In the early 2000s, magazines were still the number one source of inspiration for fashion enthusiasts. Fast forward 10 years and social media influencers obtained more power than most catwalk models. In 2022, some might even believe that Instagram is now the new vogue!
When it comes to social media, the fashion industry is a fast-paced market that has a huge worldwide community. In order to make the most of social media marketing, fashion brands must create an effective strategy that can boost engagement, drive sales and attract a loyal following.
Why do Fashion Brands Need a Strong Social Media Strategy?
With a huge list of competitors, fashion brands should expect to create a well-developed strategy in order to make the most of their presence on social media. Unlike the runway, fashion on Instagram isn’t just about trends, but also about experiences, connections, and communities.
As a digital marketing agency with extensive experience in fashion marketing, here are our top tips on how to successfully utilise social media as a fashion brand.
Instagram Strategy For Fashion Brands
As a highly-visual platform, fashion brands should strive for complete creativity on Instagram. As well as promoting products, it’s also crucial to create connections, maintain consistency and provide value. Here are our five top tips for boosting your visibility on Instagram.
1. Diversify Your Content
These are the most engaging types of content that fashion brands should include in their strategy:
Products
According to Brand Muscle among many others, 80% of social media posts should be useful to your audience — meaning they educate, entertain, or inspire. On the other hand, only 20% should explicitly promote your products or brand. Nonetheless, those promotional posts are still important and should be utilised in a creative, eye-catching way.
Girlfriend Collective have created an captivating catalogue of product images throughout their feed. Photographing the outfits in unique, real-life ways.
New Collections / Launches
Have an exciting announcement on the way? Why not create momentum with an eye-catching pre-launch post? This will excite users before your launch or sale even goes live! It will also give them a reason to return back to your profile to check in for more.
To successfully promote their new summer collection, Lavish Alice increased brand awareness by offering an exciting giveaway. This resulted in more accounts engaging with their profile and checking out the new range.
Lifestyle Content
The inspiration behind living an “aesthetic lifestyle” is everywhere on Instagram. Because of this, fashion brands can now utilise lifestyle posts to subtly promote a product.
Adanola bring their story to life by demonstrating how outfits look throughout everyday errands. This creative approach represents the products in real life and not just on a rail.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
UGC is the perfect way to show followers how your products look on different people. At the same time, you’ll also be sharing customer testimonials!
Like a lot of other brands, ASOS take full advantage of UGC. Here they reshare a reel by an influencer who gives a full review of a high-demand product. This is the perfect way to get users rushing over to your website!
Behind-the-Scenes
Behind-the-scenes content is a great way to create a deeper connection with your audience. Consider posting Reels or doing Live Videos to answer any questions that they might have.
With 18.5 million followers, Pretty Little Thing have built up a huge following on Instagram. As well as posting fun behind-the-scenes clips from events and shoot days, they also have an Instagram highlight called “FAQs”. This is where they answer important questions raised by their audience.
2. Invest In Influencer Marketing
According to Linqia, 93% of marketers agree that Instagram remains the top social media platform for influencer marketing. As a huge and growing industry, it’s important that you choose the right influencers who will help your brand grow and succeed. Check out our expert guide for finding the best Instagram influencers for your fashion brand.
3. Set up Instagram Shopping
Instagram shopping is a handy way for users to browse and buy products without leaving the Instagram app. Once you set it up, your Instagram followers and other users can shop your products directly on the app. Likewise, TikTok Shop is another similar and popular tool for convenient online shopping.
4. Make use of Fashion Hashtags
Due to the huge amount of fashion bloggers and influencers, hashtags are one of the best ways to reach a wider audience on Instagram. If you’re able to master your strategy, they can boost the reach, engagement and overall growth of your Instagram account. However, without proper research, those go-to hashtags might turn out to be completely and utterly useless! Check out our handy hashtag guide which covers everything you need to know about adding hashtags into your social media strategy.
5. Invest in Paid Adverts
Social media advertising is one of the most important digital marketing channels for fashion brands. By combining eye-catching designs, compelling copy and intelligent data, paid social is an incredibly powerful tool that helps to capture user attention at all stages of the buying journey.
We worked with Couture Club among many others, to help increase ROAS and brand awareness. Within just a couple of months, the client’s accounts were outperforming their previous results. We achieved a 66% increase in return on investment and a 50% increase in revenue.
In order to build a loyal following and turn that audience into customers, brands must create and implement an effective strategy. In the world of fashion marketing, It’s crucial to maintain consistency, diversify content, work with influencers and invest in paid adverts.
As an experienced marketing agency, we’ve worked with a super long list of diverse fashion brands. Our paid social team have perfected an approach that we’re very proud of. Scaling performance for maximum return and ensuring your ads are seen by the right people, at the right time.
Interested in learning more about how we can help your fashion brand on social media? Get in touch today!
.svg)