INFLUENCER MARKETING

Influencer Marketing for Fashion Brands

Influencer marketing is a lucrative strategy from all points of view. Many brands who use influencers wisely will get increased awareness, loyalty, and profit.

This statement holds for fashion brands. Studies show that the global fashion influencer marketing market will grow by about 35.7% CAGR until 2027.

You can hop on that train too.

Keep reading to find out more about influencer marketing for fashion brands. We’ll discuss haute-couture fashion brands, sports brands, and many more as we share our experience.

TL;DR

Influencer Marketing Benefits:

• Fashion brands can benefit greatly from influencer marketing.
• Studies project a 35.7% CAGR growth in the global fashion influencer marketing market until 2027.
• Fashion influencers embody the beauty ideals that people trust and admire.
• It offers 11 times more profit compared to banners.
• 90% of companies report similar or better ROI compared to other marketing channels.
• Especially effective for engagement and brand awareness.
• Provides highly targeted and trust-building advertising.

Risks of Influencer Marketing:

• Brands may lose some creative control.
• Negative publicity involving an influencer can harm a brand's reputation.
• Results may not be immediate.

Best Examples of Influencer Marketing:

• Kids Fashion Brands: Deux Par Deux found success partnering with influencer moms.
• Sports Fashion Brands: New Balance focused on tribal loyalty and niche targeting.
• Luxury Brands: Balenciaga's TikTok campaign targeted Gen Z with challenges.

Choosing the Right Influencers:

• Consider the type and size of your fashion brand.
• Assess your region and target audience.
• Choose from nano, micro, macro, or mega-influencers.
• Vetting is crucial; influencers should align with brand values and resonate with the audience.

Choosing the Right Channels:

• Instagram is the primary platform for fashion brands due to high engagement.
• TikTok is gaining popularity, especially for Gen Z audiences.
• Choose platforms based on your target demographic and brand style.

The Advantages of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing fits fashion brands like a glove. Or like a tight-fitting cashmere shirt caressing your body. But we deviate.

Influencer marketing fits fashion brands like a glove.

Think of it like this: fashion is built around beauty idols that people identify with, trust, and want to worship. Does that ring a bell? We’ve defined influencer marketing!

If that’s not enough, let’s look at some stats:

• You can get 11 times more profit from influencer marketing than banners.
• 90% of companies say that influencer marketing generates at least the same ROI compared to other channels.
• If your company’s goal is engagement or brand awareness, you can get eight times more ROI by using influencer marketing.
• Over 80% of fashion brands use influencer marketing.
• 40% of people are buying according to influencer’s recommendations.

Besides, influencer marketing for fashion brands:

• Is highly targeted, which means you’ll get more conversions even from a narrower audience.
• Builds trust towards your brand. As a result, your audience won’t dismiss your other ads.
• Builds a scalable reach, from nano- to micro-and macro-influencers

The Risks of influencer marketing

Influencer marketing isn’t risk-free, though:

• You may lose some of the creative control for your marketing campaigns.
• Bad publicity about one of your influencers will affect your brand – remember the Olivia Jade scandal?
• You may not see quick results.

Best Examples of Influencer Marketing for Fashion Brands

We’ll review different types of fashion brands below so that you understand the practical aspects of influencer marketing. Besides, you can find plenty of actionable content if you read below:

Kids Fashion Brands: Deux Par Deux

Deux Par Deux isn’t a renowned fashion brand the size of Balenciaga. It’s also a kids’ brand, which doubled our challenge.

However, we understood the company’s essential need: partnering with influencer moms with beautiful families.

That’s how each micro-influencer we found added five new customers for the brand. And, if you’re reading our case study here, you’ll learn that these influencers’ posts were value-for-money. At the end of its campaign, Deux Par Deux had over 150 pieces of original content and hundreds of new customers.

Lessons learned:

• If you have a kids fashion brand, address parents.
• Connecting with parents isn’t about the clothes; it’s about building an emotionally safe space.
• Your product line is there to enhance feelings of security, happiness, and carefree childhood.
• Parents want beautiful clothes that protect their children and also underline their unique personalities.
• You need influencers that are authority figures in parenting and lifestyle.

Sports Fashion Brands: New Balance

New Balance was a challenge because we needed to cast sports micro influencers. After studying the sports fashion industry, we came up with several conclusions:

• Sports fans and athletic people feel the most influencer fatigue. Our audience isn’t the kind to spend all their free time on Instagram.
• Sports fashion brands like New Balance have a lot to gain by understanding their audience’s need to be part of a “tribe.” This word is essential here because it defines more than a standard group. The ties in a tribe are stronger, and the loyalties are for life. Often, the members of this sort of tribe will help each other above and beyond fashion tips.
• Target a specific niche. Knowing the tribe to address (e.g., survivalists, trail runners, sporty moms, etc.) helps convey your unique brand identity and thus increase your ROI.
• Sports influencers are gurus – the tribe’s leaders. Their followers look to them for inspiration and life advice, not just fashion tips. That means your content has to address this intense need for leadership. Ensure your influencers engage actively with their list of followers, answer all questions, and offer lots of valuable tips.

Here’s what we’ve learned from working with New Balance:

• It’s more important to concentrate on your relationship’s quality rather than just cold numbers.
• Address communities on their home turf.
• Your campaign’s cornerstone should be your audience’s core values and needs.
• Avoid influencer fatigue by hiring influencers that don’t seem fake, Make sure these influencers connect to your audience at a cellular level, exuding confidence, expertise, and strength.

It’s more important to concentrate on your relationship’s quality rather than just cold numbers.

Luxury Brands

When you start building your campaign, choose a relevant influencer. One of the determining factors should be their audience’s financial status. In other words, make sure their demographic can afford your prices.

• If your influencers have a loyal audience, your high price points aren’t determining factors. Balenciaga addressed French and UK Gen Z-ers with an excellent TikTok Christmas campaign. This campaign got them 4.5+ million users on their landing page, even if most of these users don’t usually buy haute-couture apparel.
• Use challenges. Some people may not afford to dress head-to-toe from your brand. However, they look up to the values and style you advertise. These people are likely to save money for a few months to afford one original piece from your brand. The #GucciModelChallenge is an excellent example of how you can address this target. Gucci asked its audience to use their own clothes for Gucci-inspired looks, therefore raising people’s awareness.
• Some influencers can promote both haute-couture and high-street products. For example, Molly-Mae Hague is renowned for her partnership with Pretty Little Thing. However, she often models Louis Vuitton or Balenciaga apparel. She can pull this off because her following of 5+ million people is likely very diverse.

Choose the Right Influencers

Choosing the right influencers is a poignant issue whether you have a fashion brand or not. In this particular niche, this problem increases because you’ll have to consider:

The type of fashion company you have:

• Large/ medium/ small
• Haute-couture/ department store
• Sports fashion/ elegant/ business/ casual apparel, etc.
• Apparel/ beauty and cosmetics/jewelry and accessories
• The region you’re targeting

The type of influencer you need:

• Nano-influencers
• Micro-influencers
• Macro-influencers
• Mega-influencers

For instance, if you have a small-medium fashion brand, you can consider micro-influencers. Studies show that micro-influencers have 22.2% more buying-related conversations, and almost 85% of those happen face-to-face. That’s why they have more chances to convince customers to buy your products.

That said, casting is essential. You can use keyword or hashtag search on Google and social media. You can also peek at your competitors to see what they’re doing.

We wrote an in-depth article on how to search for influencers here, plus our inBeat platform is free.

Vetting is next. Ensure that the influencers you’re choosing will fit your brand’s personality and values. The cornerstones of vetting are:

• Reach: your influencer’s audience size must fit your company’s size. Engagement is a crucial factor, too, so analyze their comments, likes, and shares.
• Relevance: your influencer’s content must be relevant for your potential customers.
• Resonance: the influencer should appear trustworthy and authoritative to its audience.

So, at the end of the day, these fashion influencers should fit your brand’s image to a T. Our advice is to identify your customer persona and find influencers that closely match it (age, gender, niche, size, etc.).

Choose the Right Channels

Now that you have the right influencers, it’s time to find the best channels. Otherwise, your messages will go unnoticed, and all your effort would be in vain.

Let’s look at some stats again:

• Instagram is the playground of fashion brands. Most of them use this channel because it drives the biggest engagement compared to other platforms.
• 77% of fashion micro-influencers prefer Instagram.

Tik-Tok is gaining speed, though. This platform caters to Gen Z, and it’s only evident that brands targeting this audience would want to connect to people on their home turf.

And that’s the critical statement: connect with your audience on their home turf.

It doesn’t really matter whether 99% of fashion brands are using a particular medium. Ask yourself what works for you, according to your brand’s style and needs. Craft your brand’s persona and ask yourself what they will be browsing.

For example, if you’re targeting 20-year-olds from upper-middle classes in Western Europe and North America, you’ll use Instagram and Tik-Tok. If you’re targeting 40-year-old business people from China, you’ll use WeChat or Weibo. For some brands, website is the best option which drives better user engagement. If you are someone who is just starting out on establishing a fashion brand and looking for website ideas, you could check some of the beginner friendly fashion website templates and themes.

You’ll make these choices yourself after analyzing the market. Or we could help you out like we did the brands above.

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