How Digital Marketing is Changing the Game in Apparel Industry
05 April 2023, Mumbai
The caveat here is that say from personalized campaigns and social media influencers to data-driven/data-led analytics, digital marketing is totally set to reshape how apparel brands connect/engage with targetted consumers, drive sales/volumes, and stay afloat & keep thriving in the competitive retail landscape of the day.
Transformative change; Digital marketing has quite certainly emerged as a life-changer/pivot in the apparel industry, transforming/challenging traditional promotion & advertising strategies.
Digital marketing redefining; Digital marketing of the day enables apparel brands to create personalized/bespoke campaigns that attune uniquely to individual consumer preferences/choices, consolidating engagement and translation/conversion rates & here one has to underline the incremental role played by 'Social media influencers' with increasing brands tendency to leveraging the power of social media (SMs) to focus sharply to facilitate their products and reach wider target-audiences to connect in a measured way with their focused audience and promote their products meaningfully.
A granular nuanced understanding of influencers is that create genuine and interactive/engaging content featuring apparel brands, fostering consumers' ability to recognize the brand and influencing consumer buying decisions and purchase journeys.
Focal Point
Digital marketing provides gets valuable insights into consumer behavior, preferences, and trends to help makes scientific/informed marketing strategic decisions for apparel brands with a Data-driven analytics business approach & E-commerce boom has only fueled the sales & volumes all thanks to the tailwinds witnessed out of pandemic and trend is still going on.
Key features supporting the secular trend are:
Virtual try-on facilitation enabled by emerging technologies enhances & building on the online shopping experience and in a limited sense addresses the malaise of reducing returns.
Transforming Challenges into Opportunities; Another critical factor is a reflection of how digital tools/potent digital marketing and emerging technologies can be dovetailed by the discernible empowerment of consumers necessitated to create user-generated content such as reviews, testimonials, and social media posts for any apparel brand with the underlying objective to build trust/belief credibility among prospective targeted customers base.
How Businesses are Adapting and Pivoting
What will take brands to have agile digital marketing strategies given challenging market dynamics allows burgeoning apparel brands to adapt and pivot timely, enabling them to execute necessary pro & reactive corrective actions standing tall when the world economy is confronting multiple headwinds in the apparel industry.
COVID-19 Reshapes Apparel Marketing
The coronavirus pandemic's impacts have severely impacted the fashion sector; this shift in consumer mood makes consumers more likely to focus on purchasing necessities. According to Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the apparel industry's revenue decreased by over one-third in 2020 or around $640 billion in lost sales. This is amazing.
Many fashion companies also had to shut down their retail locations. H&M, the second-largest fashion retailer globally, expects to eliminate 250 of its 5,000 locations worldwide.
At the same time, Inditex SA, the company that owns Zara, has already liquidated over 1,000 retail sites this year. Only some people are prepared to shell out cash for new clothes they will only wear at home. especially not amid a world crisis!
Several fashion firms are turning to digital solutions in reaction to the coronavirus epidemic and its impacts. For instance, Inditex SA committed $3 billion to bolster the online business of retailers like Zara and Bershka.
Fashion firms will need to make their online shops and the shopping experience they provide clients as accessible as they can, given the severe restrictions on in-store buying. According to a 2018 Gartner poll, 46% of shops plan to implement AR or VR solutions by 2020.
This figure is anticipated to rise even more in 2021 due to the coronavirus epidemic that forced the closure of several retail establishments. Around 25% of businesses intend to use chatbots and other AI technologies in the coming year, according to Brian Manusama, the senior director and analyst at Gartner.
Importance of digitization
A more individualized shopping experience may be readily provided via chatbots and other digital tools, which results in happier customers and increased sales. To replicate the in-store buying experience, several firms are even providing virtual storefronts as business solution providers.
For instance, Dior introduced a 360-degree view virtual shop where clients could browse the entire inventory precisely like they would in a physical store.
Today's Changing Landscape; The old marketing notion has been constructed with a digital mode that takes the whole globe to the customer's doorstep with a single click, thanks to the significant technological growth the planet has undergone.
Consumers became more informed and aware of the value they anticipated receiving in exchange for the costs they spent because of the internet's increasing penetration and other quicker digital communication channels, more extensive networks, and new devices.
Bottomline
Decoding Digital marketing; is in more than one way revolutionizing the apparel industry by building/creating limitless opportunities for brand exposure, constructively engaging customers through social media (SMs), in some sense bargain chip remains e-commerce platforms, experientially enhancing the overall shopping experience, only to lead in incremental sales and augmenting brand recall and, in effect sticky customer loyalty.
The million-dollar question Is digital marketing the future? Yes, the article has well articulated the thesis of underlining digital marketing is becoming the next big thing shaping/redefining the future of the apparel industry, outlining a futuristic idea transforming how brands associate/connect/resonate with customers and sell products digitally, leading to significant changes in the industry landscape.
Disclaimer:
Coexisting Strategies: Digital and Traditional Marketing's Synergistic Power
Not to state that conventional marketing, advertising, and promotion are a thing of the past as both have their place under the sun.
