INFLUENCER MARKETING

Fashion Influencer Marketing: The Ultimate 7-Step Guide [+ REAL Examples]

Influencer marketing is a lucrative strategy from all points of view.

Many brands who use influencers wisely will get increased awareness, loyalty, and profit.

This statement holds for fashion brands.

Studies show that the global fashion influencer marketing market will grow by about 35.7% CAGR until 2027.

You can hop on that train, too.

Keep reading to find out more about influencer marketing for fashion brands.

We’ll discuss our case studies, plans, creative briefs, and insider tips as we delve deep into our experience.

TL;DR:

• Influencer marketing significantly boosts brand awareness, loyalty, and profits in the fashion industry.
• The global fashion influencer market is expected to grow by 35.7% CAGR until 2027.
• Fashion influencer marketing utilizes social media to influence consumer trends and behaviors.
• Key benefits include enhanced engagement rates, broader audience reach, higher conversion rates, cost-effective customer acquisition, and strengthened brand-customer relationships.
• Challenges include finding the right influencers, ensuring brand-influencer alignment, managing multiple campaigns, measuring success, and navigating legal issues.
• Setting clear goals and KPIs, understanding your target audience, and choosing the right channels and strategies are crucial steps.
• Implementing and monitoring campaigns effectively is essential for success.
• Platforms like inBeat can simplify finding and connecting with suitable influencers.

What Is Fashion Influencer Marketing?

Fashion influencer marketing harnesses the power of fashion influencers on social media platforms to shape consumer behavior and trends.

This strategy involves collaborations between fashion brands and content creators with a significant following within a niche audience.

Operating across various digital platforms, this form of marketing taps into the influencer's personal style and aspirational lifestyle, establishing a deeper connection with the target demographic.

As an influencer marketing platform, we’ve seen it work a thousand times.

By leveraging influencer-generated content, our clients captured consumers' attention and increased engagement with potential customers.

5 Advantages of Influencer Marketing for Fashion Brands

This approach is integral in today's ever-evolving world of fashion marketing, where relatable content reigns supreme.

Here are five advantages our clients have reaped by leveraging influencers:

1. Enhanced Engagement Rates

Fashion brands collaborating with influencers experience heightened engagement rates, as influencers' followers are highly invested in their content.

This personalized and relatable content leads to more meaningful interactions between the brand and its audience.

For instance, a 2022 study revealed that fashion influencer campaigns can boost engagement rates by up to 5.7%, significantly higher than traditional marketing channels.

And according to Influencer Marketing Hub, an increase in influencer marketing spending by just 1% can lead to an almost 0.5% boost in engagement rates.

This suggests that reallocating budgets towards influencer marketing could significantly enhance engagement, with potential increases of up to 16.6%

2. Broader Audience Reach

Leveraging influencers allows fashion brands to tap into a wider audience, including demographics that may have been previously unreachable.

Micro-influencers and mega-influencers bring diverse follower bases, expanding the brand's visibility across multiple social platforms.

Research indicates that influencer marketing can extend your brand's reach to a higher-quality target audience than conventional advertising, according to 51% of interviewed marketers.

That’s probably why 81.4% of fashion brands use influencer marketing.

3. Higher Conversion Rates

Authentic endorsements by influencers often translate to higher conversion rates for fashion products.

Businesses earn, on average, $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing strategies, with some companies seeing returns of $20 or more for every $1 spent​.

And that’s because consumers trust recommendations from their favorite influencers more than traditional advertising.

4. Cost-Effective Customer Acquisition

Fashion influencer marketing presents a cost-effective solution for customer acquisition.

The collaborative effort between brands and influencers can significantly reduce customer acquisition costs, offering a more affordable alternative to high-budget marketing campaigns.

Data suggests that brands can save up to 30% on customer acquisition costs when employing influencer marketing tactics.

5. Strengthening Brand-Customer Relationships

Influencer marketing fosters a deeper connection between fashion brands and their consumers by promoting a more personal and engaging brand narrative.

This approach builds trust and loyalty, essential components for long-term consumer relationships.

A survey highlighted that 37% of consumers trust influencers more than brands, so influencer partnerships can transfer some of that trust onto your brand.

Challenges of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing for fashion brands isn’t free of challenges.

Here are just a few we’ve noticed in our work.

1. Fashion Marketers Have Difficulties Finding the Right Influencers

One of the primary challenges in fashion influencer marketing is navigating through the vast influencer marketing market size, which includes millions of content creators.

Fashion brands struggle with identifying influencers who truly resonate with their key demographic and fashion community, potentially leading to partnerships that don't align with the brand's values or aesthetic.

2. Brand-Influencer Alignment Is Tough to Crack

Ensuring that influencers' content style and personal brand are consistent with the fashion company's image is crucial.

Mismatches between the brand's ethos and the influencer's persona can lead to diluted brand messaging and a confused target audience, undermining the marketing efforts.

3. Marketers Have Troubles Managing Multiple Campaigns

Fashion influencer marketing involves coordinating campaigns across various social media platforms, which can be overwhelming without the right tools.

The complexity of managing different content creation timelines, engagement metrics, and influencer communications can lead to lost opportunities and fragmented campaign execution.

4. Measuring Campaign Success Is Very Difficult

A significant hurdle in influencer marketing campaigns is quantifying success and ROI.

Without clear key performance indicators and robust tracking mechanisms, fashion brands risk not capturing the full impact of their campaigns, making it challenging to justify marketing spend and assess campaign performance.

5. Some Marketers Forget to Check Influencer Following

The risk of partnering with influencers who have inflated or misleading follower counts is a real concern.

Such discrepancies can lead to overestimated reach and engagement, affecting the anticipated conversion rates and overall effectiveness of influencer campaigns.

6. Legal and Contractual Issues Always Arise

Creating comprehensive influencer contracts and proposals that protect both the brand and the influencer can be intricate.

Issues such as unclear deliverables, copyright infringements, and payment terms can lead to disputes and potentially harm the brand's reputation and relationships with creators.

7. Program Tracking and Compensation Has a Learning Curve

Efficiently tracking program progress and ensuring timely influencer payments pose logistical challenges.

Inadequate systems can lead to dissatisfaction among influencers, potentially affecting the content quality and the overall enthusiasm for the campaign, thereby impacting the desired results.

The Ultimate Influencer Marketing Plan for Fashion Brands

Now, the section you’ve been waiting for.

The ultimate influencer marketing plan we’ve also used for our clients.

1. Set Your Goals

Setting clear goals and KPIs allows you to assess campaign performance and align your efforts with business objectives.

Pro tip: We always advise our clients to set clear goals and then derive clear KPIs.

Goals can range from boosting brand awareness within the fashion community to increasing sales of specific fashion products to enhancing customer engagement on digital platforms.

KPIs must be tailored to these goals:

• For brand awareness: Track the campaign's reach and the annual growth rate of social media followers.
• For sales objectives: Monitor conversion rates and product sales linked directly to influencer campaigns.
• For engagement goals: Focus on metrics like comments, shares, and the engagement rate of influencer-generated content.

Tracking the cost-effectiveness of marketing efforts through customer acquisition costs and the ROI of marketing campaigns can provide valuable insights into the financial impact of your influencer marketing strategies.

Pro tip: Use this free cost-per-acquisition calculator to keep track of your campaign.

2. Know Your Target Audience

Understanding your target audience is essential in fashion influencer marketing, as it determines the type of content that resonates most.

You can start by gathering all the data you have on your target audience from sources like your sales team, chatbot conversations, or social media listening tools.

Use this info to create a comprehensive buyer persona.

This approach makes it easier to understand the types of influences and messages that would resonate.

Pro tip: We advise our clients to go beyond crafting a buyer persona toward understanding what they need.

Fashion consumers seek:

• Inspiration from fashion influencers who embody an aspirational lifestyle while maintaining relatable content that reflects their personal style and values
• Insights into fashion practices and trends, showcasing how to integrate fashion products into everyday wear
• Authentic experiences and stories behind fashion brands, favoring genuine endorsements over overt advertising
• Meaningful interactions with influencers who create a sense of community and deeper connection within the fashion community

The demographic is also keen on seeing a wide range of influencers, including lifestyle influencers and beauty influencers, who can introduce them to new trends and ideas, thereby enriching their fashion content consumption.

3. Choose the Right Channels

Now that you have the right influencers, it’s time to find the best channels.

Otherwise, your messages will go unnoticed, and all your efforts will be in vain.

Let’s look at some stats again:

• Instagram is the playground of fashion brands. Most of them use this channel because it drives the biggest engagement compared to other platforms.
• 77% of fashion micro-influencers prefer Instagram.

TikTok is gaining speed, though. This platform caters to Gen Z, and it’s only evident that brands targeting this audience would want to connect to people on their home turf.

And that’s the critical statement: connect with your audience on their home turf.

Remember: It doesn’t matter whether 99% of fashion brands use a particular medium. Ask yourself what works for you, according to your brand’s style and needs. Craft your brand’s persona and ask yourself what they will be browsing.

For example, if you’re targeting 20-year-olds from upper-middle classes in Western Europe and North America, you’ll use Instagram and TikTok.

If you’re targeting 40-year-old business people from China, you’ll use WeChat or Weibo. For some brands, a website is the best option for better user engagement.

Pro tip: If you are just starting to establish a fashion brand and looking for website ideas, you could check some beginner-friendly fashion website templates and themes.

4. Set a Creative Brief

Yes, you should build a creative brief before finding your influencers.

In our platform’s experience, it’s easier to find the right influencers who match the content you need rather than vice versa.

Here’s our agency’s influencer brief for Luxbox to inspire you:

A well-structured creative brief for influencers should clearly outline the campaign's objectives and expectations, ensuring alignment between the fashion brand and the influencer.

Key elements to include are:

• Campaign overview: Summarize the campaign's purpose, highlighting the desired impact on the fashion influencer marketing market and the role of the influencer in achieving this goal.
• Target demographic: Detail the key demographic and niche audience the campaign aims to engage, including age bracket, interests, and lifestyle attributes.
• Brand messaging: Define the core messages and values your brand wants to convey, ensuring they resonate with the target audience and maintain the brand's identity within the fashion community.
• Content requirements: Specify the type of influencer-generated content needed, such as fashion content, product reviews, or lifestyle content, including any specific content style or themes.
• Key deliverables: List the expected deliverables, such as the number of posts, stories, and specific hashtags or mentions, to ensure clear expectations.

Insider tip: To ensure smooth campaign execution, provide a clear timeline for content creation, reviews, and publication dates.

5. Choose the Right Influencers

Take it from us; fashion consumers heed the advice of a specific type of fashion influencer.

This content creator should:

• Understand their followers' preferences and buying habits, earning trust through genuine content.
• Stay ahead of emerging trends and adeptly incorporate them into their content.
• Connect with specific niches relevant to particular campaigns, proving to be an adaptable, cost-efficient, and measurable channel for sales.
• Be a source of creative inspiration and foster positive connections with their audience, passionately engaging with fashion, art, and lifestyle themes.

Pro tip: For you as a company, influencers play a crucial role in collecting consumer feedback to refine brand strategies.

So, pick creators who really have a pulse on their audience and fashion trends.

To pick the right influencers, consider:

• The type of fashion company you have:
• Large/ medium/ small
• Haute-couture/ department store
• Sports fashion/ elegant/ business/ casual apparel, etc.
• Apparel/ beauty and cosmetics/jewelry and accessories
• The region you’re targeting:
• Urban
• Rural
• The type of influencer you need:
• Nano-influencers
• Micro-influencers
• Macro-influencers
• Mega-influencers

For instance, if you have a small-medium fashion brand, you can consider micro-influencers.

Studies show that micro-influencers have 22.2% more buying-related conversations, and almost 85% of those happen face-to-face.

That’s why they have more chances to convince customers to buy your products.

There are two steps to consider:

1. Casting: You can use keyword or hashtag searches on Google and social media. You can also peek at your competitors to see what they’re doing.

Insider tip: We wrote an in-depth article on searching for influencers here, plus our inBeat platform is free.

1. Vetting: Ensure that your potential influencers will fit your brand’s personality and values. The cornerstones of vetting are:

• Reach: Your influencer’s audience size must fit your company’s size. Engagement is a crucial factor, too, so analyze their comments, likes, and shares.
• Relevance: Your influencer’s content must be relevant to your potential customers.
• Resonance: The influencer should appear trustworthy and authoritative to its audience.

So, ultimately, these fashion influencers should fit your brand’s image to a T. Our advice is to identify your customer persona and find influencers who closely match it (age, gender, niche, size, etc.).

6. Choose the Right Strategies

Selecting the right strategies for your fashion influencer marketing efforts is key to achieving your brand's long-term objectives.

Creativity in your approach can significantly enhance your campaign's visibility, leading to an uptick in social media users, audience engagement, and ultimately, product sales.

Here are some strategies that brought our clients steady success:

• Product showcases: A prevalent strategy involves providing influencers with your fashion products or allowing them to select items from your online collection. Influencers can then integrate these items into their fashion content, showcasing them through blog posts, social media updates, and stories, thus highlighting your brand to their followers.
• Affiliate marketing: Amplify your sales events by partnering with influencers who share their top picks from your brand using affiliate links. This approach not only promotes your sale but also incentivizes influencers with a commission for each sale generated, attracting potential customers to your brand.
• Personalized discounts: Offering exclusive discount codes through influencers is an effective way to boost sales and track the impact of individual influencers on traffic to your website. This tactic not only appeals to consumers looking for deals but also provides valuable data on campaign effectiveness.

If you want awesome inspiration, BBC Three explained how a new fashion brand launched its Cannes collection with six key influencers, including Lorna Luxe.

7. Choose the Best Influencer Marketing Tactics

Selecting the most effective influencer marketing tactics specifically tailored for fashion brands allows you to captivate your audience and drive engagement.

Here are some dynamic tactics to consider:

• Social media takeovers: Allow an influencer to manage your brand's Instagram for a day, sharing updates, stories, and reels. This approach provides a fresh, engaging perspective to your content, drawing the influencer's audience to your social channels.
• Engaging video content: Encourage influencers to create spontaneous video posts or live streams that showcase your fashion products in action. This real-time engagement adds a personal touch, making the content more relatable.
• Interactive features: Use Instagram's interactive polls or questions in stories to engage users directly, making them feel a part of the conversation and more connected to your brand.
• TikTok challenges: Leverage TikTok's viral nature by having influencers participate in or create try-on challenges, showcasing your fashion items in creative, trend-setting ways.
• Music-infused reels: Collaborate with influencers to produce reels featuring trending music, aligning your fashion items with popular culture and increasing their appeal to a wider audience.
• Daily fashion inspirations: Use the "Outfit of the Day" (OOTD) concept, where influencers showcase daily looks featuring your products, providing continuous engagement and fashion inspiration.
• Curated lookbooks: Work with influencers to create digital lookbooks that highlight various ways to style your products, offering valuable fashion content to their followers and showcasing the versatility of your range.

Asia Jackson offers an excellent example of a catchy fashion video by showing her audience how she repurposes her old clothes into new outfits.

And her engagement is skyrocketing.

Although she currently has 647,000 subscribers, this video below has over 4.7 million views and 1,764 comments.

8. Implement Your Campaign

Implementing your fashion influencer marketing campaign involves a series of practical steps to ensure smooth execution and alignment with your strategic objectives.

Here are key actions to take:

• Content creation & approval: Allow influencers to commence content creation, providing them with necessary products or access to your collections. Implement a review process to ensure content aligns with brand standards and campaign objectives before publication.
• Scheduling: Coordinate with influencers on a content posting schedule that maximizes visibility and engagement across different time zones and peak user activity times on various social platforms.
• Logistics and support: Address logistical aspects such as product shipments, access to digital assets, and any technical support influencers may need to create or post content.
• Communication channels: Establish clear, open lines of communication with influencers for timely updates, feedback, and resolution of any issues that may arise during the campaign period.
• Legal and compliance: Ensure all contractual agreements are in place, covering aspects such as content rights, disclosure requirements, and compensation terms, adhering to industry standards and regulations.
• Launch preparation: Prepare for the campaign launch by coordinating with influencers for a synchronized effort, ensuring all parties are ready for the go-live date with content primed for posting.

9. Monitor and Scale Your Campaign

Monitoring and scaling your fashion influencer marketing campaign helps you maximize its impact and achieve your desired outcomes.

Here’s how our clients effectively manage this phase:

• Performance tracking: Employ tools and software to track key performance indicators like engagement rates, reach, and conversion rates. This data helps assess the effectiveness of each influencer and the overall campaign.
• Feedback loop: Create a system for gathering and analyzing consumer feedback and influencer insights. This information can highlight what’s resonating with your audience and areas for improvement.
• Adapt and optimize: Use real-time data to make informed adjustments to your campaign. This might include changing content styles, focusing on more successful social platforms, or even shifting the emphasis between influencers.
• Pay-Per-Click integration: Consider integrating Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising to complement your influencer efforts. Targeted ads can amplify influencer-generated content, reaching an even wider audience and driving additional traffic to your campaign.
• Influencer expansion: Based on initial success, consider scaling your campaign by partnering with additional influencers. This could involve exploring new niches or tapping into influencers with larger followings to increase campaign reach.
• Content diversification: Scale up the variety of content being produced. Incorporating different content formats or themes can keep the campaign fresh and engaging for a wider audience.

3 Best Examples of Influencer Marketing for Fashion Brands

We’ll review different types of fashion brands below so that you understand the practical aspects of influencer marketing.

Besides, you can find plenty of actionable content if you read below:

1. Kids Fashion Brands: Deux Par Deux

Deux Par Deux isn’t a renowned fashion brand the size of Balenciaga.

It’s also a kids’ brand, which doubled our challenge.

However, we understood the company’s essential need: partnering with influencer moms with beautiful families.

That’s how each micro-influencer we found added five new customers for the brand.

And, if you’re reading our case study, you’ll learn that these influencers’ posts were value-for-money.

At the end of its campaign, Deux Par Deux had over 150 pieces of original content and hundreds of new customers.

Lessons learned:

• Target audience: Focus on engaging parents, particularly moms, as they are the primary decision-makers for kids' fashion.
• Emotional connection: Successful marketing to parents goes beyond the product; it's about creating a narrative of safety, joy, and carefree childhood experiences.
• Product messaging: Highlight how your clothing line contributes to a child's well-being, happiness, and individuality.
• Influencer authority: Choose influencers who are not only parents but also respected voices in the parenting and lifestyle communities.

2. Sports Fashion Brands: New Balance

New Balance was a challenge because we needed to cast sports micro-influencers.

After studying the sports fashion industry, we came up with several conclusions:

• Sports fans and athletic people feel the most influencer fatigue. Our audience isn’t the kind to spend all their free time on Instagram.
• Sports fashion brands like New Balance have a lot to gain by understanding their audience’s need to be part of a “tribe.” This word is essential here because it defines more than a standard group. The ties in a tribe are stronger, and the loyalties are for life. Often, the members of this sort of tribe will help each other above and beyond fashion tips.
• Target a specific niche. Knowing the tribe to address (e.g., survivalists, trail runners, sporty moms, etc.) helps convey your unique brand identity and thus increase your ROI.
• Sports influencers are gurus – the tribe’s leaders. Their followers look to them for inspiration and life advice, not just fashion tips. That means your content has to address this intense need for leadership. Ensure your influencers engage actively with their list of followers, answer all questions, and offer lots of valuable tips.

Lessons learned:

• Audience understanding: Realizing sports fans' resistance to traditional influencer tactics underlines the need for genuine engagement.
• Tribal loyalty: Capitalizing on the 'tribe' concept within niche communities fosters deeper brand connections.
• Niche focus: Targeting specific groups enhances message relevance and engagement.
• Influencers as leaders: In the sports world, influencers should offer inspiration and guidance beyond fashion.
• Relationship quality: Prioritizing meaningful interactions over mere follower counts is crucial.
• Native engagement: Connecting with audiences on their preferred platforms ensures more authentic interactions.

3. Nordstrom x Wildfang

Nordstrom collaborated with the direct-to-consumer brand Wildfang to introduce a non-binary clothing line on their e-commerce platform, marking a significant step towards inclusivity in fashion retail.

The primary challenge was crafting an influencer marketing strategy that celebrated inclusivity and represented all identities equally.

inBeat Agency’s campaign for their product launch generated over 4.1 million impressions and created 160 content assets, underlining the initiative's vast reach and content diversity.

The campaign deliverables included influencer sourcing and management, product fulfillment, creative direction, and meticulous coordination of the collection drop.

The goal was to leverage the influence of over 100 content creators to amplify sales and awareness for the new WF/BP collection on major social platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Lessons learned:

• Inclusivity matters: Emphasizing inclusivity in product lines and marketing strategies resonates with a broader audience and fosters a positive brand image.
• Strategic influencer partnerships: Carefully selected influencers can significantly amplify brand messages, especially when launching new collections.
• Diverse content creation: A wide range of content assets enriches the campaign, catering to various preferences and enhancing engagement.
• Effective coordination: Meticulous planning and coordination of collection drops with influencers are crucial for synchronized and impactful launches.
• Platform-specific strategies: Tailoring content and approaches to specific platforms like TikTok and Instagram maximizes reach and engagement.

Fashion Influencer Marketing Tips for Luxury Brands

1. Pick Relevant Influencers

When you start building your campaign, choose a relevant influencer.

One of the determining factors should be their audience’s financial status. In other words, make sure their demographic can afford your prices.

Pro tip: Some influencers can promote both haute couture and high-street products.

For example, Molly-Mae Hague is renowned for her partnership with Pretty Little Thing.

However, she often models Louis Vuitton or Balenciaga apparel.

She can pull this off because her following of 5+ million people is likely very diverse.

2. Don’t Focus Exclusively on Your Audience’s Financial Means

If your influencers have a loyal audience, your high price points aren’t determining factors.

Balenciaga addressed French and UK Gen Z-ers with an excellent TikTok Christmas campaign.

This campaign got them 4.5+ million users on their landing page, even if most of these users don’t usually buy haute-couture apparel.

3. Use Challenges

Some people may not afford to dress head-to-toe from your brand.

However, they look up to the values and style you advertise.

These people are likely to save money for a few months to afford one original piece from your brand.

The #GucciModelChallenge is an excellent example of how you can address this target.

Gucci asked its audience to use their clothes for Gucci-inspired looks, therefore raising people’s awareness.

@jessicajehaa Reply to @kiaaja878 joining the trend 🤭💕 lanjut gk nih? #supermodel #guccimodelchallenge #guccichallenge #gayaditiktok ♬ original sound - Forgotten_supermodel

Kickstart Your Influencer Marketing Campaign

This article has journeyed through the importance of setting clear goals, knowing your audience, crafting creative briefs, selecting impactful strategies, and implementing campaigns effectively.

Each step underscores the delicate balance between brand vision and influencer authenticity.

If you’re venturing into or looking to optimize your influencer marketing efforts, the key lies in finding influencers who resonate with your brand ethos and can authentically engage your target audience.

To streamline this process, platforms like inBeat offer a solution.

inBeat specializes in connecting brands with the ideal influencers, simplifying the search, and ensuring a fit that aligns with your brand's goals and values.

And we could help you out like we did the brands above.

inBeat, for free

Get your Influencer campaign started.

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