While clothing and accessory design may come easy, many fashion designers struggle with creating a successful marketing plan. Before you spend too much time and money on marketing, it's important to decide whether you want to market to a mass audience or focus on a niche. Once you've made this decision, you can build your marketing plan around it, creating a better chance of seeing a positive return on your investment. Here are a few of the most important things to consider.
Reach marketing, also known as “mass marketing,” is all about communicating to the largest possible audience. This strategy depends on reaching all types of people in the hopes that some are interested in your product. Some examples of mass marketing techniques include television commercials and widespread flyer distribution.
Mass market fashion designers typically manufacture items in large quantities that are designed to appeal to the broader market. These items are usually available in standard sizes and often feature many copies of the same design.
Niche marketing is the opposite of reach marketing. This approach focuses on reaching a small group of people who have interests that align with your brand and the products that you offer.
To choose your niche, start by considering your passions and values. From sports and active-focused design to sustainable fashion, there are many ways to set yourself apart from the rest of the fashion design world.
When creating a niche-based fashion design business marketing plan, it’s important to gain a deep understanding of your customers. What do they really want? What problems do they have that you can solve? Getting inside their heads will help you create both fashion designs and marketing campaigns that truly resonate.
When you first start thinking about your options, reach marketing is very tempting. After all, the idea that anyone in the world could be your next customer is appealing. However, when you’re reaching out to the entire world, competition is fierce and costs quickly add up. It’s easy to feel like you want to create designs that appeal to everyone, but as the old adage goes, “If you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.”
On the other hand, niche marketing allows you to focus on a hyper-targeted audience. It typically costs less and allows you to “fly under the radar” with your marketing methods. This may give you the opportunity to build a strong following without attracting the attention of your competitors.
It’s also important to note that just because you start in a niche, you don’t necessarily need to stay there. Niche marketing can help you build a strong foundation for your business, but once you do, you can shift your focus and eventually become a mass marketing powerhouse.
While you’ll ultimately need to decide which marketing and design style is best for your business, most fledgling fashion designers find their success in appealing to a niche market... at least at first. Reach out to a marketing consultant today.
Working with influencers can play a huge role in your fashion design business marketing plan. Just as with your overall marketing strategy, you’ll need to decide whether you want to choose a niche vs. reach influencer. What does this mean? Let's take a look.
When looking for the perfect influencer for your brand, you might initially think of someone like Kylie Jenner – who has over 308 million Instagram followers. While you might think that having access to this huge audience is sure to increase your sales, that’s not necessarily true. When it comes to influencers – relevance is key!
While many people follow Jenner’s lead when it comes to things like makeup and fashion, if the types of items you design aren’t geared to her audience, you would likely be wasting your time and money. For example, assume you specialized in making men's hiking pants. Even if you were able to get her to market your product, your sponsored posts wouldn’t resonate with a huge portion of her audience. While your hiking pants might be seen by millions of viewers, it’s unlikely that many will actually want to learn more or make a purchase.
Now, think about what might happen if you decided to work with influencers who are known for hiking, camping, and other outdoor adventures. While they may have a small fraction of the audience Jenner has, if they’re well-respected by the people most likely to need your product, you’re far more likely to turn your investment into sales.
In addition, working with smaller influencers is usually far less expensive. You're also likely to face less competition as you try to snag your ideal influencer.
Fashion design business marketing can feel overwhelming. However, once you understand the basics and decide on your approach, everything will start to fall into place. Hiring the right experts can also help you quickly elevate your marketing plan and bring your ideas to life. Take a look at some of our skilled fashion design graphic designers and reach out to them today!
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