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Whether you’re a fashion consultant, fashion brand owner, or budding fashion entrepreneur, it can be very easy to overlook marketing. After all, you become so fixated on producing the perfect garment for the right season that your website and social media can become redundant.
But they shouldn’t.
Marketing is a must-have for any business, but especially for fashion. The rise of visual marketing platforms like that of Instagram, TikTok and Facebook means that fashion owners have a plethora of different avenues in which to advertise their products and reach customers.
Marketing doesn’t have to take huge chunks out of your day, either. Here are 5 easy ways to market your fashion brand that involve very little hard graft at all.
1. Have a Brand Website
It may sound obvious, but a fashion brand cannot exist without a website. For fashion retailers, a website works as a virtual store where you can showcase your wares.
New businesses can make great sales on an individual marketplace like Etsy, for example. However, when building a following, it’s so much easier to make sales and grow your business if it is hosted on a website.
Making a website doesn’t mean you need to stop selling on marketplaces either. Selling on both a website and a marketplace is known as multichannel selling, so it’s definitely recommended.
However, it’s a great idea to look into an eCommerce platform. Make sure whichever platform you choose supports a large number of variants like the same product in varying sizes and colours, as well as one that offers versatility. This will let you update your homepages and collections to make life much easier.
2. Be active on social media
Social media is made for fashion brands. Visual platforms like Instagram and Facebook especially mean that you can post galleries of your collections, your ideas, or even just your initial products being modelled.
This means that you can be found by a wide array of potential customers who may resonate with your brand’s ideology or have an interest in your products.
Social media also works to grow both your brand awareness and your website traffic. Once you are seen and followed by more people, the traffic to your website will increase. If you start posting regular valuable content, your followers will begin to recognise you as an authority, and once that happens: Customers will buy.
Other avenues for promotion include discounts and giveaways. You can team up with other brands, or you can invite your followers to share with their network of friends which results in extra reach.
A great factor of this style of promotion is that you are increasing your following with already engaged followers. After all, if they’re entering your giveaway they are clearly interested in your products.
To keep nurturing that engagement and get resulting purchases and brand loyalty from it, ensure that you are posting regularly, and keep your content relevant and valuable.
3. Show your brand’s personality
To really create a brand following and to distinguish your fashion brand from all the others, you must make it memorable.
To do this, you must capture your brand’s personality and showcase that to the world.
What we mean by brand personality is the overriding message and ideologies that make up your brand. For example, when Polo Ralph Lauren first decided on their logo, they chose it because they wanted to promote ideologies of elitism and the good life. The good life then becomes part of their brand personality, as well as their brand identity.
We can see this in examples from their social media pages where they post images that throwback to the good life, such as classic designer cars, traditional sports, and old school watches. Most recently they’ve introduced the Lauren Bear which has added a sense of humour and warmth to the brand.
To introduce your brands personality, intertwine it in these 3 aspects:
1. Copywriting:
When it comes to an online presence, your words and your images are everything. Good copywriting can help convey your ideas and engage with your audiences.
Try to make product descriptions as personal as possible. Don’t just list specifications, talk openly about what separates your product from the rest. Include ideologies that make up your brand (for example, luxury or comfort) and don’t be frightened to include a dash of enthusiasm and humour!
2. Packaging:
Custom packaging is a sure way to make your brand memorable. Not only will this encourage first time buyers to become repeat buyers, it will also help differentiate your beans for site visitors.
Custom packaging, like D&G’s gold bags, can also encourage customers to share images of your packaging and their unboxing experiences online – potentially engaging new customers.
Ensure that your custom packaging is in your brand style, for example the colour scheme and font. Remember, a good first impression can keep customers coming back so don’t miss out on this part of the creative process.
3. Photography:
As a fashion brand, you will be selling your products based on how they are perceived to your audiences. This could be something as simple as the cut, fit, or design.
So, in that case, photography becomes everything.
Ensure that you take high quality photographs of your products in a variety of different situations and styles so that you can help your audience visualise how your product would appear on them.
Make it flattering, and if you’re using high quality materials, take close up images of this material.
Wherever possible, make sure your products are being modelled. Don’t just take photographs of your products laying face down on floors or tables – this won’t sell it to anyone.
4. Blog
Blogs do two things. Firstly, they convey to your audience that you know what you’re talking about by giving your customers a chance to begin building relationships with you through your insights.
Secondly, blogs allow you to gain extra visibility and organic traffic by ranking well in Google. If you can post high-quality content regularly, you will be boosting your SEO efforts and potentially driving clicks.
Ensure that you target specific keywords in popular topics. If you’re not sure what those are, look at sites like Quora, or simply Google a topic like “summer dresses”. Google’s recommendations for similar searches and popular questions will show you exactly what content your audience is looking for. Write that!
5. Sell your looks
A final overlooked tip for fashion brands is that they have something marketable that other industries don’t: Fashion look-books.
Look-books are a staple of fashion marketing that stretch back decades. Their goal is to sell a particular look and encourage shoppers that they too need these items to complete this must-have look.
A well-designed, glossy look-book containing high quality images can evoke a psychological response in viewers who can react to the “feel” (i.e, industrial) that a look gives off.
By putting these products centre stage, you are potentially ushering a customer toward the checkout simply by playing to their imaginations.
What’s more, high quality look-books can become featured on other websites which can then link to yours. This will give you higher organic visibility, and potentially more reach!
Fashion marketing is a must, and it doesn’t need to be extravagant or expensive. Simply taking the time to invest in things like custom packing and high-quality photography can bring plentiful return on your investment when you advertise it across social media or on your website.
About the Author
James Hillman is a fashion consultant with over 10 years of experience. He’s worked with brands like 88Fresh and REPO and doesn’t follow trends: He creates them.
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Image source: Unsplash.com
