The fashion industry is among the most valuable and competitive in the world—it’s a difficult market to establish yourself in but it can be very profitable if you do. With the thousands of brands and products on offer, it’s essential that you market yourself effectively enough to stand out from the crowd.
Given the modern digital approaches available today, the fashion business is well-positioned to make use of omnichannel marketing to ensure customer loyalty, higher revenue, and greater success. This article will not only define omnichannel marketing but also explore how this strategy stands out from others when applied to fashion businesses.
What is omnichannel marketing?
Before looking at omnichannel marketing, let’s define the term “omnichannel”: it means “all channels”, and it’s employed as a business strategy with particular reference to the customer experience. Modern technologies like websites, apps, and social media, alongside existing physical means, allow businesses to deliver on and exceed their customers’ expectations by enabling a greater degree of engagement between the two. This also includes working with partners like a China Dropshipping Agent to expand product offerings and simplify logistics.
Omnichannel marketing makes use of all of these channels to enable a cohesive, convenient, and more personalized customer experience. The importance of a seamless and effortless shopping experience in the fashion industry is clear, as an ever-increasing number of customers make full use of multiple channels.
Simply put, the use of omnichannel marketing allows an immersive and personalized customer experience while making your approach more consistent and presentable, as well as offering unique insights into your customers’ preferences and behaviors.
Now that we’ve defined the terms and what they mean in relation to businesses, let’s take a look at the unique benefits it offers a fashion business in particular.
It’s immersive
When looking for clothes to buy, most prospective consumers would ideally like to physically see the product and even have the opportunity to try it on beforehand. Fashion businesses, with their brick-and-mortar stores, are quite unique in this regard—many other industries aren’t able to offer a free trial before making a purchase. It’s important to remember that your physical store is a channel like any other, so allow your customers to integrate it into their shopping experience.
Free to use image sourced from Pixabay
Within physical channels, it’s important for your staff to be ready and able to offer personalized assistance: sales associates could help customers find the best products and direct them to whichever digital channels might be of the most help. These channels can display products while offering online orders, as well as encouraging visits to the brick-and-mortar store, where nearly half of the customers spend more money.
Immersive and experiential strategies are employed by many top e-commerce platforms like Shopify UAE. The integration of physical and digital channels will guarantee a seamless, satisfying experience and keep you ahead of the competition.
It can offer a more engaging experience
Fashion brands are among those to which customers are most loyal—if you can foster this loyalty through effective customer service and social media, you can ensure greater business success.
Customer service
Having an exceptional range of clothing and accessories is all well and good, but unless your staff is properly equipped to interact with customers well, your business will struggle. Whether you are running a retail store or a dropshipping business, ensure that you are easy to contact; a customer expects to find help swiftly and easily.
While a customer service representative cannot necessarily be constantly available, your customers should always have ample means of receiving help. For instance, business phone service providers for small businesses can serve your customers when an employee is unable to do so.
Social media
A significant factor of customer-centricity is a robust social media presence: a fifth of consumers follow their favorite brands on Twitter. Social media is often the first stop for people looking to show off their latest clothing purchases, while product reviews reach far and wide.
Providing the opportunity to engage online promotes loyalty, furthers brand awareness, and improves the customer experience. Using tools such as Dialpad’s virtual phone system is another effective means of keeping in touch with your customers and responding to their queries as soon as possible.
Image sourced from SaveMyCent (data from Statista)
It ensures consistency
Fundamentally, each channel is a separate—but above all else—connected experience. In order to foster trust, as well as minimize confusion and complication, all customer-facing channels must be consistent, especially in a visual-based industry like fashion. Let’s take a closer look at this below.
Visual appeal
Your brick-and-mortar shops should present the same atmosphere and aesthetic as your online website. Maintaining a cohesive brand image throughout the entire experience will generate a perception of professionalism and quality. Create a comprehensive style guide and ensure that you follow it with precision.
It is equally crucial that this consistency extends beyond the visual: your use of terminology should not change, and the language and manner of speech used with customers should remain the same. Services that offer a similar level of quality across numerous channels retain far more of their customers than services that do not. Cohesiveness across all channels will build trust, improve customer experience, and further a reputation for professionalism.
It’s adaptable
Inherently, the fashion industry is one that changes constantly. Trends come and go, and it’s essential for a business to keep on top of them. Omnichannel strategies make this easier than ever before, as we’ll see below.
Customer insights
By leveraging the power of social media, you’re able to keep a close eye in real-time on your customer’s behaviors and preferences. The same can also be accomplished by reading online customer reviews.
Going beyond this, you can also approach them directly; offering surveys upon the purchase of an item can offer a fantastic insight into your product and your customers. This will let you tailor their experience better based on their preferences. In an ever-changing industry like fashion, being able to keep up with shifting priorities and desires is essential, and leveraging multiple channels will allow your business to do just that.
Analyzing data
The data obtained from such methods as surveying your customers and observing their buying patterns will let you better adapt to industry changes. It will influence your product range, ensuring that you stock products that will appeal to the greatest base, as well as adjust your pricing strategy as necessary.
While the prospect of data analytics might seem daunting and complex, services like the Databricks data engineering courses can make it a breeze. Such data will inform you of the best possible marketing campaigns to explore while enabling you to effectively target specific demographics within your customer base.
Free to use image sourced from Unsplash
Final thoughts
It is clear that an omnichannel marketing strategy is beneficial for any customer-facing business; however, it offers a range of benefits to those in the fashion industry. Uniquely positioned to offer an immersive and tactile experience, fashion businesses can use both digital and physical channels to craft an even better sales process.
Moreover, the ability to better engage with customers and provide them with a consistent and integrated experience throughout will help retain loyalty, which is especially important when it comes to fashion choices. Omnichannel marketing will also make your business more adaptable to the constantly-shifting nature of fashion while providing valuable insights into your customers’ behaviors and preferences.
Written by Grace Lau.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by Fashinnovation’s columnists are their own, not those of Fashinnovation.
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