When you start-up your fashion business you need a solid marketing budget to successfully promote, introduce, launch, and sell your line. You also need a sustainable marketing budget each season. In this blog, I give you tips on knowing how to budget for marketing expenses from the very beginning.

M.O.N.E.Y. We all know the joys and upsets money can bring, but I am here to make money and marketing simple. In order to make money you must sell your products. In order to sell your products you must have a healthy sized audience. You can build your audience organically through strategy or through paid ads. Your marketing budget can be small but it should be creative in order to stretch the value. With a bigger marketing budget you can put more into things like, photoshoots, graphic designers, placement of your products, ads and more. 

Difference between Marketing and Convincing

There is a difference between “marketing” to an audience and trying to “convince” an audience. When you aim to convince someone you are trying to sway them, by giving them a list of benefits you value but maybe they do not. However, when you market a product, well you do so by creating appeal for your product. Take Apple for example, their ads are sleek and create a desire for the product. This is ultimately what you will want to achieve. If you take time to strategize and create desirable imagery, and words around your brand you can create a “want” for your products. Selling products becomes easy with a marketing plan. With this strategy in mind, you can develop ideas that can truly market your product. And then you can put your ideas to action using your marketing budget.

Have a Starting budget: 

We love helping designers create the products of their dreams. We also know that achieving that dream will require an investment of funds. Our team likes to go over all aspects of budgeting right from the initial concept. We always tell designers to set aside a budget for marketing. It is an essential element in the budget and it is critical  to enable you to generate consumer awareness, build audience anticipation, create the desire for your product, and ultimately drive demand which generates revenue. Unfortunately, there are many sad stories of designers who put all their investment into producing their line and then have nothing left to actually market it. Many great ideas have failed because a short-sighted vision did not budget for marketing and promotion in the initial investment. Do yourself a favor as a designer with a market vision as well as a creative vision. Make sure that you have a starting budget for marketing that can drive your launch and build your target audience.

Have a Budget Each Season for Marketing:

Successfully marketing a fashion line is quite different from marketing a consumer product that never changes. Fashion is always seasonal and your marketing strategy needs to evolve with each season. When you budget you must prepare for quarterly design development and evolution, production, and marketing strategies and content. Things as simple as photos and other content featuring your product in sunny, summer situations may not be as appealing or attention grabbing to consumers who are shopping for the cold winter months. This content will need to be updated and replaced by photos and creative materials that are more appropriate for the season your buyers and consumers will be shopping for.  The solution is to build a quarterly marketing budget that accounts for these changes and allows you to reach out with season-appropriate marketing materials that continue to feature your fashion line in the best possible way. Along with making a budget, you must also create quarterly marketing strategies that change with the seasons. This can help maximize your reach and appeal to your consumers in the seasonally most-appropriate way. 

Be Contrarian:

I see it over and over, when an economic scare hits. Companies reduce their marketing and advertising budgets; however, as I have emphasized earlier in the blog, marketing is extremely important at all times to generate solid sales and revenue. The consequence of a knee-jerk reaction and being fearful and frugal during a slow economy means that if you reduce your marketing budget, your sales will decline as well. That can make a troubled situation even worse, and creates a self fulfilling prophecy for your brand. Take Covid for example, television media prices plummeted. Many marketers, like those in Direct Response Television (DRTV) saw the opportunity and snatched up the discounted air time. They made a killing during the pandemic while everyone sat at home and watched television. An economic pull back can offer many fashion lines a new opportunity. It is important not to react with fear and slash marketing budgets during those times.

Marketing is critical to establishing brand awareness for a new fashion line and creating the audience who will hopefully become brand loyal consumers. It is a necessary element to the success of your brand and your business. As a fashion entrepreneur you must make preparations to have the proper budget dedicated to marketing in your launch budget and for the seasons to follow, so you can create brand awareness, generate interest, build consumer demand, and drive the sales revenue necessary to support and grow your new business and brand.

Not sure how to go about your marketing plan? The V.Mora team can create social media content and manage your social media plan with one of our Marketing Packages.  For inquiries please contact: vmorainquiry@vmora.com

Have a Marketing plan already, but need help with producing your line? V.Mora can help you take your brand voice and turn it into products. We will help each step of the way to design, develop patterns, and connect with the right vendors for your project through our Production Development and Management service. Please contact us if you are in need of the Production Development and Management Services below:

• Sourcing 

• Technical sketches 

• Pattern Making

• Prototype making 

• Sample Making

• Fittings 

• Digitizing and Grading

• Marker Making

• Manufacturing

Please contact us at: vmorainquiry@vmora.com