Digital is truly the new frontier for brands and advertising, and now it’s incredibly rare to find a mid-market brand that doesn’t have a well-developed digital content and online following strategy. Brands from all over the world have achieved amazing success in the market due to their online marketing strategies or social media maneuvers and the good news is that there is always room for more excellent, high-performing fashion brands in the market.
If you’re interested in fashion and design but don’t know where to start when it comes to branding in the digital age, don’t worry. Many of the skills and experiences gained from working in the fashion industry can be transferred to the digital side of things. Read on to learn about some of the best practices fashion companies should follow when it comes to branding in the digital age.
– Advertisement –
Maintain a consistent aesthetic
Fashion is all about design, aesthetics, projection and emotional connection, so it should come as no surprise that maintaining a consistent aesthetic is of paramount importance. Fashion brands that don’t have a cohesive aesthetic end up looking disjointed, awkward, and dated in a way not dissimilar to JC Penney’s catalogue.
The additional challenge modern fashion brands face is maintaining this aesthetic also on all digital platforms. This means that the colors, branding and even the tone of the brand must be the same across all digital channels, and if the brand has physical stores, the feel of the store should mimic the online experience or vice versa. What this level of cohesion requires is a solid design strategy, starting with a well-crafted logo. If your brand’s logo looks awkward, boring, or homemade, it’s likely to be disregarded or the brand itself as a whole devalued.
If you’re not sure where to start, you can Experiment with a logo maker to get inspiration and get a better idea of what you like. Logo makers are digital tools that help you design a logo by using artificial intelligence (AI), icon libraries or design tools, depending on the logo maker.
Whichever logo maker you choose, you will be asked to fill in information like company name and industry, and the logo maker will then help you choose a good logo for your business. After you’ve chosen a logo, you can customize the logo to ensure it fits the vision you have for your business.
Once you have your logo design, create a style guide based on the fonts, color palette, and icon. This style guide guides you in creating all other branding aesthetics to keep your brand consistent across platforms.
Is your branding evergreen?
It can be tempting to jump on it new Pantone colors for the season in which they will be realized and try to integrate them into your brand. However, it’s worth taking a step back and considering whether the colors that are trending now are here to stay or are more of a passing fad.
It’s definitely still possible to incorporate the trendiest colors, shades, and patterns into your brand, but you might want them to be less permanent, such as brand aesthetics as a whole. That being said, all tokens will self-upgrade if they survive long enough. So don’t be afraid to give your brand a makeover when it needs one.
Invest in the site
It might seem obvious, but investing in your brand’s website is definitely worth it. We can all create a great-looking website using the freebie tools on sites like WordPress and Wix, but to truly build a professional, quality website, you probably need to make an investment.
While it may be useful to integrate those latest technology into your website design, it doesn’t mean you have to throw everything into your website at once and hire the most expensive website designer you can find. Instead, create a budget and do your research by making a list of things you appreciate about other fashion brand websites.
If you have the budget to hire a website designer, it is highly recommended. Your website is your cover letter and website design is one of the most important things to keep your audience engaged and ready to buy. If you’re going down the professional design route, make sure you do it Read reviews of website designers you’re considering hiring to make sure they have the experience you need to bring your site to life.
If you can’t afford a professional designer, you can too Check out some fashion website templates developed with best practices in mind. This will definitely be a lot more affordable, and it’s a good start.
Strategy!
There are so many different aspects of digital marketing and maintaining a digital platform that it can be confusing and overwhelming, especially if this is your first time creating a digital presence for a brand. In addition, Google Analytics is constantly updated and new tools are constantly being developed. So if you had experience with AdWords or any other SEO strategy four or five years ago, that experience is probably no longer relevant.
Developing a solid, multi-faceted, and staged strategy for building a brand’s social media presence is the best way to achieve long-term success. When you develop the strategy, this is what you will want Contact an SEO agency or a hired professional, depending on your budget, to help you with the aspects of SEO you are unsure about.
You should also identify key areas you want to develop, such as: E.g. social media, website, analytics, online advertising, brand awareness, etc. As you develop your strategy, you should benchmark yourself and schedule regular “check-in” sessions to ensure you meet the benchmarks, and give you Also, feel some flexibility around goals and KPIs, as you’ll likely learn that digital branding and marketing involves trial and error.
Consider the tone of your brand
When it comes to marketing in the fashion industry, social media is a huge topic and an area to think about. Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are incredibly visual, so it makes sense that they’re ideal for the fashion industry. However, it’s really important to be clear about your brand’s social media presence and operations before launching social media advertising campaigns, collaborating with different influencers or developing your accounts.
The first and most important step is to take a moment to think about what your brand is and what you want it to be. These are fundamental concepts that should shine through in your aesthetic, tone, and social media presence. For example, if your brand is sustainable, forward-thinking, and targeting a younger demographic, the aesthetic should match that “vibe,” as should the tone of your posts and replies.
Be smart with social media
These days it’s easy to get one, even for small brands unbelievable amount of pushback or criticize online when they’ve made a misstep. This is why it’s so important to have a solid understanding of what your brand is and who your customers are before developing your social media presence.
A few ways to be smart with social media is to do your (serious) due diligence before collaborating with influencers, not react negatively to “hate” comments, but instead come up with form responses and posts and videos with a few Verify people before posting Make sure typos or potentially harmful misunderstandings are caught before posting.
Help customers with digital style guides
Not everyone is a born fashionista and most people can benefit from the guidance of a style guide. Style guides help shoppers by showing them all the different ways a given set of products can be worn and styled. These guides help customers gain a better understanding of how to put an outfit together while also giving them the opportunity to visualize themselves in your clothes.
Additionally, style guides are great for boosting your brand’s SEO ranking because they’re packed with keyword-rich, high-quality content. These guides can then be used as part of your brand’s holistic marketing approach and applied to email campaigns, social media ads and banners on websites.
Invest in blogging
Blogging is not dead! How many times have you googled a question only to find the answer in a well-worded and clear blog post? There’s a reason for that – blogging is great for SEO as it allows a website or platform to increase the number of words and phrases on the site. This, in turn, gets caught by Google’s SEO crawlers and improves the Google ranking of the website.
Blogging is also a great way to connect and cross-fertilize with other brands, if you will. All brands and creators are looking for a way to boost their platform online, and a blog is a great way to connect and support one another. Interviews, collaboration posts and highlight articles are great ways to connect and network in the industry.
These are some of the best practices fashion companies should follow when it comes to adopting the digital aspect of a brand. The digital space is huge and new tools, platforms and strategies are always available, so this is really just the tip of the iceberg. As with all things, trial and error, patience and perseverance are essential to succeed in digital marketing.