2. Riot Society
For some specialists, word-of-mouth is still the most effective marketing strategy there is. Research conducted by BrightLocal found that nearly 50% of consumers trust customer reviews online as much as recommendations from their close social circle.
If you think about that, it’s pretty clear how user-generated content and reviews would be persuasive ad material. Here’s how Riot Society is using them.
Source: Meta Ads Library
What’s great about the ad?
Riot Society made a clever testimonial choice. Online shoppers often worry about the risk of spending their money on low-quality products they find online, or worse, falling for a scam. If someone arrives at your website for the first time after seeing an ad that addresses this, they might already be primed to trust your brand and make a purchase.
Riot Society effectively anticipates this issue and features a positive review to combat it in the ad, transforming a pain point into an advantage. 5/5!
Takeaway #2: Engage with user-generated content
Consider turning short screenshots of testimonials into visuals for your t-shirt ads, or use positive reviews left on comments or pictures where your brand has been tagged. If you have some extra money to invest, you can go for paid partnerships with influencers that do things like video reviews.
3. Everpress
There’s a subtle, but important difference between a product’s feature and a product’s benefit. It’s all about how you phrase it: while a feature is all about product characteristics, a benefit highlights what the customer gets from it. In other words, it shows how the features will fulfill their needs and wishes.
It’s better to stick with the benefits when you aim to be persuasive. Take a look at how Everpress does it.
Source: Meta Ads Library
What’s great about the ad
Everpress knows who they’re advertising for. Their business model—print-on-demand for independent artists—is all about the sustainability trend. Using approachable and direct language, their advertising elegantly says “Hey, I know exactly what you want to wear and I got you.”
Takeaway #3: Know your audience
Everyone can sell and advertise custom shirts, but only your store can cater to your niche's needs. Use all the data you can get from your audience’s habits, needs, and personal tastes. Then, assess how your t-shirt can check those boxes and find your way to their hearts with a well-tailored copy.
4. Dumb Club
The drop in attention spans is real. If you’re already a content creator, you probably noticed that people don’t always read through the content. If you add ad blindness to the mix (when people consciously or subconsciously ignore/overlook online advertisements, making them less effective), it might seem like getting people to pay attention to your t-shirt ad is Mission: Impossible.
That’s where the concept of scannable content comes in handy. Check out just how Dumb Club lays out their ad so people can easily get what they need.
Source: Meta Ads Library
What’s great about the ad
See how the ad creator broke the copy into topics, so the benefits are more visible? User experience heatmaps show that people often pay more attention to the first few words on the left of each line, so breaking the info into topics and writing direct phrases will help get your message across.
Plus, they used emojis as bullet points, which makes the whole thing adorable (and on brand!).
Takeaway #4: Keep it short
When writing copy, creating a video script, or designing your t-shirt ad, remember editing is key. There’s always a way to make it even more concise without losing key information. The shorter your message, and the easier it is to scan, the more likely it is that your potential customers will absorb it.
5. Design by Humans
You probably noticed that in most t-shirt ads, the benefits are well known. The challenge is finding a design that you and your audience both like. Luckily, there are plenty of marketing techniques to help products sell themselves. Look at this one by Design by Humans.
Source: Meta Ads Library
What’s great about the ad
The t-shirt appeal is very easy to comprehend—game character prints for gamers. So instead of unnecessarily informing them on why this is the perfect t-shirt, they create a purchasing urgency. How? By creating a timeframe (get a new t-shirt for this weekend) and by writing two simple imperative sentences (“grab a new tee,” “shop today”).
Takeaway #5: Call to action
Focus on the reader rather than the company. Instead of saying “We’ve launched a new t-shirt,” go with “Check out our new t-shirt.” If you manage to start the sentences with a verb, your call to action gets even more powerful.
6. In God We Must
Our short attention spans in the digital era have another angle: if people aren’t putting too much thought into scrolling through social media, they’re more likely to be led by emotions. And this is what NLP copywriting techniques take advantage of (NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming).
In short, this sales technique can be applied to copy to trigger actions and sales, using a couple of persuasion protocols. One of them is the fear of missing out, or making your audience feel the urge to buy something to get a limited benefit. This is what In God We Must does in this t-shirt ad.
Source: Meta Ads Library
What’s great about the ad
It’s extra simple and actionable. They have a very well-defined niche—streetwear for Christians—so the t-shirt design speaks for itself. Creating urgency to make a purchase falls to the copy, and the brand does it emphatically: a simple sentence in uppercase letters, insisting that this is an unmissable opportunity to grab the perfect t-shirt.
Takeaway #6: Create urgency
Limited-stock editions are one of many ways of triggering urgency. Even if you work with print-on-demand and have no stock issues, you can find ways to create a limited-time offer or a limited-prints design. It’s worth the try!
7. Headline
Taking advantage of seasonality is another approach to t-shirt advertising that doesn’t focus on just describing a product or its benefits. Check out this ad by Headline.
Source: Meta Ads Library
What’s great about the ad:
They didn’t have to create a special collection for the season, or seasonal ad visuals even. It’s all about advertising designs they already have, that happen to be a perfect match for the occasion, and creating a cohesive seasonal offer.
Takeaway #7: Take advantage of seasonality
Plan your yearly marketing campaigns taking advantage of special dates and seasons that make sense to your business. Take a look at our Marketing Calendar to get a few ideas and learn how to turn them into profit.
8. Billabong
Marketing specialists are always claiming that video is the future of social media—and that includes social media ads. The numbers show that they’re more engaging, more shareable, and generate more clicks. But, they’re also expensive to produce. Or are they? Billabong proved it doesn’t have to be like that in a video ad made with a compilation of pictures.
Source: Meta Ads Library
What’s great about the ad
Billabong compiled different images to create a slideshow video, advertising a vast collection of t-shirt designs all at once. Notice how even big and well-established brands can use simple tactics to increase sales.
Takeaway #8: Add some movement
Creating a video ad doesn’t have to mean higher investments and long production times. Take advantage of material you already have and use free editing and animation sources to create simple, but effective promo videos.
If you don’t know how to use a tool like this, keep reading. We’ll show you how easy it can be to create your t-shirt ad with a free online tool, step by step.
