Many times, fashion brands find it hard to communicate effectively with their target audience and this hinders growth in many ways. With the communication issues fashion brands have, it is often hard for them to position and differentiate themselves from other brands in the industry and this poses a major challenge.
This week, we spoke with Communication Enthusiast and Brand Strategist, Dunni Dimka, on ways fashion brands can use marketing communication to position and differentiate their brands from others in the fashion industry.
Ms Dunni Dimka is a Communication Enthusiast and Brand Strategist who is passionate about brand communication using the right approach. She works with brands in the Marketing and Advertising industry under the lead of Octoplus Marketing Limited.
What is Marketing Communication?
According to her, “Marketing Communication is simply storytelling. It is telling a brand’s story to its target audience in a way that helps to convey its offerings to them through the appropriate use of the right marketing tools and channels that help convert these audiences to customers and aid to build and maintain relationships.”
Importance of Marketing Communications and Standing Out of the Crowd for Fashion Brands
Marketing is holistic and helps a brand achieve not only sales but its set objectives.
1. It helps Improve Brand Perception
Marketing is key as it aids to manage brand perception and brand image. This is important because the way a brand is perceived or seen by its target audience is how they will relate with it. We must bear in mind that these target audiences are potential customers.
2. It helps Brands Understand Customers Better
Marketing helps a brand identify its customer’s needs and determine how best to meet those needs. This is because, before marketing, a lot of research must have been carried out by the brand to ensure that what it is selling is solving a problem or meeting a need its customers have.
For your fashion brand to stand out of the crowd through marketing, it needs to make memorable campaigns. Memorable campaigns are campaigns that tell a good story as what makes a good campaign is a good story.
Everyone loves a good story and good stories are hard to forget. So tell a story with your brand, one that people can relate with.
The reason you need to make a memorable campaign is that the fashion industry is a highly fragmented market and one that is constantly evolving so it is easy to get lost in the crowd of brands. However, if your campaign can make your target audience smile or laugh; essentially, if it can evoke an emotion in them, they will never forget your message.
A brand’s core message is its selling point.
Also, to stay relevant in the highly saturated fashion industry, Top Of Mind Awareness (TOMA) is key. A brand must strive to maintain TOMA amongst its target group and this can only be achieved with a mix of designs and emotions that create a memorable experience.
Once you are top of mind always, customers will always remember you first. They will also go ahead to refer you to others once a need for a fashion brand arises.
Ways to Use Marketing to Position your Fashion Brand Right in the Market
To position your brand right in the fashion industry, you need to use the marketing tools and channels that are available to you. Marketing tools and channels like direct marketing, personal selling, advertising, sponsorship, social media, public relations and so on can be very useful in helping you position your fashion brand.
Hence, before trying to position your brand right, you must recognise who your major target audience is and where they can be found. This information will help you know the right marketing channels and tools to use to ensure your brand is positioned as close and visibly to them as possible.
You also have to ensure that you are communicating with them using the right language. By language, we mean how your target audience speaks and how they understand things.
When you understand their language, you will be able to incorporate what your target audience is saying and how they are thinking in the way you communicate with them.
Techniques to Employ in Differentiating your Brand from the Crowd
To stand out of the crowd, fashion brands must first seek to solve a problem, meet a need, and create value to their customers.
Great marketing has evolved from just great advertising or sales to problem-solving.
Ways to be distinct include:
- Drawing campaigns and communications from deep consumer insights.
- Carving your niche and owning your space.
- Being consistent in terms of your tone of voice and communication.
- Giving your brand a face that people can relate with.
It is also important to enter the minds of your target audience to create fashion items that meet their needs.
How to Grow your Brand Through Marketing Communication
Marketing Communications aids brand growth by availing brands an opportunity to latch on all available channels such as advertising, promotions, sales, branding, campaigning, and online promotion to showcase their brand to the world.
The process of using marketing communications to grow your fashion brand allows the public to know or understand your brand. With growing technology and techniques, the direct participation of customers is also made possible.
So, rather than just waiting for reviews after creating, marketing communication has made it possible to weigh and first get customers opinion before creating fashion items and this aids branding.
Successful branding leads to the growth of the brand as it involves taking into consideration the customers’ desires and needs in product development and brand promotion.
One way to get your customer’s opinions is through social media. By using social media, you, as a fashion entrepreneur, can display intended style ideas or concepts and use polls to get customer ratings of likes and dislikes. You can also engage customers on preferences in styles, designs, colours etc.
To spur conversation and get more into the minds of your target audience, you can also share common mindsets about fashion and encourage people to share their opinions.
Marketing Strategies to Employ in Marketing your Fashion Brand
1. Content Strategy
The major strategy should be content strategy; however, content is great but Context is key. While employing content strategy, you must ensure that your communication is in the right context of what your customers want and need.
Strategy = Brand + Audience + Message / Objective
2. Storytelling Strategy
This is telling relatable and compelling stories. Stories that will connect with your customers on a personal level and make them feel a form of connection to you. This strategy always works.
3. Value
Give people a reason to patronise your fashion brand by offering them value. Be sure that your fashion items solve a form of problem for your customers to keep them with you. Also, be sure who you are creating for and what is available for them so you know how best to serve them.
In closing, Ms Dimka said, “Finally, I will like to say to every fashion entrepreneur that your brand story is your marketing asset. Make a statement with your brand, leave lasting memories with people, be consistent and lastly but most importantly, don’t chase trends, make the trends!”
