Designing your own personalized mug is pretty awesome, you can fill the canvas with your slogans, art and ideas and if you make the right design, you’ll make a profit selling your custom mugs online and in stores.
Designing mugs to sell to a niche audience
Creating funny printed mugs that will sell is tricky – the most popular custom printed mugs aren’t always the funniest designs. Top selling custom printed mugs are usually designed for a certain niche audience.
1. First of all, understand your audience.
Are you selling personalized mugs to Canada lovers? To fans of your podcast? To yoga lovers? Think about who your audience is and what sets them apart from everyone else. If you love the same thing your target audience loves, you’ll have an easy time designing popular custom mugs for them.
Example: Making a custom mug for sloth lovers
If you love sloths and want to design mugs for fellow sloth-heads, think about who your audience is and why they love these slo-mo animals. Well sloths are cute, slow and kinda funny.
This first mug has a cute illustration of a sloth with a dorky joke about how slow they are. Pretty much checks off all three boxes!
This second mug captures the same vibe and includes a sloth in the instagram post. Think about your audience and it’s not too hard to reach them!
2. Look for community lingo
Find the inside jokes, the secret codes and the funny things that only your audience will relate to.
Example: Designing a custom mug for teachers
Teachers don’t love grading plagiarized essays or lazy test answers. At some point that exhaustion and frustration has to be expressed!
This custom printed mug was made by Wit and Wisdom Boutique with plenty of sparkles. It’s a joke that only teachers can relate to, expressed in a short, pretty and unique way. Awesome custom mug design that speaks directly to teachers!
3. Check out the competition
To see what other artists, fans and entrepreneurs are creating. What’s trending in your community?
Example: Designing a custom mug for yoga lovers
If you wanna make a mug to sell to yoga enthusiasts, take a look at what’s on the market:
We have funny yoga mugs
Informative yoga mugs
And simple yoga mugs
Consider which type of mug you want to create and which type is missing!
4. Design your own custom printed mug
Create a design that is unique and playful and matches your audience’s aesthetic. If you’re making merchandise for your fans, use art that they’ll recognize.
Example 1: Merchandise for a webcomic
The Gunshow webcomic is most famous for one strip, you know the one:
Designing their custom mug was simple, no need to create new arts when Gunshow lovers want a specific strip. (You can get this mug on their merch page)
Example 2: Designing a mug for knitters
If you were creating custom mugs that knitters would love to buy, what aesthetic would you go for? Perhaps something elegant like this mug:
Or something playful like this custom printed mug for knitters:
5. Find a good custom mug printing shop
Find a place with great pricing and the best mugs. We may be biased, but we’d recommend ourselves, Artik for custom printed mugs. Our friendly staff will make sure your design is ready and the print is perfect. We’ll give you tips to lower your prices too!
6. Finally, promote to your audience!
Find out where your niche hangs out. Promote your custom mugs with advertisements, social media posts and sponsored posts to influencers. You’d be amazed at how fast your custom printed mug can find an audience online.
Example 1: This Escher custom mug from the New Yorker
This custom printed mug was made by the New Yorker. Again, the dorkiest jokes are funnier on custom mugs.
To reach their audience, the New Yorker shared this mug on their New Yorker Cartoons facebook page. If I were them, I’d promote this mug to architecture and art fans too, and offer giveaways around the holidays.
Example 2: Promote your mugs with contests and giveaways
@Fayefinn promoted their tea lovin’ mugs with a sweet giveaway. Encouraging people to like, share and post pictures with your custom mugs is a super effective way of getting more attention and sales!
Example 3: Take beautiful pictures!
Whether you’re making funny mugs, nichey mugs or beautiful art mugs, posting stunning pictures online is a great way to get more sales. Check out these simple winter mugs:
With some nice lighting and a hard wood backing, this post got more love than it’d attract with poor lighting and an ugly background. Check out this article for tips on taking product pics with your smart phone!
Final Thoughts
Here at Artik, we print custom mugs for people all across Canada. We’ve seen some mugs sell out quickly while others gather dust. It’s all about connecting with your audience in an authentic way, designing beautiful custom mugs and hustling!
If you need custom printed ceramic mugs in Canada, talk to us at Artik, we’re happy to help 🙂