8 min read
The uniform industry is an old industry, but it is one that has seen a tremendous change in recent years.
As the current generation of business leadership nears retirement and a younger generation steps in to take its place, the way in which effective companies market is changing.
Add to this the advent of online shopping, and uniform companies often find themselves wondering at the best strategies to use to market.
Here is a closer look at seven tips you can use when developing a uniform marketing strategy.
For a uniform company, most of your target market is business owners.
Even those who supply school uniforms are, ultimately, working with people running an organization, and they are very similar in nature to business owners.
Uniforms are an important part of corporate branding, but they are just one part. The people you are selling to are extremely busy, and you need to understand this.
These professionals are constantly thinking about the next thing they need to do, and they need to work with uniform suppliers that understand this.
Create marketing materials that will capture attention and generate interest within 15 seconds in order to be effective.
The uniform industry is changing as the top leadership of today’s companies is growing younger and younger.
Young professionals want to shop for uniforms
eCommerce that is properly branded and marketed will be critical to the success of your marketing efforts.
Build and then market an effective eCommerce platform as part of your uniform marketing strategy in order to remain relevant
Uniforms may not seem like the most interesting thing to talk about on social media, but these platforms are an important part of your uniform branding plan.
When leveraged well, social media can be an effective marketing platform.
Social media gives you a platform to showcase visual marketing materials, like images and video, but it also gives you a platform to interact with your audience to build relationships.
By taking advantage of newer social media marketing tools that are more interactive in nature, you can grow your brand’s presence.
Some of these methods include:
Facebook Live videos
Instagram polls
YouTube targeted videos
Once you have created some uniform marketing materials and placed them online, it is time to start making them effective.
Post regularly, encourage people to respond to your posts with questions or polls, then interact with your audience when they do.
The more interactive you are, the more effective your social media accounts will be at reaching your target market.
Business owners are constantly networking with other business owners, and that means they are constantly sharing what has worked and what has not.
A referral program will help ensure that they are talking about you when they do.
Give your current customers an incentive to refer others to your service.
These incentives could be discounts or branded “thank you” gifts, depending on what you decide and what your budget allows.
The small expense of the discount or item will be offset by new business coming your way when the referral program starts to take off.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is critical for any modern businesses, including uniform companies. If your site ranks high on the search engines, you will get more traffic and business.
Make sure your online marketing efforts are taking advantage of search engine optimization.
This means every page of your website needs to be optimized with keywords and titles that will draw the right traffic. It also means keeping the content on your site fresh.
A blog can help bring fresh content for the search engines to crawl as well.
Uniform companies have a unique opportunity when it comes to search engine
Those products each have their own page, and each of those pages should be optimized.
Product descriptions are an excellent way to drive targeted traffic to your individual uniforms and, in turn, create more customers.
Directory listings are still an effective way to increase your marketing, but you need to leverage them effectively. Instead of just listing your business in
If you sell nursing uniforms, list your website in nursing and medical directories. If you sell hospitality or food service uniforms, find appropriate places to list.
If you sell a wide range of uniforms, consider building niche sites for the various industries, and then list those sites in the appropriate online directories.
Once you have found the right directories, make sure that the information is accurate. Uniform branding messaging across all of your online venues is critical, and this includes your directory listings.
You need your business name, address, phone number, and website address to be consistent on all of the listings you place, as well as on your actual website, including consistent punctuation and capitalization of your business name.
This will help with your branding as well as your search engine ranking.
If possible, add photos of your uniforms to your listings.
Once you are listed, encourage your satisfied customers to write reviews about your business in the directories where you are listed.
High ranking companies are those that have positive reviews.
Uniforms are a type of product that business owners need for the duration of their business.
If you can build a relationship with your clients, you will be able to continue selling uniforms.
How do you do this?
Here are some strategies to build a good, working relationship of trust between your business and your clients:
Be honest about what you offer.
Be straightforward about pricing. Though hidden or surprise fees may boost your bottom line, it will drive away repeat business.
Take time to understand what they need, then show how you can provide it.
Continually bring better products to them when appropriate.
Strive for good customer service with every interaction.
Relationship building is not always easy, but for uniform
Marketing for uniform companies must work quickly and be effective at first glance.
By applying these principles, you will be able to drive better traffic to your website, build working relationships with your customers, and overshadow the competition as you push forward towards greater success.
