Your luxury fashion sales guide – 10 important sales tips
Do you own or work for a fashion brand? Discover 10 important sales tips.
Effectively marketing your fashion business is a key factor in making sure that you’re able to acquire and retain customers. Here are ten tips to help you improve your fashion business’s marketing activities.
1) Develop a mission statement
A mission statement will do two things: First, it will help focus your efforts when developing new products and services suitable for the market space in which you operate. Second, it helps keep your employees focused on what is important when working toward company goals.
2) Know who you’re selling to
To effectively sell fashion products, it’s important that you know who you’re targeting with your products or services. This means knowing who makes up the decision-making unit in regards to the fashion items in question. For example, if you’re targeting wealthy consumers who make up the decision-making unit for buying comme des garcons items, then perhaps a luxury line of products is suitable.
3) Know your market space
This means know what types of products or services your competitors are offering and developing a ‘niche’ in your offer. For example, if one competitor offers low quality but cheap fashion items, while another one offers high quality but expensive items, knowing this information can help you position yourself as the middle ground by offering medium quality but moderate priced fashion items that will cater to price-sensitive customers without alienating your higher end clients.
In other words, stay competitive with product pricing because keeping up with changing prices can help keep customers loyal to your brand. But don’t go too cheap with pricing otherwise you risk cutting into margins and not being able to cover all costs of doing business.
Furthermore, price points may vary from market space to market space – luxury clients in Asia might be willing to pay a higher price for luxury items than, say, middle-class consumers in Europe or North America.
4) Know the value of your customer base
The fact is that there are different types of customers who come looking for different things – whether it be low prices, high quality or unique fashion items. Understanding what different customers want from your brand can help inform product development decisions and help you better communicate value from a customer perspective when describing your products and services to others.
For example, if you’re working on a new product and you know that your customers value high quality, then it may be a good idea to communicate this fact by emphasising the use of high-quality materials in the product description.
5) Leverage customer data
To understand what different types of customers want from your playboi carti merch brand, for example, it’s best to leverage as much information about them as possible so you can create appropriate offers for them. This includes their needs, habits and demographics.
For instance, knowing age ranges and genders of customers who have bought certain items or come back looking at new products will help you decide which marketing channels to focus on when communicating with different groups of people based on their preferences and interests.
6) Develop promotional offers
Promotional offers such as discounts can help entice new customers to try your brand and bring back old ones who may have fallen out of the habit of buying. They can also motivate people to buy more than they usually would, simply because the offer is good enough that it’s worth paying full price for an item or making an additional purchase even if they don’t need it.
7) Leverage social media
Social media has become a critical platform for online marketing efforts due to its ability to create emotional responses in consumers about brands and products through engaging visuals, messages and advertising.
Furthermore, social media provides unprecedented access into people’s lives, including their shopping habits and interests which make it the perfect place for fashion businesses looking to market themselves online. Most importantly, studies show that social media users are also willing to buy products they see advertised on these platforms, given the right context.
8) Use multi-channel marketing efforts
The fact is that different types of customers have varying preferences in terms of how they want to be marketed to and which channels they prefer over others. For example, some may be more likely to visit your website while others are more inclined to ask for information about products when shopping at physical stores.
Understanding what works best for each type of customer can help you streamline your promotional activities so you’re using your marketing budget most efficiently. Furthermore, if you know which platform works best for what type of customer, it helps inform strategies for converting them into paying customers.
For example, having information about whether someone has bought from you before or simply requested information before will help you decide whether to focus on building brand awareness or making online sales for this type of individual.
9) Provide customer service that exceeds expectations
While marketing plays an important role in acquiring new customers, it’s just as important to keep them around. Some of the best practices retailers use to do so include:
- Responding quickly and efficiently when people have issues or complaints about their products and services
- Providing unique and memorable shopping experiences – such as private appointments at luxury fashion houses – so people feel special and valued by your company
10) Reduce supply chain costs through direct-to-consumer distribution models
One way that luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Hermès are able to maintain their high profit margins is by selling directly to their customers through luxury retail stores. This allows them to reduce costs associated with distribution channels such as wholesale and department stores, which typically have lower profit margins than so-called ‘pure play’ retailers who only sell direct-to-consumer.
In order to successfully implement a direct-to-consumer model, successful ecommerce fashion brands focus on providing a unique shopping experience – just like the brand’s physical stores – that ensures people feel special and valued when purchasing from them online.
Increase your sales and generate higher margins
Through focusing on customer needs and preferences, leveraging relevant data points, developing promotional offers that incentivize purchases, leveraging social media advertising strategies and using multi-channel marketing efforts (including leveraging Omni channel platforms), luxury fashion brands are able to increase sales and generate higher margins.
