There is no doubt that Facebook is a fantastic platform for acquiring customers and increasing revenue for your fashion and clothing brand. Even after the IOS updates that had Facebook advertisers on their knees, things have recovered somewhat with the use of alternative tracking and different strategies to utilise.
Fashion brands have long been using the likes of Facebook & Instagram ads to increase their sales, customer loyalty and repeat purchasing. Today I want to go over some things we’ve had success with on the platform, so that you can learn a thing or two and get some creative juices flowing.
Social media is a busy place. There is so much content being published in front of your target market each day, making it a challenge to stand out from the crowd. Your ad has to do a great job of acquiring attention for your sales funnel, in order to make sales.
Before We Start
One thing I talk about a lot when it comes to running ads on any traffic platform, is that your brand needs to have a good sales funnel in order for your ad campaigns to work. What I mean here is your product pages need to sell, have good offers, fast loading times, products that are actually in demand. You need to improve your average order value as well as improving your conversion rate. All these elements in your sales funnel need to be optimised for improvement.
If you have a good ad strategy and your ads are driving targeted traffic and getting alot of interest, your cost per purchase will reduce and your profits will increase on your sales.
Let’s begin…
Use Video & Image Ads
What we find great over at Byrne Media is utilising a mix of video and image ads for fashion and clothing brands. We find that video & motion designed creative tends to be a fantastic way of acquiring brand awareness and attracting new customers. These are the top of funnel audiences who need to be entertained initially and get an understanding for what your clothing/fashion brand is all about.
At the same time, we find image based creatives work great for retargeting people who are already aware of your fashion brand.
Here are a few motion/video ideas you can create with your ads today –
- Create a video of a model wearing a completed outfit during a social event, date, etc. This shows the viewer what the end outcome looks like if they decide to buy a completed outfit and convey a feeling that the viewer wants from wearing your clothing label.
- Design a video creative where a model is wearing one of your clothing items, but the colour of the garment changes with the model staying the same. What this does is convey to the viewer what the item of clothing looks like in different colours and triggers their imagination on what colour might suit their style.
- Another idea is to show off styles based on certain themes. Styles such as what to wear “at a job interview”, “in summer”, “social events” or “what to wear at work”.
A good video ad should acquire good video views & engagement. You should create a custom audience from those viewers who watch your ad and retarget them to nurture them further down your sales funnel.
Use User Generated Content
I’m a big fan of UGC. The reason why is because it simply works! It’s a brilliant way of conveying social proof and influencing your audiences to buy from your brand. If you can get your customers to create content based on their positive experiences with your clothing items, you will nurture more of your prospects with their decision to purchase from you. This is because they see people in their own tribe, getting the type of results that they wish to acquire.
Nothing sells your products better than customers who share their positive experiences that come from your brand.
Customers want to see how your garments fit in real life on a real person. UGC does this job really well. To find UGC content, simply look at the pictures your brand was tagged in social media. On a side note, we always recommend asking for the permission of the user in question to use the picture.
Pro Tip:
As you ship each order, add a flyer into the packaging and have a call to action that asks the customer to tag a photo of them wearing your clothing items for whatever purpose they intend. Doing so will have them added to an enticing giveaway for that month for a chance to win something valuable from your brand.
When done right, this works a charm!
Use Celebrity & Influencer Content
Very similar to UGC. Leveraging people of influence and status can really help to boost your own branding and of course purchase conversions.
As most fashion brands know, a lot of people decide what to wear based on what celebrities or influencers wear. With that in mind, it’s always an advantage to leverage influencers & celebrities in your Facebook ad campaigns.
One great example of this is a streetwear clothing brand called Against All Odds. They have ex professional footballer and TV pundit Rio Ferdinand wearing their clothing.
What we suggest here if you are considering going down this route is to take your best selling products or new clothing line and get some influencers and celebrities to take pictures with them. You can then take the images and use them inside your Facebook ad creatives to boost the results. We do this by targeting people who know the celebrity or influencer or have interests related to them.
All the more sweet is if you get a short video clip of the celebrity/Influencer hyping up your garments. That’s even more influential and also very possible if they love your clothing and your purpose as a brand.
Use Lifestyle Photography
Lifestyle photography is one of the most used types of Facebook image ads for clothing. Lifestyle shots of your clothing brand can really help to make your product really stand out and offer its true value. This is also another great way of offering creative ideas to your customer of how they themselves could wear the garments you are trying to sell.
So what sort of lifestyle shots should you create?
Here are a few tips we can share:
- Tell a story (Use captions)
- Have a clear style to let others recognize themselves (as if they are wearing your clothing)
- Don’t have too much action, focus on one product at a time
Use Facebook’s Collection Ad Format
Have you ever used Facebook Collection Ads?
They offer a great experience to the end user when it comes to selling your products online. If you have a new collection or have an existing collection that people love, then running this type of ad campaign can really help with purchase conversions.
To give you an idea, the Facebook ad would have a video on top and a few products in a carousel format at the bottom. When people click on the ad, a small landing page will open below on Facebook with all the products.
Use Custom Audiences
Moving the conversation outside of ad creative themes and format, it’s important to focus on good audiences to target for your ads. Picking relevant audience interests to target can work great. It can be the difference between strong results and no results at all.
Another highly recommended audience to target is custom audiences. Setting up custom audiences will work wonders in terms of nurturing your prospects and landing them to your end goal (purchase conversion). Custom audiences are built from any interactions that people have with your brand (liking a Facebook post, saving an Instagram ad, messaging you, watching your videos etc)
With these custom audiences, you can select a certain timeframe for choosing the people in that audience. To give you an example, you can pick your website visitors over the last 90 days. The smaller the amount of days, the better the results in theory (good chance they will remember you in a 7 day visitor window, compared with a 30 day window).
We always recommend brands to start with website visitors of 180 days, Facebook engagement 365 days and Instagram engagement 365 days. This will give them a large enough pool to leverage the power of custom audiences.
If you’d like to read part two of this mini series, please visit this link
Looking to grow your clothing brands revenue using paid media such as Facebook, Instagram etc? Need help growing your clothing brand? Let’s hop on a call and discuss your ambition and growth goals.
