The billion pound industry: How to correctly leverage social media and influencer marketing for your fashion brand

It is undeniable that social media is a critical marketing tool for fashion startups as well as established brands. Without a social presence, you may as well be invisible in the current climate. With the global online fashion market predicted to grow to £872 billion by 2023, 74 percent of consumers rely on social networks to help them make purchase decisions.

While the most popular social media platforms are Instagram and TikTok – especially in the fashion space due to how visually inclined they are – building a presence on other platforms like Pinterest and Twitter is just as important and can increase your credibility and brand awareness; allowing you to communicate your brand story in other ways.

The fashion industry relies on brand experience, lifestyle, aesthetics and a distinct culture that should be well translated over a digital platform. Brands such as Gymshark and Huda Beauty have become billion pound businesses and heavily credit social media and influencer marketing as the reason for their success. Through cultivating an online community through popular social media stars, consumers use these brands as a means of attaining a similar lifestyle to these “influencers”. This article covers everything you need to know about influencer marketing strategies for your fashion brand, and how to do it well.

Influencer marketing budgets are increasing year-over-year, with 17 percent of companies planning to spend more than half of their budget on this marketing method.

There are several ways you can work with influencers to increase sales and spread brand awareness.

1. Product placement

This is a paid agreement to share your products on an influencer’s social media account – for example, sharing content on Instagram, Snap or TikTok. Remember that it’s important to meet advertising standards when spending on product placement, such as including text in the description that indicates that this is a form of paid advertising.

2. Gift products to inflencers

Fashion brands can gift products to influencers, which they can share or review as they wish. This can be an effective influencer marketing method for brands with confidence that a particular product will be sought-after and highly rated. You should keep in mind that as this is “gifted”, the influencer has no legal obligation to share your products or even post positive reviews and is something to consider. This method is most effective when you are confident in your product or service being well-suited for the influencer.

3. Collaborate with influencers

Working closely with an influencer to create stylish look books, blog posts and other forms of curated content on your website and across your social media channels. This type of content can often be cross-promoted on your account and the influencer’s account.

4. Affiliate links and discount codes

A different kind of collaboration is to give an influencer a discount code or link which they can share with their audience. You can then use this unique code to identify sales attributed to this marketing method. This helps you identify just how effective a campaign was.

It is also very important to consider the kind of influencer you wish to be the face of your product or campaign. Depending on your target market it is worth researching the influencers you work with as well as requesting their insights.

Insights tell you how much of an audience actually interacts with the influencer. It’s no use working with an influencer with 20,000 followers when their average reach is between 3000 – 4000. Equally, it depends on their content and just how relevant their content is to your product. Just because an influencer has a large following, it doesn’t mean their audience will take an interest in your brand if their content is focused in another niche.

Many brands also use “nano-influencers”, a term used to describe influencers with a following under ten thousand and over one thousand. Marketing experts say that nano-influencers have some of the most highly engaged followings and can help brands with targeting. They’re also a great testing ground for brands to experiment with influencer marketing.

Just like every other fashion brand that is competing in an increasingly over saturated market, you will need to ensure that every aspect of your brand experience is on point for your target audience. Read our blog post on creating a great unboxing experience here and get in touch today to access the expertise of our team on all things branding, labelling and packaging.