How to market a small clothing business

Retail businesses rely on high sales and lots of new customers to make money. To attract these new customers, a company needs to have a solid marketing strategy. This is true for any retail business, whether you sell carpets, computers, or clothes.

This article will specifically look at how to market a clothing business. We’ll cover a variety of marketing strategies, including:

• Creating a website
• Email marketing
• Social media
• How to manage your marketing expenses easily

The first step you’ll want to take when marketing your clothing business is to create a business website. For many retail businesses, their website is where most of their sales occur. If you want to offer your customers the option of buying clothing online instead of in-store, do some research on how to start an eCommerce business. 

A website also provides a hub where you can store all of your contact information, like social media links, phone numbers, and email addresses. This means that customers can easily contact you after finding your website.

Consider hiring a web developer to create your website, as they’ll be able to make a high-quality website, which can massively improve your customers’ experience. If you can’t afford a professional, there are also a lot of easy-to-use website builders out there that you can try.

An important part of building your website is filling it with engaging content. This will encourage visitors to return to your page and buy your products. 

For a clothing business, a good example of engaging content might be a fashion blog on your website. For instance, you could write articles about whatever style is in at the moment, and use photographs of your products as examples. Or (if you make your clothing yourself) you could post educational videos on how to make clothes. 

Email marketing is another effective online method for promoting your company. It’s a great way to show off the range of products your offer to potential customers. It also has the added advantage of keeping your returning customers updated on any recent events within your business. Here’s how you can do it in a few simple steps:

The most crucial step in creating an effective email marketing campaign is building an email list. After all, the best marketing email in the world won’t do any good if you don’t have anyone to send it to. 

There are many different ways of building an email list, but one of the most straightforward methods is to request the email addresses of anyone who visits your website. You can do this with pop-ups that ask your visitors their email addresses, though some customers may find pop-ups intrusive. 

The contents of a good marketing email vary between companies, but things like links to your website and contact information are mainstays. For a clothing store, helpful additions might be a list of your new and returning stock or short lists of easy fashion tips. You might also send a newsletter via email that updates customers on any changes or events within your company.

Businesses commonly automate their email marketing. Automation is a great way to save time and can be particularly helpful for small business owners because of the many other jobs they have to spend their time on. There are many email marketing services available, so do some research to find the best one for you.

Using social media is a common marketing tactic because it’s free and reasonably easy to use. Although making quality social media content – photos, blog posts, videos – can be a little trickier, simply having a social media presence means a great variety of potential customers can find you.

When marketing yourself on social media, remember to be consistent. If you put together a video that demonstrates the great fashions you’re stocking that month, make sure you share updates over the following months. And while you should post content to your social media pages frequently, try to make sure it’s all relevant to the people you want to work with. Avoid creating content simply to fill space. 

A clothing business will benefit significantly from the visual focus of most social media platforms. For instance, posting pictures that show examples of your clothes is a great idea. You may have to hire models (or ask for volunteers) but having someone wear the clothes is one of the best ways to demonstrate their quality.  

If you want to get better results from social media, though, you can also pay for some additional services. These include things like paid advertising or boosting the range of your posts beyond your followers. 

These are handy services to pay for if you think social media will be an effective way to market your company, but you don’t want to put a lot of effort into attracting followers to make sure your posts reach many potential customers. This means it’s a particularly good idea for small business owners that might not have the time to build a large social media following.

These services are also very cheap: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram offer very affordable advertising rates. Facebook and Instagram also provide the ability to boost posts from only £1-£5 per day, and you can customise your budget for this service by setting a maximum you’d like to spend. 

Sometimes you’ll need to spend money on your marketing to get the most impact. It’s smart to keep track of this spending so you don’t spend too much. This can be complicated, though, unless you have a specific business account that separates company transactions from your personal finances. 

Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. One particularly useful feature is its profit and loss reporting. 

This shows a real-time report of your spending and income, so you’ll know whenever money comes into or goes out of your Countingup account. This way, you can confidently keep track of all your marketing-related expenses. 

Find out more here.