Mastering Digital Retail Marketing: Strategies for Apparel Brands

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For clothing brands like yours, digital marketing is as essential as the air we breathe. Without it, your brand’s reach would be infinitely limited, and connecting with customers would prove challenging. 

Chances are, you don’t need to be told why it’s important. Rather, you’re likely on the lookout for innovative tactics to acquire new customers, optimize first-party data, and stay ahead of the competition — or at least stay afloat some days. 

If that sounds like you, you’ve come to the right place. Consider this your all-encompassing guide to the world of digital marketing for fashion. 

Without further adieu, let’s dive into our expert tips and tricks to outperform.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

First things first, you have to know your target audience. After all, the saying goes, “If you are targeting everyone, you are targeting no one.” Before you invest precious ad spend, ensure you know exactly who you are talking to. 

Develop an ideal customer profile (ICP) and ask yourself: What does your ideal customer care about? What are their challenges, and what solutions can your brand solve? 

Is your target audience active? Speak to the comfortability and durability of your clothing pieces. 

Is your target audience eco-conscious? Speak to the sustainability and ethics of your brand. 

Do you specialize in gifting? Craft a compelling story that speaks to each chapter of life that is worth celebrating or commemorating. 

Your customers are humans, after all, and knowing what they care about is the first step to connecting with them. Never lose sight of who you are speaking to and why. 

Understanding your audience is the key to always-relevant marketing that hits the mark every time.

EACH STAGE OF THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Got your target audience squared away? Good. Now, let’s dissect the customer journey. In today’s omnichannel world, customers jump from one channel to another in seconds. From swiping out of Instagram to shopping on Amazon while streaming the latest Netflix show in the background, customers today are more connected than ever. 

While the customer journey is far from linear, the 4 stages remain relatively the same. 

1. Awareness: The first step of the customer journey is knowing who your brand is. The awareness stage is the widest net you will cast, and this is your opportunity to clearly tell the story of your brand.
   • Pro Tip: Lean into your ICP and make sure to segment and personalize your ads accordingly. Remember to speak to your target audience.
2. Consideration: Once customers know who your brand is and what you sell, they transition to the consideration phase. If you sell dresses that work well for wedding guest attire, you will be top of mind when another save the date hits your customer’s mailbox.
   • Pro Tip: Set up your campaigns to retarget users who engage with an ad but do not convert. But make sure to employ frequency capping to avoid ad fatigue and wasted ad spend. 
3. Purchase/Decision: Cue the confetti! Your prospective customer officially made a purchase. You now have yourself a customer. 
4. Loyalty: The purchase has been made, but now the fun really begins. It’s important to establish a relationship of trust through customer service, high-quality products, and a dash of intentional marketing campaigns. 
   • Pro Tip: Of course, your products will speak for themselves and ideally keep them coming back for more, but sometimes, a deeper look at customer retention will help your brand forecast and pivot when churn seems a bit higher than normal.

FIRST-PARTY DATA IS THE NEW SOURCE OF TRUTH

With the loss of third-party cookies, first-party cookies are the cornerstone of personalization and targeted campaigns. 

Before we discuss techniques for optimizing first-party data, let’s discuss the key differences between first-party and third-party data.

What is a cookie? Cookies are text files containing small pieces of data that are used to identify a device connected to the Internet.

Now that you’ve got the basics down, the next step is optimizing first-party data. Here are three ways to do just that:

1. Retail media networks (RMNs) like Amazon are a deep well of first-party data. With retail media networks, your brand can serve hyper-specific relevant ads close to the point of conversion.
   • Pro Tip: If your brand is locked into several retail media networks simultaneously, you’re likely familiar with the lack of standardization between platforms. Until the industry gets organized, remember to gather and integrate as much data as possible, find your north star, study metric definitions, and collaborate with platform partners. 
2. Lean into Google’s Enhanced Conversions to leverage first-party data and AI-driven insights to boost the precision of conversion tracking, all while upholding adherence to privacy regulations.
   • Pro Tip: Consider tools like BEACON^TM to implement via the API (application programming interface) quickly and with a low technical lift. 
3. Harness Meta’s Conversion API (CAPI) to enhance digital ad strategies using first-party cookies. This empowers Meta’s Advantage+Shopping campaigns to optimize bids and adjustments on Facebook and Instagram using enriched signals and custom strategies.
   • Pro Tip: Load the system with as many creative assets as possible. Meta’s AI will enhance the media by tailoring each creative to individual user preferences. We suggest starting campaigns with at least 10 creatives. Our experience shows that campaigns are most effective when they include a mix of dynamic product ads (DPA), static images, videos, and carousel ads.

PERFORMANCE MAX FOR RETAIL MARKETING

We’d be remiss if we didn’t include Google’s Performance Max Campaigns (Pmax) in this guide. 

Chances are, you have a love-hate relationship with Pmax campaigns, but like it or not, it is here to stay. While it is touch and go for retail marketers across the industry, there is no denying the benefits Pmax offers when optimized correctly. 

So here are our top 3 tips to make the most of this platform for your brand.

1. Test, rinse, and repeat: Outperform your brand goals through strategic utilization of asset groups and focused experimentation.
   • Pro Tip: Leverage Audience Signals to accelerate Google’s algorithm learning process. Audience Signals in Performance Max offer valuable testing opportunities with various audience types based on search terms, similar websites, customer lists, interests, demographics, and more. 
2. Fine-tune your campaign structures: Your brand is unique, and your campaign structures should be, too.
   • Pro Tip: Consider a systematic method for SKU grouping that enhances your campaign’s organization and sharpens your ability to pinpoint performance trends. By systematically categorizing products, you can enhance your campaign’s clarity, pinpoint specific performance trends, optimize ad spend, and maximize performance goals. 
3. Stand out with better creative: Performance Max uses machine learning to serve optimal creative assets at the optimal time, but sometimes artificial intelligence isn’t always so intelligent.
   • Pro Tip: Always lean into human oversight when utilizing machine learning. Is Pmax serving creative that aligns with your brand messaging and tone? To avoid any mishaps, follow Pmax’s creative best practices and provide your own creative that converts.

NAVIGATING KEY RETAIL EVENTS AND HOLIDAY SHOPPING

Last but not least, let’s chat about the holidays. In the world of retail marketing, it’s never too early to prepare for the holiday season. 

Three Tactics to Sleigh Your Next Retail Holiday Season

1. Optimize Paid Social: Just last year, 85% of Gen Z said they use social media to learn about new products, and half of US Gen Z and millennials make purchases on social media.
   • Pro Tip: If you have a younger demographic, leverage paid social media to strengthen your brand’s holiday presence and deliver personalized ads to your audience. Consider testing with Meta Advantage+ shopping campaigns so your brand can simplify and streamline campaign creation, ad setup, and account management processes; allowing you to focus on results. 
2. Take Advantage of Amazon Prime Day: Amazon Prime Day is more than just a two-day shopping frenzy. It’s your brand’s opportunity to increase brand awareness, acquire new customers, and nurture those relationships before, during, and after the event.
   • Pro Tip: The ripple effect of Amazon Prime Day can tell you a lot about what to expect for the peak holiday season. Use this event as an opportunity to test what discounts and messaging resonate most with your audience. These insights should inform your Performance Max campaigns for the holidays. 
3. Lay the Foundation: Establish a strong collaborative foundation before the holiday season begins. Regardless of your team size, it’s crucial for your brand to ensure clear communication and consistency across departments. This preparation will simplify your role as a digital marketer during the busy holiday period and improve your campaign outcomes.
   • Pro Tip: Follow this holiday checklist to divvy up tasks and responsibilities across teams and departments. 

CONCLUSION

We hope these tips and tricks bring clarity and confidence to your digital marketing efforts. 

As a retail marketer, you understand the challenge of keeping all the plates spinning at once. While understanding your audience, optimizing first-party data, and combining machine learning with human insights are crucial to driving profitability, we encourage you to just take it one step at a time. After all, one step is better than no step at all. 

Remember, as retail marketers, some days you win, and some days you learn, so keep up the good fight and go forth and conquer. 

Don’t forget to subscribe for more retail marketing insights like this! 

Are you looking for a reliable partner to spin those plates for you? Let’s prove outperformance has no limit. 

Adlucent

Adlucent is the performance marketing agency that proves outperformance has no limit. Powered by our purpose-built platform, Deep Search™, Adlucent unifies the best of human and machine for a scientific approach to marketing. We work transparently in partnership with B2C and B2B retailers and brands to create custom, predictive programs that drive ever-better outcomes. Our services include paid search, shopping, social, retail media networks, display media, video, performance creative, consulting, and measurement. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Adlucent is part of Advantage Solutions and ranked one of the top marketing companies in the U.S. by AdAge.