Fashion brands have always been aggressive when it comes to their marketing strategies. And if you want to make a business in fashion, you need a killer social media marketing strategy.
One of the most attractive businesses is in some of the most competitive niches. Even though the technology is rising and is forcing brands to keep their positions higher on top, there are solutions to improve social media marketing for fashion brands.
The greatest asset that a fashion brand has is visual appearance. To connect with your audience you have to be visually represented. Based on that you can start creating your social media marketing strategy and the following tips will give you a competitive advantage.
- Use the Power of Instagram and Dominate the Hashtags
- Market your Brand on Facebook
- Collaborate with Social Media Influencers and Fashion Bloggers
- Ace the Customer Service Game
It's not about selling clothes, but rather creating the concept and building brand awareness.
1. Use the Power of Instagram and Dominate the Hashtags
The most obvious yet vital medium, Instagram, should be your first choice. To succeed in the fashion industry you have to create a strong Instagram marketing strategy.
Fashion for Instagram is like the Ring for Gollum. It is the supreme synergy. Instagramming fashion might be some of the most desired types of social content. The classic hashtag #fashion is the top fourth most popular hashtag. Additional #selfie and #style have the 14th and 23rd place in the top 25 most used hashtags.
Always use relevant hashtags, don't add irrelevant ones just for the sake of it. Add the location, think of all the pieces from the post. Search for people who tagged your designs and repost them.
Follow trending hashtags on Instagram to find out top content and get inspiration.
The social listening tool, BrandMentions allows you to track any hashtag you want for Instagram, plus lots of other social media platforms. Monitoring the hashtag performance will deliver a ton of useful information and help you find other people using similar hashtags, plus get new ideas and insights. For example, you can find people who use your hashtags and are potential influencers you could collaborate with, but you'll talk about that at point 3.
They are talking about your company
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Instagram has lots of cool features a fashion brand can use for keeping the users' interest high and keep them hooked into the funnel. Choosing the right hashtags can expand your social media reach and gain a larger audience.
You can master Instagram if you take advantage of all the features available. Create Instagram stories portraying behind the scene videos and pictures, then create highlights where you add stories on your profile. Group highlights based on product, campaign, theme, or however you want.
Check out the Instagram account below from Cluse that created a few highlights with their social campaigns for newly launched watches. The second one contains behind-the-scenes footage with their watch #bevigoureux from Instagram Stories.
IGTV is trending too, with influencers doing lots of video content with outfit ideas. For example, Louis Vuitton broadcasted its recent fashion show which featured Women’s Fall-Winter 2019 Show by Nicolas Ghesquière at the Louvre in Paris.
2. Market your Brand on Facebook
Facebook isn't something you'd want to lose. You can start creating Facebook Ads and deliver niched content to potential clients, people who entered your website or have interests in fashion and in your competitors. Think of creative ways to gain the desired results through your Facebook marketing strategy.
They are talking about your company
Get instant access to brand mentions across social, news, blogs, videos and more. Get Free Report
Plus, you can show your newest collection and create a social community. It is one of the greatest strategies you can implement. Make your target audience feel connected, create targeted messages. Think of your buyer persona, the likes, the favorite activities. For example, in clothing, think of how somebody feels when they have the favorite piece in their wardrobe, create lookbooks. Think of creative ideas to dress simple clothing. For example, how to create 10 outfits with a midi skirt or a how-it's-made tutorial.
Below you can see an example from Leather Catrice that did a how-to-video from their workshop. Lots of comments and likes followed. This type of content can be shared by other people, other pages and amplify the reach. Before you add your video on the social media channel, make sure you added your logo.
Look at this guy's talent!It's amazing how the bag does and the good final result!Mention your friends who like leather bags.
Gepostet von Leather Caprice am Dienstag, 12. März 2019
Your Facebook page should contain all the necessary information (website, contact and description), and add by preference your other social media accounts, shop items, subscribing form, contest and so on. Below you can see the Facebook page for Cluse that made the most of their social account.
If you want to build a strong community, create a Facebook group with special deals club members, brand loyalty discounts, discuss and deliver unique and exclusive content only to the group participants. The sky is the limit.
You can also show an exclusive preview of your newest launches, discount codes and much more. If you do create a Facebook Group, make sure you have time and you post there daily to maintain it active.
3. Collaborate with Social Media Influencers and Fashion Bloggers
Influencer marketing is here to stay. And in fashion business, it is a must. It works way best. Most of the fashion bloggers and influencers are on Instagram. If they're not on Instagram, they don't exist. The same applies to your brand. If you're on Fashion, you have to be there, but not only that. You have to post on social media 4 times a day, respond to comments, create stories, like others' posts, comment and so on.
As we mentioned, hashtags are the base so you can search for trending hashtags and find an abundance of influencers and fashion marketers. Scroll on their profile, find out whom they had collaborated with previously, see if their style is a good image for your brand and start sending a private message to collaborate with them.
You can look at those that have lots of likes, hence a higher number of Instagram followers.
Since video is one of the most used type of content, the fashion industry and influencers started doing video lookbooks: the set contains a mirror, a stander with the clothing the persons combine into creating multiple looks (it has to comprise a pair of pants, a dress, skirt, blouses, hat, a few belts, bags and few pair of shoes), using the catch technique (somebody throws the items to you). An example you can see below from the fashion blogger Cristina Surdu.
She signed a collaboration with a clothing brand named @blueamore_clothes and created a line that has her name. The brand will get double social exposure. This type of collaboration is a great way to earn a dedicated audience, to create a strong relationship with a blogger, a person that can help you with tips and tricks of what people like to buy, how to style and combine clothing pieces or accessories.
A similar collaboration started between Cluse and CarolineReceveur. Makeup brands do the same thing. So why not get inspired by other industries, too?
You'll be able to increase brand awareness, reach new audiences, develop trust towards your brand, and create higher engagement with your brand, just to name a few.
4. Ace the Customer Service Game
As you made a name for yourself, you'll have to create a customer service guideline and have dedicated people that know how to make clients happy and resolve sensitive situations and unpleasant issues. In critical situations is important to know how to acknowledge customer experiences and how to deal with them.
You'll inevitably deal with angry people, mean and online bullies no matter how great your product is. If you have a guideline and your time to response is fast, than you'll be able to resolve them all.
There will be people that talk about your brand all over the internet, not necessarily on your social media account or customer service platform. To find what the audience says about you, use a mentioning tool. BrandMentions, for example, collects all the web and social mentions about your brand no matter if they have the @ handle or link attached back to your site.
That way you'll see everything. Plus, you'll see if they had a positive or negative experience through the Sentiment Analysis feature.
They are talking about your company
Get instant access to brand mentions across social, news, blogs, videos and more. Get Free Report
Protect your brand by being prepared and equipped with all the information.
Following this social media strategy for fashion brands can open new roads and paths that fit you best. Moreover, social media can have a positive impact not only on your content marketing efforts but also on your SEO efforts. You need to explore and get the right one. There's no fits-all solution. Prepare a personalized digital marketing plan for your audience. People might appeal to different messages, even though they all like your products.
