Chapter 8
Advertising, merchandising, and product promotions
To achieve maximum success in retailing, merchandising strategies and promotional plans must be highly integrated.
Product-specific ads have 4-6 x higher CTR (click-through-rate) than static ads, and brands who use retargeting see average uplifts of 8-10% in eCommerce profit.
How does it work?
A potential customer visits your website, but leaves without making a purchase. So, you create a retargeting campaign on social media to win them back. As they later check their social media channels, suddenly your product they were looking at appears in their feed.
This is your opportunity to convert that same prospect into a customer, because it allows you to remind them of the products or pages they viewed and get them to take action.
This tactic can also be used to generate awareness of new products, features or announcements relevant to your business.
There are plenty of sales that happen throughout the year to mark on your calendars. Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are huge every year and there are plenty of ways brands can leverage these high sales periods.
The holiday season in general is a good occasion to boost sales too. Many merchants run marketing campaigns and implement marketing strategies throughout this period to increase orders.
Make sure you design your ads and merchandise in a way that supports the occasion and the holiday. You can also use it as an opportunity to plan strategic discounts to get rid of unsold stock.
For example, Miann and Co has an annual retail calendar that has their sales and promotions for the next 12 months. They then have an in-house graphic designer who manages their social media promotions for those periods.
In the business of fashion, it’s more important to rotate your stock rather than short term profits.
Even when there isn’t necessarily a high sales period, you can use discounts to get rid of dead-stock as soon as you can. It helps move inventory. Organize clearance sales every month or two (you can offer 10 – 25% discount) and heavier discount (in the range of 40 – 75%, no returns) twice every year to clear the remaining dead stock and keeping your inventory and overall brand experience as new as possible.
The 5TH, while they currently sell their products year-round, started out only selling their products on the 5th of every month (thus, the name). This model led to a clean refresh of inventory every month without the need for discounts and sales.
The same way a merchandiser creates product displays in-store, you need to replicate this experience online too.
NET-A-PORTER is a pioneer in this kind of fashion experience with regular curation of new season trends, fashion advice and fashion memos. They have regular articles published on their website and they publish an online magazine called ‘The Porter Edit.’
This kind of content curation will take some significant investment in time and resources. To get started, we recommend starting by focusing on highlighting the new stock on your website and social channels.
That means it shouldn’t go unnoticed by returning visitors.
Use website banners and lookbooks of the new collection. Announce it to your subscribers and your social media followers. Give them a reason to expect something new each time they visit your store.
Do you want to connect with existing and potential customers? Grow your follower base and increase engagement?
Running a social media contest or giveaway can make this all possible and there are multiple apps that can make the set-up easy for you.
Make sure you take the time to understand your audience. Doing this will help guide you on what kind of prize you offer, the channels you use and what type of campaign you run.
Tying competitions and giveaways to new products, trending events, or seasonal promotions serve to drive them even further.
There are a number of ways fashion brands can collaborate with influencers across a range of platforms.
The most common form is gifting a product in exchange for digital mentions and coverage. This is a low cost option for a brand.
But don’t gift your product to every influencer you can find. Take the time to consider how your product aligns with their values and whether their audience is a market where you want exposure. Once you crack the right influencer collaborations, you’ll gain exposure to a whole new captive and engaged audience.
From corsets and bonnets to ripped denim and athleisure, fashion has come a long way since the 19th century.
It’s been a continuous overturn of trends: some making a comeback and others evolving.
But, nothing shakes up the industry more than technology.
It’s now or never for emerging brands to understand the need and importance of tech innovations and ethical practices.
Fashion brands are getting a digital makeover with the endless possibilities of augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) making all leading innovators’ minds tick over.
The new era of the #WokeCustomer is pushing brands to be more transparent around their ethical practices and supply chain management.
At the end of the day, you need to run an ethical business and figure out the best pathway to success.
This boils down to understanding how the retail environment currently operates and which sales channels you should be leveraging; determining which inventory account management methods will help you stay profitable and what marketing strategies and tactics you should effectively be spending your budget on.
This intersection of technology and ethics shines a spotlight on the importance of proper planning, execution and inventory management to eliminate waste and avoid deadstock, and building an ethical business that keeps your customers loyal and excited about your brand for years to come.