How Social Media Can Boost Your New Fashion Brand: Facebook
Over half of online fashion sales are influenced by social media. Each platform is a little bit different and together, they are a powerful marketing tool. Facebook stands out as one of the essential platforms that your fashion line needs an active presence on. Here’s why…
Fashion magazines used to be the fashion bibles that dictated what was in and what was out for the season, but now, social media is the primary influencer in the fashion industry. Studies show social media is the number 1 fashion influencer and impacts about 70% of all fashion choices. E-commerce has cut into the retail stores’ market share and now accounts for over 20% of actual fashion and apparel purchases.
If you are launching a new fashion line and creating a fashion brand, social media is essential for your success. There are too many social media platforms to effectively maintain a presence on all of them; however, several platforms stand out as primary influencers for new fashion brands. In this series of blogs, I am going to specifically explain the current platforms that you need to be active on. Today, I’ll explain why Facebook is so important in finding your niche target audience, growing brand awareness, and even selling your product.
Why Facebook?
Facebook is one of the most useful platforms for promoting your brand, finding and creating a target audience, and even directly selling your product on the site. The sheer numbers make it too big to ignore. The platform has over 2 billion users worldwide. Even more important, over half of fashion and apparel shoppers named Facebook as a primary influencer of their purchase choices.
Facebook allows you to create a Facebook Page for your clothing brand, and to use that as a showcase to engage with your target audience. A Facebook page is a great place to show off your fashions, host testimonials, explain how to use or style your product, and even feature User Generated Content (UGC) that is created by your customers.
One of the most important features of Facebook is their Facebook Groups. You can search for almost any topic or lifestyle situation and find several groups with active users interested in it. This can be a powerful tool for identifying people in your target audience and actively engaging with them.
You can even sell your products directly on Facebook and users never have to leave the Facebook platform. This is a very strategic way to make it easier and less disruptive for someone to buy and still remain browsing on their Facebook feed. When they do not have to stop their browsing activity and go off-site to your home page, they will be more likely to buy and then continue with their other facebook viewing.
What you can do on Facebook?
Facebook gives you many different ways to engage with your followers, find an audience, build brand loyalty, and even sell directly. It’s important to set up a Facebook Page which acts like a personal profile page, but it’s all about your brand and your new fashion line. It’s kind of like a website within the Facebook stream.
Once you have a Facebook business page, your outreach starts with posting. That is when you upload a graphic, photo, quote, or video for your followers to view. The viewers are allowed to like, comment, share, or even send you a direct message. These posts are initially visible to your followers; however, you can also add # Hashtags. This names topics and phrases and turns them into clickable links. Hashtags help other people who are searching for your brand specific topic or phrase to discover your post even if they are not your followers. This can help expand your target audience and brand awareness.
There are several types of posts and your posting options may change as the platform evolves. Currently, you can post single photos or graphics, multiple-images that create a narrative called carousels, or present a video. You can even appear live with Facebook live.
Currently, Facebook excels at helping you identify and engage with your niche market. The Facebook Groups feature allows you to search for groups of Facebook users who are interested in the problem your product solves. Let’s say you are introducing a new line of maternity clothes. Simply go to the Facebook Groups search bar and type in maternity. You will find many groups and many thousands of users interested in various maternity issues. If you have a maternity product, you can join these groups, participate within them, and potentially attract interested users to become your followers.
You can even get started selling your product on Facebook before you have your website built. The Facebook Marketplace allows you to set up a sales page and sell directly to your audience. They do not even have to leave their Facebook platform. This is more immediate and less disruptive than if they have to click a link, go to your brand’s landing page, and then navigate your shopping cart. Facebook makes it easy for you to sell and for their users to buy.
How to Sell and Make Money on Facebook?
One of the most important features on Facebook is the Facebook Marketplace. With a business account, you can create a Facebook Shopping page. This allows users to specifically shop for and buy the products featured in your posts. A Facebook Shopping page allows you to set up a storefront within the Facebook app that can sell your collection. You don’t even need to have a website.
This option is very important. Within a day or so of joining Facebook, you can literally create your profile, showcase and promote your fashion line, and generate sales directly off the Facebook app. This can all happen before or while you are creating your actual landing page, website, and shopping cart. This direct selling option allows you to make sales and generate revenue nearly instantly.
The important thing to remember is that you don’t need thousands of followers to begin selling. You simply need a few users who trust you and have a need for your fashion product.
How much does Marketing on Facebook cost?
The beauty of marketing on Facebook is that it requires almost no start-up costs. Your product can be marketed and sold in just a matter of days. There is no cost to create a profile or page for your fashion brand, and there is no cost to post. If you choose to sell directly on Facebook Marketplace, there are some fees involved with each purchase. You can also choose to Boost your posts or advertisements which is a way to buy more exposure to users who are not your followers.
Overall, Facebook can be a very economical way to introduce your product line, attract your specific audience, and begin to generate sales revenue. It is a powerful marketing tool, and can help launch your new fashion brand to an interested and eager target audience.
Fashion magazines and their limited number of influencers are no longer the dictators of fashion and style. Social media is replacing their impact with a nearly infinite amount of influencers and more immediate and direct ways of selling your fashion line.
As a fashion entrepreneur, social media gives you a very strategic way to market your line, generate brand awareness, and even sell it. You are no longer at the mercy of retailers’ buying decisions. It no longer takes an enormous investment to make an impact and get started.
As a creative designer and fashion innovator, this gives you new options and new freedom to express yourself, find your audience, and generate revenue. Implementing a marketing strategy that optimizes social media can be the key to your fashion line’s successful launch and your brand’s ultimate growth.
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