Creating customized and offering custom branded company merchandise in your online company store can be a great way to boost employee morale, engagement, and productivity. But what types of merchandise will most appeal to your employees and best represent your business? In this article, we’ll provide you with practical step-by-step tips and advice on how to create employee merch that boosts employee morale and increases employee engagement.
Understand Your Brand Identity and Audience
While custom items for your online employee store will boost morale and engagement, designing them requires a thorough understanding of your brand identity and target market. To begin, you need to define your brand’s values, tone, and voice, which will guide your custom merchandise design process.
Employee Merch Should Reflect Brand values
Start by identifying your brand’s values, which are the principles that specify what your business is all about. Your values will aid you in creating custom merch that appeals to your staff and represent the goals and objectives of your business. For example, if your business emphasizes sustainability, you might want to think about making products out of environmentally-friendly materials.
Employee Store Merch Should Reflect the Right Tone and Voice
While developing products for the company store, it’s crucial to keep your brand’s tone and voice in mind. Your voice is the personality of your brand, and your tone is how you speak to your employees. You should think about creating merchandise that represents the nature of your company, for example, if it is recognized for being lighthearted and humorous.
Ask What They Want to See in the Online Employee Store
Doing market research to understand the likes and dislikes of your target audience is another crucial step in understanding your brand identity. Analyzing purchase patterns and interests, as well as variables like age, gender, income, and geography, is part of this process. You may get a better idea of the preferences and merchandise that your employees are interested in by conducting surveys, initiating focus groups, and paying attention to social media.
Follow Branding Guidelines for Employee Merch
Use branding guidelines to develop products that accurately represent your business’s values, tone, and voice after you have a firm grasp of your audience and brand identity. The colors, fonts, logos, and general look of your company should all be included in your branding guidelines. Following these recommendations will make sure that your customized merchandise is in line with your brand identity and appeal to your staff.
Canva is a great tool for creating customized products that are consistent with your brand’s values, tone, and voice. You can use Canva’s wide selection of templates and design components to produce products of the highest caliber. To make sure that your designs are aligned with your brand identity, you can also upload your branding guidelines to Canva.
Track and Measure the Success of Your Online Employee Store
Finally, track and measure the success of your custom merchandise program. Analyze sales data and gather feedback from employees to understand what’s working and what needs improvement. Use this information to improve and iterate continually, making sure that your custom merchandise program remains effective and valuable to your employees.
Designing Engaging and Creative Merchandise
Here are some tips and best practices for designing custom merchandise that aligns with the company’s brand identity and incorporates employee feedback:
Brainstorm Creative Ideas for Employee Store Products
You’ll want to brainstorm ideas about what appeals the most to your employees while also keeping the company’s mission and values in mind. Think about industry trends and also look at your competitor’s employee store online for ideas.
Select the Right Products for Your Employee Store Online
After you’re done brainstorming, start choosing merchandise that is functional, high-quality, and that is in alignment with your employees’ needs and preferences. Merchandise might include water bottles, phone cases, or notebooks. The right items can even help improve productivity of employees.
Choose the Right Graphics and Colors
The graphics and colors of the merchandise should match your brand identity. Consider including creative graphics and illustrations to represent the culture of your company.
Obtain Employee Feedback
You might also want to include employee feedback in the design process. This can give employees a sense of ownership and involvement in the decision-making process. Surveys and focus groups can turn this into a collaborative design process where employees can feel open to submitting ideas.
Launching and Promoting Your Company Store
Promoting an employee store is crucial for driving sales and increasing brand awareness. There are a few strategies that you can use to promote your store and its custom merchandise program.
Email newsletters
Email newsletters are great for keeping customers informed on special offers, new products, and promotions.
Social media campaigns
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can be used to showcase product images, discounts, and promote engagement.
Targeted advertising
Targeted advertising is great for reaching specific demographics.
In addition to these strategies, Accelerate Print Group (APG) offers other services like direct mailers that can be used to promote your employee store. Direct mailers are a great way to reach customers who may not be active on social media or email. By combining multiple promotional channels, you can create a comprehensive marketing strategy that reaches a broad audience.
Increase Employee Engagement With Accelerate Print Group
APG is a top-tier printing company that has established itself as an expert in the industry, thanks to our commitment to creative design standards and expertise in print design and employee/target demo psychology. In addition, we specialize in fulfilling enterprise printing and promotional products for online company stores, making us the go-to choice for companies of all sizes.
Whether you’re a small business owner or a large corporation, Accelerate Print Group is the best choice for all your printing and promotional needs. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you achieve your goals. Let us be your partner in success and take your printing to the next level!
