How to Start a Fashion Brand Marketing and Public Relations Campaign for Sales Growth

Fashion is just one of those industries that is greatly influenced by the perception of what is in style and on trend, and because of that it is continuously evolving. It is very important that because of that reasoning, your fashion brand stays ahead of the curve and is ready to anticipate upcoming trends. While that be your first job, your brand should also work towards influencing customer perception in order to stimulate said trends rather than just following the pack. When you do that, you are creating demand for your products.

You are just as responsible for creating excitement about your brand and promoting your line along with all the other responsibilities. That is where marketing and public relations comes in. It is very important that in order to remain successful as a business, fashion brands need to focus on everything, not just one or the other. Especially in the fashion industry, marketing and public relations go hand in hand and work best when they are implemented together.

Fashion brands have definitely become and will continue to be much more educated on marketing efforts using social media, blogs, search engine optimizations, and fashion content marketing as consumer expectation and education levels in mobile and ecommerce have changed and evolved.

In this article, we will look at:

• What does a Digital Marketing Agency do for your Fashion Brand?
• What does a Public Relations Company do for your brand
• The difference between Marketing and Public Relations
• Why Fashion Brands need both

What Does a Digital Marketing Agency Do for Your Fashion Brand?

Marketing is what most people think of when they want to build their business. It is definitely the most direct way to engage your customers. For many years, traditional marketing has influenced customers buying decisions through TV, radio, magazines, and more traditional media. However, at the moment the landscape of marketing has changed dramatically and traditional media has becoming less and less effective due to poor public perception. Instead of traditional marketing comes digital marketing and digital marketing agencies.

What do Digital Marketing Agencies do?

The difference between traditional marketing agency and digital marketing agency is that digital marketing agencies are focused on results-based marketing in the digital world like measurable marketing and ROI.

The relationship that you have with the agency that you choose would depend on their expert recommendations. They can range from brand identity to building a highly effective website. When your brand is established, the agency will focus on the most effective forms of marketing for your business and driving online or in-store sales.

When paired with highly targeted paid advertising on platforms like Facebook, Inbound marketing campaigns have excellent returns for fashion brands. The intention of these agencies is to optimize your brand’s ability to bring your products to market in an effective and engaging way. They are continually working towards generating new leads and sales, as well as boosting repeat customer base. Another job is to establish your brand as a trusted industry influencer.

Agencies will also track your results and continuously change up your strategy in order to achieve the highest return of investment possible. You definitely need to choose the agency with an expertise in marketing fashion brands because they would be able to show you the results that you want.

What Does a Public Relations Agency Do for Your Fashion Brand

The intention of a public relations agency is to focus on media attention to increase brand awareness and improve public perception. Traditional outlets generally work better for PR than marketing, but a lot of PR has gone digital as well. PR is all about generating interest and awareness in the public eye, but digital marketing and public relations are relating to each other, which is a good thing for fashion brands out there.

What do Public Relation Agencies do?

A good PR agency, like Pressfarm, will use their expertise to create a strategy to generate and expand brand awareness through media. Before, it used to be limited to pitching to traditional media outlets for article placement. The tactics implemented before still work, but press releases are now being submitted to digital platforms as well. Resources like fashion blogs and magazines are able to spread brand awareness in real time because they are able to maintain high readerships.

The PR agency that you hire might also be in charge or creating events that are designed to engage the public and the media and they should be market research on your brand and continuously develop new tactics to optimize your brand’s PR strategy.

Another thing that PR agencies should be able to do is create crisis management strategy just in case there is a crisis. They would be responsible for countering any negative awareness generated and work to restore positive brand/product image.

Public Relations should be about public perception of your brand and that brand perception can be the make or break between stellar success and closing. It is all about strengthening your image and how your brand/products are perceived. The work that agencies do can lead to increased SEO and improved organic search ranking. They need to have the ability to increase brand awareness provides a valuable resource that can establish a strong foundation.

The Difference Between Marketing and Public Relations

Marketing is basically about bringing a product to market while public relation is about how the product is perceived by the public. The same can be said for an entire brand. Marketing is about engaging a brand’s customers to generate conversions and PR is about engaging a field of potential customers to generate a positive brand image.

Why Fashion Brands Need Both Agencies

Even though they definitely have their differences, it is important to understand why fashion brands need both in the promotion of the business. Digital agencies mainly focus on sales; they track everything and provide hard data and conversion rates. Traditional digital marketing agencies do not focus on getting a brand featured in magazine or TV segment, that is what public relations firms are for.

At the same time, PR does not generally focus on obtaining quantifiable results that digital marketing provides. They need to be able to provide brands with metrics that they use to track brand awareness.  It’s just more difficult to provide real-time results like those of digital marketing. When you pair a digital marketing agency with a public relations agency, you will be able to fill the gaps that the other misses out, you will be able to enhance one another’s strengths. The digital marketing agency may help you create excellent content and your PR firm may be able to take that content’s exposure to the next level with their contacts and resources.

Wrapping Up

Employing both a digital marketing agency and a PR firm will allow fashion brands to promote their products in a way that their customers find exciting and engaging. They are both able to engage would-be customers on all part of the spectrum in their own unique ways. Having the combination between improved brand perception and awareness via PR channels and the increased customer interaction and conversion digital marketing provide may be just want fashion brands need to a new level of success.