Reasons for Making and Selling Merch
Merchandise is a flexible business asset that can help to grow your revenue stream by a great amount. Aside from being a supplement for income, merchandise can be a marketing tool, and act as a building block for your channel. By producing merchandise, your consumers will be walking billboards. Many of these types of merchandise will help to advertise your brand and increase word of mouth; leading to more sales. Merchandise is also huge in creating a reputable fan base. Loyal supporters of a channel want to celebrate the work of their favorite content creators and show off their support. Personally I am a huge fan of LunkersTV, a fishing and outdoors channel. He first started by creating his fan base through his content and then started to sell his “Lunkers” merchandise.
How YouTubers Sell
YouTubers create merchandise that reflects their company and channel. By doing this the consumer can connect with the intent of the product much better and incline them to purchase such products. These YouTubers then typically sell their merchandise online for ease of access. Advertising is extremely important in selling these products. YouTubers tend to advertise their products in their videos where it is fit and show themselves using/wearing the product to drive incentive. Social media communities are also huge for marketing of merchandise, most YouTubers have social media sites they use to direct traffic towards their merch.
These Tactics in Action
As previously mentioned, LunkersTV is one of my favorite YouTubers, he meets my content demands and does a great job of producing videos that the general population likes. Lunkers is primarily a fishing & outdoors channel so it would only make sense to create merchandise that would help in the fishing and outdoors realm. Lunkers creates shirts, sweatshirts, and hats that represent his company and that are fitting to use in the outdoors. He also self advertises all of his products by wearing at least one item of Lunkers clothing per video and shows them used in reality. He also gives his friends and family his merch to drive incentive and desire to buy. Lunkers is a great example of how to drive sales through YouTube and does a great job with all of his advertising.
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