The internet is full of apparel clothing stores and it can be a little challenging to distinguish your brand from the rest of the pack.
In most cases, apparel clothing brands that have a solid digital marketing strategy tend to perform better in the market.
A good action plan for online marketing not only improves brand awareness and visibility but also accelerates the sales.
When done correctly, you can get in front of your real audience faster, educate them about your brand, boost sales and turn your audience into fans.
At the end of the day, it is money that matters for every business and there is no alternative to increasing sales.
In this post, I am going to show you 5 of the most efficient digital marketing strategies that directly influences your sales.
Let’s dive in…
1: Build a Website
According to Stastia, the apparel clothing industry may hit £534.5B in revenue by 2022 despite the setbacks this year.
Plenty of stores have closed but yet, the sales seem increasing day by day.
Why?
It is because most apparel clothing brands are performing brilliantly on the Internet.
It has become very easy to start a business online since drag and drop website builders came to existence.
E-commerce platforms like Shopify, Woocommerce, Bigcommerce, Magento all are very useful to get you started on the internet.
You can easily build a website, upload all your items, set prices, integrate payment gateways and start taking orders almost immediately. Have a look at the following example:
Helly Hansen is a leading provider of sportswear and gear items. Their website is on Magento and gives a fantastic shopping experience.
However, all these platforms have limited customization features.
If you want to have a website with more dynamic features, going for a custom made web solution will be better but more expensive.
Although custom websites are far better than template sites, It is more viable if you have a higher budget and long term planning.
2: Start a Blog
Blogs are one of the most important hallmarks of content marketing. From boosting organic search results to helping your overall SEO it helps in various ways.
But before you start, you have to know the basics first.
Firstly, determine the content categories of your blog. These will be based on the niche, topics and keywords you would want to rank for.
Secondly, determine the appearance of your blog. It will depend on how you are displaying your blog posts or contents and how readers can navigate through it.
Here is an example of the American Eagle Blog
Never copy the format of another apparel clothing stores blog. Always focus on uniqueness and spend time to plan or design your blog appearance.
Your blogs objective should be helping, informing and guiding your customers to understand about your products.
So post contents that are only specific or somehow related to the products you are selling.
In this way, you can drive traffic based on those search queries and bring visitors who are looking for information related to those keywords.
Your sales opportunities will increase simultaneously with the increase of targeted traffic to your store.
3: Use Effective Social Medias
The fashion industry has a very strong foot on social media. However, to generate sales opportunities from social media you need to have an effective strategy.
Facebook is by far, the best amongst all social media for clothing brands followed by Instagram.
Twitter, Linkedin and other social platforms on the web have their impact on clothing business.
However, Facebook and Instagram generate more sales opportunities than any other social media platforms.
Here is a survey published by Facebook News related to the fashion industry:
In order to sale your products on FB, just follow the simple steps below-
1. Open a FB page dedicated to your brand
2. Use original and high quality photos
3. Set automation on your messenger
4. Create and post video contents every week
5. Run promotions on seasonal themes
6. Use FB Pixel and Remarketing features
7. Run custom ads every month
Instagram is also one of the social networks where fashion brands get the maximum exposure to their products.
Make sure you are using the right hashtags and your images are attractive to grab the attention of the users.
Set up a routine of posting your products with the right description and never miss that.
4: Connect With Influencers
Influencer marketing is pretty similar to word of mouth marketing.
You connect with people online who have a certain level of expertise or a set of followers on social media.
They partner with your brand, endorse your products and deliver your message to a larger audience.
In most cases, influencer marketing works to give fashion brands an early leverage.
However, brands need to ensure that their products live up to the claims and do not disappoint the audience.
Here is an example of influencer marketing from Banana Republic:
In this case, Banana Republic partnered with a micro influencer to spread their brand name and promote few of their products which boosted their sales significantly.
There are different types of influencers with whom you can connect.
If you are in the early stage, you can team up with micro-influencers who normally have a follower base of 500 to 10,000 followers.
You can also connect with macro-influencers who would normally have 10,000 to 1 million followers on their social media.
You can hire, pay, motivate or partner with influencers. However, You have to be cautious while contacting influencers and avoid any sort of unsolicited methods of communication.
5: Get a Mobile Presence
If you want to boost your sales, reinforce your customer base and spread your brand name even more, having a good mobile presence is a must.
According to smartphone traffic worldwide, mobile phones drive more than 56% of traffic for retail business.
Here is a statistic by the business insider intelligence-
According to the Business Insider, mobile eCommerce will have a 25.5% rise by 2024 and hit the mark of $488 Billion.
So you have to ensure that your customers are able to see your products properly, access your product details and place orders as well.
Therefore, you have to make a mobile friendly website and also a mobile app for your clothing store in order to keep up with the customer behaviour.
Apparel clothing buyers prefer to check and buy products on mobile applications more than browsers. It is much faster and convenient.
Although it may add more cost to your expense list, having a standalone mobile app exclusively for your store will get you more sales in the long run.
Final Thoughts
The apparel sector is very competitive but yet profitable. You can make a fortune out of this business really fast if your strategies are in the right direction. Finding genuine clothing sourcing companies and getting products at a lower price will not be enough anymore. There are plenty of businesses in the market and you have to make your way to success. Using the above digital marketing strategies at its fullest can unlock plenty of opportunities. So make sure you are applying these techniques in the right way.
