What is Digital Marketing and Why is it Important For Your Fashion Business?

If you don’t have a solid answer to this question, “What is digital marketing?,” then it’s time to get educated.

The online world is taking over just about everything. Don’t believe us?  See for yourself all the things you can now buy online that you couldn’t 20 years ago. These businesses and industries are now successful online because of digital marketing and the evolution it’s bringing to every business out there.

What is Digital Marketing?

Smart Insights defines digital marketing as, “achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies and media.” Digital marketing is replacing all the traditional means of marketing. Old techniques such as billboards, TV commercials, newspaper and magazine ads aren’t as popular these days since everything is online now. The digital technologies used are of course the internet on your laptop, desktop, cell phone, and tablet. The media involves everything from emails, blogs, ecommerce shops, google analytics, and social media. Many of you would call yourselves fashion designers, but you now need to also train yourself to be an online marketer.

Importance Of Digital Marketing

Since the world is shifting to online, you need to shift your marketing strategies to online as well. The number one reason- driving traffic to your online store, since I know most of you want to sell online. Driving customers to your ecommerce site will boost your sales and brand recognition, so it’s essential that people are aware of your presence. But how do you let people know you exist? You do this by incorporating all the difference aspects of digital marketing, as we listed below.

Email Marketing

Did you know that email marketing is still the most effective marketing technique and the number one way to reach people?! Think about it, we all check our email every single day, however there may be days we forget to check facebook or instagram.  Plus by having someone’s email, you now have much more control over how to contact them. If Instagram decides to shut down your page for some reason, you just lost all of your followers and you have no way of reaching back out to them.

Email marketing is also a great way to start building a tribe, and can be done simply by putting an email pop-up on your website. Then as soon as they enter their email, you’ll receive their contact information. Keep in mind you are a professional business owner though, so you need to start acting like one! Be sure to get a professional email marketing service, so you’re not spamming people on your Gmail account. I highly recommend MailChimp, it’s great and free. However you can also try Constant Contact or Covert Kit.

Blogging

Google loves fresh content that’s new and relevant, and that’s why you need to start a blog ASAP! You’ll be constantly updating your website and Google will notice that you are important, so you will be ranked higher. This is where SEO (Search Engine Optimization), keywords, and Google Analytics come in. You want to include words and phrases (long-tail keywords) that people are actually typing into Google in order to get recognized. Additionally, Google is now rewarding people that are getting super specific and using these long-tail keywords, so be sure to use long and relevant words to be ranked higher! Two other great ways to make your blog posts and website higher up on Google is by doing blog swaps and getting some backlines. A backlink occurs when someone else posts a link to your website on their website. Google loves backlinks because the more backlinks you have, the more relevant your website will be in Google’s eyes, so start finding similar people to swap blogs with. And if you find you don’t have the time or skills to blog on your own, let us help you with our blogging services!

Social Media

If you don’t have social media going for your business, it’s time to start! This is something you can do FOR FREE and you don’t even have to have a product made yet. Set up a Facebook business page along with an Instagram business page to start building your tribe. These allow you to include your email address so people can contact you directly, along with having a link to your online store, blog, etc. Google is constantly looking at all the shares, likes, and comments. Thus the more engagement you have and the more frequent it happens, the higher your page will be in Google, which will drive more traffic to you. Additionally, you’ll be noticed more if your Instagram is more aesthetically-pleasing. This is why we now added Instagram Management to our list of services because we’ve seen our clients go from 2-22K followers with our help and advice!  

Online Ads

The last aspect of digital marketing we’ll go over are online ads. These can be placed on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, or any website in all types of places. The main purpose of these is not only to drive people to your brand, but to track WHO you are driving to your brands. Online ads allow you to see exactly who is viewing and clicking them, so you can target the right consumer at the end of the day. This includes their geographics (locations), demographics (gender, age, profession) and psychographics (interests, behaviors).  Online ads when done right, can help to drive a lot of sales, which is why we’ve partnered with one of the best digital agencies out there.

Want to learn even more about digital marketing?  Then you’ll love our Mastering Digital Marketing Course. It covers everything from social media content to blogging, email marketing, driving traffic to your online store and even planning logos and taglines.

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