Today, companies operating in every industry are paying for influencer marketing. The fashion industry, however, is putting in more money in it than any other industry. If somebody is planning to launch an apparel company soon, they make it a point to put aside a certain amount of money to invest in influencer marketing.
One keeps hearing about clothing brand collaborations with influencers regularly. Clothing brands collaborate with influencers in different ways to promote their products. They also use them to strengthen their brand and ensure that a larger number of people become familiar with it. Sometimes, clothing brands also pay influencers to talk or share posts about them and promote them in different capacities.
In the last few years, influencer marketing has played a key role in many companies becoming well-recognized names in the fashion industry. Influencer marketing is the only marketing activity many young companies have paid for to establish themselves in the market. Apart from helping companies market their products, influencer marketing has played an important role in the growth of the fashion industry in the last couple of years.
Here is why apparel brands need influencers to propel their growth forward:
Digital Media Promotion
These days, a lot of people buy a product or invest in a service after they see it being advertised on social media. A social media influencer can help the clothing items manufactured or sold by your brand have good visibility and therefore, play an important role in boosting their sales. If you want your products to be seen on social media, you have to take the help of influencers.
Influencer marketing plays a pivotal role in accelerating the sales of most clothing brands. Once you get an influencer on board, you can promote your products in various creative ways. Apart from getting them to put up posts endorsing your products, you can produce videos and other advertising content with them featuring them.
Influencing Consumers
People on social media find the lives of influencers aspirational. They aspire to travel to all those locations influencers go to and wish to wear all that they wear. When an individual wields so much influence, it is quite natural to see clothing companies reaching out to them to endorse their products.
When the followers of a social media influencer see them wearing a particular t-shirt, they might want to buy it. Of course, they have to like that T-shirt as well. The influencer would share the link to the online store where they can buy this particular t-shirt from. If an influencer wears a variety of clothing items made by a brand in a video, their followers would want to know more about that brand.
Saves Money
A newly established clothing company might not have the budget to hire popular models or actors to endorse their products. This is when one could explore the option of clothing brand collaborations. They could collaborate with social media influencers on a barter basis and give them a bunch of their products, along with some goodies, to collaborate with them.
While one should not expect very popular influencers to say yes to a collaboration for some free clothing items, there is a good possibility of newer or micro-influencers coming on board for such collaborations. You can get several smaller influencers to collaborate and that will, cumulatively, help your business in a big way.
Enables Visual Storytelling
Visuals tend to make a better impact than simple text or audio. Collaborating with an influencer allows a brand to create the kind of promotional material that is driven by visuals. When influencers come on board, it makes it much easier for clothing brands to engage in visual storytelling without spending a lot of money.
Visual storytelling can be best described as the art of conveying a message with the help of narratives, emotions, and information. Brands invest in visual storytelling with the hope that it will make a lasting impact on its consumers. Since consumers already have a connection with influencers, they find themselves more engaged when they are involved in enabling visual storytelling.
Reaching Target Consumers
Collaborating with influencers can help your clothing brand reach its target consumers in no time. However, it is important to collaborate with the ‘right’ influencers. Clothing brand collaborations turn out to be successful when they are put together to appeal to the target consumers. This is one of the most important things you have to be mindful of before reaching out to any influencer.
If your clothing company specializes in manufacturing and selling clothes for teenagers, you should collaborate with influencers who are popular among the young crowd. In case you make clothes for infants or babies, you should get in touch with mom influencers or those who educate people about raising babies and the kind of products they need to buy for them.
Sharing Discount Codes
People get more interested in buying a product when it is available at a discounted rate. You might have often seen influencers sharing certain codes while posting about a product. For instance, an influencer could post the link to a website where one could buy acoustic guitars and share a coupon code using which one could get a 10% or 20% discount on buying any of those guitars.
When an influencer tells their followers that they can get a good discount on a clothing item when they use a discount code shared by them, many of those followers would jump at the opportunity. This is one of the simpler but effective ways in which an apparel brand can use influencers to sell their products.
Creating Awareness About Website
The digital revolution has led many clothing brands, which were selling their products offline, to put up their products on online platforms as well. While many of these brands were selling their products on popular online platforms, they slowly worked toward launching their website or app. This has helped them increase their revenue significantly.
Sometimes, it takes a while for a business to communicate to its consumers that it has an online presence as well. Influencers can help speed up this process. A lot of times, clothing brand collaborations with influencers happen when the brand is making an effort to direct many of its consumers to its website or app. Influencers can do several interesting things to create a good amount of awareness around them and ensure there is good traffic on the website and app.
