As a print on demand entrepreneur, your primary goal is to drive consistent traffic and sales to your online store – something that I found very difficult when I did my first POD website. With the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape, it’s very important to use a multitude of different marketing tactics to stand out from the competition.
The best way to drive traffic to your print on demand website is by setting up a blog and write blog posts, using social media such as YouTube or TikTok, optimizing your site with SEO, or to just simply pay for ads.
You will most likely find that your first few months, or even years, with your POD store are very uneventful, and nothing really happens. This is for two reasons:
- You simply don’t have the experience that you need to create demand for your website.
- Your website doesn’t have enough credibility to rank highly on Google.
In this guide, I’ll help you to overcome these obstacles and quickly gain traffic to your website. So let’s start!
1. SEO
SEO – Search Engine Optimization – is the act of optimizing a website for search engines like Google. This helps people naturally find your website, for free, because they are looking for it.
SEO is the most important thing to get people onto your site, because all the other forms of marketing will encourage people to search for your site – and if they can’t find it, you don’t get a sale!
It also helps because some searches aren’t even looking for your site, they just want answers. If you can answer these the best, then you get the click.
Optimize Your Product Pages
Once you have a solid understanding of your target keywords, incorporate them strategically throughout your product pages. This includes optimizing your titles, descriptions, and even your product images. Make sure that your content is engaging, informative, and provides a seamless user experience.
Develop a Content Marketing Strategy
The best way to increase your SEO is content creation. If you can create blog posts or videos answering people’s questions, you will eventually start getting visitors. So here’s how to start.
- Create a blog. This is really easy to do on almost any website builder, and you might have already played around with this before.
- Create some blog posts. If you make at least 100 good blog posts, you could probably expect 50,000 visitors per month.
- Add images. Images have been proven to increase your blog’s visibility.
- Make each blog post at least 1000 words long. This makes sure that you have definitely answered the question well.
- Answer questions that people actually type into Google. You can just use your brain to think of these questions. No need for fancy tools (and besides, they’re very inaccurate with their estimations).
- Create an answer target. This is like a cheat code to the number 1 spot on a google search. If you create a short answer, a single paragraph, in bold at the top of the post, Google will pick it up and you have a better chance of being given the “snippet” at the top of the SERPS. In fact, I have used this strategy at the top of this very blog post.
- If you want to learn more about building a blog, I recommend watching some of Income School’s videos on YouTube.
Speed Up Your Site
Speed has also been proven to help your site with SEO. If your site is blazing fast – a bit like this one, it can usually score a 100 on PageSpeed Insights – it will do better on Google, simple as that.
This is because users on really fast sites tend to not click off as often. This is probably a bigger difference than you think, as a slow site could easily have double the click-off rate compared to a fast one.
It’s also pretty easy to speed up your site, especially if you use WordPress, so give it a go. For WordPress, you could use plugins like LiteSpeed Cache and Performance Lab. Tyr to also use a fast host.
2. Social Media
Social media is a brilliant tool for absolutely anyone trying to do some marketing. It allows you to reach billions of people, completely for free, if you do it right. Most social media apps also help you to promote your website – for example, YouTube creators can add a “shop” section to their YouTube profile.
However, you can easily get very disappointed with what you achieve if you don’t know what you’re doing. As well as this, if many of your videos do terribly, the algorithm might stop promoting you to many people, so you really need to do it right the first time.
So here’s a quick guide:
Choose the Right Social Media Platforms
You need to find the places where your target audience hangs out most often. Popular options for POD businesses include Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and TikTok, where visual content and product showcases tend to perform well.
Create Good Content
Content is king. If you have the best videos, you will naturally rise to the top and become more visible to everybody.
This is a lot easier said than done though. Particularly on social media, where absolutely anybody can post anything, you really need to stand out and put a lot of effort in, often to achieve disappointing results. You need to be prepared for your first few videos to flop.
With that said, here’s a checklist for you to complete for every video. It’s pretty simple, but it should work:
- Make it look good. The colours should work together well and just overall look aesthetically pleasing. Ugly videos don’t perform well.
- Cut out anything that’s boring. This one is obvious.
- Make it interesting. Often, a simple product showcase isn’t enough, particularly for POD websites. You need to add a twist, or at least something different to keep your viewers entertained.
- Add sound. Sound is just as important as the visuals, arguably more so. Add swoosh effects between zooming in and out, add a pop sound if something comes on screen suddenly, and so on.
- Keep it simple. If it is difficult to understand, people will not watch. People didn’t come to social media for a headache.
Engage with Your Audience
Regularly engage with your followers by responding to comments, sharing user-generated content, and running interactive campaigns. Making your viewers feel included really boosts your view counts, as the social media platforms will track this.
Leverage Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is what most people know as “sponsorship”. This is simply just paying a (usually small) influencer a bit of money to make a video about your website, or just mention it in a video that they were going to do anyway.
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing is the original way to get customers. Tried-and-true, this is the technique you can always rely on. But the hard part is getting a long enough email list, and after that the sales just roll on in. So here’s how to start.
Grow Your Email List
For email list subscribers, you should offer discounts, special products (like a secret design or product that nobody else can get) or some other motive for signing up.
Place forms on every page on your website, or even better, add it to the footer. Add a link on all your socials to a page where they can sign up, and you could even add targeted ads.
Segment Your Email List
Segment your email list based on customer behavior, interests, and purchase history. This allows you to create more personalized and targeted campaigns that resonate with your audience.
For many of your emails, though, you can just send it to your entire email list, as long as it doesn’t start feeling spammy for your customers.
Make Engaging Email Campaigns
When you are creating your email campaigns, it should be pretty simple to make it very good, but you have to have a good title. That’s the best advice I’ve got as I never had a particularly large email list myself.
Automate Your Email Workflows
Using AI tools you could begin automating at least part of your email list. You can automate the emails if you just ask Claude or ChatGPT to help you with it.
4. Paid Advertising
If you want my personal opinion, paid advertising is usually not worth it. Most paid ads need to have a really high-converting ad for print on demand, and it simply isn’t worth it.
However, if you know how to make a good advert, paid advertising is essentially printing money. This is because, if you make £1.50 off of every £1 you spend on advertising, then you can just keep multiplying your money (until you hit a cap, like the number of a demographic).
Facebook and Instagram Ads
Facebook and Instagram ads offer highly sophisticated targeting options that allow you to reach your ideal customers.
Experiment with different ad formats, such as carousel ads, video ads, and dynamic product ads, to find what resonates best with your audience, as it can drastically change depending on what you make.
However, you will probably find that video ads almost always have the highest conversion rate.
Google Ads
Google’s search and display ad networks can be a great way to attract potential customers who are actively searching for products in your niche. However, I would not at all recommend YouTube ads for POD stores, because they tend to have low conversion rates at high costs.
Experiment with Other Paid Channels
Depending on your target audience and the nature of your POD products, consider exploring other paid advertising channels, such as Pinterest Ads, TikTok Ads, or even influencer-driven partnerships on platforms like Instagram or YouTube.
Track and Optimize Your Paid Campaigns
Continuously monitor the performance of your paid advertising campaigns, and make data-driven adjustments to improve their effectiveness. Use tools like Google Analytics and ad platform reporting to track key metrics, such as click-through rate, conversion rate, and return on ad spend.
5. Partnerships and Collaborations
Collaborating with other businesses and influencers in your industry can be a powerful way to cross-promote your POD products and reach new audiences.
Explore Affiliate Marketing Opportunities
Identify reputable bloggers, YouTubers, or social media influencers who align with your brand and offer them a commission for driving sales to your POD store. This can help you tap into their established audiences and increase your overall reach.
The are some tools you could use to set something like this up, so have a look, as it will change a lot depending on what platform you use.
Partner with Complementary Brands
Reach out to businesses that offer complementary products or services to your POD offerings. Collaborate on joint promotions, cross-selling opportunities, or even co-created product lines to leverage each other’s customer bases.
Participate in Online Marketplaces
Consider listing your POD products on established online marketplaces, such as Etsy, Redbubble, or Society6. These platforms come with built-in audiences and can help you expand your visibility and sales channels. Some POD stores even offer Amazon as well.
Guest Blogs
Most large blogs would be happy to publish an article for you if it is high-quality and isn’t basically just an ad for you. In return, they will mention you and allow you to link your site, which not only brings in more customers, but can also help you in Google Search Results, because of high-quality backlinks.
Organize or Participate in Giveaways and Contests
Partner with other POD businesses or influencers to organize joint giveaways or contests. This can help you attract new leads, increase engagement, and foster relationships with complementary brands.
If you want to see more about print on demand, I have other resources you can check out, but until then, have a good day!