7 TikTok Promotion Ideas for your T-Shirt Brand

Current estimates suggest that the global e-commerce market will swell to around 7.5 trillion by around 2030. Even if you keep your t-shirt brand domestic, the US e-commerce market was valued at around $870 billion in 2021 with little doubt that it will continue to grow in step with the global market. Capturing your piece of that market means embracing digital marketing strategies, such as search engine optimization, content marketing, and social media marketing.

For trend-dependent products like t-shirts, social media marketing is particularly important. Social media often serves as the source of new trends, which you can help shape, and a place to research. Of the top five social media sites out there, TikTok is the fastest-growing option. It’s populated by young, trend-conscious users. It’s an ideal option for promoting your t-shirt brand. If you’re not confident about where to start with t-shirt TikTok promotions, keep reading for some key tips to help you get started.

1. Put a Link in Your Bio

Instagram is a little famous for only allowing you a single link in your bio. TikTok seems to have modeled itself on Instagram in this respect. Since it’s your only link, though, it also means people pay more attention to it. Use that to your advantage. You have two main options with the link.

Link to Your Store

Your first option is to put a link directly to your online store. If you create a TikTok account specifically for your brand, this option makes the most sense. It lets people go directly to your store and buy after they see your more recent t-shirt TikTok promotion. It also helps with brand consistency, which we’ll talk about a bit more later.

Landing Page Link

Your other option is a landing page link. There are several third-party services that offer landing pages that let you list all of your relevant links, such as your website, YouTube channel, and other social media accounts. If you plan on using your TikTok account to promote yourself and your brand in a more general way, this approach makes sense. Unless you see a lot of extra value in providing those links, though, you’re probably better off linking straight to your shop.

2. Brand Consistency

When people move between somewhere like a social media site and purchasing platform, they want to feel confident that they’re at the right place. With the threat of identity theft and data breaches at an all-time, you don’t want your potential customers to leave because they don’t trust that they landed on the right buying platform.
One of the key ways you can reassure visitors that they’ve come to the right place is with brand consistency. There are several superficial ways you can help with that, such as using the same logo on TikTok and very visibly at your store. You can also use similar colors in your branding, such as headers. If possible, use the same name for your TikTok account and your brand. You can even try to match things like the font used on TikTok and your store.

All of those surface similarities are great visual cues that help visitors feel confident they’ve come to the right site to buy one of your shirts.

Beyond that, though, you also want consistency in terms of style and tone. So, in your t-shirt TikTok promotions, you’ll want to make sure that you use similar lighting and similar tone. For example, you don’t want one promotion to use a bright, light, and a funny tone and follow that up with one that uses darker lighting and a more serious tone. The one exception to that might be for Halloween, and even then you want a similar tone.

3. Merch Videos

One of your main t-shirt TikTok promotions will be your merch videos. Basically, any time that you add a new t-shirt design to your store, there should be a TikTok video about the new design. Don’t treat these videos like TV advertisements. While the end goal might be similar, that won’t play well on TikTok. Authenticity is huge on TikTok, so keep it authentic.

Spend some time talking about the shirt or the design. What was the inspiration for the design? Why did you pick it over other options you might have come up with? What do you love about it?

While TikTok used to set the max length of 15 seconds, you can upload videos that are as much as 10 minutes long these days. While you might not have 10 minutes’ worth of things to say about the design, don’t limit yourself to 30 seconds either. Your enthusiasm for the design will help you sell others on it.

4. Posting Consistency

Like other social media sites, TikTok serves up content to users based on several factors that its algorithm weighs. Posting consistency is one of those factors. The tricky part is that there isn’t anyone ideal posting consistency. As a safe bet move, though, you should aim for at least one post per day. Without that level of consistency, there is a good chance that your videos won’t get served up as often.

You should also look to post at similar times each day once you figure out when you get the most traction. Posting at similar times lets you get your audience used to seeing content from you at those times. They’ll look for new videos from at those times and may seek out your profile if TikTok doesn’t show it to them right off the bat.

5. Announcements

While you don’t want to flood your followers’ feeds with endless talk about buying your t-shirts, it’s entirely possible to take it too far in the other direction. It’s the old cliché about hiding your light under a barrel. You should be proud of your shirts and want to talk about them. You should also make a point of announcing it when you run sales on your online shop.

Let’s say that you’re running a holiday-themed sale for the 4th of July. You absolutely should make a video about that sale that tells people what kind of discount you’re offering, how long the sale will last, and if you’ve created any themed products for the sale. If you have created special shirts for the sale, the announcement video can serve as a springboard for talking about those shirts in a separate video.

Let’s say you make the announcement video and mention your flag shirts or your fireworks-themed shirts. The next day, you can post a video where you specifically talk about those shirts. Then, adopt your usual approach in terms of discussing the inspiration for the shirts. You can even wear one of the shirts in the video.

6. Leverage Features

TikTok offers a surprisingly wide range of features that can enhance your videos. For example, they offer green screen options that can let you load in custom backgrounds you created or images you found elsewhere, just make sure those images are free for public use.

One of the most popular features is TikTok’s sound feature. This option lets you include music clips, noises, or even audio clips from shows. The good news is that TikTok will tell you what sounds are trending by looking in their Discovery section. You can also find sounds simply by paying attention to what songs or sounds pop up in the videos you watch. If you find one you like, TikTok will let you save the sound to your “favorites” for later use.

7. Hashtags

While this is technically a feature, hashtags deserve their own section because they play such an important role on TikTok. Hashtags will let you find communities that share your particular interests. For example, you might look for a general community hashtag like #fashiontiktok. From there, you can look for more specific hashtags, like #gothaesthetic. Once you find the relevant hashtags, you can add them to your video descriptions.

Adding these hashtags helps bump your videos up in the feeds of the people who are most likely to be interested in and buy your products.

Wrapping Up

Social media is one of the most important elements of your t-shirt brand’s digital marketing strategy. It’s an ideal place to look for new trends or even to create your own trends. TikTok is particularly well-designed to serve this purpose. It caters to shorter videos, which helps reduce your overall production timeline. Its user base trends young, which means your ideal customers are probably already there. Plus, it offers features like sounds and hashtags that let you lean into trends or communities to help focus your t-shirt TikTok promotions to the right people.