“I finally got promoted!”

I am a Marketing Executive who has been in the same field for a few years now and finally I got promoted to where I wanted to be at the very start which is becoming a Marketing Manager. Marketing executives aim to maximise profits through developing sales strategies that match customer requirements and by promoting products, services or ideas. Marketing executives develop and oversee marketing campaigns to promote products and services. While a marketing manager is responsible for managing the promotion and positioning of a brand or the products and services that a company sells. Typically marketing managers are employed to attract more customers to buy from the company and to raise brand awareness through the creation of marketing campaigns. You may ask how I got from there to where I am right now in just a few years. Well that is simple, everything has to do with customizable items. For example customised caps and customised polo tshirts. People may ask how you manage to get people to buy at least one customized cap, here is where I am going to tell you. 

Always have the mindset on how I am going to sell them as cheaply as I can, with good quality items and also earning profits out of it. Other than that, how am I going to market them? Who is our target audience? Which platform should have the most interested buyer that would buy from us? What are the current trends that will not die in the long run? This question has always been popping in my mind ever since I started to work here. From there my team and I gather as a group to brainstorm ideas to fit our current target audience.

What leads me to having the idea of customization. First it is something that everyone would treasure as it personally belongs to them, second it would be interesting to me how someone could portray or put their personality in just a custom design. Lastly, is that customization will not die as easily compared to fashion statements. So we did our research on how much other companies sell their customized caps and customized polo t-shirts. Half of my team sourced out for  distributors who have cheap bulk orders with good quality materials and another half brainstormed on how we should market it. 

Looking at the current trend that is going on right now, lots of people are using a platform called ‘TikTok’. We found many different businesses that promoted their products on that platform and it actually skyrocketed. Though it takes time for it to go upwords, we give it a try. Other than Tiktok, we continued on with our Instagram page since we have quite a decent amount of followers there. Since it would be a new product that will be launching, I asked for options regarding the Instagram template for this particular customization product. From colours to fonts, I asked the design team to help us with this. It is not an easy job to colour coordinate with the other Instagram template that we have for our existing products. I will also strongly recommend doing polo tee printing so that your influencer or personnel fronting your social media campaign can also carry your brand via the t-shirts that they are wearing. 

We then compared prices with other companies and see whether our pricing was outrageous or would it be cheaper. When everything is done such as getting distributors, customization equipment, pricing, templates, platforms, that is when we start to post on all the social media platforms step by step. Here are the steps we did:

1. Post a shoutout on Instagram to let your followers know that we created a TikTok account 
2. Post about the new product on Instagram 
3. Post it on Facebook 
4. Update the website list for product
5. Lastly post on our TikTok

It was slow at the beginning of the months, but we persevered on with what we stood by. All of us took the initiative to ask our family members and friends to help us promote our new product and buy from us with a 10% discount with a minimum of two items. From then onwards, we received more orders from other people and we ended up selling out most of the items and we had to hold the new orders. The delayed orders will get a 10% discount for their next purchase from us. They became our happy customers rather than a sad customer. They continued purchasing from us for almost all new products that have been launched. 

We became one of the best customised caps in Singapore and polo t-shirts. Afterward, my team and I decided to bring in custom t shirt printing in Singapore as there are not many people in Singapore currently doing t-shirt printing. To my surprise business was actually booming for months and we gained more customers than what we actually thought. For the custom t-shirt printing, we had to ask the design team to work closely with us as we think that teamwork makes the dream work. Clearly it did! Our goal as a team was to at least get over 300 orders. In the span of 3 months we had more than 300 orders and we celebrated our success as a whole team. 

We brainstorm more ideas on customisation products, but a thing sparkles in my head. The reason why we continue with customization is because of our customization caps and customized polo t-shirt. “Why don’t we just make a big sale customization for these 2 products that has brought us to where we are today”. Everyone agreed to it and we started to plan and came up with a 35% discount for a minimum 5 caps or polo t-shirt with whatever design the customer wants. Once again it was a success, we were all flooded with orders from our loyal customers and new customers.

The moral of the story is, it is not how hard you work, it is how smart you can do your work. It takes me a few years to get where I am because I am passionate about what I do. Though it is tough to get sales and all, you have to persevere through the hardship that you have to work. Lastly, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Like I said, teamwork makes the dream work!