Written by ML at Apparel Search July 11th, 2007
You may want to also learn more about Fashion Industry Search Engine Optimization Tips.
Promote Your Fashion Brand by Apparel Search - Terms of Interest to the Fashion Industry
In this section you will learn about how to promote your fashion brand.
Promote Your Fashion Brand
Is there
anything more important then promoting your brand ??? Well, I
guess the "quality" of your garments are more important.
However, for the sake of this article lets move forward on the
assumption that the promotion of your brand is
the most critical issue that you face. With this assumption in
place, lets now talk about some of the methods to turn your
unknown brand into a brand to die for...
Clearly
the best place to promote a fashion brand is at the
Apparel Search website, but their are also many other
very good resources. Although the internet has become a mammoth
in regard to advertising and self promotion, it is our opinion
that offline brand promotion is still very important. Lets
segment this discussion into two primary categories of
promotion.
1)
On-line Promotion
2)
Off-line Promotion
Off-line Promotion -
Television, Magazines, Billboards, Radio etc.
In regards
to fashion their is much to be said for finding your brand
gracing the cover of a
fashion magazine.
Even if you do not grab the cover, having your garments or
fashion accessories listed in the body of a style mag certainly
provides excellent credence to your brand name. One question
you may be asking is how do you get your brand listed in an
important magazine such as
Vogue,
InStyle,
Elle, etc. Does
luck have a role in getting into a magazine? Probably not...
To get published in a quality fashion magazine it most often
takes either hard work or money (some times both). When I say
hard work, you can spend ample time contacting editors and
writers at the popular magazines. This may eventually lead to
having them agree to write an article about your brand.
However, more often then not, you may have to spend money
advertising in their magazine. Or spend even more money and
produce your own runway show so that they are almost forced to
write something about you or your event. In summary, magazines
are great for fashion brands to get recognized. If you can get
published in one, we suggest that you do so.
Similar to
magazines,
newspapers serve with an almost equal value. I say "almost"
because I think that the fashion and style "magazines" are more
appropriate for pushing your brand name on the consumer then a
newspaper. Lets be honest, the magazines have a better method
of providing color images. Simply stated, fashion articles look
better in magazines (when they include images). When thinking
about Newspapers, we have to look past the New York Times, Wall
Street Journal and your local newspapers. It is very important
in the fashion industry to also consider the trade papers.
Newspapers like the
DNR,
WWD
and
Apparel
News are clearly powerful resources for the apparel
industry. A good article can help you, and a bad article can
possibly hurt you. Keep in mind that store buyers typically
read these papers. It is important to impress the ultimate
consumer, but it is also very important to impress retail
buyers. Although the internet provides a method to sell
products directly to consumers, if you want to develop a brand
name, you really want to have your product in the retail channel
of distribution. So, you better get yourself published in the
trade papers to get yourself in the mind of the
retail buyers.
If you
have a great deal of money, you may wish to consider advertising
on television. That is all that I plan to say about TV
advertising... Sorry, too expensive for me.
Although I
personally do not have experience with Radio or Billboard
advertising, my understanding is that this is a less expense
form of advertising then television. In my personal opinion,
for developing a long term brand awareness strategy, billboards
may serve you better then radio. Please do your own research in
regards to radio ads and billboard ads to promote your brand.
Well, I
think that I have talked more then enough about offline
advertising methods. Do to the fact that the Apparel Search
Company is an online media company, the on-line promotion is
where we have the most experience. Lets move along to the fun
stuff...
On-line -
Yes, we mean the internet.
Unfortunately, we can not tell you all of our secrets to online
success. However, we will try to give you a few hints to point
you in the proper direction. If you already have a brand
developed and a website to go along with it, our very first
suggestion is to try and meet either Larry Page or Sergey Brin. If
you are lucky enough to meet with either of them, we strongly
recommend that you immediately attempt to seduce them in any way
possible. It does not matter if you are male or female, just
seduce them and offer your hand in marriage. For those of you
that are not aware, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the
co-founders of Google (currently, the most important online
resource in the universe). Anyway, with all kidding aside, if
you want to promote your apparel brand online, it is important
to have your website search
engine friendly.
In order
to keep your site search engine friendly (meeting standards set
forth by the search engines; and internet standards groups), you
may wish to consult an SEO company (Search Engine
Optimization). In our opinion you will need to be
careful because even the SEO companies may not fully understand
the most current search engine ranking methods. Therefore, they
may offer you advise that will ultimately hurt your search
engine ranking rather then helping you. Each search engine has
different algorithms. In addition, the search engine algorithms
do not stay constant. The bottom line is that you should do
your best to make sure that your site is developed properly. If
you do not have the confidence that you can develop the site
well yourself, you can search for an SEO company to assist you
(Again, just be careful because I image that some of them would
provide good suggestions and others may provide suggestions that
will actually hurt your search engine ranking). For your
reference, currently we do not use any SEO services.
However, we may turn to them for advise in the future. In
summary, MAKE SURE YOU GET LISTED ON THE SEARCH ENGINES.
If you
site is fully developed and ready to be promoted, we suggest
that your first stop be at the Google site. They are clearly
the leader. You will want to have your site listed on
Microsoft's search engine as well. In addition, you should also
submit your website url (website address) to other smaller search
engines. In my opinion, start with the engines
that allow "free" submissions. You can later go back and
register for search engines that require a fee if you think that
is appropriate. However, before spending money to get onto a
smaller search engine, you may wish to investigate ways to get
more exposure on the larger search engines. For example, rather
then pay to be on a small engine, you can investigate the
AdWords program at
Google.
You can find similar programs at Microsoft and Yahoo. If you have a
budget to handle it, you may want to try all three. From
personal experience, I have this year tested Google, Yahoo, and
Microsoft with their advertising programs. It is too early for
me to analyze the effect (I will try to do this for you for a
future article). By the way, the only reason that I use the
Yahoo program is that I think that their search engine results
"suck". Because for some unknown reason, Apparel Search does
not currently show up in Yahoo. Therefore, the only way to have
exposure on that site is to advertise. Yes, that is super
annoying and it makes me dislike Yahoo... (anyway, that is
entirely another story). Getting back on the subject, MAKE SURE
THAT YOU GET LISTED ON THE SEARCH ENGINES.
After your
fashion site is developed and you are listed on the engines, it
is time to promote your brand on the fashion directories,
fashion blogs,
online fashion news resources, etc. In addition to creating
your own fashion blog, you can also promote your brand by asking
other bloggers to post articles about your company and brand.
As a matter of fact, you are welcome to post fashion relevant
blog postings at the
Fashion Newspaper.
In addition to style blogs, you can promote your brand on news
websites. In my opinion, it may be easier for you to get listed
on an online news resource then it would be getting published in
an off-line news resource. Actually, if you are interested, I
would be happy to post articles about your fashion brand here at
Apparel Search. You can view our
fashion
articles section to see what we have done for
others (at the bottom of this page you will find a method to
contact us). In regard to getting your company listed on
directories, you can add a listing here at Apparel Search and
you can also create a listing at the
Clothing Industry
Directory website. You can also search the internet
and find numerous other fantastic apparel industry directories
to join. None are as good as
Apparel Search,
but you will find many excellent resources.
Another
way to promote your fashion brand is to join a
Fashion Industry Network.
From a fashion business
network, you can meet other like minded people. It is very
possible that they will offer better suggestions then I have
provided in this article.
Don't
forget to visit
fashion trade shows. Even if
you do not register a booth at the exhibits, you can at least
walk the show to try and develop business contacts.
If Apparel
Search can assist you with turning your new brand into a "popular
brand", let us know. We are happy to assist if
possible.
Oh yeah, I
almost forgot to mention. You should look into the possibility
of working with a
Public Relations company (PR firm). You may be
surprised how well that would work out for you. They can assist
you with all of the issues discussed above in this article.
By the
way, if you dreams fail miserably and you can not actually get
your brand off the ground, you can still fall back on a career
in fashion. If that time comes, you should visit our
employment section, the
Clothing Industry Jobs site, or the
Fashion Job Search site.
OK, I agree that much of what I have told you above is common sense. However, I guess it could not hurt to have read this information.
Good
luck... We truly wish you the best. Don't give up. Hey, don't
forget to invite us to your fashion shows when you are a famous
fashion
designer. Thanks in advance.
Written by ML at Apparel Search July 11th, 2007
You may want to also learn more about Fashion Industry Search Engine Optimization Tips.
Written by ML at Apparel Search July 11th, 2007
You may want to also learn more about Fashion Industry Search Engine Optimization Tips.
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