Promoting your clothing brand to boost online sales
When it comes to marketing, few sectors are more savvy and demanding than the fashion industry. The same is true of its customers. If you wish to market a clothing brand online, you need to be aware that you are targeting an audience that is image-conscious, has a strong brand and product knowledge (as well as powerful existing brand loyalties), and is thoroughly at home in the world of social media. It is, therefore, vital that you promote your clothing brand through creative and competent use of digital and visual media. This includes, not only strategic and measurable digital marketing tools, but also well-crafted fashion photography. As you go about marketing your new clothing line, take the following tips into careful consideration.
Build an attention-grabbing brand website
First things first: get that website up and running! This is the natural starting point for most brands. However, many new businesses, including new brands in the fashion industry, will try to sell in established marketplaces first. Your chosen marketplace might be a major online retailer, Etsy or something more traditional like Camden or Chatsworth Road – or perhaps a combination. There is nothing wrong with selling through these marketplaces, of course, but you need to set up your digital home base first. Use all of those other platforms to build your following, but then direct all leads to your website. This is where your brand lives, and it is very important that it embodies everything about your brand, in addition to providing a place where people can buy your designs. This requires great copy, a logo that sticks in people’s minds and, of course, beautiful photographs that capture the essence of your collection and enable your audience to visualise what each of your stunning designs will look like on them.
Push your brand through social media
If your website is your brand’s online home, then your social media accounts are the places it goes to work and play. Not only should you be posting regularly with news about your product line, but you should also be following other players in your industry, liking and retweeting, and making yourself an integral part of the community you want to target. Being in the fashion industry, you can make great use of influencers, who will post photos of themselves wearing your designs, and sing your brand’s praises to their huge audiences. While all major social media platforms work well for promoting a fashion brand, Instagram is particularly well-suited to this industry. Make sure you have plenty of beautifully shot photographs that you can post on this platform regularly.
Build trust and brand authority through blogging
Your home page is where you welcome your visitors, engage them, and create a first impression. Your product pages are where you present your products for sale. Your blog is where you build trust and show that you are an authority in your field. The point of a blog is to educate and inform readers to the point where they begin to associate your brand with your industry, its trends and intricacies. As readers grow to trust your expertise, they become more likely to buy from you, as well as sharing your content with others.
Use email marketing to generate and convert leads
Email marketing is one of the most effective tools in digital marketing – regardless of the industry you are in and the products you are selling. You can use targeted email campaigns to create personalised experiences based on the recipients preferences and needs. Email marketing also provides you with more opportunities – beyond your social media and website – to get your stunning new designs in front of buyers. You can then add a call to action to enable readers to click through to your eCommerce platform to place an order or find out more about your latest collection.
Spend time crafting a brand that will stand out
You may have the most ground-breaking designs the world has ever seen, but if you fail to grab people’s attention, nobody will ever know about them. You have only a few seconds to capture people’s attention with your social media posts and your online store. People will easily click off if you don’t grab them immediately. You must make your brand both engaging and memorable – not an easy task in today’s competitive, fast-moving market. You will need to approach this task by combining visuals and copy in a way that embodies your brand and speaks to your audience.
Outstanding visual design: Your website, logo and everything related to them must be unique and beautiful. Ideally, your products should even come in custom packaging that buyers will come to associate with your brand. Professional product photography will form an important part of all this.
Clever copy: Once you have grabbed your visitors’ attention with beautiful images, you can keep them there, and help them advance along the buyer’s journey, with clever, well-written copy that speaks directly to your buyer personas, while synching perfectly with the spirit of your brand and products.
Focus on incredible product photography
Professional product photography of the highest order is absolutely essential to a fashion brand’s website. If you decide to focus the majority of your marketing efforts and budget in one area, it should probably be this one. No amount of copy on its own will ever sell a dress or pair of shoes, no matter how well you can describe the product’s qualities. You are not selling mere products; you are selling a look, a style, a way of life. Your photography needs to embody these and convey them to you customers at a glance.
An important point to remember is that there is only one thing worse than having no photos on your website: having bad ones. What constitutes a bad photograph? Just as you cannot make people understand what a garment really looks like with just a descriptive paragraph or bullet-pointed list, you also can’t evoke your style and brand with badly-lit pictures of garments laid out against bland backgrounds. Take your garments, put them on models your buyer personas can relate to, and hire a professional to light and shoot them, creating stunning imagery that will enhance your brand.
This is not to say that you should use only model photography. Flat lay or ghost mannequin photography can work extremely well, but if you are going to use these types of images, it is even more important that you get the help of an experienced, professional fashion photographer, who can shoot your designs in a stylised way that highlights their attributes and brings them to life.
Types of fashion photography
There are three main types of photography used for ecommerce fashion stores: model, ghost mannequin and flat lay:
Model: For these photos, a model is dressed in your designs, showcasing your range and creating tangible and engaging representative of your brand. Your buyers can thus see what your garments look like when worn.
Ghost or invisible mannequin: This is also a very popular technique for ecommerce fashion photography. Your clothing items are arranged in such way that they appear as if they are being worn by a model but, as the name suggests, no model or mannequin is actually present in the photo. This enables customers to see what an item of clothing looks like when worn, but without the distraction of a model.
Flat lay: In these photographs, your garments are laid flat on a horizontal surface or hung against a wall, usually with a simple background – light or dark to contrast and accentuate the colours of the clothing. This is the simplest way to present your clothing, showing each item on its own and unworn. Flat lays can be shot with a great deal of style and creativity, with many opportunities to make them unique to your brand.
How an ecommerce fashion photography Studio can help
Marca Studio is a team of professional photographers, videographers, stylists and models. We have years of experience in fashion photography. Combining our industry knowledge with our passion and love for photography, we create images that bring your designs to life, with outstanding aesthetic and commercial results. Using an array of equipment and techniques, we tailor every project to be stylish, effective and efficient, and to fit the style, look and spirt of your brand perfectly. Get in touch with us for more information on promoting your clothing brand to boost online sales.
