TeeSpring. What am I doing wrong?

22 replies
I have two campaigns running that I've advertised on Facebook. However, no one is clicking on my ads. I'd appreciate help in determining what the problem is.

Campaign 1: New Yorkers for Bernie Sanders
A shirt design for supporters of Bernie Sanders in NYC. I was able to narrow down my target audience to 7.3k. NYC only, 18-35, both sexes, professed liberal democrats, interested in specifically political publications.

Campaign 2: Sassy Halloween Shirt
Target audience is 190k. 18-40 women, entire USA, professed specific interest in Halloween.

I've also targeted people who shop online for clothing for both ad sets.

So. What am I doing wrong? Is the issue with my audience? Or are the designs at fault? Or maybe it's my ads?
#teespring #wrong
  • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
    The landmark clip art on shirt #1 might be considered touristy. I think the only way around that is a higher artistic value. But then there's the question of what "Feel the Bern" has to do with NYC landmarks anyway.

    Shirt #2 is poorly designed.
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    • Profile picture of the author mercacredo
      Originally Posted by DubDubDubDot View Post

      The landmark clip art on shirt #1 might be considered touristy. I think the only way around that is a higher artistic value. But then there's the question of what "Feel the Bern" has to do with NYC landmarks anyway.

      Shirt #2 is poorly designed.
      I see what you mean. It's a matter of better designs, then? Not the niche/target audience?
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    • Profile picture of the author Denise Hall
      Originally Posted by DubDubDubDot View Post

      The landmark clip art on shirt #1 might be considered touristy. I think the only way around that is a higher artistic value. But then there's the question of what "Feel the Bern" has to do with NYC landmarks anyway.

      Shirt #2 is poorly designed.

      I agree wholeheartedly. You pretty much took the words right out of my mouth.
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  • Profile picture of the author stackman
    The problem is with your designs -- amateurish. Even if I were in NYC, I would not get the whole BERN thing. And the Halloween shirts looks like it was designed by a 4th grader. Sorry. But you had the courage to ask, and if you learn from your mistakes and honest critiques, you'll soon be doing a much better job.
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    • Profile picture of the author mercacredo
      Originally Posted by stackman View Post

      The problem is with your designs -- amateurish. Even if I were in NYC, I would not get the whole BERN thing. And the Halloween shirts looks like it was designed by a 4th grader. Sorry. But you had the courage to ask, and if you learn from your mistakes and honest critiques, you'll soon be doing a much better job.
      Yeah, I got that. I'll need to be stricter with the designs from now on. I wasn't sure why I thought I could settle for average [or less than that in the second design] in the first place.
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  • Profile picture of the author onSubie
    The problem with political shirts like #1 is people don't really buy these shirts because they want the cool shirt. They buy them because it is part of a donation to the political campaign.

    Your sales copy says "Support Bernie Sanders" but it does not say how buying this shirt will support Bernie Sanders. And it is clearly not endorsed by the Sanders campaign.

    Unless the subject is so overwhelmingly popular and hot that people are jumping on the band wagon in large numbers with great enthusiasm there is not that much interest in paying $26 for a T-shirt tied to a political campaign.

    I would say a niche political candidate is a poor market for selling products that are not officially endorsed by the campaign. Unless the person is so incredibly popular that everyone wants a piece.

    You might have more success marketing a shirt that would appeal to that demographic but not tied directly to the candidate: Think "No Nukes" not "Vote JFK".


    As for #2. t's just a very ugly design that I would hardly call "sassy". "Your trick is my treat" makes no sense. What does that mean?
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    • Profile picture of the author mercacredo
      Originally Posted by onSubie View Post

      The problem with political shirts like #1 is people don't really buy these shirts because they want the cool shirt. They buy them because it is part of a donation to the political campaign.

      Your sales copy says "Support Bernie Sanders" but it does not say how buying this shirt will support Bernie Sanders. And it is clearly not endorsed by the Sanders campaign.

      Unless the subject is so overwhelmingly popular and hot that people are jumping on the band wagon in large numbers with great enthusiasm there is not that much interest in paying $26 for a T-shirt tied to a political campaign.

      I would say a niche political candidate is a poor market for selling products that are not officially endorsed by the campaign. Unless the person is so incredibly popular that everyone wants a piece.

      You might have more success marketing a shirt that would appeal to that demographic but not tied directly to the candidate: Think "No Nukes" not "Vote JFK".


      As for #2. t's just a very ugly design that I would hardly call "sassy". "Your trick is my treat" makes no sense. What does that mean?
      I didn't consider that about the first shirt. So, basically, it's preferable to go for social issues versus a specific candidate? That actually does work out better in the long-term as well, I suppose.

      One thing I just noticed is that my ads haven't even been shown at all; total reach is zero. I'm using oCPC. Does anyone know how to address this?
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  • Profile picture of the author rainmaker79
    Hi,

    I think if you are not getting any clicks, it could be the way you have set up. But I wanted to give you an update.

    I was on craiglist for something and your ad was shown (Halloween sassy). It is consistant and showed it to me on the following sites today:

    Home | Daily Mail Online
    Fitnea – Stay Fit
    Bon Appétit Magazine

    The ad was good. Clean and simple. Just wanted to give you a a feed back. Are you getting more clicks and sales now?

    Also, I saw the bern t shirt only once in craiglist. I know your target audience is NY. So, I am not sure why it was showing it in Toronto. May be it is just a one time occurrence.

    Who or what are you using for ads? and how much is the cost?

    RM
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    • Profile picture of the author QTeeKitty
      Originally Posted by rainmaker79 View Post

      Hi,

      I think if you are not getting any clicks, it could be the way you have set up. But I wanted to give you an update.

      I was on craiglist for something and your ad was shown (Halloween sassy). It is consistant and showed it to me on the following sites today:

      Home | Daily Mail Online
      Fitnea - Stay Fit
      Bon Appétit Magazine

      The ad was good. Clean and simple. Just wanted to give you a a feed back. Are you getting more clicks and sales now?

      Also, I saw the bern t shirt only once in craiglist. I know your target audience is NY. So, I am not sure why it was showing it in Toronto. May be it is just a one time occurrence.

      Who or what are you using for ads? and how much is the cost?

      RM

      Retargeting. That is all
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    • Profile picture of the author mercacredo
      Originally Posted by rainmaker79 View Post

      Hi,

      I think if you are not getting any clicks, it could be the way you have set up. But I wanted to give you an update.

      I was on craiglist for something and your ad was shown (Halloween sassy). It is consistant and showed it to me on the following sites today:

      Home | Daily Mail Online
      Fitnea - Stay Fit
      Bon Appétit Magazine

      The ad was good. Clean and simple. Just wanted to give you a a feed back. Are you getting more clicks and sales now?

      Also, I saw the bern t shirt only once in craiglist. I know your target audience is NY. So, I am not sure why it was showing it in Toronto. May be it is just a one time occurrence.

      Who or what are you using for ads? and how much is the cost?

      RM

      Thank you for your feedback on the ad. I was actually the one who designed all the ads, but not the shirts themselves. I outsourced the shirt designs to Fiverr.
      I realized that, as a digital painter, I probably have a better aesthetic than most of the people I'd find on Fiverr. I thought that outsourcing the shirt design was more efficient than teaching myself vector design.

      I used Facebook exclusively for the ads, so I'm not sure why it's showing in Toronto. Maybe it's TeeSpring's own advertising? I'm new to this, so I don't know if TS takes it upon themselves to advertise shirts. I disabled the FB ads the moment I decided to learn vector design, since I wanted to re-think my approach.

      Lastly, I chose oCPC for this, and the cost was a bit over $4 per click for the Bernie Sanders shirt. The Halloween shirt never got any clicks on FB, as the total reach was zero. If someone could explain either phenomenon to me, I'd really appreciate it. I don't think it's supposed to cost that much.
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  • Profile picture of the author seobro
    I think a better picture would be a caricature that vaguely resembles Bernie Sanders pointing a pistol at an over size Donald Trump like pig.

    "All right capitalist pig, gimme your money... so I can give it to the poor!"
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  • Profile picture of the author QTeeKitty
    Originally Posted by mercacredo View Post

    I have two campaigns running that I've advertised on Facebook. However, no one is clicking on my ads. I'd appreciate help in determining what the problem is.

    Campaign 1: New Yorkers for Bernie Sanders
    A shirt design for supporters of Bernie Sanders in NYC. I was able to narrow down my target audience to 7.3k. NYC only, 18-35, both sexes, professed liberal democrats, interested in specifically political publications.

    Campaign 2: Sassy Halloween Shirt
    Target audience is 190k. 18-40 women, entire USA, professed specific interest in Halloween.

    I've also targeted people who shop online for clothing for both ad sets.

    So. What am I doing wrong? Is the issue with my audience? Or are the designs at fault? Or maybe it's my ads?




    Merca, Your problem is that your design and your targeting for both are WAY too general. (besides just being a really bad design for the Halloween one. I didn't even look at the sanders)


    First of all, you're way too late for Halloween; For Teespring the campaign has to end, print and THEN ship and the product can take up to two weeks to get there.


    But to clear some things up, the people who have done seasonal stuff are not targeting that as an interest. You first need to have a specific niche and your design would be niche specific just with a seasonal twist on it.


    You are too general on the design and too general with the targeting...


    Here are my suggestions:
    *Make a list of your interests and try to get your niches from there
    *DO NOT jump into saturated niches like "nurses" and the like just because at one time a few people made a lot of money there.
    *You can explore those later if you really want to, but learn your stuff first where it's not so competitive
    *Spend time on target research, and then go back and spend even more time!!
    *Audience Insights is your new best friend!
    *And so is google to make sure AI has given you EVERYTHING!
    - Let's say you were trying to target Chef's: That as an interest is too broad, pages like Rachel Ray are too broad, Recipe pages are too broad. Everyone likes those.
    You are trying to find people who want to buy your shirt!
    Where would you dig deeper? How about Culinary schools, Or certain brands of cookware ONLY chefs would use, brands of knive's, Commercial kitchen products?
    Dig deep until you hit the super passionate people!
    *THEN create a design. Find audience, KNOW them, THEN do a design, not the other way around.
    * Need design ideas? Go see what's selling and popular among that niche on other websites; Pinterest, google image, ebay, wanelo, ect
    *Get ideas from the above but NEVER ever ever copy
    *Search for Teespring groups on Facebook, Join them, and stay updated on every single change, every day. Teespring News is one of them and there are more.
    *Watch youtube videos when you need to clarify something more
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    • Profile picture of the author mercacredo
      Originally Posted by QTeeKitty View Post

      Merca, Your problem is that your design and your targeting for both are WAY too general. (besides just being a really bad design for the Halloween one. I didn't even look at the sanders)


      First of all, you're way too late for Halloween; For Teespring the campaign has to end, print and THEN ship and the product can take up to two weeks to get there.


      But to clear some things up, the people who have done seasonal stuff are not targeting that as an interest. You first need to have a specific niche and your design would be niche specific just with a seasonal twist on it.


      You are too general on the design and too general with the targeting...


      Here are my suggestions:
      *Make a list of your interests and try to get your niches from there
      *DO NOT jump into saturated niches like "nurses" and the like just because at one time a few people made a lot of money there.
      *You can explore those later if you really want to, but learn your stuff first where it's not so competitive
      *Spend time on target research, and then go back and spend even more time!!
      *Audience Insights is your new best friend!
      *And so is google to make sure AI has given you EVERYTHING!
      - Let's say you were trying to target Chef's: That as an interest is too broad, pages like Rachel Ray are too broad, Recipe pages are too broad. Everyone likes those.
      You are trying to find people who want to buy your shirt!
      Where would you dig deeper? How about Culinary schools, Or certain brands of cookware ONLY chefs would use, brands of knive's, Commercial kitchen products?
      Dig deep until you hit the super passionate people!
      *THEN create a design. Find audience, KNOW them, THEN do a design, not the other way around.
      * Need design ideas? Go see what's selling and popular among that niche on other websites; Pinterest, google image, ebay, wanelo, ect
      *Get ideas from the above but NEVER ever ever copy
      *Search for Teespring groups on Facebook, Join them, and stay updated on every single change, every day. Teespring News is one of them and there are more.
      *Watch youtube videos when you need to clarify something more
      Thank you for the suggestions.
      I realized a lot of this the other day, particularly what you mentioned about the more specific interests. I thought that Bernie Sanders combined with a specific location would suffice, but apparently not. I've decided to target something less time-sensitive for now, so that I don't make any hasty decisions.
      I didn't consider TS groups, so I'll definitely be looking into that.

      I just want to clarify, how was it too late for Halloween? The campaign would have ended today, and two weeks shipping would mean the shirt would arrive just in time for Halloween itself, or day earlier. Or do people shop the month previous? Such as, Christmas shirts in November, or even October?
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  • Profile picture of the author QTeeKitty
    When you are shown an ad like rainmaker is describing it's called retargeting. Yes it would be retargeting from Teespring. Since I clicked the link to your Halloween shirt, I may be shown that ad in other places now. You should look it up, because at some point you will be using retargeting yourself for your ads with a custom audience.


    The thing with Halloween is that the actual day is all about costumes, not shirts. So for a Halloween themed shirt it should've been out beginning of the month-to be worn during.
    If the campaign would have ended today, that means it doesn't get shipped today. They have to print your shirt, so add on days for that as well. And two weeks is just an estimate, I'm on day 17 waiting for one of my shirts from them. So always give yourself enough time.


    I wouldn't concentrate too much on seasonal stuff for now, nail down a niche first. If you're interested in Christmas do an "ugly Christmas sweater" theme with the niche's taste, get a good designer-NOT on fiver. Just go into the groups on Facebook and ask for a designer and you should get recommendations to some that people have already used themselves.
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    • Profile picture of the author mercacredo
      Originally Posted by QTeeKitty View Post

      When you are shown an ad like rainmaker is describing it's called retargeting. Yes it would be retargeting from Teespring. Since I clicked the link to your Halloween shirt, I may be shown that ad in other places now. You should look it up, because at some point you will be using retargeting yourself for your ads with a custom audience.


      The thing with Halloween is that the actual day is all about costumes, not shirts. So for a Halloween themed shirt it should've been out beginning of the month-to be worn during.
      If the campaign would have ended today, that means it doesn't get shipped today. They have to print your shirt, so add on days for that as well. And two weeks is just an estimate, I'm on day 17 waiting for one of my shirts from them. So always give yourself enough time.


      I wouldn't concentrate too much on seasonal stuff for now, nail down a niche first. If you're interested in Christmas do an "ugly Christmas sweater" theme with the niche's taste, get a good designer-NOT on fiver. Just go into the groups on Facebook and ask for a designer and you should get recommendations to some that people have already used themselves.
      I see, thank you! There's a lot for me to learn about online advertising, so most of the terminology is new to me.

      Yes, I understood that about shipping. However, I was unaware that Halloween-themed shirts would have been worn prior the actual event, as I don't live in the USA.

      Thank you for the suggestion, I might have someone else design a Christmas shirt I have in mind while I learn vector design.
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    • Profile picture of the author rainmaker79
      Thanks for the summary on retargetting. I know about remembering the IP of a clicker and keep showing the ad again to him/her but did not know the term for it. Great!

      So, if you sell Tees with TSpring, does Tspring do advnertisement withour us paying separately for it?

      Originally Posted by QTeeKitty View Post

      When you are shown an ad like rainmaker is describing it's called retargeting. Yes it would be retargeting from Teespring. Since I clicked the link to your Halloween shirt, I may be shown that ad in other places now. You should look it up, because at some point you will be using retargeting yourself for your ads with a custom audience.


      The thing with Halloween is that the actual day is all about costumes, not shirts. So for a Halloween themed shirt it should've been out beginning of the month-to be worn during.
      If the campaign would have ended today, that means it doesn't get shipped today. They have to print your shirt, so add on days for that as well. And two weeks is just an estimate, I'm on day 17 waiting for one of my shirts from them. So always give yourself enough time.


      I wouldn't concentrate too much on seasonal stuff for now, nail down a niche first. If you're interested in Christmas do an "ugly Christmas sweater" theme with the niche's taste, get a good designer-NOT on fiver. Just go into the groups on Facebook and ask for a designer and you should get recommendations to some that people have already used themselves.
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  • Profile picture of the author QTeeKitty
    Get in the groups on facebook, Lots of help for you there
    Sending you some good luck vibes!
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  • Profile picture of the author Carsten Tiensuu
    The designs are not the best...you should get your designs done on fiverr... The Halloween shirt it´s a bit late...

    In this article How To Set Up A Winning Teespring Campaign | Travis Petelle Travis Petelle gives some awesome ideas to target
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  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Tran
    i think the promblem that is your ads and your items. Your ads can not run or can not use money so it can not bring your ads to everyone. Your items, in my opinion, are not atractive or not enough attractive. For the Haloween shirt, you should design to be able to make the young of attractiveness.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
      Originally Posted by onSubie View Post

      T

      As for #2. t's just a very ugly design that I would hardly call "sassy". "Your trick is my treat" makes no sense. What does that mean?
      I immediately saw that as a sweatshirt for a hooker to wear who is giving out freebies. lol
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  • Profile picture of the author LesterRussell
    Try looking at other popular designs and take reference on the "Standard" of design that you should be having. A properly targeted campaign is only half the battle won, having a good product is necessary when selling anything.
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      Originally Posted by mercacredo View Post

      I didn't consider that about the first shirt. So, basically, it's preferable to go for social issues versus a specific candidate? That actually does work out better in the long-term as well, I suppose.

      One thing I just noticed is that my ads haven't even been shown at all; total reach is zero. I'm using oCPC. Does anyone know how to address this?
      Another problem with candidate-specific items, other than official campaign memorabilia, is that they become worthless the moment the candidate drops out or the election is over.

      Originally Posted by Jill Carpenter View Post

      I immediately saw that as a sweatshirt for a hooker to wear who is giving out freebies. lol
      "Your trick is my treat" might be more appropriate for the pimp, wouldn't it?

      Or maybe the ultimate "pay it forward" deal?

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