The Internet, which makes it easier to spread the word about new products, also makes it more challenging to do so. The competition for customer attention is fierce, and it’s still hard for small companies to get noticed. To outdo your competitors, you need to use every trick in the book — from fashion shows and celebrity endorsements to sponsorships and product placements. But how do you do that when you don’t have enough time or resources for most of these tried-and-tested fashion marketing techniques?
The good news is you don’t have to necessarily do these kinds of marketing campaigns to become a successful fashion brand. What you absolutely need is a rock-solid digital marketing strategy.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is a form of marketing that exists exclusively online. It’s a way of connecting with potential customers through a variety of online platforms and digital channels such as websites, social media, YouTube videos, search engines, e-mail campaigns, blogs, and more.
Digital marketing is a crucial aspect of building brand awareness, growing sales and reaching a wider audience. Look at all the brands that are becoming successful thanks to their products going viral on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. From Polly Princess to Girlfriend Collective, these companies know how to get millions in revenue with excellent products and a strong digital marketing strategy.
Regardless of whether you’re an established or new brand, or if you’re already engaged in some form of digital marketing or not, this article will be helpful for all kinds of readers. In it, you’ll learn about some of the most effective digital marketing methods, why you need to use them, and how to implement them for your fashion brand’s digital marketing strategy.
Here’s a list of the best digital marketing techniques for fashion brands:
Create a website
Your fashion brand’s website can be your most powerful marketing tool. This is because it enables you to connect with customers 24*7, no matter what time of day or night it is. This is what customers want in 2022: they want access to everything without even having to step out.
While creating your website, make sure that the look and feel of your site matches the clothes you’re selling. After all, your website is a virtual representation and extension of your brand. Moreover, just creating your website is not the end of the journey. You must create new content and make improvements to your website regularly to improve user experience. You can add tools and widgets to make your website interactive so users can engage with it and you can track their behavior over time.
Retarget users
When customers visit your website, they don’t always make a purchase right away. They might look for information on other sites before they decide what to buy. That’s why it’s important to reach out to them at every stage of the buying process. For example, you can reach them with Facebook ads, display ads and emails when they’re in the consideration stage of the conversion funnel. According to Google’s data, retargeting can increase your sales by as much as 50%.
Here are a few tips for making your retargeting campaigns more effective: Don’t spam your prospects; don’t show them badly designed ads; don’t run ads without any segregation; and don’t forget to keep track of when to end a campaign.
Use email marketing
Email marketing can help you land your latest collection first into the customer’s inbox, then in their minds, and finally in their closet. A cost-effective way to reach your customers, it is estimated that for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you can generate $38 in revenue.
The process is fairly simple and straightforward. Collect email addresses from your customers and prospects and send them emails about special offers, events, and other news that will help build loyalty and boost sales. This is a great way to connect with your customers on a personal level and let them know what’s new at your store.
If you’re going to email your customers, make sure you don’t send too many messages or send emails that are irrelevant. It’s a good idea to segment your subscribers into different groups and send them emails about products that actually interest them to get better results.
Collaborate with influencers
If you want to reach a particular group of people with your advertising and marketing efforts, you can collaborate with popular influencers of that niche. These are individuals with dedicated fans or followers on one or more social media platforms. So, if they review, recommend, or wear your products, it can help increase your brand awareness and sales.
When using influencers to market your business, keep in mind that this can be an expensive endeavor and may not always guarantee the results you expect. To ensure that your company is represented well in the campaign, analyze the influencer’s past posts, taking note of products they have recommended, what’s their relationship with their followers, as well as the demographics of their followers.
Create style guides
If you are a fashion brand that offers different types of clothing items, you can create styling guides to show how people can wear your clothing items. You can create style guides for different occasions, target audiences, weather, or themes and post them on your website or social media pages. Some great platforms for posting these guides could be Pinterest, Instagram, and Polyvore, where users often post and rate different fashion looks.
You can even create a separate section on your website to showcase your style guides using the clothing items in your collection. Additionally, you can give users the option to buy the complete look or some specific items from that look. This is an effective way to increase traffic to your website and improve conversion rates.
Use social media
Social media is an excellent tool for fashion brands, helping you to showcase your collection and reach a wider audience. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and TikTok are all highly visual platforms and great for reaching customers directly. Earlier, brands used social media to improve brand awareness, but now they’re also using it to improve customer experience, gain market insights and improve brand loyalty.
While using social media, make sure you create and follow a plan. It’s important to post at the right time of day (when most of your audience is online), post regularly, have a purpose for your posts, and make sure to post visually rich content to create an impact for your brand.
Run paid ads
Because the fashion industry is so competitive, it can be hard to reach your target audience organically. But you can use paid ads on different search engines and social media platforms where your audience is most active. Running paid ads will help you reach the audience of your choice with near-perfect accuracy.
Paid ads are a powerful way to generate attention and conversions when you apply best practices like strong creatives, a clear intent or objective, proper targeting, and relevant CTAs (or Call-to-Action).
Try video marketing
Video content (or video marketing as it’s called) is the future of digital marketing. Marketing experts say that 83% of marketers who use video believe it generates a better ROI than text-based content. You can use this to your advantage in the fashion industry, as well. You can improve the impact of your message by using videos because they allow your audience to see things from multiple angles, thus helping them gain a better understanding of what you’re trying to convey.
To engage your audience, you can share your videos on various mediums like email, product pages, YouTube, and social media. The only thing you should take care of is that there is a purpose behind every video.
Use affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is similar to referral marketing. With affiliate marketing, you pay third-party publishers to create awareness about your brand. A good affiliate program should help you keep your fashion brand visible and accessible on highly targeted websites. Moreover, all this will be managed by professionals at the level and cost decided by you. Affiliate marketing will not only help to improve sales but also will help to create a buzz about your fashion brand.
Here are some things to keep in mind when using affiliate marketing: select the right affiliates, optimize your platform to get the maximum benefits, diversify the affiliate program, leverage coupon deals to make the process hassle-free, and use affiliate marketing software to make the process smoother and easy to manage.
Conclusion
Nowadays digital marketing is now regarded as the most effective form of marketing. It reaches a wider audience, and it is more engaging than traditional methods. It allows you to get ahead of your competition, and it helps you create brand recognition much quicker than other types of marketing.
While we don’t discount the power of traditional marketing tactics, they have and continue to work well for some of the biggest fashion brands in the world like Nike, Adidas, Gucci, Chanel, Dior, ZARA, and UNIQLO, but we’ve found that other, newer methods work even better in today’s marketplace.
Despite having built decades of brand awareness and legacy, what are the chances that these brands will still be relevant and consumer favorites in this day and age if they only stick to traditional marketing tactics? Even legacy brands can’t ignore the powerful hold digital marketing tactics have over millennials and Gen Z. That’s why fashion brands that are successful in the physical world also tend to be successful online with a robust digital marketing strategy.
A great thing about digital marketing is that it’s much more cost-effective, especially for mid-to-small fashion brands. You can reach millions of customers without worrying about the logistical support and resources that are generally required for traditional marketing initiatives.
I hope now you have a better understanding of how important digital marketing is for a fashion brand. So go ahead, and set up your own winning strategy.
Author Bio:
Shivani Sehta is a marketing enthusiast and content writer at World Fashion Exchange (leading Cloud ERP and PLM software for fashion). She specializes in writing content about fashion technology, sustainable fashion, fashion marketing, and self-help articles for designers. In her free time, she likes to dance and spend time with nature.
