We love marketing talk here at Startupbiz. To that, we’ve decided to do a few articles that give marketing tips that are specific to industries. Today we draw the attention of businesses in the fashion industry and give a few marketing tips that can help get your business out there into the world and sitting square in the minds of your target audiences. The tips are meant to be universal but will not always apply the same way to all businesses.
Show in situation
This is a fancy way of saying when showing clothing or accessories it is best to show them on a body or in use. Fashion is a game of perceptions and you really have to manage the perceptions of your articles to get people thinking about them the right way. A piece of jewellery for example looks better when pictured with skin than on a canvas or mannequin. The same goes for a piece of clothing. So you should use marketing images that show your items on a body. Even something as small as an earing looks better on an ear. This of course brings up the matter of diversity.
Diversity
This is a tricky one to navigate so I will do my best to navigate it without ruffling any feathers. It is normal for brands, particularly in fashion, to have a specific target market. This can be based on factors such as body size, skin tone, lifestyle and other demographic issues. So it is normal for brands to choose a particular look to associate with their articles in their marketing. The problem arises when you have a customer base or audience that contains people who do not resemble this look or image and you also want these to be your customers you will have to think about being more inclusive in your images. This can be with skin tones, body types, hair types, demographic backgrounds, height and so many other factors depending on your products.
Attention to detail
There are very few markets in the world that can claim to have finer margins than fashion. The difference between a fashion item being laughable and a hit is sometimes, if not most, arbitrary. Getting your products in the eyes of the right people for the right reasons is of the utmost importance and the best way to do this is to lean heavily into the details. If your clothing is about comfort telling us that it’s comfortable is not enough. What makes it comfortable and how does this make it comfortable? Leaning into such details in the marketing messages makes it easy for those who care about those details to identify your items as the right fit for them.
Quality images
A picture says a thousand words. Nowhere is that more true than in the world of fashion. When using photos or videos to advertise your products you need quality images to convey the quality and attributes of the clothing. Quality images are not just about the technical details such as the image resolution or camera used. Quality I also in how the images are captured. Product photography is very different from photographing people for example. So whilst you may have a person in the dress, the job of the photographer is to show off the dress not the person and this is not a skill that all are blessed with.
Make it easy
This is a tip that applies to every industry but I feel like it needs reiteration to those in the fashion industry. Fashion items like shoes are easy to work with because there isn’t much going on in terms of sizing and fitting. While there are things like wide and narrow shoes there’s really not much else besides the shoe size. The same cannot be said for items such as pants and dresses. A lot is going on there and that may even be an understatement. This is compounded if you are selling online where people cannot get a look at or try on the item first. Sizing such as small, medium large etc can be very deceiving. It’s a good idea to have additional info such as informing customers that a small t-shirt fits a particular chest or shoulder measurement. This makes it easier for the customer to pick the right size the first time. Which in turn prevents a lot of back and forth.
There’s a lot more that could be said when it comes to marketing for the fashion industry of course. These are 5 key things that I have seen that could be greatly improved on in marketing messages by those in fashion in Zimbabwe.
