A Simple Guide to Working with Fashion Influencers

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing methods. It is great to build trust, grow brand recognition and drive sales. The fashion industry uses influencer marketing to promote its products. 75% of the fashion brands already collaborating with influencers or with plans to do so in the next year.

If you are a fashion brand and are planning to use influencer marketing then you are on the right page. This is a detailed guide to working with fashion influencers to grow your brand. Taking help from an influencer marketing agency will ensure smooth processes. So, let’s begin by understanding why influencers should be used.

Why use influencers?

Ampjar.com conducted a survey in 2019 based on the current influencer marketing statistics. The results revealed that the most common goal of influencer marketing campaigns was to increase brand awareness.

About 89% of surveyed marketers believed that the return on investment (ROI) from influencer campaigns was much greater than that of other established marketing channels. Other findings suggested that 65% of influencer marketing budgets were to increase in 2020, with the most common budgets being between $1000 and $10,000.

The association of influencer marketing goes a long way back with fashion brands. Fashion has always revolved around people since its inception many tens of thousands of years ago. Everyone has always wanted to look good since looking good mattered in our understanding. We as people have always looked up to those we admire to get inspired about what to wear, how to wear it, and when to wear it.

Some centuries ago people looked up to prominent social personalities like queens, duchesses, and other rich and famous people. Today with the dawn of easy availability of the internet and social media in general the fashion focus has shifted to media and entertainment celebrities, vloggers, and Instagram idols. These people influence our wardrobes a lot and are considered trendsetters in fashion and lifestyle.

Now that we understand why influencers could be your best bet in making fashion popular and in demand. We need to dive deeper and understand the advantages and disadvantages of working with them.

Advantages of working with influencers in the fashion industry

Let us begin with some of the major advantages and benefits.

1. Better ROI

Data-driven findings reveal that influencer marketing has much higher returns than other conventional marketing methods. Here are some ways it does so.

• It generates more than 10 times the ROI than what is done by banner ads.
• More than 85% of businesses say that the ROI generated is comparatively more than the other marketing channels.
• Strategies that focus on brand awareness or driving engagement generate about 8 times or more ROI.

2. Targets the right audience

Influencer marketing lets you reach your target audience by pairing with the right influencer. As an example, if you are selling sports fashion wear, you might want to collaborate with a sports influencer. This way you get need targeted traffic with greater purchasing potential and intent.

3. Trust

Influencers have a lot of trust from their followers owing to their personalities and the content they post. When you are hiring the services of an influencer, this is what you are getting. While doing so you get an audience that accepts the advertised content as genuine reviews and positive recommendations than being sceptical about it.  Their gained authenticity makes them greatly more genuine than the other conventional channels of advertisement.

4. Adaptable reach

Everyone is influenced by someone or the other and scaling and adapting your campaign to make it larger has not been easier. A successful campaign using a micro-influencer can always be up-scaled for a larger audience using a bigger influencer with more reach or engagement.

Disadvantages of working with influencers

Now that we know some advantages of working with influencers let us see some disadvantages as well to be able to decide after knowing fully about it.

1. Compromise on creative control

When you use influencers for your campaign you are allowing a substantial part of your marketing campaign into the hands of someone who is not a part of your business. The posts they will do are mostly content they come up with and thereby portray and represent your business to your target audience. This means, you can not exercise creative control over their posts, though you may suggest.

2. Scandals can be harmful

Your brand is tied to the influencer you are working with. This lets you share the success of the campaign. Through the campaign, you get promoted to a consumer segment who are potential buyers, and this increases sales. At the same time, the influencer promoting a good quality product gains reputation and more authenticity in the eyes of their followers.

However, if your influencer gets involved in a scandal your reputation is at stake. Even if you cut ties with the influencer the damage can still be detrimental as people might still associate you with the influencer concerned.

3. Takes time to execute from end-to-end

Influencer marketing campaigns take more time to plan, strategize, source, and execute than other forms of marketing. Finding the right influencer to connecting with them. Takes a lot of time especially if you are planning an in-house execution. That is not the end because there are many more details. And back-and-forth that needs to happen before you can even roll out your campaign. After the campaign is initiated, measurement and assessment are also time and resource-consuming in addition to the span of the campaign itself.

The way to maximize the advantages and minimize the disadvantages is by hiring an influencer marketing agency.  An agency will know what to do, how to do it when it comes to influencer marketing because of their expertise in the domain. They are experts in the field which will let them be able to predict shortcomings and deal with them in time before the issue escalates.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing is a new concept but it has many minor factors that sum up to its success. An agency will know these factors. And have access to specialized tools and analytics that will assist them in the fruitful running of your campaign. Though you may think that choosing an influencer marketing agency will increase your campaign expenses, it reduces the expenses because of effective management of time, resources, and finances. Fashion influencers can be difficult to contact as they get hundreds of collaboration requests, an agency has the contacts and dedicated personnel to get the ball rolling in the right direction and maintain effective communication with them throughout the length of the campaign.