The e-retail marketplace is booming. More and more online fashion retailers are entering the space and fighting for the attention of their audience. But how can you make your brand stand out amongst all the noise?
Harnessing social media is crucial for all e-retailers; especially for those who sell clothing, there is a lot of creative opportunity to showcase products drive engagement through utilising social media.
As a rule, every online brand should have a strong social media presence across multiple platforms, and to ensure you're making the most of the platforms, here are creative tips that will help you to sell your clothing online.
1. Use shopping tags
In the last year the online shopping experience has been revolutionised, thanks to Instagram's shopping feature. By simply clicking on an image of a product, a consumer can see how much it costs and can click through to a link where they can purchase it.
To direct your customers down your sales funnel and create a seamless shopping experience, utilising shopping tags is crucial.
2. Use high-quality imagery
Having high-quality images is of the utmost importance when you're selling products online, especially clothing. In an age where most people have access to advanced smartphones with high-resolution cameras in-built, there is no excuse not to produce good content.
If your business is solely e-commerce, your customers cannot go into one of your stores and have an up-close experience with your products, and this is a problem for those who like to "try before they buy". Therefore, in order for your customers to trust in and invest in your brand and your products, you need to have a high-quality image and video content strategy in place to help your consumers properly gauge the look and feel of your products online.
Humans are inherently visual and respond positively to high quality, well-curated images and video content. Your aim should be to create visuals that are creative and eye-catching, and that causes the user to stop "scrolling" down their social media and take a closer look.
3. Showcase the clothing on real people
Most brands will show their clothing on models, but not all brands show as much as they should.
Instead of just sharing a couple of campaign shots, offer customers a close inspection by sharing 5-10 images of models wearing the piece of clothing in different settings. Better yet, show the clothing worn by multiple models, as consumers are well aware that clothing can look different on various body shapes.
You should also include a short catwalk-style video to communicate how the clothing moves on the body when in motion. By doing this you will gain your consumer's trust and they will be more likely to purchase.
4. Utilise Pinterest
Pinterest is an incredible tool for e-retailers who sell clothing. By posting high-quality fashion images (maybe experimenting with formats) and utilising keywords, you can gain more traction from online users who are searching for similar products. Include a short link of the product to the image description to drive traffic to your site.
5. Create clever captions and social sells
The effectiveness of a post on social media is greatly impacted by the caption. Just like when you write a product description on your website, your captions should reflect your demographic and use their language. They should be engaging and exciting, use CTAs, and tell a story.
For example, if you have released a new men's fashion suit, avoid captioning the image "new suit available now". Instead, you should think about "who, what, when, where, why and how", and communicate a story. Audiences, especially millennial audiences, will respond more positively when they feel like they are learning something new and gaining a new insight or experience. So, in your caption talk about why the suit was made, how it was made and the story behind its creation. Utilise the large character allowance on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest posts.
6. Use social proof
The great thing about social media is that everyone has a platform to discuss and review anything and everything, including your products. Reviews are crucial for attracting more customers, so encourage consumers to share images of themselves wearing your clothes and use designated hashtags. You can then find their feedback and report the best ones, and this will help to promote engagement and enhance your brand awareness online. What's more, through small-scale collaborations you will get to know your audience, keep abreast with trends and take inspiration.
7. Leverage online influencers
Popular online influencers have huge platforms and hundreds of thousands of followers, so leveraging this is instrumental in growing your brand. Reach out to influencers that are relevant and popular within your industry niche and ask to collaborate with them. Send them a few items of your clothing and ask them to wear the pieces in their next social post and tag your brand. If done well you will experience a surge in interest around your brand, and your sales will increase.
8. Conduct competitions
You can also generate hype and gain traction around your products by running competitions. This could be as simple as encouraging users to like, comment and share your post to be in with a chance of winning a voucher to spend on your online store.
The more hype you create around your brand and your products, the more interest you will garner and the more conversions you will get.
Conclusion
Nowadays, images and videos have such a high production standard, and so consumers expect the best. If you want to stand out amongst your competitors and own your market you need to come up with innovative, out-of-the-box ideas to showcase your product and brand and engage your audiences.
Guest Author
Helen Cartwright is a passionate blogger, who excels in the Digital Marketing and Technology niche. When not wired in marketing strategies she ghost-writes for a variety of authors who have their work published on leading online media channels such as The Huffington Post and Entrepreneur.com.