Fashion is one of the most competitive industries in the world, which means that fashion and design brands have their work cut out for them. Fortunately, the global apparel market generated approximately $1.5 trillion in 2021 and is predicted to reach $2 trillion by 2026 — so there is a high enough consumer demand to keep many brands in business.

But we’re not talking about many brands — we’re talking about your brand. How can your brand scale and generate revenue amidst a sea of competition?

The answer comes down to digital marketing. Fashion and design brands that “get” digital marketing are those that are able to differentiate themselves from their competitors. They offer great products and know how to market them to their target audiences. 

We’ve put together a list of the top 10 best digital marketing practices that you should start implementing so that your brand can generate the recognition (and revenue!) it deserves.

A 2022 survey of global adult consumers shows that 51% prefer shopping for clothes online. Fashion brands must offer online shopping in order to stay relevant. 

These are not the early days, when any ol’ online store would suffice. Users expect comfort and convenience — that’s why they shop online.

Run a SiteSpeed test and aim for under 3 seconds.

A kpi we track from advertising is ensuring more than 20% of Add to Carts complete their Purchase; if it’s less, there’s friction somewhere in that checkout.

In this age of direct-to-consumer, it can feel like every category has been niched down. This is especially true for Fashion & design brands; with the rise of single product, material, use case brands seemingly everywhere.

This places a huge emphasis on the ability to nail your positioning and communicate this with clarity through your advertising and landing pages

Run an audit of your own ads and landing pages; have you truly locked down your positioning?

It might be time to pull out the X+Y graphs and re-plot where your brand uniquely stands out. 

This begins with your advertising to focus on benefits & experiences, not features. As marketers, we’re often so proud of the material or the design and assume that’s what our customers want to know too.

Instead, we need to explain why it’s important

Once you have their attention on site, consider how you are merchandising your products and offers?

59% of the global population uses social media, according to Smart Insights. Between January 2021 to January 2022, the number of global social media users grew from 4.2 billion to 4.62 billion. By January 2023, the number grew by another 137 million users. (The fastest growing platform? TikTok!)

Each platform is different. Content that works on Facebook may not work on YouTube, and content that works on Instagram may not work on TikTok. While it’s possible to create similar content that can work across all platforms, the ideal strategy is to create social media content customized for each platform. 

However! There is a shortcut for fashion & design brands. If you start by designing content that works on TikTok; this is likely to be your best-performing creative on Instagram and YouTube too, building the confidence (& cost analysis) to design uniquely for each channel.

How do you get high-performing TikTok content? Social media has moved fashion from the small elite circle of designers and magazine editors into the hands of the wider population. Influencers and creators are now the drivers of tomorrow’s hottest fashion trends, especially those on TikTok.

Fashion brands that select smart influencer and/or creator partnerships can do wonders for their image, generate brand awareness and leads, and increase sales. 

How does this line up with your current creative?

While acquisition campaigns are a must for any growth strategy. Too many brands ignore the importance of retention.

Your customers need to be nurtured through a sophisticated retention strategy. In our world, this is most effective through email marketing. In fact, they are one of the most effective marketing strategies, with an ROI of $36 for every $1 spent, according to Hubspot. 

That statistic alone is reason enough for fashion and design brands to invest in email marketing! But if you do it, do it right. Influencer Marketing Hub has nine predictions for effective email marketing trends of 2023. 

With the rising CPMs on digital ad platforms; brands who report on their total lifetime customer value with have a huge advantage for acquisition.

Brands in the US are already seeing ROAS figures drop below 3x for acquisition; it’s likely many of these brands will break even on first purchase.

If this happens to your brand, are you aware of what percentage will re-purchase and do you have levers to increase this?

There is nothing scarier than auditing a fashion or design brand’s advertising efforts and seeing that they rely on these channels alone for survival.

As we experienced during the iOS changes of 2021, many brands lost revenue through Meta. While things may have stabilised, the lesson is clear favouring advertising and ignoring critical digital marketing channels like; Email Marketing or SEO is criminal. 

SEO best practices include unique content, writing alt descriptions for all images, writing great title tags and meta descriptions – it cannot be an either/or for SEO.

Consumers today expect a lot from companies. According to a 2022 Salesforce survey, 73% of respondents expect companies to understand their needs and expectations, while 62% think companies should anticipate their needs! So there are a lot of consumer expectations, but fortunately, companies have a way of meeting them. How? With the power of data.

Fashion brands must harness the power of data to offer personalised marketing. Personalisation can retain current customers and attract new ones. Plus, the personalisation strategy then creates a cycle — the more customers respond to targeted marketing, the more data you collect, and the better you can customise your offers, ads, and campaigns, and so on. 

One of the simplest ways to achieve this is considering where you send your visitors from ads.

It’s incredible how few Fashion & Design Brands consider the experience of a New Visitor to the site, sending them to the Homepage, Category or Product Pages.

Here are some examples of strong Cold Traffic Landing pages styles you can explore:

This is one of the biggest tension points for fashion & design brands; the trend of marketing is to embrace AI. While most of the news has been about ChatGPT; there are AI creative tools on their way and Google & Meta are likely to be the first to embrace these.

Already we are seeing that Dynamic Creative & Performance Max are offering the most scale for brands; add to this the need for UGC or Lo-Fi style content and it becomes difficult for marketers to maintain all their digital ads “on brand”

There is a throw away line from performance marketing circles to “Make Ugly Ads” – while we believe strongly there’s an opportunity to embrace the TikTok style ad trends & performance of the platforms AI campaigns – there is a reality that most fashion & design brand style guides don’t currently allow for this.

Simply ignoring or worse turning off these campaigns is not the answer.

Paid advertising, whether it’s Google, Programmatic, or Social Media, is part and parcel of any serious digital marketing campaign. 

Unfortunately, many fashion & design brands view their digital advertising investment purely in terms of its ability to generate short term eCommerce sales only.

The brands that will continue to grow will build the maturity to:

The digitisation of traditional media means brands have more control over their total ad spend than ever before.

Testing Programmatic to run out of home or catch up tv alongside Google & Paid Social campaigns that are full funnel is the playbook for serious fashion & design brands.

Digital marketing is dynamic, creative, and exciting; traits shared with the fashion industry.

As are the levels of quality, expertise and style. Just as one brand’s Maxi Dress can differ massively from the next; this is true for digital marketing agencies too. 

As you can see from the 10 best practices above, at Intentional we take a full Brand view; wanting to understand your business & brand first; not simply focussed on performance at all costs.

If you are a Fashion or Design brand that cares about your brand; then check out the 11 Questions To Ask Your Digital Ad Agency