Five PR Tips for Fashion Brands

Whatever their size or financial backing, fashion brands are always out to create clothes that look good on their customers. If they can achieve more than just “good,” that’s even better for them. For that to happen, though, customers have to buy the clothes first. And for that, the brand has to set itself apart from other brands on the market to increase its appeal. Here are five suggestions fashion brands can use to do just that.

Do Research

Research should always come before anything else in PR and marketing. The best questions have to do with their competitors. More specifically, brands should ask who their competitors are and what they can do to get an advantage over them. They might also ask what problems other brands are having, and how they’re uniquely placed to solve those problems.

The second part of the research is consumer-focused. This is where the brands ask who their likely customers are. From the answers they come up with, they can try to form avatars that help them to appeal to those customers even more.

Apart from who’s actually buying from them at that time, brands can also look into who their ideal customer is. The answer to that question lies in who the fashion brands think is the perfect customer for the clothing they make. When they’re clear on that one, they can try to adjust their image to be more aligned with that customer.

Another important bit of the research is finding out who the top magazines are, as well as their journalists. Armed with this information, a fashion brand can begin to think about taking other steps.

Use Attractive Models

For a business in the fashion industry, hardly anything tops looks when it comes to sheer importance. Having attractive models ensures that the clothes will also look attractive.

Now, brands should be careful not to fall into the stereotypical thinking of what counts as beauty. Models of one ethnicity and body type can alienate other several potential consumer bases. Instead, brands should ensure that they vary it up with models of different body types and ethnicities so that they appeal to a broader base.

This is increasingly important as brands are receiving more and more backlash for lack of diversity.

Post on Instagram

Posting pictures of clothing and attractive models in them on its website can only do so much for a brand. For starters, the pictures will mostly be seen by people who have already heard about the brand, and web content is much less shareable than social media.

Instagram has become the go-to social network for fashionistas looking to craft their style, as well as to get more insight into what’s trendy. What makes Instagram the prime place for brands to post pictures is that, well, it’s built and highly for sharing pictures.

Hire Brand Ambassadors

While celebrities make great ambassadors in fashion, the most famous or recognizable among them might be out of reach for many fashion brands, especially the fledgling ones. For comparable results, brands can turn to fashion bloggers and Instagram models.

An advantage that celebrities have is that they showcase the brand to a much broader audience, boosting visibility. While fashion bloggers will showcase it to a smaller audience, it’s likely that the audience will be more engaged. In that sense, fashion bloggers and Instagram models will present the brand to a higher concentration of the target market.

Learn What to Pitch and When

The buzz that can be generated with the help of models, Instagram and ambassadors help to imbue pitches with some much-needed credibility. Brands must come up with creative pitches before speaking to editors, as it’s likely that they’ve heard all the bland and oft-repeated pitches and they’re hungering for something new and daring.

Not to forget the content calendars, which throw a lot of brands off. It’s standard for fashion magazines to plan out their content as much as six months ahead of time. Waiting until summer to start pitching summer-wear will probably mean losing the window of opportunity.

While there’s a lot of fun and excitement in fashion PR, tempered by the fact that clothing lines are an easy-to-start and resultantly saturated business. With that much competition, brands have to get down to some deep research, creative thinking and embracing diversity.