Ever thought why American people love purchasing clothes from Gap or Macy’s?
There are many other fashion brands out there in the USA, however, Gap and Macy’s stand out as the top choices when it comes to buying clothes and fashion garments.
It is not because they are big brands but because of their big eCommerce Marketing.
The fashion industry is an evergreen industry where customers are always waiting for new arrivals and never feel tired trying something different. But to succeed in the industry, businesses need constant improvement in marketing and customer service.
In 2020, fashion eCommerce accounted for nearly 29.5% of the total fashion retail sales, and retail eCommerce revenue from the sale of fashion apparel, footwear, and accessories amounted to an estimated 110.6 billion USD.
There are already 7.9 million online retailers in the world and 2.1 million of them are in the USA alone. If you have an eCommerce store, you didn’t make any difference. To win in the fashion industry, you have to be serious as well as smart with marketing.
These days shouting to get your message across all platforms won’t bring people to hear you. You have to speak effectively and uniquely that makes your customer feel to browse online.
Without a human personality, your shop just looks like a normal shop to a potential customer, and you are shouting at them as they are passing you by. If your store is also hungry for more customers, it’s time to do something unique in eCommerce marketing that empowers your online store.
Today in this blog post, eSearch Logix will tell you effective eCommerce marketing tips that will make your online fashion store stand out from the crowd and help you sell more than your competitors.
It sounds alluring to make your online fashion store stand out from other stores but to make a difference in the crowd, you have to first be aware of:
What is the current status of the fashion industry?
1. Competition in the fashion industry had increased
Fashion business is growing across all sectors- from local to global companies and from retailers to wholesalers. As the number of eCommerce fashion stores is growing, customers now have more options to choose from.
This growth has made the fashion industry more competitive. So, to make a difference in the industry, innovation is highly needed to thrive in the fast-changing industry.
2. People are shifting to online and mobile platforms
When it comes to eCommerce business in 2021, the fashion industry appears as a large B2C market segment. Covid-19 pandemic forced the entire world to stay home and do everything from home. This change in behavior made people avoid shopping in-store and moving to eCommerce platforms.
Browsing through catalogs, choosing items, and checking out online has become a new routine. Fashion brands are now discovering ways to create an omnichannel shopping journey to gain customers on both online and offline platforms.
3. Customers are considering sustainability and ethical sourcing in their purchase decisions.
Fashion industry is one of the largest industries in the world, but it faces a lot of criticism about sustainability and other ethical values. A report by UNECE indicates that 10 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions come from the fashion industry.
People are now aware of the carbon emission caused by clothing production and the poor working conditions in sweatshops. For these reasons, consumers are beginning to shop more responsibly and become choosy in selecting their favorite fashion brands.
eCommerce Marketing Tips to Make Your Online Fashion Store Stand Out
1. Define Your Target Audience
If you are selling to everyone, it means you are selling to no one. As fashion is a big market, you have to clearly define who is your target audience and market location for your clothing company. You need to know whom you are selling to so you could identify specific things to do it well. Just because you are selling skirts, it doesn’t mean every woman is your customer.
They all have different tastes and choices in fashion so you should narrow down your target audience to flow your digital marketing investment in the right direction. To make it happen, here are the primary questions to figure out your target audience:
- What are they interested in?
- What is their age, gender, location?
- What is their profession?
- What fashion brands do they like?
- Where do they hang out online?
It is important to understand the goal of your brand. Is it meant to sell clothes for all age groups or just a certain part of people? It applies to different customer groups based on the above factors such as their age, genders, hobbies, etc.
Once you know your target audience, you can create content with a clear message that will capture the audience’s attention. Additionally, keep in mind that your target audience may change a little as your online fashion store grows. You may identify that some audiences buy better than others and then put attention towards marketing to them.
2. Reach Shoppers with Targeted Ads
The next move is to find the best ways to reach your target audience. And online advertising is undoubtedly one of the most efficient ways to scale your store.
Why?
Because you can start selling instantly
A long-term organic content strategy can help you leave many of your competitors behind. You can run an online ad campaign with quality content to create a unique impact on the audience. You can also incorporate top PPC trends in your online ad campaign to generate high ROI and start selling instantly.
So where should you run ads?
According to Sixads data collected from more than 60,000 Shopify stores to see where visitors and money come from, there are top 5 best sales channels such as Direct, Facebook, Organic, Google Ads, and Instagram Ads for apparel & accessories.
Paid advertising accounts for a significant chunk of sales. With ads, your online fashion store can get a large number of views and increase your brand awareness. You can run direct sales ads or promote your blog to heat up your target market.
Once people will see your ads with good content, they will eventually start purchasing from your store. Though they may not buy immediately but may bookmark your store and return to it later ready to make a purchase. It could be direct sales for your store as well.
To increase the brand awareness of your eCommerce fashion store, you should set up high-performing ads, since fashion industry is extremely competitive. Not only you have to create great as well as attention-grabbing copy but also you will have to work out the intuitive details of targeting the right people at the right time.
No matter how good your ad looks, if you are targeting the wrong market, your whole investment is going in vain. Is there any best solution to make the ad fully successful on the Internet?
Yes, just hand over your ad campaign project to a professional online marketing agency like eSearch Logix who can handle independently everything and make your ad campaign for your online fashion brand across all the channels.
3. Take Beautiful Pictures of Clothes
People see before they read. Your fashion store will have a great impression on visitors when there are great images. And for fashion brands- it is all about looks. If you are running an online fashion store, shoppers can’t touch or try on your clothes as they could do at an offline store or in a mall.
To compensate for this lack of product experience, you have to utilize high-quality photos and showcase your items from all possible angles. To make it happen:
- Have a few different models
If you have the budget, organize a professional photoshoot to get photos for your store. Models can present your clothes from any angle which you need and bring your clothing to life.
- Get a mannequin
If you don’t have the budget to hire a model, a mannequin can be the best idea to make your clothes look good and give a better view to customers.
4. Promote Your Clothes on Social Media
eCommerce marketing is incomplete without social media marketing. Just think of Instagram, and how eye-catching photos attract people’s attention and inspire them to make a purchase through a link.
So don’t forget to use the power of social media to promote your online fashion store. Below we have given some important things which can help you do so.
- Allow shopping on social media
The whole purpose of making your online store stand out from the crowd is to sell more than your competitors, right? You should be aware of selling clothes on social media is much easier when you turn your social media account into a shop.
To enable this, integrate your eCommerce fashion store with social media accounts like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, and let visitors browse clickable catalogs of your latest collections with a simple formula- See, Tap, and Shop.
5. Use Social Proof
Customer trust on customer more than businesses. There are many eCommerce stores selling the same products, but customers usually prefer some specific stores due to their special features and brand recognition.
If you aspire to develop an online fashion store that stands out from common stores, you should focus on using social proof to bring trustability. How would you do this? Let’s find out-
- Incorporate User-Generated Content
User-generated content or UGC helps businesses to turn customers into brand advocates. You can present your clothing store to your audience with great brand reliability when you have authentic content.
For example, Gap and Macy’s the two iconic fashion brands encourage their customers to upload photos with their products using a branded hashtag. This is how you can get social proof to entrust customers:
- Have more testimonials
Reviews have a great influence on people’s buying decisions. It is probably the most direct form of social proof that empowers businesses to give strong brand reliability to new customers.
Send automated emails to your customers who made a purchase from your online store. You can encourage them to write a review by just asking politely or offer a small discount on their next purchase.
You can also use the social proof tool which can help your store selling more products with the power of reviews, and feedbacks from customers. BuzzFyr is such an advanced social proof tool powered by eSearch Logix which helps store owners to improve their sales performance.
- Influencer marketing still has the influence
Think when something stands out uniquely from the common things? When it is able to capture the attention of people. Influencer marketing is the same thing that still has the power to influence the maximum number of people. You are selling clothes which are made up of diamonds or from the raw materials which are found on Mars.
People usually make their purchasing decision through a reliable source of information or product education. If you are able to educate your audience about your product nicely, chances are your online store will have no difficulty selling any clothing products.
That is why we recommend you use Influencer marketing. The best way would be to opt for multiple micro-influencers instead of hiring one big influencer who may cost a lot on your eCommerce marketing budget.
A micro-influencer is one that has around 10,000 to 100,000 followers. These micro-influencers can help you promote your online fashion store effectively across all social media channels.
6. Use affiliate marketing to uplift your online fashion store
Affiliate marketing is among the best ways for clothing brands to attract new customers and increase their brand awareness, especially when there is a lack of time to create blog content on your website.
Affiliate marketing is about promoting someone else’s brand or products on your website. So, if you want to promote your online fashion store, create an affiliate program and find relevant promoters in your niche.
As a seller, you will get targeted traffic with a high conversion rate and your affiliate partners will receive a commission from each sale you make. It’s a win-win partnership. To start selling clothes with affiliate partners, you can implement the following strategies like:
- Outreach your niche bloggers who have high domain authority
- Search for influencers who have a considerable number of followers
- Run Pay-Par-Click (PPC) ads
- Join affiliate networks
7. Display Social Responsibility
If you have the vision to make your online store stand out from the crowd, you have to do something that stands from others. People give values who value to others. The same principle applies here as well. Clothes are an essential commodity and people can never live without them.
This industry needs a timely marketing approach that resonates with people to have consistent sales growth. Displaying social responsibility is a great concept where a company showcases a sense of responsibility towards the community and the environment in which it works.
Modern audiences ate more socially aware and mostly willing to deal with ethical companies which embrace social responsibility, even if the products are more expensive. As a result, the brand gets special recognition in the eyes of a common audience which is in high number.
You can learn from Toms.com who has a unique value proposition- it’s one for one founding idea links altruism to commerce. For every pair of new shoes it sells, the company donates a pair of new shoes to a child who needs them.
(Image Source: Toms.com)
8. Give Your Online Store a Human Face
Nothing emphasizes a website more than attracting the face of a real human being to it. Giving your online store a human face creates a personal human connection to your customers. People don’t like brands that are not very much transparent in their marketing or brand visibility.
Therefore, when there is a real human face on your eCommerce website or online store, it gives a great impression. However, make sure the face must be real- either the face of a marketing team or the CEO.
Do not use airbrushed models and stock photos to market products because people can easily find out whether they are real or relevant people in the image and consequently they can doubt the website’s authenticity and sincerity. To implement it, include the recent photos of your team who works behind the website.
9. Appreciate Your Helpers
Your customer will appreciate your brand authority when they see you care for people who care for you. There would be many contributors, customers, and people who might be working for your brand promotion, product marketing, or other business-related activity that helps your brand reach more people.
So say thanks to these people and give them a special place on your website to appreciate their effort. According to some expert psychologists, gratitude is a powerful emotion that strongly affects people.
Appreciating those who helped or helping you build your website or brand distinguishes it from other eCommerce sites which usually don’t focus on emotion. By incorporating this step your store can immensely get the touch of humanity and give great values in the eyes of visitors.
10. Focus More on Your About Us Page
The ‘About Us’ page is a common part of websites all over the Internet. Many eCommerce website development companies in India consider this page as a normal thing, which is why visitors don’t feel much interesting browsing this particular page. But this is where most eCommerce or even other websites make mistakes.
About Us, the page is extremely important to define what you are. How can you think of being different if you can’t tell how, you are different? The phrase is only seven letters long, but there is a strong and deep meaning to provide valuable message and information about your company or brand.
Most About Us pages are dry, boring, and filled with normal corporate or business tone. By paying a little more attention to this commonly neglected page, you can easily set your online fashion store apart from the rest.
See the example of a famous clothing brand- Black Milk
(Image Source: BlackMilk)
Although they are About Us Page looks wordy, this is certainly not a page written by content writers or lawyers. Black Milk Clothing uses its “About Us” page to humanize its founder and give the site added personality by ‘keeping it real.
Customers are not idiot. They have the intelligence to understand how much you value yourself before you value others. If you can’t tell meaningful about yourself what you are, what your brand is, why your brand is different from others, your online marketing campaign will look like a paid advertisement and nothing else.
So define your About Us page more sincerely and deeply with a great meaningful message.
11. Boost Credibility with Press Coverage
It sounds great when you clearly define what you are on the About Us page. But after all, it is your website. You can say what you want about brand. In the end, potential customers view information that comes from third parties as being more reliable.
To increase the credibility of your online fashion store, it is important to build relationships and provide links to news and review sites that have covered your company or its products. Focus on creating effective PR content that brings trust to people.
You can add a separate page of a press release or coverage on your store that showcases how much you are popular in media voices.
12. Let Customers Look Behind the Scenes
Usually, a behind-the-scenes part shows the process behind making a TV show or movie. But it is relevant to eCommerce as well. Allowing customers to see behind the scenes is a powerful method to catch their attention and hook them emotionally. People appreciate when a company shows a transparent and honest attitude towards its customers.
When you show the behind the scenes of your online fashion store how does it work, how your teamwork to make a product reach the customer doorstep from its packing, how does your store make thing possible using technologies, will display how much you are transparent in your business principles.
As a result, people feel more confident to share their personal information by signing up for your subscription for newsletters and sharing information to buy products.
Conclusion: Collaborate with a Professional Marketing Agency
Establishing an online fashion store that stands out from the crowd requires a lot of effort and an intelligent marketing approach. You have to make sure you are authentic in what you do and say, along with the features and technologies you incorporate.
To stand out from other clothing brands or stores, you have to do what your competitors are not doing. And above tips will guide you to do so successfully.
Now we would like to hear from you.
Did you find this post helpful? Or do you have an online fashion store that needs to be boost up with a powerful eCommerce marketing strategy that makes your store unique in the eyes of the audience?
eSearch Logix is a decade-old eCommerce marketing agency in India that is empowering global businesses to perform better with high brand recognition. Collaborate with us if you also aspire to give new energy to your online store.
Just Book a Free Consultation and Talk to Our Experts Now.
