As the marketing world as a whole gets increasingly fascinated by the possibilities of content marketing, the fashion industry can justifiably say they were way ahead of the curve.
If any sector should be studied as a great example of how content has been used incredibly smartly to build brands, develop a social presence and acquire search traffic, fashion content marketing is it.
With over 80% of companies who blog on a daily basis now quoting a positive ROI for their inbound marketing, fashion brands have been at the forefront of blogging, posting great social content and encouraging rampant sharing of their content. Of course, fashion brands have fantastically visual products, normally modelled by striking individuals, all of which helps in terms of making their content look brilliant, but there is still much to learn from how they create engagement and conversation amongst peer groups.
Here are our 5 favourite examples of great fashion content marketing, in no particular order:
Anthropologie
Women’s clothing and accessories brand Anthropologie have used brilliant content to generate strong communities. They use Instagram to post new products and previews of new brochures and publications, building anticipation for new collections. As well as posting photos of their employees wearing Anthropologie clothes, they also share photos of what’s happening in their offices, giving a glimpse behind the scenes of the fashion industry. They’ve even become masters at initiating their own innovative hashtag campaigns, encouraging sharing amongst their community with hashtags like #HisPantsHerWay, with users posting photos of themselves wearing their boyfriends’ clothes.
Birchbox
Using various topics, how-to and style guides, as well as product reviews and interviews, beauty and lifestyle brand Birchbox are able to create a constantly compelling blog. Their aim is to get customers engaged through genuinely useful advice and videos, helping them to gain their trust, and ensuring customers return to the site regularly.
Victoria’s Secret
Obviously Victoria’s Secret is a huge brand with the resources to match but much can be learned from their content and social approach. Their annual Fashion Show has become a huge marketing event and spawns huge amounts of shareable content. Using offline events to generate online content is a great way to engage your audience. Knowing their customers inside out, Victoria’s Secret use customer insights to craft their Fashion Show and then capture the action in a striking and glossy manner for a much larger audience on social. It may be difficult to compete with Victoria’s Secret in terms of production budgets, but it’s worth investing significant amounts of time and money into the look and feel of your content.
Rebecca Minkoff
Fashion brands are increasingly adept at talking about a range of subjects wider than just their products of their niche. Check out Rebecca Minkoff’s RMEdit website to see how a brand can talk about culture, music, arts and travel, relate it back to fashion and their own products, and make it all resonate with their own tone of voice.
Net A Porter
Online fashion brand has taken content production to a new level, almost becoming a publisher first and retailer second. Their website and primary shop front, looks like a magazine with the articles, features and celebrity interviews. They then use their heavily subscribed social channels to propagate their content and create a vibrant online conversation with their users, including video guides on health issues, beauty secrets and even yoga.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt79AZ7TafY
So there are our 5 favourite fashion content marketing examples. Even though these brands have firmly established themselves as content creators, often with budgets to match, it’s clear that there’s plenty that other businesses, both large and small, can learn. So get thinking today how you can use content marketing to build your brand today.