In today’s fashion industry, so many apparel brands pop up every day and consumers are spoilt for choice. The problem then becomes how to market your fashion brand to attract loyal customers.
In this post, I share a few of my favourite tips for fashion marketing that will attract customers to your brand and keep them coming back.
These tips are perfect for any brand, whether you’re an established fashion business or a new fashion entrepreneur. You can also pull most of these tips off regardless of your marketing budget.
Here’s a deeper look at how to attract loyal customers to your fashion business:
5 Tips For Attracting Loyal Customers To Your Fashion Brand
Most new fashion entrepreneurs say they struggle with getting customers virtually. Either attracting new website visitors, converting them into customers, or acquiring new customers through social media platforms.
These tips ought to be helpful to newbie fashion business owners.
1. Focus On Your Customers’ Needs
You’ll need to think deeply about your customers when marketing your brand.
Making sales and attracting loyal customers has a lot more to do with psychology than we think. You’ll need to tap into their emotions and make a connection with them.
It’s therefore crucial that you know who your customers are, or will be if you’re just starting out. Then, learn their needs, and when you finally get to promoting your brand, tell your customers what you intend to do for them.
Here are points you can consider:
● How will your product help them? Be clear on the benefits your product has on your customers when marketing if you want to attract more of them.
● Avoid overpromoting your business and let the quality of your products earn you more customers. Research shows that 65% of users in the US and UK do not trust advertisements as much as they trust social proof.
● Consider other interests your customers may have that are related to your clothing line and create blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other content that will add value to them.
People are much more inclined to click on something that provides a solution to a problem they've been having. For instance, if you’re selling activewear apparel, you can create other fitness-related content such as nutrition for working out, or workout routines —something your customers would find useful.
If you’re not sure what information you’ll need to gather about your audience, this post can help.
2. Use Targeted Marketing Tactics
Marketing options are vast, both paid and unpaid, including your website, emails, and social media platforms. While you can try a little bit of each, it’s not always an effective way to attract loyal customers.
For instance, if social media marketing is not working for your brand, perhaps it’s time to explore more targeted marketing tactics such as email and SMS marketing. Similarly, if social media marketing works, you can choose the best-performing platforms and prioritise them.
I advise fashion brands to choose at least two marketing methods for a start and maximise them. Some effective marketing ideas include;
● Optimizing your website SEO to appear in more organic searches
● Use the Pinterest search engine/social media platform: a minimally utilised marketing tool.
● Referral marketing. This is especially effective for building loyalty among your customers since people trust people they already know.
● Posting guest blogs on other websites
● Brand partnerships and influencer marketing
● Email and SMS marketing
● Pitching to the press and being featured (one of my favourite marketing methods - it’s free and gives your brand credibility)
● Event marketing, both online and offline.
● Social media and website paid advertising
Social media is the most familiar method for most fashion brands, so you’ve probably tried it.
However, if you’ve not had success with it, you can always try The Fashion Sales Kit, which has 90 days and beyond of content ideas for your brand.
3. Monitor Your Customers’ Buying Journey
To attract loyal customers, you’ll need to be a part of their buying journey, right from when they get introduced to your fashion brand until they become repeat customers.
For this, you’ll need to keep track of your marketing data, and carefully guide your customers down your sales funnel. The early stages of promotion are the most difficult as customers need to interact with your brand multiple times before making a purchase.
Therefore, with platforms such as social media, you’ll need to put more effort toward attracting an audience, getting them interested in your brand, and consequently turning them into loyal customers.
Statistics have it that most of your followers won’t see your posts online due to social media algorithms. I have specific steps I follow for this process, which I call the A.C.E.S method.
Data and algorithms can sound scary, but actually they can be really simple when you know what to look for! If you want to learn more about these and the A.C.E.S method, you can click here for The Fashion Marketing Course which teaches all this and more.
The best thing about this method is it helps you build a community of ‘raving fans’; a concept created by Ken Blanchard. This refers to when customers love a brand so much, they can’t stop telling people about it.
4. Automation Marketing
So many affordable marketing tools exist out there that can automate some of your repetitive marketing efforts.
Take email and social media marketing for example. You could take a vacation and be away from your computer but still, have your fashion business gain more customers.
With automated email triggers, personalisation, and audience segmentation, your subscribers can receive periodic promotional emails from you automatically and place orders on your site without you lifting a finger. That’s the power of automation.
Automation ensures consistency in your interactions with your customers, keeping your fashion business and brand name in their minds. Despite the competition that exists in the fashion industry, you’d still be able to turn your brand into a fashion powerhouse with the right marketing combination.
5. Offer Financial Incentives
This may be a short-term way to attract customers, but it helps introduce new buyers to your business, making them feel like a part of your fashion community.
Everyone loves a good incentive, and you can structure it in any way that fits customers, regardless of their place in their buying journey. Discounts, coupons, free shipping, you name it.
For instance, you can reward repeat customers with discounts to build loyalty, or you could offer free shipping for first-time customers as a welcome gift and to encourage them to try the brand for the first time.
A word of warning here though – don’t be discounting all the time! It can lead to problems down the road and make it difficult for you to sell at full price.
Ready To Up Your Marketing Game?
Building a loyal customer base around any fashion brand can be daunting. And as discussed, it may also sound like a lot of work. Well, it is—attracting customers to your fashion brand takes work.
However, when you eventually built yourself a loyal customer base and have repeat customers, chances are you’ll keep them as long as your brand exists. Because once customers become loyal to your brand, most remain loyal for years and sometimes even for life.
If you’re ready to uplevel your marketing, I invite you to check out The Fashion Marketing Course and see how my step-by-step training can help your brand.
Pickleball outfit inspiration……