How to Promote Your Print-on-Demand Business: 11 Free and Paid Ways

Let’s set the scene: after researching how to start a print-on-demand business, you finally decided to create your online store. You’ve chosen a target audience, selected print-on-demand services to work with, picked your products, created designs, and set up an ecommerce store. Now, all that’s left is to get visitors to your store and turn them into customers.

Although it’s only one step, you’ve arrived at the trickiest part—standing out from the competition and convincing people who haven’t shopped on your store to take the plunge and buy your print-on-demand products.

Another hurdle many new print-on-demand stores face is the lack of budget for marketing efforts. Your funds are often limited before you start making money from your print-on-demand store. So, you’ll need to figure out how to promote your print-on-demand business for free.

We’re here with some ideas to help you out. Read on to find out several free and paid ways to advertise your online store.

How to promote your print-on-demand business: 11 ways

From multiple social media platforms to other marketing tools, this article offers something to every ecommerce business owner.

1. Instagram

Instagram is still one of the most important social media platforms for print-on-demand sellers. Whether through regular posts, stories, or reels featuring your print-on-demand products, it’s a platform that puts the visual experience first, making it an ideal place to showcase your merch. You can share new products, announce special offers, tease new designs, and more in your social media posts.

Instagram is free to join, and you can post as often as you like in the regular feed and stories. Although Instagram doesn’t let you add clickable links to the photo and reel captions, you can add a link to your print-on-demand store in the bio section or use the link feature in the stories to sell products.

To help your target customers find you on Instagram, use hashtags—a popular way people find new accounts to follow.

Source: Last Exit to Nowhere Instagram

Instagram lets you add up to 30 hashtags, but there’s no consensus on the ideal number of hashtags you should use. While one recommendation says that 20 hashtags have been shown to bring the best results, another experiment found out you should use all 30 hashtags for Instagram reels. So, you’ll need to do some testing yourself to find out what works best for your niche.

Read more: How to Sell Shirts on Instagram: Step-by-Step Guide + Examples

2. TikTok

With over 120 million users in the US alone, TikTok is one of the buzziest social media platforms currently in use. It’s also brought new marketing opportunities for online stores. You should consider including TikTok in your marketing efforts if your target audience is younger—more than two-thirds of TikTok users are between 18 and 34 years old.

Like Instagram, TikTok is free to use, but engaging content is a must for this social media site. To achieve the best results, you’ll need to develop fun ideas for your videos that bring value to your audience beyond just promoting your custom products. Otherwise, people won’t engage with your content, and your TikTok videos are unlikely to succeed with the platform’s famous algorithm.

| If you’re a US or UK-based seller, Printful has an integration with TikTok so that you can set up your online store right there.

Read more: How to Sell Merch on TikTok with Print-on-Demand

3. Pinterest

Pinterest is another excellent social media platform to include in your print-on-demand marketing efforts. It gets over 500 million users monthly, and like other social media sites, it’s free to join. People use Pinterest to look for trending products, style inspiration, and design ideas, creating mood boards and wishlists. This is an excellent opportunity to add your designs to the mix.

Source: Dumbgood Pinterest

Create your account on Pinterest, create your own Pins, and add links to your store to each of them to ensure interested customers can easily find your print-on-demand products.

Pinterest is a visual search engine, so you’ll need outstanding product photography to succeed there. Otherwise, your designs will get lost in the middle of everything else.

Read more: Pinning Your Way to Success: Pinterest Strategies for T-Shirt Entrepreneurs

4. Online groups and communities

Depending on the target market you’ve selected, another great option where you could find potential customers is specialized online groups and communities. These include Facebook groups, subreddits, online forums, Discord channels, etc. Join in on the discussions and share your merch with the people who might be most interested in it.

However, be careful and make sure your contributions to the discussions are worthwhile and not just about promoting your products (unless that’s explicitly what the group is for). The people who participate in these forums are there to discuss what they’re passionate about and might not enjoy someone pushing them to buy some products.

Check the rules of the group before you post, integrate your products in your content in an organic way, and don’t spam the forum with ad posts. You don’t want to get banned and create a bad first impression about your brand among the most critical audience.

5. Search engine optimization (SEO)

To help your products appear on Google and other search engines, you need to optimize your content, like include relevant keywords in your text, add alt texts to your images, etc. But don’t worry—SEO doesn’t have to stand in the way of compelling product descriptions. You can organically include the keywords in your listings, and by optimizing your content, you’ll get more visitors to entice with your fun descriptions.

If your print-on-demand store is dedicated to a topic you’re passionate and knowledgeable about, you can create a blog section on your site. You can share SEO-friendly articles and include links to your products, inspiring readers to purchase something.

Keyword research and other SEO elements will require some practice and study, but if you want to optimize your content, there are many free and informative guides to help you get started.

6. Micro or nano-influencer marketing

Influencers are not just for major brands with a lot of money to spare. Even smaller brands can find influencers to collaborate with. In some cases, simply sharing your product in exchange for an honest review will do the trick.

Source: Mizzle Starchild Instagram

Look up the famous voices in your chosen niche and try to contact them for a collaboration. Influencers with large followings will charge a lot of money for promotion on their channels, but micro-influencers (10,000–100,000 followers) and nano-influencers (1,000–10,000) could offer affordable deals.

You mainly want an influencer marketing strategy as part of your efforts because people trust trendsetters and their recommendations.

One study showed that 63% of consumers would likely buy a product recommended by an influencer they trust. Plus, micro-influencers tend to have higher engagement rates than major celebrities—although their followings are smaller, they’re more dedicated.

Valuable read: Influencer Marketing Trends You Need to Know

7. Email marketing

Though social media and other tools have opened up many new marketing opportunities, good old email marketing campaigns are still popular and highly effective. According to one study, 50% of people buy something from marketing emails at least once per month.

So consider creating your own mailing list as well. As an incentive, many stores offer a one-time sign-up discount code.

This way, you can kill two birds with one stone:

1. The offered discount increases the chances of the visitor making a purchase
2. You add another email to the list to inform about new products, sales, or other updates, which can lead to sales in the future

Another bonus for email marketing is that, at least at the beginning, you can do it for free. Tools like Mailchimp offer free plans, with a limited number of emails you can store and other functions. But if you’re just starting, you can get by with the free options.

8. Reviews and testimonials

When you start getting sales, make sure to ask buyers for reviews. Over 75% of people trust online reviews and check them before purchasing. If you’re about to shop from a brand you have no experience with, you want to feel confident the product will live up to expectations. Reviews and testimonials will reassure new buyers they’ll get their money’s worth.

Source: Wicked Clothes

When you’ve received some feedback, use the positive reviews in your marketing. Share the nice words people have said about your items on your site, especially the ones that highlight product quality. This aspect is more challenging to gauge when shopping online.

9. Paid ads

If you have some budget to invest in marketing, paid advertising can be the way to go. Whether it’s Google Ads or social media ads, depending on your niche, this is one of the most effective ways to make your target customers aware of your brand.

Like SEO, paid advertising has a learning curve, but you can start experimenting with small investments and tweak your approach as you see what brings results.

10. Contests or giveaways

Hosting a contest or giveaway on social media is a great way to incentivize your audience to tell others about your brand. Offer a piece of your merch as a prize, set simple rules for participation, and see your following grow as more people join in.

Source: Out of Print Instagram

Afterward, you’ll need to keep the new followers engaged and interested in your products, so this is where the rest of your marketing strategy comes in.

11. Wear your own merch

Most print-on-demand companies, including Printful, offer sellers special deals on ordering samples of their products. This lets you make sure you’re delivering high-quality products to your customers, but you can also use these samples in your marketing. Organize a photo or video shoot and use your custom images on your store, social media posts, emails, and elsewhere. You can also wear your merch and share the pics on your personal social media accounts to spread the word about the brand. 

Source: Charli XCX Instagram

Just take a look at singer Charli XCX. Her album Brat dominated the summer, and to capitalize on the hype, it also had a merch line. To spark interest in the merch, the singer sported a brat tee in an Instagram post on her profile.

It’s time to get creative

Print-on-demand statistics show that only about a quarter of all print-on-demand stores continue operating in the long term. This means the competition is fierce, and you need to figure out how to market your store so that it finds its target audience.

All brands use multiple marketing channels in their efforts, so it’s a matter of finding the best combination for your store. In all cases, a strong brand identity must be at the heart of your marketing. It determines how you talk to your audience, use the tools available on different platforms, and everything else.

Now’s your turn—choose some methods for your store and start experimenting!