Fashion is huge, with the industry predicted to generate $418 billion worth of revenue worldwide in 2018.
Like all businesses, it’s important for fashion brands to set themselves apart from their competitors, to encourage current customers to stay loyal, and new customers to buy into them. This means that they need to employ a range of marketing tactics, to ensure they are the brand that people go to.
Enter content marketing: the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant content. If done right, it can lead to an increase in brand visibility, customers and sales. Get it wrong and… well, it does nothing.
For fashion brands, there is a huge opportunity to create successful content marketing pieces that will resonate with your target market. Here, I’ll talk through four different examples that you can try, and highlight which brands are doing this really well.
Tell your brand’s story
Fashion is focused on portraying a certain lifestyle – each brand has their own history, and serves their own sectors of the market; and this is true of both high street shops and luxury labels.
When shoppers buy an item of clothing, they buy into the brand and what it stands for. This presents fashion brands with the unique opportunity to actually tell a story, through the power of content marketing.
Burberry does this well: back in 2016, they released a video that was similar to a film trailer, telling the story of their founder, Thomas Burberry’s journey, and what led him to opening one of the most reputable and iconic fashion labels in the world. The video received over 15 million views, and thousands of shares across social media.
Instagram influencers
59% of marketers plan to increase their budget for influencer marketing over the next year; and whilst working with Instagram influencers isn’t relevant for every industry, there are so many opportunities for fashion brands.
Of course, it’s all down to finding the right influencer, and remembering that the biggest names aren’t always the best. Micro influencers may have a smaller following, but they’re probably more willing to work with you, and have a more engaged audience.
Outfit posts and gifting are the obvious options, but you could style influencers for an event, or even recruit them as a brand ambassador, as part of a long-term partnership.
Back in 2016, Brandy Melville received the most social engagements of all fashion brands, directly due to the successful influencer project they launched. In March 2016, they received over 9.3 million Instagram likes, and increased their following by 1.6% – the equivalent of 53,000 new followers. And that was just in the space of one month.
Brandy Melville worked with famous Instagram models who portrayed the free-spirited millennial lifestyle their brand embodies, as they posed for pictures on a road trip across California, which included a stop off at Coachella.
You can find out more about the world of Instagram influencer marketing, and whether it’s something you should do here.
Blogging
Nothing new, but companies can’t really afford not to have an up-to-date blog, if they want to keep drawing in additional traffic to the website, whilst retaining customers.
For fashion brands, blogging presents a whole load of opportunities, as there are so many things you can talk about, that will engage both customers and potential customers. Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Fashion Week round-Ups: Don’t limit yourself to the big ones like London, Paris, New York and Milan. Copenhagen and Berlin are the ones to watch when it comes to emerging, alternative designers.
- Style guides: Focus on a key item you’re selling, and show the different ways you can wear it. For example, you could have a skirt and style it for at the office, out for drinks, and a day shopping. Alternatively, you could provide outfit inspiration based on different body shapes.
- Interviews with industry professionals: This could be influential designers, models, or someone who actually works for your company. Finding out how that person landed their job in the first place can be really inspirational for those who want to work in the fashion industry.
Just make sure that you include only the highest quality photos in your blog – fashion is all about being creative and visual. If you have a blurry or boring image, it’s not going to help you in any way, and will just make you look amateur.
Want to see a fashion brand’s blog at its finest? Head on over to Topshop. In addition to articles on fashion, they post related content that they know their readers will be interested in, like spotlights on emerging singers, Netflix shows and the most Instagram-worthy locations in the world.
Videos
A billion hours of content is watched every day on YouTube, and over 87% of online marketers create and utilise video content.
More statistics to throw at you: social videos generate 1,200% more shares compared to text and image posts combined, and 64% of consumers make a purchase after watching a branded social video.
From outfit hauls to runway shows, behind-the-scenes access to your brand, and user-generated content, the options are quite literally endless when it comes to fashion brands creating videos.
Sharing them on your social channels is a great way to encourage followers to watch them, and then share them with their connections, which will ultimately get your name out there, with the long-term aim of increasing sales.
ASOS use product videos on their site, so you can see how items of clothing look from various angles; and all you need to do is search for them on YouTube to see thousands of results for outfit hauls – user-generated content at its finest.
Ultimately, content marketing is all about telling a story, and that’s what fashion does, so it makes sense that the two go hand-in-hand.
If you need help with content marketing or social media, then get in touch with our experts today.
