Those involved in fashion actively use social media for boosting recognition and such a strategy brings the desired results. Analysts claim that a global online fashion market will skyrocket to over 800 billion dollars by 2023 with 74% of buyers making purchasing decisions based on the info they saw on social networks.
While the fashion industry is laser-focused on eye-pleasing phenomena skillfully ingrained in our lifestyle, marketing experts can use the full potential of social media to spur growth, increase brand loyalty, and roll out new fashion styles.
As practice shows, trend-setting fashion brands have figured out how to get the most out of social media marketing, using all channels available. A great example is an online retailer ASOS with a whopping 10mln Instagram followers, and just slightly fewer fans on Facebook and Twitter. This article broaches the subject of social media in the fashion industry to help you understand where to start and how to move further.
Benefits of Using Social Media in the Fashion Industry
The way social media shapes the fashion industry is amazing. When social networks became increasingly popular, many businesses switched to those environments to build a rapport with their prospects and give their brand a new representation. Some of the most impressive impacts of social media on the fashion world are described below.
1. Reinforcing Brand Recognition and Credibility
There is hardly a better way to reach broad audiences than using social networks. Such platforms are visited by millions of people on a day-to-day basis and if you want your brand to become noticed, you should definitely use the power of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and the like.
However, considering the range of companies vying for buyers’ attention, you need to think outside the box and offer social media users unique offers. For example, you can conduct photo fashion shows in London and events on social networks, where a skilled event photographer captures engaging visuals, which is sure to interest fashion-conscious people.
2. Setting Connection with Customers
Fashion social media marketing has outpaced alternative strategies of establishing relationships with customers mainly due to its unobtrusive way of communication. Companies that are active on Facebook and similar sites can engage with their customer in a natural manner, by responding to comments, offering products with great discounts, sharing info on upcoming events, tagging loyal buyers and even reposting photos where people demonstrate and laud the items purchased.
What’s more, resolving all types of issues is easier and faster via social networks. People can instantly report their doubts about a product or ask for more details without navigating multiple contact forms. Besides, you can get relevant data from real customers, e.g., what they expect to see from your brand or what products they like most of all, by running simple polls on social networks.
3. Ability to Increase Traffic
If a company boils down its online presence solely to its websites, it takes a toll on its overall popularity on the net. This is especially relevant for start-ups that are trying to find their place in the market but provide clients with limited possibilities to locate them on the web.
Currently, there are many ways to attract clients to your brand with paid ads, intriguing content, and binding with bloggers being the most efficient options. Since the number of people using social networks is ramping up every day, you should use this tendency to your advantage and become more active on those platforms.
4. Getting Influencers Support
If you have already experienced the marketing power of social networks but want to increase your reach even more, it makes sense to find a reliable partner and go hands entwined across this road. Such cooperation can be either organic or through a paid partnership, but it will definitely increase your brand visibility, which means higher traffic and better revenue in the long run.
Approximately 39% of marketers collaborate with influencers and they ripe mutual benefits. In fact, Shein and PrettyLittleThing, 2 most popular British brands on TikTok, are go-to reputable partners for many fashion companies craving a better online presence.
5. Can Be Used as Effective Marketing Tool
Whether your long-term goals include higher traffic, increased brand loyalty, better customer support, or an uptick in monthly production, you can’t do without social media marketing. Social networks offer limitless opportunities for developing a solid reputation and attracting more customers.
Most brands have long discerned the importance of social media in the fashion industry and developed strategies to derive benefits from such channels. For example, a British retailer TopShop increased the number of followers on Twitter by 75% (to 3.8 million) using the #LiveTrendsRealTime hashtag. The hashtag was created to put the word out about the upcoming season trends during London Fashion Week 2015.
Michael Kors’ design team has also adhered to this method and created the #JetSetSelma hashtag on Instagram. Users add it to their photos with a Selma bag, and as a result, the company received more than 200K clicks to its website in a month, and the JetSet collection became twice as famous.
How Social Media Has Revolutionized the Fashion Industry to Launch New Styles
Fashion appeals to our visual perception, so no wonder, various trendy items are successfully touted on social networks that rely on high-quality images and succinct messages. Nowadays, the link between the fashion industry and social media is more defined, meaning that the former is no longer controlled by a team of designers but is affected by those who follow the trends and buy products. So, how to promote a clothing brand on social media and generally become recognizable among thousands of other companies?
1. Quick Access to Information
The most noticeable impact of social networks on the fashion world is that you can instantly access the most relevant information. Half a century ago, it was forbidden to take pictures at the shows, but today it is commonplace to snap selfies right on the catwalk.
Cara Delevigne was the pioneer of the trend by taking a selfie at the Giles fall-winter 2014 fashion show. At the Dolce&Gabbana fall-winter 2016 menswear show, every guest could partake in the performance – models photographed visitors, thus involving them in the process.
The possibility to take a selfie wearing branded clothes motivates some people to purchase new trousers, dresses, etc. Though it seems unbelievable, marketers questioned the British about this tendency and a third of the respondents stated that they are ready to spend money on new clothes to take photos for their feed.
2. Huge Power of the Audience
Some time ago, fashion experts were in the driver’s seat when it came to dictating trends and introducing new items, but the situation has changed completely.
With the growing influence of social media in the fashion industry, average people take to following bloggers and influencers instead of listening to what designers advertise. There are lots of profiles of celebrities that come up with their own ideas of what goes well together and what color combos you should steer clear of this season. Thus, people educated to set trends have ceded their power to new talents.
Fashion marketers state that 30%-70% of their total marketing budget is allocated to influencer marketing. 53% of experts state that they spend a large portion of their finances on reaching new people and transforming them into returning customers.
Companies that jockey for a higher position in the fashion industry have fully overhauled their strategies, encouraging creative people to share their vision and concepts with them. Thus, they can keep in the loop of current demands and easily adapt to them. Everybody who wants to get involved in fashion can easily turn a dream into reality.
3. Inspiration from Different People and Places
With the advent of the Internet, and social networks in particular, people can see the most far-flung corners of our planet, marvel at the pristine beauty, and recharge their batteries for new creative projects without leaving their office or flat. Having multiple sources of inspiration at your fingertips is an indisputable advantage, as you can easily organize a 20-min respite and then quickly return to your work. This is especially important for designers and artists, who have to present audiences with offbeat projects every time they release a lineup.
4. Creative Formats When Designing Clothes
The fashion industry is changing so fast that magazines can’t keep up with it. However, this insane pace poses no difficulties for social networks! Fashion, in turn, has become more flexible to social media requirements. Some designers (for example, Alexander Wang), when thinking over the design of a future collection, try to predict how items will look in Instagram photos.
Keeping in line with the fashion social media marketing trends, some brands are jumping to a drop system – releasing part of their collection on a certain day of a week, creating a huge buzz. Another option is to roll out several capsules and collaborations (a fast fashion phenomenon) instead of one collection per season. Thus, they can make posts on your social networks more often and get more mentions in other accounts.
In this evolving fashion industry, even classics like men’s tuxedo suits are being reinvented for social media. Brands showcase them on platforms like Instagram, highlighting their versatility and style. This approach enhances their visual appeal and builds excitement and engagement among followers.
The impact of social media goes far beyond this. Creative directors are casting (a prime example is Nicola Formichetti for Diesel) using Instagram hashtags, and marketers are tailoring label campaigns to specific online platforms (as Calvin Klein did with Snapchat and Tumblr apps).
Striving to win more loyal customers among various social groups, fashion houses invite models with different body types and appearances. In order to stand out in the news feed, brands cooperate with models with memorable facial features and other traits, including albinism and vitiligo (pigmentation disorder) – such as Melanie Gaydos, Viktoria Modesta, Shaun Ross, Alica Liss, and Winnie Harlow.
5. Using Instagram Stories Highlights
Instagram impressed users with the launch of Instagram Stories in 2016 and most people got carried away with the possibility to share their special moments with their followers and have them automatically deleted after 24 hours. However, professional brands and influencers weren’t so excited about that upgrade.
A bit later, Instagram added a new function called Stories Highlights, which lets you manage already published stories and keep them active as long as you need. Such an innovation turned out to be a perfect method to get more viewers on Instagram organically.
H&M is totally in love with Stories Highlights. Using this feature, the brand combines photos of their clothing items and allows potential buyers to look them through without even visiting the official website. Thus, a new H&M collection is just one tap away.
Top Social Networks to Promote Your Fashion Brand
Though core principles of social media marketing for fashion brands are applicable to all platforms, there may be some nuances to keep in mind. To date, there are tens of thousands of social networks and services: news, communication, blogging, graphic, professional, and others. And yet, every day there spring up are more and more new projects. The total audience of social networks is measured by billions of users.
Choosing a social network for brand promotion, you have to be very attentive, otherwise, your marketing efforts will go in vain. I’ve prepared a brief review of the most suitable websites for the task.
According to a recent survey, Instagram tops the list of the best social media websites for advertising a product. It has over 4 billion active users with each of them owning 5-7 accounts on average.
So, what are the latest Instagram trends, and what posts interest users the most? According to the statistical data, mobile-created marketing stories outstrip produced ads on Instagram.
One caveat to keep in mind is that creating an advertising route on this platform, you should include a call-to-action in your stories. Such an ad with a CTA is 89% more efficient.
The global Facebook community transcends 2.7 billion people. From a marketing standpoint, Facebook has both strengths and weaknesses.
As for advantages, users are more educated and buy more than on other social networks (TikTok, Instagram). But on the flip side, Facebook uses a complex mechanism for ranking messages in the feed and you need to spend more money to attract potential customers.
YouTube
The efficacy of YouTube in terms of fashion social media marketing is much dependent on the size of a company. While start-ups favor Facebook ads, large-scale players such as Chanel (about 2mln subscribers) and Louis Vuitton (almost a million subscribers) opted for YouTube.
Every top-line fashion brand lures customers not only with paid ads but also organic content that appears on a regular basis on its own YouTube channel. If you’re inclined to spend your funds on the ads, remember that the average fee per/view equals $0.026 with the average view rate reaching 31.9%.
Tik Tok
Though TikTok lags behind Facebook when it comes to the number of active users, more and more brands use it for expanding their client base.
This service is unmatched if you want to attract viewers’ attention with short yet informative videos related to your brand. However, the main crux of creating content on TikTok is a high price. Anyway, if you want to hit it off with Millennials and Gen Z, this is a perfect fit.
Being the key source of fresh ideas and arresting images for many people, Pinterest is no less efficient for brand promotion. Here you can “pin” items to virtual boards, arranging them into thematic groups or just saving them for future use. Such a working scheme interests many companies that want to present their products to as many buyers as possible removing geographical confines.
Does it work as intended? In fact, yes. 70% of users find new products on Pinterest and 90% say that they make a final shopping decision after navigating this website. What’s more, about 66% of Pinterest users buy a product after seeing a brand’s pin.
Final Thoughts on Social Media in the Fashion Industry
The fashion industry is a massive market that’s constantly evolving and growing. It encompasses a great variety of products, services, and people. As more people are buying more fashion items, more businesses are springing up in the apparel supply chain.
Social media marketing is a way to promote your brand and reach millions of potential customers with ease. You simply need to identify a social network that your target audience frequents. Once you’ve narrowed down the best options, use your creativity and start promoting your business on social media to bring it to the top of the page.
The most successful fashion brands use all channels available. They create content and post it on social media to engage with their followers. They also optimize their content to maximize exposure and drive additional traffic back to their website. This article has outlined all the benefits of social media marketing for the fashion industry and encouraged you to start promoting your business on social networks.