The Fashion Market And Inbound Marketing: Perfect Combination To Sell More

Who has never been to a shop window (or website), fell in love with a piece, and bought it on the spot, without even noticing the price? Even the most controlled men and the most controlled women have some impulse purchases in the closet.

The fashion world is based on this desire: an outfit so beautiful that you can’t imagine continuing your life without it. A piece is so stylish that it is able to change your attitude when you wear it.

We know that in the fashion market an impeccable showcase (or feed) is essential. The question that remains is: does Inbound Marketing have a place in this impulse-driven market?

The simple answer is: yes! We need to understand that there are impulse purchases (and we can work on several strategies to stimulate them), but there are also purchases that require greater “preparation”.

Want an example? A bridesmaid dress. The color may even be decided by the bride, but does the bridesmaid know which model is more suitable, which are the trends of the moment, which accessories to combine?

Higher value purchases, or even for special occasions, are often decided only after research. This research doesn’t just happen online, but offline too: do you know those people who come into your store “just to take a look”? So, this is where we begin our journey to understanding the Inbound marketing strategy for your eCommerce store.

Inbound Marketing for the Fashion Market: 4 Important Points

Next, I will approach Inbound Marketing for the fashion market using a sequence of four very important points. Are they:

• Definition of the persona
• Lead Capture
• Relationship by Email Marketing
• Marketing Automation

Come on, then, starting at the beginning of everything, which is to understand who your persona is.

1 – Definition of Persona

Certainly, when you decided to set up your store (whether physical or virtual), you thought very carefully about which products you would offer to attract that “dream” customer. This ideal client could be an executive in her 40s, a 15-year-old rock fan, or a 25-year-old man who loves to ride a bike.

Having clarity about your ideal client, better known as a persona, is the first step in structuring your inbound strategy.

The persona is there to facilitate this content creation. If I know that my persona is Anna, who is 38 years old, is a commercial director, has a son, and a super busy day-to-day life, it is much easier for me to empathize and be able to think of content that attracts “Annas” of the world.

What do you think Anna would like more: “dresses that are a hit in the club” or “how to wear a white shirt in different looks”? By understanding who your persona is, it is much easier to understand what kind of material will be able to attract you.

2 – Capture of Leads

Now that you know who your ideal customer is, you need to attract them. Here, the proposal is to go further than just getting a like on Instagram or visiting the site, for example. You need his email so that he becomes the Lead of your business.

Why is email important? Because after he becomes a Lead, you can talk to him as many times as you want, and for free. That’s right! With a single email, you can speak to thousands of people at once.

Not that likes on your Instagram or Facebook pages are not important. They are, and a lot, after all, they are advertising channels for your store. But you’ve certainly heard of organic reach, haven’t you?

Therefore, it is very important that you diversify the ways of talking to your client. If Instagram or WhatsApp were down for a day, for example, how badly would your store’s sales be affected? Is something like that really impossible? Just in case, always work on the relationship with your client in several channels, including by email.

Now, in order to get your visitors’ emails, you’ll need to make an exchange: interesting content in exchange for their data. Here, understanding your persona will make all the difference, as you will build suitable offers for her problems!

Examples of possible content? We have several:

• video teaching how to use a piece X
• season trends manual
• size guide to buying online
• how to keep a shoe of a certain material
• checklist with key parts to have in the closet
• beginners manual on how to combine prints
• quiz which dress is more your style
• sweepstakes

Here, creativity is the limit! Remembering that any format of the content is valid, but the most important is to generate value for your persona, regardless of whether it is short or more extensive content.

Do you know how to exchange rich content for your persona data? Is that in addition to name and email, you can take this time to learn more about it? You can ask which accessories she wears most, which piece she loves most but has difficulty wearing, her status, birthday, what number she wears, even her favorite print.

What is this information for? They will be essential for you to get to know your Lead better and move on to the next step, the relationship.

3 – Relationship by Email Marketing

You have defined your ideal client, gained his contact, now one of the most important moments has come: to relate to him. It is with Email Marketing that you will relate to thousands of people at the same time.

However, using the right strategies, you will make Lead feel that that email was made with him in mind. Email Marketing is an incredible strategy for the fashion market and will be a superb ally to also leverage impulse purchases.

The first tip here is: the sender must be a person, not your store. After all, the store doesn’t send e-mail, does it? The boss is someone who works on it. Your Lead is much more likely to open your email when it comes from a person, as it generates greater empathy.

This care in making the e-mail more personal is not only valid at the sender but throughout the e-mail. If you were to write an e-mail to your friend telling her the news of your store, how would you do it? Think about it when building your emails, be they content, promotional, or any other type.

The second tip for effective emails: send the right content to the right person. A very common mistake of e-commerces is to send free shipping emails to everyone in the base, with free shipping only for the southeast, for example. It is an excellent email to make customers in the Southeast happy and the rest of Brazil upset.

Want a more frustrating experience than opening an email bearing free shipping and discovering that it is not valid for your state? If the person was thinking of buying, chances are good that he would give up here. And how is it possible to solve this?

You will be happy to know that with a good fundraising job, this is very easy. Here come the questions we ask in the Landing Pages, which will help us to segment your base: if we already know the person’s condition, we can advertise free shipping only to people in that state. Thus, nobody gets upset and you still have the chance to think of a different offer for those who were not awarded the freight.

Segments allow us many interesting possibilities. You can, for example, send a congratulatory email in the person’s birthday month, with an exclusive coupon for that person to use that month. Do you know the shoes of that number that are always left in stock? How about making a special email with an offer from them and sending it only to whoever wears that number? The more targeted your email, the better your rates.

However, don’t forget that you don’t want to become another email that only talks about selling in your customer’s inbox. The same data you use to sell, you will use to send exclusive content by email to your customer.

Your Leads are a “VIP list” that everyone needs to want to be a part of, so it’s very important that you deliver some treats and exclusive offers to them. This channel is also very valuable for you to get your customer’s opinion, with feedbacks and research.

4 – Marketing Automation

Finally, we still have one more way to work on the relationship with your Leads: automatic emails according to his interactions. A simple example of this application is the discount pop-ups on the first purchase: you register and then receive the coupon in your email.

This action has no scheduled time to happen, it happens at the time the person registered (if they register at 3 am, they receive the email at 3 am). That’s why we use Marketing Automation.

The possibilities here are many. You can use page tracking (Lead Tracking) and, as soon as Lead visits the page of an item that you have stopped in stock, you receive an email with a discount code for that product.

You can make a Landing Page that offers summer trends content and schedule a sequence of emails offering the products she needs to be in fashion during the season.

Put Inbound Marketing into Practice

After all these tips, I hope you can see a little bit of the difference that Digital Marketing can make in the fashion market.

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Article author: Raunak Pandey
Bio: Raunak is a Mechanical Engineer by qualification & Marketer by passion. He is the founder of Maiden Stride, a leading digital marketing company that provides world-class search engine marketing services and website & application development.