Influencer Marketing for Fashion Brands

If you’re a fashion brand working on influencer marketing, odds are you’ve seen #OOTD. That’s right, the Outfit of the Day that countless lifestyle influencers and Instagrammers post every day.

It’s a selfie or a quick picture featuring the outfit that the influencer styled. Typically, it’s taken in some scenic location that coordinates perfectly with the outfit.  

However, how do fashion brands partner with influencers in ways that extend beyond the selfie and feel innovative and fresh to their audiences?

Here’s a few ways for influencers to partner with fashion brands in ways that feel different from the typical influencer posts.

Live Streaming

Live Streaming is becoming a staple of many brands who want to reach their customers in a way that feels genuine and personable. Brands can share new product launches, explain updates and sales promotions, or start user-generated content campaigns with live streams.

However, live streams present a problem for brands — who will be the face of that brand? If you have an influencer on staff at your brand, then problem solved! More often than not, you’ll need to find someone within the company who has natural charisma and tons of personality to help you with this. They’ll need to embody the values and message of the brand.

Influencers can also help you round out the conversation during your brand’s live streams. With an influencer, you’ll be able to keep the conversation going during your live stream’s lulls, as well as offering a unique perspective from an expert in their industry. Influencers can also bring their audience to your live streams when you list them as a host in the posts prior to going live.

Think of unique ways to consistently offer your followers fresh content through your live streams. As a fashion brand, you can offer live events like fashion shows, or show styling tricks and tutorials in real-time. Influencers who are familiar with video production or who have experience offering weekly live streams are great candidates for this kind of partnership.

Fashion Shows with an Influencer Twist

Fashion shows help luxury brands to get their looks in front of the press and media. But what if you could go one step further? What if every model who walked in your show could bring attention to your brand?

Partnering with fashion influencers to wear your brand’s items for your live events and fashion shows can help draw the influencers’ audiences to your brand.

Having influencers model for your collections can also present an easy opportunity for influencers to create really interesting content for their audiences. They can share behind-the-scenes footage, or create exclusive updates about the new collections. In addition to creating entertaining content for their audience, they’ll also be advertising your brand!

Influencers may also present opportunities to display diversity and inclusivity with your collections. Choosing body positive influencers can help your audience members picture the clothing on different body shapes that look like their own.

Collaborate on Capsule Collections and Limited Editions

Working with influencers for your capsule collections or limited releases can help you get an extra boost of publicity for these exclusive items. Influencers who help you create your products can also help you promote and sell these items.

Fashion influencers are also uniquely prepared to create capsule collections because they are used to styling photos and outfits to share with their followers. Their unique style can also help your brand break into new audiences and develop new creative looks that your in-house designers may not have thought of before.

You can read more about creating co-branded products here.

Hosting Giveaways

Giveaways can help you generate buzz for your brand. When working with influencers, having them host giveaways is a win-win situation– you get the brand awareness you want, and the influencer gets to post with guaranteed engagement.

Giveaways also help you both generate new audience members. By having the entrees tag their friends or sign up for both your email lists, you can ensure that new people get connected to your brand in a way that you can target with your remarketing efforts.

These types of promotions are still very popular on Instagram and Facebook, generating a lot of engagement for the influencer and the brand.

One for You and One for a Friend: A New Approach to  Influencer Gifting

If you want to go a step further with your influencer giveaways and other posts, then you may want to consider gifting double to your influencer partners.

With the extra product or set of products, the influencer can:

• Host their own giveaway to their followers
• Share with a friend, who can help with content creation and spread the buzz about your brand through word of mouth

Either way, gifting more than one set of products can help the influencer create better content for your brand in new and imaginative ways.

Every Post Gives Back

If you want to motivate a user-generated content campaign, then consider a campaign that gives back. Partner with influencers who can post about your brand, and promise a charitable donation for each piece of content from the influencer, each use of a hashtag, or each participant who shares within the given guidelines of the promotion.

Not only can this help you encourage user-generated content that you can use for other promotions, but it also helps brand awareness and positive feelings for your brand. It’s an innovative way to take the charitable giving model and also promote audience participation.

Working with Micro and Nano Influencers

Not all influencers have a large following of millions. Micro and nano influencers, with as little as 1,000 followers, can help fashion brands get the word out to audience members that are truly engaged and looking for recommendations.

Micro influencers can help you build a word of mouth marketing program that can produce consistent traffic to your brand’s site. Make it easy for fans of your brand to get a discount code that they can share with friends, or offer affiliate commissions to those who sign up for the program.

These incentives can help you turn your fans into influencers that get results for your brand. Options for incentivized sharing about your brand should be build into your email marketing and listed in the footer of your site, so that customers and subscribers can easily participate.

“One way to get more than a photo or selfie when collaborating with influencers is to make their payment a stake in the results of the campaign. One way to do this is to give them a special link or code to give commissions based on how much their followers buy. This gives them a stake in the results so that they are more likely to do more to promote your brand than a single photo post.”

~Stacy Caprio, founder at Growth Marketing

Influencer marketing for your fashion brand should be diversified and creative. Influencers should be allowed to branch out into different types of promotions and content so that they can best share your brand’s message.

Taking a moment to find out what your influencers’ strengths are can help you partner in ways that feel fresh and new.

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