customers’ first impression of your print-on-demand products begins with what they see.
To make the most of this, ensure your product images are clear, high-resolution, and well-lit. Showcase your products from various angles, and, if possible, display them in real-life scenarios to help customers visualize their use.
Pro tip: At some point post-launch, check out your customers’ social media posts with the product. This is a gold mine for user-generated content that’ll steal the show on your product pages.
Your product visuals are your sales tools. They should capture attention and help customers understand what they’re getting. By optimizing your product visuals and leveraging social media effectively, you’re steering your print-on-demand journey toward success.
However, planning photoshoots can take time you don’t always have. In case this is an urgent launch, speed up the process by using product mockups. You can always come back to your product pages and update them with fresh visuals later.
Source: Printful
9. Prep marketing materials
There’s no point in going through all that trouble developing a product if it goes unnoticed. That’s why you need marketing. To ensure your print-on-demand products receive the attention they deserve and you get more customers, follow these steps:
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Define your marketing strategy—craft a clear marketing plan targeting your audience (check your Step 1 findings) and leveraging different sales channels
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Prepare content—create eye-catching visuals and snappy copy for your marketing campaigns
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Tailor your materials—ensure your marketing materials are platform-specific and customer-focused
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Optimize for mobile devices—check if your visuals and website are mobile-friendly
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Create a timeline—plan out your marketing efforts with precise publishing dates
10. Kickstart the pre-launch communication
Your marketing strategy shouldn’t go live on product launch day. It should start way before that. At this stage, you’ll build buzz and anticipation around your product.
Here are ways for you to get your target audience excited about your upcoming product launch:
- Share teasers on social media—prepare behind-the-scenes material and showcase a few details without revealing the whole product
- Host mystery giveaways—promote the upcoming product launch with a giveaway and the new product as the prize
- Let your audience guess the product—share polls or ask people to comment their guesses to build up your engagement rate
- Share a countdown—keep the audience excited for your new release and let them set up reminders for the big event
- Allow VIP access—build a relationship with your customer base by offering loyal shoppers early access to your product in exchange for a review
- Urge people to sign up—offer shoppers early access or discount codes in exchange for signing up for your newsletter (this will come in handy in the next step!)
Source: Halfdays
11. Maximize launch day impact
You’ve made it to the top! But the journey’s not over yet—during and following your product launch is the busiest time for your business. The shopper attention span is short, so you need to close as many sales as possible while they’re still paying attention.
Source: Twitter
On launch day, your goal is to transform anticipation into action. Here’s how:
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Double-check your product page—before the rush begins, ensure that product links work correctly, images load smoothly, and descriptions are crystal clear
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Post social media announcements—kick things off by making noise on social media
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Create urgency—offer limited-time discounts on launch day to prompt immediate purchases
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Message your email list—make use of the new leads you generated in the pre-launch stage to drive more traffic to your store
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Host an interactive launch event—engage with your target audience in real time via livestreams, Q&A sessions, or product demonstrations
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Be helpful—check your inbox and comment section often and answer any questions as soon as you can
12. Sustain the momentum post-launch
After the first few weeks of your product launch, things will start to quiet down. While that’s normal in ecommerce, it doesn’t mean the momentum has to die altogether.
Post little drips of communication about your product as reminders to make sure you get the most out of your new product launches. At this point, you can start switching your marketing message from “Be the first to try this!” to “See how much others love it!” Post-launch is a great time to increase FOMO for those who haven’t bought your product yet.
The time after the product launch is when you get your first reviews—post quotes and customer photos on social media. User-generated content, or UGC, will help tip the scales for potential customers still on the fence. It builds trust in your brand, and people will be more at ease about buying from you. Online shoppers that engage with UGC have a 102.4% higher conversion rate.
Aside from driving more sales, you can also increase social proof for your products. Share reviews and customer photos as an incentive to get featured on your social media channels. To make it easier for your customers to generate content for you:
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Create a dedicated hashtag for them to use on social media
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Send follow-up emails to customers who bought the product and ask them for feedback
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Offer customers discounts for future orders in exchange for honest reviews or social media posts
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Host a giveaway where customers have to post content of your new product
Source: Vera Wang Bride
13. Gather and implement customer feedback
The launch journey is over. Time to reflect and gather learnings to make your next adventures even better. And much like in post-launch communication, your customer feedback is key.
One of the best benefits of print-on-demand is its flexibility. With traditional manufacturing, your product, or at least the first batch of it, is set in stone. If you make any adjustments, you still need to sell out the first version, or you’ll end up with dead stock.
But with print-on-demand, you can adjust and improve at any time without missing a beat. Check your customer reviews for any complaints about your products and see how you can improve the customer experience:
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Make clearer product visuals
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Add any missing details to your description
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Create an FAQ section for your product
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Tweak the design
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Update sizing info
When making changes, communicate them and thank your customers for their feedback. While, ideally, your product would’ve been perfect from the start, acknowledging the need to improve will humanize your brand and make you more relatable.
After your product’s been live for a while, it’s time to see how it did. Post-launch analytics help you make sense of your product’s performance.
When it comes to analytics, some metrics stand out:
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Sales data—see how many sales you got and how your other product launches compare
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Conversion rate—measure how effectively you turned visitors into buyers
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Customer feedback—check how your customers rated the product and how it compares to your other items
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Traffic sources—where did most customers find you?
To measure this, you can use external tools like Google Analytics, built-in analytics on your ecommerce platform/marketplace, or data from your product supplier. If you fulfill your orders with Printful, go to Dashboard > Statistics.
Source: Printful
There, you’ll find data about:
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Average fulfillment time—use this to provide accurate order processing and delivery estimates to your customers
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Paid orders—see how many unique orders you had
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Total order costs—check how much you paid for fulfillment and shipping
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Profit—see how much money you made
Aside from sales performance, be sure to also check your social media analytics. This will help you finetune future marketing campaigns by picking the exact content your customers engage with.
