No industry moves quite as quickly as the fashion industry. Both brands and trends come and go as consumers strive to keep up with the latest products. As products change, so does the way marketing teams promote them. If you are part of a marketing team for a fashion brand, here are a few ways you can expect the landscape to change in the years to come.
Nano influencers
The last decade has been the era of influencer marketing. But sponsored posts are more obvious than ever as posts need to include the #ad tag, not to mention the fact that users are waking up to the fact that influencers stand to profit from the promotion. At the same time, influencers aren’t going anywhere and fashion buyers are still heavily influenced by what they see on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
As a result, this could give rise to a different type of influencer: the nano influencer. The definition of a nano influencer is an account with an engaged following between 500 and 10,000 followers. When a smaller account promotes a brand, it can come across as more authentic as the audience knows they’re less likely to demand a huge fee.
While we are influenced by celebrities, we are also influenced by our friendship circle. Going forward, we could see brands working with everyday people with smaller accounts to spread their product by word of mouth. A strategy that could be more effective and also cheaper.
Community Building
Today, the best fashion brands don’t have customers, they have a community. It’s becoming increasingly common to see fashion brands go to greater extents to create a loyal, returning following that are also happy to act as brand ambassadors on social media.
This trend only appears to be getting stronger, and you can expect more brands to create a family-like feel amongst their audience going forward – not least because it improves their bottom line. If a consumer feels part of a community, they may even see it as their duty to continue to support the brand.
The challenge for brands lies in taking the necessary steps to create this community-like feel amongst their audience. Brands with the strongest communities often have a founder with a strong personal brand that helps consumers form a human connection with the company. Brands like Represent also put a lot of effort into creating offline events that bring community members together and allow them to create a physical connection with the brand, something that is often lost in the world of e-commerce.
SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) has been around since the first website was created but like everything, SEO has had to evolve with our changing browsing behaviours. One thing we have learnt about SEO is that as long as the internet is around, optimising content for search engines won’t be going anywhere.
The future of SEO largely depends on the future of technology. With the emergence of voice assistants and virtual reality (VR) headsets, the way we browse the internet could be about to change. The challenge for brands will be to adapt their SEO strategy to reflect this change.
For instance, the words we use when speaking to a device could be very different to the ones used when typing which would need to be reflected when targeting keywords. Similarly, websites will need to be tailored to VR devices just as they have recently been adapted to consider performance on mobile devices.
Physical Stores
There is no doubt that the fashion industry has moved online in the last 20 years. In recent times in particular, online fast fashion brands have dominated the space. But recent signs point to this changing in the coming years.
More and more brands are putting trust back into physical stores, but not as we previously knew it. There’s no doubt that our high streets were in need of an update and it appears that brands are now treating physical locations as an opportunity to provide an experience rather than a shopping location.
E-commerce gym wear brand Gymshark is a great example of this. After spending its first ten years of business solely operating online, the brand opened its first physical store on London’s Regent Street. But on top of just offering a shopping experience, the store also hosts meet-and-greets with influencers and team workouts. It’ll be interesting to see how brands use physical stores to offer a different experience that can’t be achieved through online browsing.
Whether you are promoting baby clothes or men’s utility trousers, you’ll notice that the fashion industry doesn’t just change month by month, but day by day. The brands that are able to stand the test of time will probably be the quickest to respond to any trends or marketing changes.
