Digital and sustainability are two areas that will offer fashion’s biggest opportunity for growth in 2022, according to a McKinsey report. We can expect more fashion brands to look for creative ways to capture consumer attention and unleash online creativity as a result. So how can your fashion brand stand out from the crowd? One effective way to increase sales and revenue is using digital marketing.
But with the sphere of digital marketing being so vast, where do you start? That is exactly what we will talk about in this article — digital marketing ideas to help you start your journey and grow your fashion brand. We will take a look at ideas across various content verticals including images and videos so that you can get a holistic understanding of how you need to approach this.
Here are the ideas we will cover:
1. Invest in video marketing
2. Run paid ads across platforms
3. Build your digital presence through social media
4. Create a user-friendly website
5. Create Facebook & Instagram shops
6. Create style guides for your products
7. Invest heavily in influencer marketing
8. Launch affiliate programs
9. Run giveaways for brand awareness
10. Grow your email list
And if you stick around till the end, we also have a BONUS section on fashion digital marketing best practices that will help you hit the ground running.
Let’s get started.
Why must fashion brands use digital marketing?
Building a fashion brand in today’s highly competitive environment can be a tough job. This is where marketing in general and digital marketing, in particular, comes into play. It can help you get the word out about your brand, get more people interested in what you have to sell, and also help you gain a loyal customer base that continues to buy from you. To that effect, here are three reasons fashion brands must use digital marketing:
- Digital marketing allows fashion brands to build brand awareness - Consumers can’t buy from you if they do not know you exist. Marketers therefore can use digital marketing to reach more people and spread awareness about their offerings.
- Digital marketing can help drive website traffic- Whether you go the content marketing route and optimize your website/ other assets for SEO, or you use social media to create engagement and awareness, digital marketing can help drive relevant consumers to your website.
- Digital marketing can help you get credibility and support as a brand - When your fashion brand starts engaging with customers on social media, it is also possible to get support from interested influencers, experts, and other digital trailblazers to increase your reach. Getting these people to endorse and refer your products allows you to gain credibility and increase the value of your brand in the eyes of the customer.
Whether you are a fledgling fashion house, just starting to dress up your digital strategy, or a brand looking to grow your presence online, here are 10 fashion digital marketing ideas to help you along.
10 Creative fashion digital marketing ideas to make more sales in 2022
1. Invest in video marketing
Video ranks on the top of our list of fashion digital marketing ideas because it is by far one of the most versatile tools you have in your marketing arsenal. Videos allow you to give your viewers a real-time experience of what an item of clothing looks like when someone is wearing it. They help build trust, and they are far more interactive than static posts.
You can therefore use videos to build genuine relationships with existing and potential customers, improve your sales, and simultaneously keep building a brand. For instance, check out this video by athleisure brand Popflex Active. It provides a low down of the exact features this garment has (and what separates it from other fitness clothes on the market):
Despite being in the fashion space, the video is educational and promotional at the same time. It tells the audience who the brand is serving, what they offer, and how it’s better than the competition. Coupled with other videos on the channel that involve styling, motivation, updates, and entertainment, they are using video marketing to its full potential. Ideally, you want to take a similar approach – create a mix of various types of videos including educational, entertaining, testimonials, among others.
But before you hit that record button to start shooting videos right away, make sure to develop a powerful video marketing strategy. First, you should understand your objective of creating videos; is this because you want to attract new members or sell a range of products you just launched? The reason could be anything. The next step is to identify who we are targeting- list their demographics, goals, challenges, and lastly, the objection to why they aren't choosing your brand. For instance, Popflex Active targets women who are starting their fitness journey and struggle to work out in gyms or outside because of the issues with ill-fitting fitness clothes. Using this information, the brand creates videos that address their pain points while helping them achieve their goals.
You can use platforms like YouTube to build your brand’s presence in the video space or you could stick to short-form content on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Either way, you want to create videos that depict not just your products but also what your brand stands for. And you can take the help of an easy-to-use editor like InVideo to create these videos. Here’s how you can tailor your video marketing strategy for each platform:
A. Instagram
A Facebook (Meta) survey found that Instagram is the number 1 fashion brand discovery platform. The Facebook (Meta) survey also points out that “mobile video is a powerful marketing tool for fashion brands and vertical video is perfect for mobile because it fills the entire screen and doesn't rely on the viewer having to reorient their mobile device.”
So you must have a fashion digital marketing strategy that includes Instagram videos. For instance, check out this Instagram reel featuring a convertible top by Free People.
Instagram video marketing for fashion best practices
- Instagram’s algorithm effectively promotes reels as of now. Your target audiences are likely likely to discover your brand through Instagram reels. You can participate in Instagram trends, especially on Reels, whether it’s creating a video reel on a dance challenge, a minimal skincare routine, or a max fashion haul.
- You can create Instagram reel videos and video stories (or posts) featuring outfits, lookbooks, and catalogs of your latest products, showcase your special collections and editions, highlight behind-the-scenes processes, and more.
- According to an Instagram survey, mobile-shot stories ads have a 63% chance of outperforming studio-shot ads. So make simple Instagram videos directly using your mobile to create organic interactive video content, as it is likely to drive more engagement for your fashion brand.
- Tag your products on Instagram stories and Reels so that users can click and find them easily. Check out how you can tag products on Instagram in this helpful guide.
- Further, if you are creating ads on Instagram, make sure to include your brand logo, a short video introducing the video/ series, and a call to action (CTA), asking users to swipe up/ know more, etc. You can now create thumb-stopping Instagram videos with music, text, captions, and more, even if you have never edited a video before with InVideo’s online editor.
Pro Tip: It is now super easy to take your mobile-shot videos and customize them to reflect your brand by adding a logo, brand colors, a cool and short intro, and more using InVideo’s Instagram video maker.
B. Facebook
Four in ten Facebook (Meta) users claim that they have discovered fashion brands via the platform. Facebook is no less important than Instagram when it comes to finding and acquiring new audiences. Facebook allows fashion brands the ability to increase brand loyalty and shop at the same time.
Facebook video marketing for fashion best practices
- While women talking about fashion and shopping online on Facebook is no mystery, research by Facebook Insight found that 37% of mentions of shopping, clothes, and accessories on Facebook are made by men. Fashion brands and eCommerce retailers catering to men’s fashion can certainly use Facebook as a platform for digital marketing.
- Facebook fashion groups are also a great breeding ground for fashionistas and fashion enthusiasts. Brands can make use of these groups to share videos of their latest products, catalogs, and more as a way to engage with interested users and create brand loyalty.
- Fashion brands can tailor their video content according to country and other audience-specific traits. Use the Facebook audience Insights tool to find out what your users are likely to look for on Facebook in different countries and regions.
- Use Facebook to grow your community and engage with audiences, but also to share live broadcasts of your fashion collections and products.
- For example, ASOS went live with ‘100 layers of ASOS,’ a short contest between ASOS staff members where they had 30 minutes to create a look for their models – using 100 layers of ASOS clothing for dramatic effect.
C. Pinterest
Pinterest is the place people go to when they are looking for outfit inspiration, fashion inspiration, and more. The platform boasts 459 million monthly active users. While many still associate it with images, pinners watch just shy of one billion videos a day, according to a Pinterest report. Another interesting statistic for marketers to note is that 83% of weekly Pinners have made a purchase based on the content they saw from brands on Pinterest. If you are a fashion digital marketer, you need to include Pinterest as a part of your digital marketing strategy.
Pinterest video marketing for fashion best practices
- A super-powerful fashion digital marketing strategy to get organic traffic, you can pin your existing content including your product photos, campaign photos, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook videos, and more to Pinterest. This way, you can start connecting your existing images and videos to Pinterest for free before you start investing in Pinterest ads, to build a following.
- 97% of business searches on Pinterest do not have brand names. This is great because your brand gets to capture attention when people are at the decision-making stage on Pinterest. You want to make sure you connect your brand to broader keywords for Pinterest. For example “outfits for short women” or “streetwear”. So if your brand is about any of these, when you have linked it to the relevant keywords, your brand will be easily discovered when someone is searching for these products.
- You want to link your Pinterest posts to relevant keywords and hashtags. This way when people search for a specific term on Pinterest, they can see your brand photos, videos, and more.
- For example, look at this Adidas ad on Popsugar featuring their ultra-high-tech running shoe. The ad is linked to the Popsugar webpage featuring the shoes and their benefits as well as links to buy them. Simple and effective, the pin might be saved by someone looking to buy the shoe.
D. Tiktok
If you are a fashion brand looking to make it big through digital marketing, you need to factor in TikTok as a social media platform of your choice. Just like Instagram, TikTok offers you the chance to promote your brand and create awareness in cool and engaging ways. Going viral on TikTok is very possible for even new brands or new accounts!
Vlogger Charli D’Amelio’s best-performing video on TikTok for fashion house Prada racked up 5.7m likes, 64.3K shares, and 36.8m views. The brand managed to create this much of a buzz, without even having its TikTok account. Check out Charli’s video on YouTube featuring the Prada bag at the Milan Fashion Week.
You can easily create videos for your TikTok using InVideo’s online editor. This way you can get stunning, custom videos that you can also repurpose for other short-form platforms like Reels and YouTube shorts. Here is a laundry list of 26 viral TikTok trends with ready to edit InVideo templates that you can play with and personalize to create your TikTok videos as a part of your digital marketing strategy.
E. YouTube
Small eCommerce brands can leverage Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for their video marketing needs effectively. But mid-sized or larger businesses have used YouTube to build engagement with users and create an image of their brand. Everything from product tutorials to catalog and collection videos and special causes that brands stand for is represented in YouTube videos. For example, Chanel, the luxury fashion brand boasts 1.95 Million subscribers, while LV (Louis Vuitton) has 940K subscribers on YouTube.
Building a presence and a brand on YouTube might take time, but it can be extremely beneficial in the long run. Check out this guide on getting more views on YouTube to start creating videos that grab attention.
2. Run paid ads across platforms
People who click on ads and come to your website are 50% more likely to purchase something as compared to organic visitors. That should tell you that paid ads are an extremely important tool in your digital marketing arsenal. Paid advertising has a very high ROI and can be a great tool to get more leads and sales in.
However, to make paid ads work, you will need to diversify. There are multiple types of digital ads that you can run for your brand including remarketing ads, pay-per-click ads, social media ads, and more. To understand the different types of ads you should create for your fashion and brand and how you should run them, check out this in-depth guide.
One thing you should consider, however, is creating video ads for your brand. Video ads have a higher return on investment and are better received by the audience. Running targeted video ads on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media channels can be a great option to create brand awareness and generate higher sales. You can announce discounts and offers, new product line launches, show off various product highlights and features, etc through these paid video ads.
For example, check out Fashion Nova’s Facebook ad featuring a pair of super stretch jeans.
The ad shows off how their product fits and stretches. It also highlights how the jeans show off your curves - an insight that Fashion Nova customers value and care for. The fashion brand understands its target consumers. They also have a clear goal with this ad - promoting their product with a discount code. This makes for a great mix, as they can deliver the right message to relevant consumers through this ad.
Insights on how you can run paid ads for your fashion brand:
- Know your target audience and what they need in connection with your fashion product. Ask how you can deliver value to them.
- Have a clear goal for your paid ad. For a fashion brand, your goal can be to gain more conversions and sell more, create awareness about a new collection or product, promote a special seasonal sale, offer or discount, etc. Based on these goals, you can choose the type of ad you need and the investment you must make. Check out this guide to understand how you can start with paid ads.
Create your own paid video ad featuring a discount, a sale, or a special offer by personalizing this eye-catching video within minutes.
Pro Tip: Interested to learn more about video marketing? Here’s a detailed guide on generating leads through video advertising that you should check out.
3. Build your digital presence through social media
One of the most prominent fashion digital marketing ideas would be to get active on social media sites. This is because social media is the preferred medium of choice for people to discover new fashion brands. In fact, in 2019, 72% of consumers used social media to discover new products.
Creating an account on all social sites might feel tempting, but it might not prove efficient. Start with the two biggest channels: Facebook and Instagram to make the most of your social media efforts. And, as you move forward, you can use other social media sites, like Pinterest, YouTube, and Twitter for your fashion brand’s promotion.
The next step would be to identify your buyer's persona and what type of content they would want to interact with. For instance, if you’re a fashion brand that makes athleisure clothing, your target audience would be very different from a brand that sells dresses. This can be done by surveying your current clients or doing external research on people you think to make your ideal buyer. This way you will be able to create content that is relevant and valuable to your audience.
For instance, the brand Popflex Active, which is an active-wear brand by fitness blogger Cassey Ho, has a social media strategy built around Instagram and TikTok that focuses on sharing videos catered to fitness enthusiasts and their pain points. Here’s an example:
Your main focus when creating content is to educate, engage or invoke a response from your audience. And, video content works well here. You can create any type of social media video content like outfit tryouts, tips on you to use and care for clothes, tips on how to style the outfits on your websites, and more using editable InVideo templates like the one given below.
All you’ve got to do is choose the right aspect ratio for your social media post, upload your media, add text, and stock media if necessary. Also, don’t forget to add a CTA at the end.
Another example is the fashion brand Réalisation Par, founded by Alexandra Spencer and Teale Talbot. The brand gears its online store toward social media platforms. Its Instagram profile features mainstream and micro-influencer marketing, compelling visuals, shoppable posts as well as curated Spotify playlists that help bring the brand to life. Réalisation Par also expands its reach to Facebook, which lets customers browse products and easily migrate to Facebook shopping to make purchases. The seamless flow from channel to channel allows customers to find what they’re looking for — wherever they are — and enjoy an integrated, seamless experience.
Pro Tip: Just keep in mind that when creating content, not all your followers are at the same marketing funnel stage. So, prepare your content for every stage of the funnel, like showcasing your most attractive outfits for a very cold audience, a video addressing pain points of the audience for those who are in the evaluation stage, and styling tips or guides for those who are just about to close the deal. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can generate leads through social media marketing for your fashion brand.
4. Create a user-friendly website or app
Your fashion brand’s website plays an important role in marketing your offers and building awareness. But, in such a competitive environment, you need an effective site that makes you stand out in front of your competitors and evoke them to take action.
Mobile messaging, AI (artificial intelligence), VR (virtual reality), and predictive recommendation systems are some of the technologies that fashion brands are incorporating into their websites to promote products and provide unique experiences to consumers.
For instance, Réalisation Par boasts an interactive website that is user and mobile-friendly. Hovering over a product shows you an image of a model wearing the product, giving the customer an idea of the feel and fit.
You can create your website via an eCommerce portal or platform (a software application that allows online businesses to manage their website, marketing, sales, and operations). Check out a detailed guide on eCommerce platforms to consider in this article.
One thing you should focus on, regardless of which platform you host your website on, is using videos to give users a seamless experience as well as a realistic feel of the outfits you’re selling. You can easily make these videos using an intuitive editor like InVideo that lets you create stunning videos within minutes.
5. Create Facebook & Instagram shops
While there are various methods to sell your fashion products online, one effective method is creating an Instagram or Facebook shop. Every month, 130 million Insta users click on shopping posts. Meanwhile, in 2019, 15% of Facebook users used the social platform to look and shop for products, and that number has only grown since. For example, check out this Instagram post by Free People UK, leading to their Instagram shop, where consumers can directly buy the products listed in the post and other items from their catalogs as well.
The brand has tagged various products in this post on its Instagram feed and linked them to its Instagram shop. You can similarly tag your posts and link them to products on your Instagram or Facebook shops. This not only makes your content more discoverable but also allows users to directly buy from the platform. Check out how you can set up shop on Facebook and Instagram here.
6. Create style guides for your products
One of the easiest ways to promote your products on social media is by creating style guides or lookbooks for social media. These can take the form of flat lay photos showing off your products, a video featuring various articles from your catalog, or a tutorial on ways to personalize your product.
For example, look at this Instagram carousel featuring Uniqlo’s new Spring-Summer collection.
The first image is a flat lay with various items in the spring-summer catalog by Uniqlo ‘22. The next images in the carousel show us the various items individually. This not only promotes awareness about the collection and its aesthetics but also invites prospective customers to check out local Uniqlo pages to find out how they can buy these designs. This is a super simple and effective way to promote your newest products, collections, and more.
Instead of posting photos in a carousel, you can also create a video or slideshow of your collection to create a more engaging style guide like the one shown below. You can of course create a high production setup and shoot a cinematic video or you can use pictures with transitions for a more dramatic effect.
7. Invest heavily in influencer marketing
The easiest way for a fashion brand today to gain credibility and trust is by partnering with influencers. Influencers are valued as much as celebrities because of their vast reach and high engagement on social media. Plus, their followers trust them and will be more likely to check out and buy your product if it is recommended by their favorite influencer. So, collaborating with an influencer is amongst the top fashion digital marketing ideas for your business.
Note that you’ll have to build authentic relationships with specific influencers who share synergies with your brand and products organically. What you can do is look into your customer base to spot local influencers who have a very loyal following. Talk to them and leverage their following to get more clients. For example, check out this list of gym outfits by fashion blogger What Em Wore on Instagram.
The video features a bunch of gym outfits by Gym Shark Women. We see Em trying out the whole collection and sharing her favorite in the description. As is evident with her emphasis on fitness and sharp outfits, Em can provide authentic information and honest reviews about the clothing. She also mentions a comment about how the material is great for gym wear.
This is an effective way for Gym Shark to reach the right people who are probably interested in similar outfits and fashion through Em’s account. You can go one step further and give influencers a discount code they can share with their followers. This also allows you to get a return on your investment in sharing your products with influencers.
Pro tip: Some influencers are a part of engagement programs on social media. This means that they are using bots, or software to beef up their follower count to seem bigger than they are. If you are a small business owner or a niche fashion brand catering to a specific group of people, you might want to look at the engagement rate on influencers’ accounts to weed out these influencers.
8. Launch affiliate programs
Affiliate marketing is a reward-based system that encourages partners to promote your products in exchange for a commission. These are a great way to increase brand awareness, build loyalty, and improve credibility.
Usually, an affiliate program will pay via a flat dollar amount or a percentage of the total sale, but incentives could also be free or discounted products. Target, for example, gives affiliates exclusive sales and promos, in addition to a commission. Amazon offers a percentage of the revenue on affiliate sales.
The way to go about affiliate programs is to collaborate with influencers, industry experts, or small celebrities who usually have a sizeable audience that they can drive to your product by posting about it. For example, fashion eCommerce brand New Chic invites people to join their affiliate program. They pay affiliates anywhere between 18 to 50% commission on sales. As a result, they can feature various product videos and posts by influencers on their social media pages.
You can also launch referral or loyalty programs in the same vein. While not as structured as affiliate programs, these allow customers to become your brand ambassadors. You can do this by simply sharing a referral code with your customers after they purchase something from you. You can give them cashback, discounts, or loyalty points for referrals with their code or link. This is an effective way to nurture relationships with consumers and provide them value beyond the products they purchase from you. What’s more, this cashback or discounts can lead them to come back and shop with you to claim the offer!
For instance, check out streetwear brand Nicce. They have a special loyalty program where spending 1Euro is equal to 5 Nicce coins. Each coin is equal to a 0.01p discount on the website and app. Tasks like creating an account, referring a friend, and performing special promotional tasks are worth a large amount of N coins.
The Nicce rewards include loyalty points and corresponding vouchers which allow you to get more discounts.
9. Run giveaways for brand awareness
Hosting a giveaway is an excellent way to build brand awareness and increase your website traffic and sales momentarily. But it’s still one of the best fashion digital marketing ideas as it appeals to the desire of wanting to win at something and motivates potential customers to participate, engage, and check out your website or social media pages.
For example, check out this post by Birchbox on Instagram announcing a giveaway. It invites followers and viewers to select their top 3 Birchbox products from the options, announcing that 10 users will win the whole set.
You can conduct a giveaway by partnering with other content creators or posting about it on social media. And to ensure active participation and increased engagement on your giveaway post, create simple steps to participate in your giveaway and make sure the reward is big enough for people to want to participate. A good idea is to use a video post instead of a static image as a giveaway post if you want to grab more eyeballs. Check out these templates to create stunning giveaway videos.
10. Grow your email list
You might find this surprising, but emails outperform social media channels by a great margin regarding reach, content value, and personalization. Email offers the highest ROI compared to any other marketing channel, especially for fashion brands.
The first step toward creating a great email marketing strategy for your fashion brand is to set clear goals. Some of the goals you might want to achieve include acquiring new customers, increasing brand awareness, and assisting people in their fashion choices so they choose your brands over others.
Once you’ve set goals, you’ve got to select an easy-to-use email marketing service having newsletter builders, responsive email templates, and segmentation options to personalize emails for different target groups.
The next step is to start building your email list by promoting lead magnets online and setting up an automated email sequence that sends your subscribers the latest update. You can also put a sign-up link on your social media pages and run ads online to get more people to sign up for your email list. A super simple way of doing this is by inviting people to share their emails in exchange for a discount or bonus points. For example, clicking on the elk & HAMMER jewelry shop ad on Instagram redirected me to the online shop website. Immediately, I got a pop-up asking me to leave my email ID and subscribe to the newsletter as well as get information about offers and discounts.
You can also nurture existing consumer relationships with people who land up on your website but do not buy anything, remind them to shop or make a purchase when something has been added to the cart, and more. Check out this guide to learn how to build and grow your email list in 2022.
Pro-Tip: If you want to up your email game, we recommend trying to send introductory videos through your email to build a better connection. Here are a few introduction templates that’ll help.
Fashion digital marketing best practices
Now that you know the different fashion digital marketing ideas that can help your brand grow, let’s go ahead and look at a few things you need to keep in mind before you implement these ideas.
Tip #1 - Diversify your marketing channels
When creating your fashion digital marketing strategy, make sure to diversify and use different channels instead of relying only on one. For instance, you can use a combination of having a killer website, along with a strong email marketing channel and one core social media platform.
If you stick only to one, like having a website, you might find it difficult to drive traffic and generate quality leads because there’s no way people are getting to know about your website. Similarly, if you just have a social media platform and the algorithm changes tomorrow, you could lose the entire audience you’ve built without any backup option.
Tip #2 - Create a social media calendar for the best results
Planning your year, month, days, etc is very important when it comes to social media. What you want to do is create a calendar with information about what you’d like to post, as well as relevant hashtags and keywords related to it. You can plan for special days, holidays, or events. You can also schedule a launch of new products, collections, and more through dedicated social media campaigns.
Posting relevant content on important days of the year is a great way to draw attention and grab some eyeballs without too much of an effort. This is one hack you want to capitalize on. Check out this guide with a custom template to help you plan your social media calendar for 2022.
Tip #3 - Design mobile-first content
With more than half the global internet users shopping online, and 6.4 Bn smartphone users worldwide, mobile is the preferred way of viewing content. For fashion brands especially, creating mobile-first visuals is key. Here are a few tips to create content that is best viewed on apps like Instagram and other social media platforms:
- Create content in the 9x16 (vertical) aspect ratio for Instagram and TikTok.
- Add motion (animations or simple transitions) to your content for greater engagement.
- Use text and subtitles to ensure readability and optimize for sound off. For example, check out this reel by Anthropologie, featuring scarf styling tips. The video uses text throughout to provide context, helping the user watch, even when there’s no sound.
- Use the carousel format on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest to make content about multiple products, product features, and more.
- Create an intro or a trailer for your videos and reels to increase brand recall.
- Make sure to use elements like your logo, brand colors, and more to ensure that the content is connected to your brand or business in the minds of viewers.
So that’s how you can create your own fashion digital marketing hacks to earn more revenue and increase sales. Meanwhile, if you want to create thumb-stopping videos for your fashion digital marketing campaigns, check out this step-by-step tutorial on how you can use over 5000+ pre-made templates on InVideo to create stunning videos quickly and easily.
Wrapping Up
If you’re trying to grow your fashion brand or business, your fashion digital marketing strategy needs to be hyper-personalized and spot on. But it doesn’t mean that coming up with ideas needs to be a tedious process. With this list of digital marketing ideas for fashion, you can take inspiration and create your campaigns.
You may want to take a look at this guide on everything Instagram promotions to make your mark on the platform in 2022 and if you prefer to learn via videos, check out InVideo’s YouTube channel to learn more video editing hacks and tricks!
This post was written by Upasna and edited by Adete from Team InVideo
