According to Shopify, the online fashion industry is the second largest industry in the world.
You created your dream online fashion store and it has top-quality products made from the best fabric, but when it comes to sales, crickets!
So what do you do?
You check your competition and see all the things they do.
Everything seems perfect: their clothing ads, Instagram posts, fashion blog posts, etc.
While it’s not a coincidence, please consider that nothing is perfect initially.
How can clothing ads help you build revenue if you lack sales?
No matter if you want to promote your store on Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok etc., we created this ultimate guide to help you create clothing ads and sky-rocket your business sales.
What will this blog post include?
Table of Contents
- PRO’s and CON’s of starting an online fashion brand
- How to write clothing ads that sell
- Clothing ads best practices
- Video vs Image Clothing Ads: Which one is more effective?
- Where can you create phenomenal visuals for your clothing ads?
- What are the best ways to promote an online clothing brand?
- Clothing ads ideas and examples
Let’s start.
PRO’s and CON’s of starting an online fashion brand
Let’s start with the PROs.
Growing market
According to statista.com, the online fashion industry revenue will grow in the United States to almost $300 billion by 2025.
You might have heard:
“The market is saturated.”
“There is no point in creating a new clothing website.”
I have to disagree with both statements.
It is never too late to start; the best time is today.
Remember that you only need to capture a small part of the market, and if you go niche with your brand, there is a high chance of success.
Reach a global audience with your brand
An offline fashion shop requires a schedule, but even if you are there for 10 hours, you will never know if you will sell any clothes.
And your customers will be mostly people that live in an area close to your shop.
The time and audience constraints will not be an issue if you open an online store.
Your eCommerce website will be open 24/7, and you can sell to anyone you want in the United States, United Kingdom, or even Japan.
What does it mean? That you will be able to make money while you sleep.
Your online fashion business will need you online if there are orders to expedite or if it requires customer support.
Potential to make a lot of money.
When you sell your clothing brand offline, your business’s revenue will have a potential maximum income that it can make because of the number of potential customers.
With your business online, open all day and all night, you can sell more, and your revenue can increase every month.
Of course, for many people, money is not the ultimate goal.
More money means more work and responsibilities, but nobody starts a business to make no money.
Work from anywhere
For obvious reasons, with an offline store, you cannot do that.
You can hire people to run it, but you will have no clue how they behave with your customers unless you are there.
With an eCommerce site, you have complete control over your business from any part of the globe.
Let’s say your business delivers mainly in the United States, but you want to live in Thailand. How would it work?
You will need someone to pack and ship the orders, but guess what?
There are better solutions to this too!
For example, you can deliver your stock to fulfilment centers, and they will take care of everything when there is an order.
Your only worry will be to create marketing campaigns and take care of the customer support.
What are the CON’s?
Invest a lot of money into getting your brand started
When you open an offline clothing shop, there are a few things that you can do to differentiate yourself from the market.
You rent a store, put clothes into the shop, and, most of the time, pray for customers to enter from outside. These are fixed costs which you should predict.
How much is the rent for six months? How much do you pay to create/resell the current clothing offer etc
Online requires more things, and losing money is easy before making revenue.
Let me give you an example.
What does an eCommerce business need?
A website – you hire an agency to build it, and this cost varies from a few thousand to tens of thousands.
After your website is ready, your clothes will require professional photos.
You upload all the product images to the newly created eCommerce website, but now you need sales, and what do you do?
You hire a Google Ads agency to create a marketing campaign for the current sales offer.
And you spend a lot of dollars without getting anything in return.
How to avoid all these?
Start small and try to figure out things on your own.
Hire a professional only if you feel that you can manage that person.
Put in a lot of work to get your brand noticed
You get more rewards if you succeed in an online eCommerce business, but it is more work than an offline business.
Why?
There are a lot of ways to promote your brand online.
- Create social media campaigns.
- Talk with influencers
- Create Facebook/Google/Tik Tok ads
- Handle online reviews
- Write fashion blog posts
While there are many opportunities, you need to work more to see what works well or doesn’t.
Stay ahead of the competition.
How do you differentiate your brand from the competition?
Imagine that if for your brand, it is easy to create a Facebook ad and be in front of a potential customer, for your competition, it is the same thing.
Competition is key to creating a successful business because it helps you improve, but you will always need to invent something new.
No matter if you create a viral marketing campaign or launch a new fashion collection with a famous pop star.
Starting an online fashion brand is a risky but potentially rewarding venture.
If you are thinking about starting your fashion brand, make sure you research, have a solid business plan and are prepared to put in the hard work required to succeed.
How to write clothing ads that sell
When it comes to writing clothing ads, you can do a few things to ensure your ad is effective.
Of course, there is no guaranteed secret recipe, but if you follow at least 1-2 tips from the below ideas, your eCommerce business clothing ads will have a higher chance of converting prospects into customers.
Define target audience
Who do you want to reach with the ads?
Why is this question important?
It will help your business know where the potential customers are and how you can “speak” to them.
Create a few user personas for the ideal customer.
What is a user persona? It is a person who you think is the best customer.
You can create it based on the fashion industry market statistics.
Start with a few guesses if you do not have this information.
If you create 2-3 user personas, you should find the answer to the following questions:
- What is the best network these people use to make clothing ads for your business?
- What language to use when you speak with them?
- What type of clothes do they buy?
- When are they online?
If you want to avoid wasting money on your clothing ads, you should define your target audience.
Use strong language and images.
You need to make sure your ad is attention-grabbing.
“Of course, genius, but how can I do that?”
Strong language means that your clothing ads should include persuasive and descriptive words that will trigger some emotional response from the people who read them.
For example, here is an ad title which uses two emotional power words:
“Spectacular evening dresses to surprise everyone.”
The power words in this sentence are “spectacular” and “surprise”.
Smartblogger has an impressive list of powerful words which you can use to boost the conversion rate.
They are an amazing way to play and create powerful sentences that captivate your reader’s attention.
When you learn the words that trigger your customers, it will feel like a superpower.
If you master clothing text ads, complement them with impressive product images.
Even if you are not a designer, today, there are a lot of tools to help you to create visuals for your ads.
What is the best tool to create ad visuals for clothing ads? Canva.
Remember, the language that you use in your ad description and the images are things which you should always A/B test.
What is an A/B test? An A/B test is running two or more ads against the same target audience to see which performs better.
Be persuasive
- Why should people buy the clothing you are selling?
- What are the benefits?
- What should an ad contain to attract the eye of the potential customer?
These are some of the questions that your ad should answer.
When you mention a benefit over a feature, you have a higher chance of converting a reader into a customer.
A benefit solves a problem and answers the “Why should I buy this pair of jeans?”.
A feature shows how a pair of jeans is made, and let’s be honest: If you do not work in that industry, it is difficult to understand why some brands use buttons instead of zippers for closure.
For example, instead of “This pair of jeans has a zipper closure”, you can write, “Never again replace the zipper closure of this pair of jeans guaranteed to last 10000 opens and closes”.
Be sure to highlight the benefits over features in your ad so that people are convinced to purchase.
Clothing ads best practices
Use short, attention-grabbing sentences
Your ad has a few seconds to capture the viewer’s attention.
Help the potential customer understand what you want to say.
The reader will not open your website’s contact form or support chat and ask “Hey, I saw this ad, but what did you mean?”
If you need a tool to help you write better copy, check the Hemingway app
Hemmingway is a great app to improve your ads copywriting and it allows you to:
- Write shorter sentences
- Use active voice more
- Write less complicated to read sentences
If you use power words from Smart Blogger and Hemmingway, you will be unstoppable.
Invest in eye-catching product images
Easier to say than done!
Good product photographers are expensive, but what solutions do you have?
If you do not have money, invest your time.
Shopify created this awesome DIY guide to clothing product photography.
I advise you to create product images on a white background.
Why? It is easier to remove the background color of the products and add a new one.
If you are starting out, today’s phones are powerful enough to create captivating product images.
After you create a product image, use Canva to create awesome visuals for clothing ads, social media posts etc.
Create partnerships with celebrities or influencers
How much money should I pay if I’m on a budget?
How do you know which ones to choose?
These are some of the questions that you might have.
While Kim Kardashian is a big influencer, you don’t need to hire her.
Look for micro influencers on their platforms.
For example, on Instagram if you do not want to use any tools to find influencers, search for popular people in the discover tab. Search the posts on popular hashtags.
When you find an influencer which you like, check the engagement they have on their posts.
Look for old campaigns they created.
Analyze their posts. Do they offer value to their followers or they only sell?
For some influencers sending a fashion product to wear will be enough.
Pay attention to see if your company has the same target audience.
How can you analyze the results?
Ask the influencer to promote a specific discount code, and you will see how many orders you get.
Keep the ad simple and to the point
How can you do that? You can use the following two strategies:
- Pain – Agitate – Solution
- Problem – Promise – Proof
Let me give you some examples.
Pain – Agitate – Solution examples
Product: Blue evening dress
Pain: Don’t have anything to wear to your friend’s wedding?
Agitate: Don’t want to spend a lot of money on a dress that you will wear once?
Solution: Rent this spectacular blue evening dress.
Product: Rain defender loose fit heavyweight sweatshirt
Pain: We’ve all experienced bad weather at one point or another. Getting drenched can ruin even the best of days.
Agitate: Thankfully, there’s a smart and stylish solution to staying dry and comfortable when rain is in the forecast.
Solution: Staying dry has never been so stylish! Just look at our gorgeous grey colour rain-proof sweatshirt.
Problem – Proof – Promise examples
Product: Under Armour Running Shoe
Problem: Are you sick and tired of running shoes who make your feet sweaty after 2km?
Proof: [Customer Proof: ‘I no longer feel like I’m swimming into my shoes’]
Promise: Try out our shoes and get your money back guaranteed!
Include user reviews
Do you have happy customers? Ask for reviews.
Even if it sounds easy, many eCommerce companies do not do it.
For example, after an order completes, send a thank you email.
Give a discount code in exchange for an honest review.
Ideally, ask for reviews in a place where other people can see it like: product page, Google, Facebook, Instagram etc.
Make sure to add this review into an ad, because social proof sells.
How many times did you buy something because your best friend recommended that product?
Create a sense of urgency
Fear of missing out makes people wonder “what if?”
“What if I don’t buy it, and it will cost more?”, “What if I’m missing out on a great opportunity?”
Offer limited-time discounts or free shipping till the end of the week, for example.
If the readers feel that they will get a good deal now, they will not wait for another opportunity, because “what if it will never happen?”.
Always test the ads
Why and how can you do that?
Imagine the following scenario.
You created an ad, and you sell a $500 product.
As a result, you make $7500 in sales out of 300 visitors.
Your ad has a 5% conversion rate, which is not bad.
What if you can increase the revenue by changing a headline, image, or call to action?
You duplicate the same ad but change some things and run it till you get 300 visitors.
Measure the conversion rate, and sometimes you might grow your revenue.
If you increase the conversion rate by 1.67%, you will make another $2500 in sales.
Never sleep on a successful ad, and keep testing.
Track conversions
What is the point of creating marketing campaigns if you don’t know how much they convert?
Track how much you spend and how much your clothing store makes from the ads.
The first thing to do after you set up a clothing ad is to ask yourself: “How will I know if this clothing ad works or not?”
There are ways to track conversions from when a user clicks an ad until it receives the order confirmation page.For example, it might be helpful to see if people click on a clothing ad but abandon the shopping cart.
It would be best to write down what actions you want to track.
You will have to set up tracking pixels based on the platform where you decide to advertise.
If you want to do Facebook ads, you can use the Meta Pixel to track your website visitor’s actions.
If you want to do Google ads, you should read this.
Video vs Image Clothing Ads: Which one is more effective?
Recently, there has been a debate over what is more effective for clothing brands, video or image ads.
With the rise of social media, it’s no surprise that businesses are turning to video engagement to reach their target audiences.
People spend around 147 minutes daily on social media, and these numbers are growing each year.
Both ads have pros and cons, but ultimately it depends on the brand’s goals and target audience.
Video ads are more effective than other types of advertising because they are more engaging and capture attention more easily.
People are more likely to watch a video than read an advertisement, and they are also more likely to remember what they see in a video.
Video ads are also more flexible than other ads and can be used to target specific audiences more effectively.
On the other hand, image ads can be more concise and to the point.
A viewer may want to spend less than 30 seconds watching a video on Facebook and Instagram, and a single image will suffice.
As a fashion brand, test whatever works better for your company.
Where can you create phenomenal visuals for your clothing ads?
If you want to make amazing visuals for your clothing store, I recommend Canva.
You can make video and image assets for any advertising campaign.
No matter if you want to promote your brand on Facebook, Youtube, or Instagram.
They have a default FREE plan, and their PRO plan costs $12.99.
You can use Canva on the web, on iOS or on Android.
What are the best ways to promote an online clothing brand?
There are several strategies to promote an online clothing brand:
Have a solid social media presence. Post engaging and informative content. Choose one or two platforms if you feel it is too difficult to post on all social media platforms. For example, today Tik Tok is popular all over the world.
Use influencers to help promote your brand. Work with popular bloggers and social media personalities who will help to spread the word about your clothing. Offer your products without expecting anything in return. If they like your brand’s clothes, they will post about it.
Run ads on popular websites and social media platforms. Increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website. For example, you can set up an ad campaign on the Google Ads platform in just a few minutes. It is the easiest way to test hypotheses and generate revenue for your company.
Set up a search engine optimization ( SEO ) strategy. It should be a long-term strategy, but it has the most significant chance of converting visitors into customers. Why? If you rank on the first page of Google or Bing for a keyword, and a reader finds your helpful blog post, you can easily suggest something to buy because they trust your brand.
Run personalized Remarketing campaigns. What is a Remarketing campaign? For example, imagine someone clicks your clothing ad and adds a product to the shopping cart but forgets to finish the order. Through a personalized message, you want to remind that person that they have clothing items in the basket.
Capture your website visitor’s emails. How can you do this? When someone opens your website, offer something for free in exchange for the email. For example, give a free eBook about any topic where you can write a few pages. You can promote your collection and generate revenue if you build an impressive email list.
Offer discounts and promotions. This is a great way to get people interested in your clothing and encourage them to purchase it. In addition, it is a way to help people gain trust in your brand.
Clothing ads ideas and examples
Before we start with examples, there is a way to spy on other brand’s Facebook ads. How?
- Open their Facebook page
- Look for the Page Transparency tab
- A pop-up should open and look for the message: This Page is currently running ads.
- Click on the Ads Library to find all their active Facebook ads.
You will find unlimited inspiration for your next advertising campaign.
Let’s continue with some clothing ads ideas and examples:
Asos
Gap
Pangaia
Coach
Michael Kors
Nike
Nordstrom
Old Navy
Ralph Lauren
Tommy Hilfiger