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How 300+ Fashion Marketers Use Content Marketing & Social Media To Drive Traffic And Create Sales
How 300+ Fashion Marketers Use Content Marketing & Social Media To Drive Traffic And Create Sales
Fashion Marketing: Here is the full research report with all the results from interviewing over 300 marketers in the fashion business.
Fashion Marketing: Here is the full research report with all the results from interviewing over 300 marketers in the fashion business.
Get answers to these questions:
Get answers to these questions:
90%
of fashion marketers consider content marketing to be
critical
to the success of their organization.49%
of fashion marketers consider their content marketing to be
successful
- Is content marketing and social media relevant in fashion marketing?
- What do people who are successful with content marketing and social media do different?
- Many experts say that having a strategy and documenting it is important. But is it?
- Should I produce a lookbook or start working on launching a blog?
- Yes, I am on Instagram, but should I do Youtube or Twitter?
- Should I do paid social media or not?
- What other best practices should I do?
- Is content marketing and social media relevant in fashion marketing?
- What do people who are successful with content marketing and social media do different?
- Many experts say that having a strategy and documenting it is important. But is it?
- Should I produce a lookbook or start working on launching a blog?
- Yes, I am on Instagram, but should I do Youtube or Twitter?
- Should I do paid social media or not?
- What other best practices should I do?
Want to know what the successful marketers are doing?
Want to know what the successful marketers are doing?
It is no secret that if you want to build out a fashion brand today, then content marketing and social media are critical elements to your success. Over 90% of fashion marketers consider content marketing to be critical for the success of their organization.
Yet, only 49% considers their content marketing activities to be successful.
1 out of 2!
No panic, we are going to share with you exactly what successful marketing pros revealed about what they do to make them successful. Also, we decided to make this research really actionable. So we went beyond the traditional high-level questions and got seriously nitty-gritty about it, and asked questions to the level of formats (lookbooks, blogs, ..), research tactics (keywords, ..) and more.
Contents:
By looking at our findings, and seeing what works for other marketers, you can make your own roadmap of what you should do or not do. It is perfectly ok not to do what brings success for others, as long as you know why you are doing it different and if doing things different works for you.
Click on the section you want to visit!
What Works And What Doesn't? Social Media, Email, Lookbooks, Blogs?
Fashion is extremely visual. So we figured that the tools used in the fashion industry would be significantly different from the blog-driven business-to-business marketing. And indeed, our research confirmed that fashion content marketing has (or should have) its own set of tools.
Apart from product pages and product descriptions, social media is by far the #1 tool used by fashion content marketers. Other widely used tactics are online lookbooks, video, blogs and newsletters.
However, because a tactic is widely used does not always mean it is the right one to use. So we asked people who were using a specific content tactic, if that tactic was working for them or not.
Who wins?
Again, the clear #1 winner is social media. 83% of marketers indicated that this tactics was working for them!
Other tactics seemed harder to master, as the success rate of the next content tactic immediately drops below 50%. Nevertheless, these might be worthwhile to try: newsletters, online catalogues, online lookbooks and print catalogues all have a success rate between 45 and 50%.
There is a lot of information in these statistics. But before we jump into our recommendations, let’s quickly talk about why we would recommend or not recommend certain tools. It is about beating the odds.
The way we see it, if 29% of marketers say that blogs are successful for them, then you have a ⅓ chance of being successful too. Probably even less, since you are starting out and you have to go through a learning curve.
Unless of course… you have an “unfair” advantage which will help you beat the odds. The advantage does not have to be that unfair. In the case of blogs, it is possible that you previously created a blog already, with success. So you might feel that you can be better than the average. If this is so, feel free to ignore our recommendations and follow your instincts. But don’t blame us if your instincts were wrong :-).
How good are your content marketing plans?
How good are your content marketing plans?
In the previous chapter we looked at what tools content marketers in fashion use, and which of these tools generally brings them success.
In the previous chapter we looked at what tools content marketers in fashion use, and which of these tools generally brings them success.
We also wanted to see where content marketing was going to evolve to in the next year. So we asked marketers who were not using a specific content tool if they were planning on starting to use that tactic in the next 12 months.
Again, social media is obviously a fashion marketing favorite. Out of the few (13%) people who do not use this tactic yet, 50% is planning to start using it in the next 12 months. We will also see more and more lookbooks popping up, as 44% of people who are not doing lookbooks currently, are planning to start producing them.
What works?
What works?
Social media is the number one tool that people plan to adapt, ad it works great for most people. Secondly, many people are planning to do lookbooks and newsletters, and they have a good shot at getting those tactics working successfully for them.
If you want to know more about creating successful lookbooks, read
"How To Create A Powerful Lookbook And Get More Customers."
Should you make your content 'shoppable'?
Should you make your content 'shoppable'?
Looking back at the most common objectives for content, we know that the top ranking goals are brand awareness (46%), product sales (26%), higher engagement (19%) and customer loyalty (8%).
And in the end, the purpose of your content, heck of your whole company, is to sell.
So we wondered what is the relationship between content being successful and content being shoppable.
Let’s have a look which content tools are directly shoppable.
Content that is mostly shoppable is social media, digital magazines, lookbooks, catalogues, blogs and newsletters. We can immediately see that many of these tools also ranked high when asked if they were being deployed successfully. Social media, online lookbooks and online catalogues ranked all in the Top 5 of successful content marketing tools.
And when we looked closer at the successfully deployed tools, we saw that 70% of them were directly shoppable. Looking at all the content tactics that were unsuccessfully deployed, we saw that only 27% of them were directly shoppable.
Looking even deeper, comparing per content tactic if successful ones were on average more directly shoppable than unsuccessful ones, we indeed found a strong correlation between ‘success’ and being directly shoppable.
Social media, online lookbooks, newsletters, catalogues and digital magazines that were successful were in most cases (around 75-80%) also directly shoppable.
Content tactics were we saw a low correlation, and so where being shoppable or not did not seem to influence success, were video, blogs and moodboards.
Key Take-Away:
Key Take-Away:
Which Distribution Should You Use For Your Content?
The two main ways for distributing content are organic search (68%), email newsletters (65%) and paid social media (61%).
What?
We counted the responses here several times, just to make sure.
The number one way that marketers in fashion rely on to have their content delivered to the right audience is organic search.
We were quite surprised that only 45% of marketers use keyword research, yet so many more trust in organic search to bring them traffic.
We also asked which of these content tools were successful for them. Top earners were paid strategies: both paid search and paid social media got A-ratings for being successful. In a second place we saw (still) organic search and email newsletters.
Key Take-Away:
Key Take-Away:
- Paid search
- Paid social media
- Email newsletters
- Organic Search
Social Media: Fashion Marketers Favorite Tool
Social media is obviously a fashion marketer’s go-to content marketing tactic. So we delved a bit deeper into how fashion marketers are using social media.
First question we wanted to see answered: which social media channels are fashion marketers using?
Facebook and Instagram are the absolute two favorites. These are used by over 90% of fashion marketers. Somewhat surprisingly (at least for us) was that Twitter is used by more marketers than Pinterest.
However, when we asked content marketers which of the used platforms they considered critical to their company, we got an answer more in line with our expectations. Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and Pinterest as visual social media platforms came out nicely on top.
How do content marketers utilize paid social media?
How do content marketers utilize paid social media?
In social media, it is pretty clear who the big beneficiary of the fashion industry’s hard-earned advertising money is. Facebook & Instagram (wait, that is Facebook as well) are by far the two most utilized channels for paid promotion.
However, a solid 56% of fashion marketers using social media indicates they do spend any budget on paid promotion. If we look at the organizations who are successful with content marketing, this number is higher: 65% engages in paid social media.
If we look at the data per social media platform, then we see that the percentage of successful organizations utilizing paid strategies is higher for Instagram (57% vs 46%) and Facebook (71% vs 63%).
For other platforms, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Youtube, the number is lower. However, less successful organizations do spend on paid social media for these latter platforms.
Key Take-Away:
Key Take-Away:
The Core Of Success: Quality Content
If you are reading this, chances are that you are one of the growing numbers of marketers who are adopting content as a strategy to boost their marketing. Content marketing & social media are extremely relevant and important in the fashion industry.
However, only 49% considers their content marketing to be successful. We are hopeful to see a better number next year. It seems we’re on the right track and improving, since 63% of interviewed fashion marketers said they were more successful with content marketing now compared to last year.
For this improvement to happen, marketers plan to do the following:
- More content marketing (94%)
- Higher quality content (93%), and
- Increased budget for content marketing (58%)
Why do companies and marketers engage in content marketing?
Top ranking goals are - brand awareness (46%),
- product sales (26%),
- higher engagement (19%) and
- customer loyalty (8%).
Why do companies and marketers engage in content marketing?
Top ranking goals are
- brand awareness (46%),
- product sales (26%),
- higher engagement (19%) and
- customer loyalty (8%).
What did marketers who saw their content marketing efforts become more successful do to create that change?
What did marketers who saw their content marketing efforts become more successful do to create that change?
Key Take-Away:
Key Take-Away:
How Do Successful Content Marketers Find The Right Content?
How many tactics should you use to determine the right content?
Key Take-Away:
Key Take-Away:
The Impact Of Strategy & Organizational Commitment
Key Take-Away:
Key Take-Away:
About company commitment.
While having the company’s (and management) support behind you does not seem to be a guarantee for success, since about 50% of unsuccessful content marketers indicate that they do enjoy their company’s support. However, it does seem that is a
necessary condition for success
. There are almost no marketers who indicate success in content marketing without having the company’s support.
About having a documented strategy and measurable KPIs in place.
Here we have almost a 1:1 correlation.
Marketers who have a documented strategy in place are mostly successful, and marketers who do not have a documented content strategy in place are almost always unsuccessful.
In other words: if you do NOT have your company’s support, and you do not have a strategy in place, you FIRST job is to build that strategy and KPIs, build a strategy and rally your organization up to support it.
Now, you might say that this sounds all great, but that you need a (winning) pilot, to totally convince all the stakeholders in your company. Or maybe you’re asking: “Great, but what should I put in that strategy?”
So how do successful marketers execute their content strategy? Let’s have a look!
How Much Budget Do You Need?
Key Take-Away:
Key Take-Away:
The Amazing Importance Of Measuring ROI
So is there a relationship between gathering data and creating success?
So if measuring ROI is important, what KPI should marketers measure?
Key Take-Away:
Key Take-Away:
Full Summary
In a hurry? Here is a summary of our key findings:
What do the successful content marketers do that others don’t?
Here is the difference we found between successful and unsuccessful content marketers:
- Success was achieved in the past through a higher quality of content (75%), better audience definition (41%) and more content (41%).
- Success was prevented in the past by budget issues (55%), not enough time (45%), and lack of good visual content (33%).
We revealed statistics showing the effect of organizational hurdles for success:
Underspending, lack of organizational support and having no documented strategy
Budgets
.
- 63% of successful content marketers spend over 10% of their budget or more on content marketing-related activities.
- Unsuccessful organizations spend mostly (58% of them) less than 10% on content marketing.
Organizational commitment to content marketing.
- Virtually all successful content marketers (98%) confirm that there is a general sense of commitment to content marketing in the company.
- Only 50% of unsuccessful content marketers said there was a commitment to content marketing.
Content marketing strategy/KPIs for content success.
- 72% of successful marketers have a documented content marketing strategy/KPIs for content success.
- 4% of unsuccessful content marketers have a documented strategy
We learned which content formats work great: social media, newsletters and online lookbooks/catalogues. And that having that content shoppable is likely to increase success.
- The most successful content formats were social media, newsletters, and online catalogues/lookbooks.
- The most unsuccessful content formats video, blog, how-to videos, moodboards and content aggregation.
Shoppable Content.
- Having content available that is shoppable helps for social media, online lookbooks, newsletters, catalogues and digital magazines.
- Being shoppable did not influence success for video, blogs and moodboards.
We also learned that many content marketers are planning investment in formats that are unlikely to bring success:
- Social media, online lookbooks and newsletters are the top content formats that marketers plan to add.
- But about 1 in 3 wants to add video or blogs, which have a low chance of success
We learned that visual content marketing platforms work best, and that paid social media is a tactic deployed by successful content marketers.
- Facebook and Instagram, with Youtube and Pinterest in a second place, are the critical tools for social media.
- Facebook and Instagram are used by a large majority (over 90%) of content marketers, with most of them confirming these platforms are critical (Instagram: 86% and Facebook: 78%)
- Pinterest and especially Youtube could be used by more, and Twitter is used by 61% although only 38% says it is critical.
Paid social media.
Successful content marketers spend money on paid social media, mostly on Instagram and Facebook.The statistics also show that successful content marketers do more research to determine the right content than unsuccessful ones.
- On average, successful content marketers use 2.4 tactics, and do more keyword research (54%).
- Unsuccessful content marketers do about a quarter less research, they use on average 1.9 tactic and only 33% does keyword research.
We found that content marketers are under-utilizing paid distribution strategies.
Organic search and email newsletters are the most widely used tools, and they are quite effective. Most successful tools for distribution were paid social media and paid search. But many are not using these tools: 41% for paid search and 61% for paid social media.
And, we also learned that most content marketers don’t measure ROI or don’t know if they do, but they should. And successful content marketers use more KPIs to measure success.
- 49% of successful content marketers measures ROI on content marketing activities
- 8% of unsuccessful content marketers measures ROI on content marketing activities
In Conclusion
In Conclusion
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