Influencer campaigns have become a must for most fashion and beauty brands. But where do you begin when you’re new to the world of influencers and social media? Here are our tips to put into practice before and during your collaborations, whether you’re new to the market or looking to reinvent your brand and attract...
Influencer campaigns have become a must for most fashion and beauty brands. But where do you begin when you’re new to the world of influencers and social media? Here are our tips to put into practice before and during your collaborations, whether you’re new to the market or looking to reinvent your brand and attract a new audience.
Don’t Think Your Fashion Brand Is too Small for Influencer Marketing
You’ve only launched two t-shirts and don’t feel justified launching an influencer campaign. Think again! If you only have two products, you’ve most likely spent a lot of time on them. Maybe your t-shirts are sustainable and/or defend a cause. In which case, your brand is bringing something new to the market and, with the help of influencers, can make itself a name.
You may have a very small marketing budget. Again, don’t worry. You already have everything you need to collaborate with influencers: t-shirts. Set some aside and send them to influencers to get them talking about you. Gifting is still the most cost-effective strategy, even for more established brands with high awareness.
Choose Influencers who Share Your Values
The world of fashion is changing. Fast fashion is still popular, but it is more and more criticized from an environmental and human standpoint. On social media, you can find ethical influencers and others who haven’t taken the same direction. Either way, make sure that they share your values.
This doesn’t mean that you should cut yourself off from certain niche accounts that don’t take a firm stance. They can still promote you in an authentic way. And maybe you could be the brand that convinces them to change their approach to fashion.
Influencers to Focus on for Fashion Brands
The success of an influencer campaign depends mainly on whether or not your products match the followers’ tastes. So, depending on classic criteria such gender and age, as well as follower engagement (likes, comments, reshares), you’re more or less likely to stand out and trigger sales.
You don’t necessarily need influencers with millions of followers. Fashion brands can resonate with like-minded accounts whose followers are keen to discover new fashion trends. Influencers answer questions about the sweater, bag or jewelry they’re wearing every day. Micro-influencers, who have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers, often generate higher engagement with their community which sees them as experts. Their followers are more likely to follow their recommendations.
Gifting or Sponsored Posts? Make the Best Choice
Fashion brands can easily gift products, rather than spending a lot of money on marketing. This small investment can have a strong impact online. That’s not to say that sponsored posts are never a good option. Especially in long-term influencer campaigns, where sponsored posts appear more regularly in feeds.
But if you’re just starting out or launching a new product, gifting makes sense. It keeps costs down and enables you to test your fashion brand on a selected audience. This strategy also boosts your visibility, while building authentic relationships with influencers, since they’re not being paid. Your targeted consumers are more likely to trust their honest opinions and, therefore, your brand.
Formalize Your Influencer Campaigns
Contracts are key to ensuring influencer loyalty, whether for gifts or sponsored posts. You can gift a product without a contract, of course, and hope that the influencer will say something positive. But contracts help to properly manage your campaigns.
These legal documents outline the influencer’s content (number of posts, publication date, hashtags or anything else to be mentioned in the post). You can then closely monitor your collaboration, as well as key indicators (number of visits to your brand’s profile, sales after posts, etc.).
Use a Platform Specializing in Influencer Campaigns
The influencer world is now so big, especially in the fashion industry, between micro- and macro-influencers, that it can be difficult for brands to know who to collaborate with.
A platform such as Influencer Marketing by Skeepers, can help you make the right choice based on your own criteria and goals. Our platform connects you with influencers, ensuring a faster response.
For example, Skeepers helped Gémo to rejuvenate its image with a two-fold strategy involving micro- and macro-influencers. The main challenge was to find influencers as flexible as the brand, which regularly changes its collections.
Gémo chose to launch 27 small campaigns at regular intervals. It selected 10 influencers from the 33,000 qualified profiles on our platform.
The brand was able to generate 80,000 interactions and 24,000 euros of media value.
This example shows how powerful a fashion influencer campaign can be when it is planned in great detail, both with an algorithm and manually. Any fashion brand, regardless of its market share and target audience, can use the platform to find the right influencers.
Our influencer solution secures all of your campaigns and provides you with a performance dashboard, so that you can drive your own fashion influencer campaigns.
