How Brands Can Nail Their Fashion Influencer Marketing

What is fashion influencer marketing?

Fashion influencer marketing is a two-way conversation between potential customers and the people they choose to follow. Rather than communication directly from the brand, influencer marketing leverages the audience, authority and authenticity of a social media personality to do the heavy lifting on their behalf.

The essential feature (and power) of this approach is cultivating a sense of genuine opinion or endorsement from a trustworthy source. This opinion might come in the form of direct endorsement or simply placement in created content, which might be video reviews, fit checks, ‘get ready with me’, skits, dances, vlogs, or almost anything else.

Why is it so effective for fashion marketing?

Audience

Influencers can instantly redraw the map of brand awareness by promoting to their unique or expansive audiences. This is especially powerful for small and boutique labels, yielding huge spikes in visibility with limited marketing spend, but it’s also a key way for large brands to stay relevant and remain a bright spot in the minds of their clients.

Authority

With influencers, your audiences are not only pre-assembled — they’re also pre-engaged. Social media users are eager to hear from their chosen influencers, they trust their opinion, and are often actively seeking advice from them on what to buy. There’s no marketing voice more compelling than this.

Human Connection

Above all, influencer marketing is personal. It’s about what they think about the item, how it works in their lives, and through that, why it will work for the viewer. For fashion in particular, it’s an unparalleled opportunity to demonstrate your product doing its thing: being tried on, combined with other items, worn out to specific occasions, in selfies – just seeing it being worn by a real person in everyday life is so much more powerful than an overly edited advert.

Fashion influencer marketing trends in 2024

Marketing practices in this sector change faster than seasonal clothes lines. Don’t worry – The Goat Agency is always on hand to make sure you’re not looking outdated.

AI-assisted influencer marketing

The possibilities opening up through AI power continue to grow. We’re already discovering exciting new avenues for ROI analysis, influencer discovery and surgical campaign targeting that these tools offer.

That means you’ll be able to find the best influencers, from micro-stars to unconventional trend-setters, to drive your campaigns further than ever, and know exactly how much they’re doing for your brand.

Luxury vs High-Street

As you’d expect, the way in which luxury fashion labels and more affordable retailers reach their consumers differs quite significantly.

Luxury brands tend to be defined by quality, legacy and of course, price. There’s also the element of exclusivity. Luxury brands don’t want everyone to have their products, they want to maintain an air of scarcity. Brands on the high street are considered more accessible. Whilst the focus is very much still on quality, they don’t have quite the same exclusivity (or price) of luxury brands.

Where high-street brands partner with influencers in highly product focused content that aims to drive purchases in the present, luxury brands plant the seed to convert you down the line. You’ll often see luxury brands partnering with the biggest creators (Hugo Boss with Khaby Lame for example) bringing them in as brand ambassadors to emphasize their exclusivity. For premium brands, the approach is much more varied, often involving multiple smaller creators to cast a wider net, making their message one of accessibility over exclusivity.

Read more about luxury vs high-street fashion brands in our report “The Prestige Factor: How 15 Luxury and Premium Brands are Taking on TikTok.”

3 Successful fashion influencer marketing campaigns

Keeping your finger on the pulse – which is always made easier by working with experts like The Goat – makes it possible to land these incredible influencer partnerships at the perfect moment.

Wait too long and you’ll be diluted among the pack of other brands that descend. Strike while the iron is red hot, on the other hand, and see your brand fundamentally linked with a trend or rising star in the minds of viewers.

Brands in the influencer space can often be too cautious with their partnerships. Sometimes the best campaigns are the ones that throw caution to the wind. Ditch the strict brand guidelines – be bold.

Top fashion influencer marketing tips for brands

Embrace your unique style

Influencer marketing is a world apart from traditional fashion marketing. TikTok is not a platform for cutdowns of your TV adverts, or models demonstrating your product in perfectly poised silence. It’s about allowing trusted figures to be themselves and interact with your brand in whatever way they choose.

For Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences, fashion is no longer about aspirational ideals and demonstrating perfection – it’s about acting on their values and expressing themselves, imperfections and all.

Market to every demographic – through every demographic

In this new age of influencer marketing, fashion isn’t to be handed down from on high. People want to wear things because they see their peers or role models wearing them; they’re looking for reliable evidence that this product will work for them and will contribute to their identity.

To tap into this, you need to work with influencers that align with your audience. That audience usually spans a wide range of different ages, body types, ethnicities and various other characteristics – reflect that.

The fashion industry has certainly made progress here, but it’s clear there are still greater depths to be found in diverse marketing. The Purple Goat Agency, for example, highlights that 24% of the UK population are living with a disability, but only 0.06% of adverts feature disabled individuals.

Marketing to a diverse ecosystem of consumers also means engaging with them across unconventional verticals. A vast number of fashion consumers (also known as everyone on Earth) don’t follow fashion influencers – but they probably follow food, sport, travel, entertainment or lifestyle influencers. Find ways to integrate your product or brand into those verticals and enjoy the multiplication of your reach.

Never stop experimenting

Above all, social media and influencer marketing never stands still. Because of that, it’s brutally efficient at mothballing uninteresting or ineffective content. If you want to join other top-performing brands on the cutting edge, the solution is continuous, strategic experimentation.

That means taking risks with your content styles – and content purposes. It means really interrogating what it is your content is doing (hint: if it’s not entertaining, educating or inspiring, you’re in trouble). Most of all, it means keeping your influencers out of brand handcuffs so they can do what they do best.

Working with an agency like Goat makes this easy. We don’t just specialize in influencer marketing and understand its specific application for fashion. With us, you won’t be jumping on trends – you’ll be generating them.

The oddball effect

The oddball effect is a phenomenon where an unexpected item in a sequence stands out. As the viewer, we recognize the unfamiliarity and remember it much more vividly. In other words, doing something that’s slightly quirky and different in order to stand out.

In a world where beautiful content is everywhere, brands must ask themselves, are you cutting through the noise or creating it? If you’re looking for guidance on how to cut through successfully, look no further than Burberrry’s partnership with Sylvanian Drama.

Sylvanian Drama is a TikTok channel that brings to life Sylvanian Family figurines, acting out its own little soap opera right in the heart of the FYP. It wasn’t until some loyal binge watchers spotted a Sylvanian Family toy clutching a Quilted Lola Bag that people started to realize Burberry had teamed up with the account.

A luxury brand teaming up with a TikTok account that uses children’s toys as props to create adult dramas? It’s such an unexpected pairing that you can’t help but respect it.

Concluding thoughts

Fashion influencer marketing goes where traditional marketing can’t, allowing brands to hybridize with and feed into the creators who make social media worth engaging with in the first place.

It positions brands to contribute to the value of the platform, rather than simply exploiting it. Audiences recognize and respond to this. The invaluable result? Brands can cultivate a share of the loyalty and affection usually reserved for those beloved influencers.Need a hand developing your next influencer-led fashion campaign? Get in touch to find out how we can build the perfect digital runway for your brand.