Tag: #bbsdigmarket

The constant advance in technology in the world today calls for increased adaptation of the marketing efforts and approaches used by businesses within the fashion industry in order to maintain their growth apace with the ever-increasing competition in the sector. Mobile phone penetration has increased dramatically over the last five years in the UK alone as illustrated in the chart below. During the 2018 the smartphone user penetration in UK is 73.12 per cent, a huge increase from 61.71 per cent as at 2014 (Statista, 2018b). This means a lot for the fashion industry as fashion is the exemplar of all beauty and creativity in the world and therefore easily for disruption more easily than other industries. Mobile marketing is definitely the way to go for any fashion company aspiring to remain to remain on top of the game.

Figure 1: UK Smartphone user penetration forecast

Even more interesting is the overall mobile phone penetration rates per household. As illustrated in the chart below – Figure 2 – is estimated at 95 per cent as at from 2016 to 2017 (Statista, 2018a).  Further, in a report by OC&C Strategy Consultants, Google and PayPal UK, it is projected that “by 2020, two thirds or c.£43bn of UK e-commerce purchases will be made on a smartphone, as the value of mobile transactions trebles from £13.5bn in just four years” (OC&C Strategy Consultants, 2017). There will most likely be enough opportunity for growth of the fashion design industry in the near future due to these evolutions of the market. The world of to-day is so interconnected in many intricate ways thanks to the Digital Age that we are lucky to be living in, where the truly innovative and creative marketers are more likely to succeed tremendously.

 

Figure 2: % Households with mobile phones

There are different approaches that each fashion design brand needs to employ in the implementation of the digital marketing model and also with regards to the objectives of the company which are mainly driven by certain insights concerning the probability of succeeding with mobile marketing. More and more people globally are now spending more average time on their mobile phones every year.  This serves to emphasize the role of mobile marketing to growth of any fashion business that employs the use of mobile marketing in the marketing campaigns and strategies that it engages in. This increased use of smartphones has also increased the ability of fashion companies to sell globally to diverse groups of clients. In addition, mobile marketing and m-commerce go hand in hand.

 

Figure 3: E-commerce, Total for mobile devices=51%

 

Consumers are increasingly using their smartphones to purchase products from retailers. According to E-Commerce News Europe (2016), “for the first time ever smartphones and tablets accounted for over half of online sales in the United Kingdom”. The statistics for mobile sales in the UK during the last quarter of 2015 are shown in the chart below – Figure 3. The total for mobile devices was 51 per cent, which is a reminder for all fashion designers who are looking to expanding their market through novel mobile marketing efforts. Furthermore, most fashion shoppers will research about brands when walking in stores just before they make the crucial buying decision: “from whom will I buy, and due what customer value propositions?” The prospective customers asks himself..
The widespread use of smartphones means that consumers will continue to use their devices to find out more about products in terms of quality, durability, and price online first before the final decision to make a purchase. The millennial generation is the best example in this digital marketing theory since they are more dependent on technology to keep them informed about market trends. This, again, explains the limitless opportunity for the fashion sector. Even, giant search engines such as Google are developing their algorithms to award more preference to mobile devices. This explains the need for every fashion business to work relentlessly towards improving their web presence. They are also needed to integrate new and innovative automated mobile marketing into their operations (Hofacker et al., 2016). Further, according to Adobe’s Mickael Bentz (2015), “Globally, 33 percent more people have access to mobile phones than to toilets! In 2013 that was 6 billion with access to mobile phones (and thus to SMS)”. He further explains that SMS open rate is 98 per cent. Given the innovativeness in the fashion industry, businesses should always tailor their SMS messages so that they can appeal to the prospective clients.

 

Figure 4: Mobile devices penetration (%)

However, mobile marketing efforts are sometimes countered by challenges that some fashion designer companies would willingly admit if asked to. Some of these challenges include the stigma and fear that most people have towards spam. This makes it hard for people consider relevant marketing messages and offers, complexity of the application of the mobile marketing models, fear of technology by some individuals, and so forth (Shankar et al., 2016).

Nonetheless, digital marketing is always undergoing a sort of evolution and sooner or later mobile marketing will help in achievement of the set objectives for any fashion business that applies this “secret” prudently and sees its implementation to the latter. The paradigm shift towards the use of mobile devices (as illustrated in the chart above) is a trend that can only be expected to increase (Consultancy UK, 2017), which means that fashion business need to set up cohesive mobile marketing plans aimed at obtaining connection with these digital consumers.

 

References   

 Bentz, M. (2015). “Marketing With 98 Percent Read-Rate and 10 More Compelling Stats”.         Retrieved from https://theblog.adobe.com/marketing-with-98-percent-read-rate-and-10-         more-compelling-stats/ [Accessed May 5, 2018].

Consultancy UK. (2017). “UK smartphone penetration continues to rise to 85% of adult   population”. Retrieved from https://www.consultancy.uk/news/14113/uk-smartphone-   penetration-continues-to-rise-to-85-of-adult-population [Accessed May 5, 2018].

E-Commerce News. (2016). “51% of UK ecommerce happened via mobile”. Retrieved from             https://ecommercenews.eu/51-uk-ecommerce-happened-via-mobile/  [Accessed May 5,      2018].

Hofacker, C. F., De Ruyter, K., Lurie, N. H., Manchanda, P., & Donaldson, J. (2016).      Gamification and mobile marketing effectiveness. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 34,          25-36.

OC&C Strategy. (2017). “Smartphone shopping to account for two thirds of UK e-commerce by 2020” Retrieved from            https://www.occstrategy.com/en/News%20and%20Media/2017/02/The%20Mobile%20M     andate%20English [Accessed May 5, 2018].

Shankar, V., Kleijnen, M., Ramanathan, S., Rizley, R., Holland, S., & Morrissey, S. (2016).          Mobile shopper marketing: Key issues, current insights, and future research avenues. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 34, 37-48.

Statista. (2018a). “Percentage of households with mobile phones in the United Kingdom (UK)     from 1996 to 2017”. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/289167/mobile-  phone-penetration-in-the-uk/ [Accessed May 5, 2018].

Statista. (2018b). “Forecast of the smartphone user penetration rate in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2015 to 2022”. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/553707/predicted-smartphone-user-penetration-rate- in-the-united-kingdom-uk/ [Accessed May 5, 2018].

 

In the fashion industry, brand extensively searches for ways to improve their online attention and responsibility to attract new customers (Hemphill & Suk, 2008). Optimization of the content in a search engine will increase the search ranking. In a research, it is noted that 93% of traffic in brands results from the search engines. The main aim so as to increase the online presence is through improving and developing brands in Google, and other search engines such as; yahoo, bing, Yandex in Russia, and baidu for the China republicans. Therefore, some rules have to be adhered to improve the natural ranking of the fashion brands in the intended websites. Thus the fashion industry has to invest more on the online platform to increase the chances of advertising through Google Adwords so that they may appear more competitive.

Major keywords in the Fashion Industry

At first a clear workable environment with the website developers is a very significant step in the fashion online platform (Craik,J. 2009). The website developers should understand the importance of Mega tags and a clear HTML. This is a major concern to the fashion industry because most of their brands require high definition graphics or animated contents. In addition every fashion brand manager should advance on the blank HTML code on their website to identify if there is enough data to read for a web-spider or crawler (Crane,D. 2012). For instance, the Tom Ford Jeans website need an improvement because their website HTML has less coding making it impossible for web-crawlers to read and acquire website information. In turn, the web-spiders will rate the website as less than average due to lack of important information that can be crawled.

What key words should be optimized? Search Optimization Engine is all about containing the right key words. The fashion design managers have to think from a customer perspective: the keywords they can use in search for the brands products and services. Following the competitors website, it will be easy to locate the main keywords that can be used to inspire their own brand. Furthermore, one can use Google Analytics to identify the most search request customer attend to on daily basis (Craik,J. 2009). The use of irrelevant keywords that are not fashion oriented will finally lead to degradation of the fashion website. Therefore, the search engine most relevant aspect is the relevance to the associated search.

Backlinks

Back-links portray a more relevant what in improving the fashion brand SOE (Salvadores et al.,). For instance, in many blogs a link is inserted that redirects to the fashion design official website informing Google on the relevance of a particular brand. Having few but more controllable back-links that are worthy is more significant in comparison to the spread of many links that were used sometimes back leading to customer confusion. Having a back-link from a fashion blogger appears more appealing compare to Google having thousands of back-links with irrelevant ideas (Crane,D. 2012). Recently Google tends to eliminate fraudulent intentions such as; cloaking and link buying in attempts tom improve the SOE.

References

Hemphill, C.S. and Suk, J., 2008. The law, culture, and economics of fashion. Stan. L. Rev., 61, p.1147.

Craik, J., 2009. Fashion: the key concepts (Vol. 1). Bloomsbury Academic.

Salvadores, M., Szomszor, G.C.M., Gibbins, N., Glaser, H. and Shadbolt, N., Backlinks: Bridging the Navigational Gap in the Web of Data.

Crane, D., 2012. Fashion and its social agendas: Class, gender, and identity in clothing. University of Chicago Press.

 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the application of a set of best practices and tools on digital platforms such as websites, blogs and so on, that help brands to obtain an increased online presence by ranking higher in the search engine results page (SERP), which in turn drives more traffic to the brand’s e-commerce website. This has the potential of attracting more sales revenues due to increased distribution channels that result from good SEO (Bhashyam, Jain & Surana, 2014). SEO plays an important role in all digital marketing campaign and strategies that incorporate various tactics that can be applied to drive clients and customers to your fashion or retail business through the optimization of online platforms (Davis, 2006). In this Digital Era that we are all living in, it has become increasingly more important than ever for every fashion design and retail business to understand the role of and apply SEO in marketing campaigns and strategies.

The dynamics of SEO have been evolving over the years due to changes in consumer behavior patterns coupled with the continued development and advancement of the capabilities of search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and others. Therefore, SEO standards that were viewed as useful and indispensable a year ago might become obsolete in the fire of an instant. In view of today’s competitive fashion market, a good SEO approach helps in marketing fashion and retail businesses that have online stores or e-commerce at significantly low costs that eventually result in great return on investment (ROI) in the long-term. Google alone processes more than 40 thousand search query every second – this is about 3.5 billion Google searches per day! The truth of the matter is that, to remain ahead of the competition, every business in the fashion and retail industry should integrate SEO into their marketing strategies and plans as the most fundamental element in modern marketing (Ozuem & Azemi, 2017).

There are different ways in which you can use SEO in the optimization of your e-commerce website and online stores for the purpose of generating more organic traffic to your site that may eventually translate into a rise in sales and revenues. Analytic forms the foundation of a good SEO strategy for any fashion design company since it helps in understanding the varying characteristics of the potential buyers and to best position your products for them to buy (2017). According to a Harvard Business Review article by Wes Nichols (2013), marketers use media-mix modeling in linking different metrics that are used to generate important analytics that can be used in monitoring every mouse-click of the users later on. This helps in identifying and strategizing on how to best sell, effectively, to different customer segments the products that best suit their behavior patterns and purchasing tendencies.

In addition, it is important for fashion design and retail businesses to optimize their online images since these are the key targets for many users who research on different fashion products online before making a purchase. It is images that form the door online purchase of fashion products. Nothing else. Image SEO can be achieved by adding descriptions and alt-texts to images posted on company’s websites, blogs and social media platforms. Besides using proper key words within the webpage, the image files used must also be renamed when being uploaded since the names of these files from their photographers or cameras are often too ambiguous with titles such as “DSC1000043”, “XYbrandphoto001”, and so forth. Moreover, a good SEO strategy for any fashion design company must include a mobile-friendly website that is highly mobile-responsive (Ozuem & Azemi, 2017).

According to Weill and Woerner (2013) in an MIT Sloan Management Review article, failure to use SEO strategies that are aimed at engaging customers at the website and mobile level will ultimately lead to customers going to buy from other sector competitors and retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, and so forth that use impeccable SEO digital marketing tactics while offering their customers a great digital experience. A good example of a fashion company that has a good SEO strategy is the Nine Line Apparel, whose website offers a splendid experience to their visitors and is very user-friendly. The company says it aims at providing an awesome customer experience for the customer who visit their online platforms. This has been instrumental in Nine Line’s becoming one of the fastest growing brand online fashion brand in the United States in the recent years (Frazer & Stiehler, 2014).

However, SEO is the most misunderstood concept in digital marketing. There are some brands that result in the use of black hat SEO hacks and shortcuts with the aim of tricking the search engine and attempting at exploiting any weaknesses within their algorithms. This hideous act is sure deliver undesirable results in the long-term since search engines such as Google impose penalties on brands that are caught using such [black hat] tactics (Malaga, 2010). Over time, Google has developed more advanced search algorithms and updates such as Penguin, Panda, and Florida which are used in detecting black hat SEO practices such as linking, content farms, and keyword stuffing respectively (Sharma & Sharma, 2015).

SEO is, surprisingly, a free to low-cost digital marketing strategy that every fashion designer should plan for and apply since it does the hard work for your business while you take the back seat. Beyond having a successful SEO campaign every fashion design and retail enterprise should understand that other digital marketing strategies including email marketing and Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) can be used in tandem with SEO to further improve the search engine ranking of the a brand. It is therefore worth the effort for fashion brands to invest more time and money in SEO plans that will ultimately leads to the success of the business in the long run.

 

References

Bhashyam, A., Jain, P., & Surana, K. (2014). “Five ways to get more from digital advertising”.     Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-         insights/five-ways-to-get-more-from-digital-advertising [Accessed May 4, 2018].

Davis, H. (2006). Search engine optimization. ” O’Reilly Media, Inc.”.

Frazer, M., & Stiehler, B. E. (2014, January). Omnichannel retailing: The merging of the online     and off-line environment. In Global Conference on Business & Finance Proceedings(Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 655). Institute for Business & Finance Research.

Malaga, R. A. (2010). Search engine optimization—black and white hat approaches. In     Advances in Computers (Vol. 78, pp. 1-39). Elsevier.

Nichols, W. (March 2013). “Advertising Analytics 2.0”. Retrieved from     https://hbr.org/2013/03/advertising-analytics-20 [Accessed May 4, 2018].

Ozuem, W., & Azemi, Y. (Eds.). (2017). Digital Marketing Strategies for Fashion and Luxury      Brands. IGI Global.

Weill, P. & Woerner, L. S. (2013). “Optimizing Your Digital Business Model”. What does it take to create the strongest possible online presence? Retrieved from   https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/optimizing-your-digital-business-model/ [Accessed      May 4, 2018].

 

 

Online PR (e-PR) : Maximising favorable mentions of a company, brand, product or website on third party websites which are likely to be visited by your target audience. It can also support viral or word-of-mouth marketing activities in other media. (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012)

 

Fashion is a multi-billion dollar industry where passion is the major aspiration to meet a broad spectrum of consumers in relation to their different age groups and culture (Aaker,D.A., 2012). Fashion mostly relies on adverts and the social media for communication. Understanding the public perceptions on the brands, and adaptation to avoid dilution of consumer preferences are some major dynamics that work handy in the fashion industry. Fashion business is more challenging because fashion is a hyper competitive industry. In the modern society, different trends drive the fashion industry (Aaker, D.A., 2012). The fashion industry include; fashion modeling, catwalk, and photographic.

Digital Marketing

Every business is bound to change to embrace the new trends and to enter the new digitisation which is characterized by social influences and the political narrations (Chaffey & Ellis, 2016). Recent digital marketing have affected the fashion industry with no exemption. For instance, Gucci bans fur go wild and the internet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpKUmZcUKRA .

 

 

Social media being the most vocal to attract audience in the recent generation, therefore, customer reviews are easy to dispose because everybody has the power to opinions. After a release of real trim hair and real animal hair under a big designers name Gucci, PETA and a number of furious customers kept Gucci under fire and so Gucci thought of permanently burning the product made of fur from its fashion industry. Did this work? This worked because the reviews from the social media weren’t something recommendable and hence the fashion industry ought to be aware and relevant and thus listens to the customer’s preference and likability. Following another example, the Nasty Gal, an online retailer in the fashion industry, has a rich digital history. The reinvention of their product image constantly has raised their brand personality. The frequent term, Girl Boss, has an empowering notion to the women and is sustainably banded in the cyber world crushing outdated feminism gender pay gap. This term empowers women into the business world and has emerged a very powerful strategy carrying the Nasty Gal brand to a huge and more elusive market strategy.  https://www.fifteendesign.co.uk/blog/digital-marketing-campaigns-in-the-fashion-industry/.  Why was this success? The creation of an impressive slogan symbolizing the brand image forms the basis, and thus creating a forgery of its own identity. Through the Nasty Gal ideology, this brand has cemented a multi-million brand on the online digital market.

 

Online PR and the future of marketing in the fashion industry

Fashion emerges to be a superb and prestigious industry. Through fashion, individuals can wear what they prefer and hide behind fabrics that are currently on style (Easey,M. 2009). Social media has also played its part by intensifying access to blogging sites and reality TV shows. Nowadays bloggers can aid in designing in the fashion industry and on following different customer reviews on the social media, they can come up with the latest fashion trends right by their fingertips. https://perspectiveyes.wordpress.com/portfolio/the-future-of-marketing-and-pr-in-the-fashion-industry/.  The internet has made fashion less secretive and a rapid growing industry due to the space its accumulating online. Following the inspiration from street fashions and traditional modes of dressing make the fashion industry a complicated sector with no main standardized company oriented to fashion. According to pr-squared.com, search engines and sites will re-orient themselves and match individual identity and therefore, fashion marketing will get affected generally. This is because the internet will care for each individual’s wants, needs, and desires. Internet has induced the privacy that was previously valid portraying privacy as less important (Easey,M. 2009). The reason for the boom in the social networks like face book and Google is because they have risen in the time where social networking seems to be a necessity and an integral part in an individual’s daily activities. Fashion designers take more time improving what people don’t like and producing what people wish to wear. Through the internet, fashion designers can pitch what their customers want through the ideas about their products hence promoting the fashion industry to be one of the fastest and ever growing industries. Lastly, designers have set up blogs to reach a wider audience and they themselves read blogs from other fashion designers creating more insights, perceptions, and inspiration compared to the older media forms (Crane,D. 2012).

Brand protection: Jovani Fashion, Ltd. V. Fiesta Fashions: Second Circuit Finds Dress Designers Copyright Claim Weak at the Seams

Following Jovani Fashion, Ltd v. Fiesta Fashions case in the United States Court of Appeal issued its opinion on second circuit copyright in fashion. Jovani a designer and manufacturer of evening dress obtained copyright for ten catalogs they had registered claiming that their artwork had been incorporated in manufacturing the dresses. In the year 2010, Jovani filed a case to sue the several manufacturing retailers and manufacturers in claim that they infringed the visual art registration rights. Fiesta later appeared to be one party that appealed dismissing the complainant that Jovanis copyright registration only accounted for the copyright protection of two dimensional images of the three rather than the three dress designs namely; gowns, evening dresses, and prom dresses. But despite the frustrations, the statutory copyright system attempts to indulge in complex and unique fashion realities and boost more motivation in fashion development on protected yet under-exploited designs (BRANDS, 2015). Therefore, fashion statutory copyright encourages motivation and creation of new fashions through designer’s protection in his creative art in creating fashion designs.

 

References

Aaker, D.A., 2012. Building strong brands. Simon and Schuster.

Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2016. Digital marketing. Pearson.

Easey, M. ed., 2009. Fashion marketing. John Wiley & Sons.

BRANDS, C., 2015. Ready for business.

Hemphill, C.S. and Suk, J., 2008. The law, culture, and economics of fashion. Stan. L. Rev., 61, p.1147.

Harley, N. (2018). Gucci pledges to go fur-free in 2018 as material is no longer ‘modern’. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/12/gucci-pledges-go-fur-free-2018-material-no-longer-modern/ [Accessed 19 Jan. 2018].

Craik, J., 2009. Fashion: the key concepts (Vol. 1). Bloomsbury Academic.

Salvadores, M., Szomszor, G.C.M., Gibbins, N., Glaser, H. and Shadbolt, N., Backlinks: Bridging the Navigational Gap in the Web of Data.

Crane, D., 2012. Fashion and its social agendas: Class, gender, and identity in clothing. University of Chicago Press.