When it comes to marketing your fashion business, commercials and billboards are out, and social media is in. But it's not just about setting up an account and spamming people's feeds with posts. The ticket to exceptional social media marketing is influencers and creators.
Explore proven social media strategies, campaign examples, and creative content ideas that help apparel brands thrive with fashion influencer marketing—plus learn how Later Influence makes it all easier.
Ready to level up your fashion influencer strategy? See how Later can help you turn style into sales. Book a demo today.
Table of Contents
What is influencer marketing in fashion?
Fashion brands can partner with social media influencers to promote products and reach customers. The brands leverage an influencer's credibility and built-in audience to foster trust and awareness with their target demographic. In the fashion and apparel space, this type of marketing can be particularly effective, as fashion trends often start on social media and people scour the web for style ideas.
Fashion marketing influencers can be style creators, models, brand ambassadors, micro-influencers, and beyond. Each type of creator has benefits for a fashion brand and can spur trends that boost revenue:
Style creators:
Many brands use content-first influencers who build narratives around their personal style. They excel at style storytelling, aesthetic feeds, and trend-setting, which is a major goal in the apparel industry. With content that feels organic and drives fads, they can make your brand or product the next big thing.
Models:
These influencers can be professional or freelance. They might focus more on showcasing how clothing fits, flows, and falls on the body, or they can curate a lifestyle aesthetic, such as the "Model Off Duty" look.
Brand ambassadors:
You can't overstate the value of long-term partners who consistently represent your brand. Consumers will come to associate your brand with the influencer, increasing visibility and integrity on both sides. These influencers should embody your brand values, fostering deeper audience trust.
Micro-influencers:
These creators have smaller but often highly engaged and loyal followings. Lesser-known influencers are ideal for niche targeting, authenticity, and affordable campaigns for brands still growing awareness.
Excellent examples of fashion influencer marketing campaigns range from #OOTD (Outfit of the Day) posts to curated reels teaching how to style a black mini skirt.
Fashion influencer marketing strategy
While fashion influencer marketing may seem easy and organic, it's essential to have a clear, thoughtful strategy for success. Every brand will need a unique approach, but here's your blueprint for getting started.
1. Set achievable goals
The best marketing strategies start with well-defined goals. Common aims include raising brand awareness, increasing sales, encouraging user-generated content (UGC), and collecting social proof. Your goals can evolve, but it's crucial to have a clear mission from the get-go.
2. Choose your platforms
Once you understand what you want to accomplish, you need to decide where to do it. The most popular platforms are typically Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, as these have strong fashion and style communities. Many of these have convenient Shopify integrations, streamlining the purchase process.
Platforms like X, which aren't as visually oriented, aren't as ripe for apparel influencer marketing. People want to see fashion more than they want to read about it.
3. Plan content
Now that you know where your content is going and what you're working toward, you can outline your content concepts, make a calendar, and identify the best influencers to execute it.
Or you can take a more freeform approach, finding influencers that match your brand's vibe first and then giving them the creative freedom to offer content ideas. They may see a prime opportunity to capitalize on a viral cultural moment or embrace a fresh trend that they know would appeal to their following.
Fashion influencer marketing best practices
Connecting with an influencer isn't enough. You need to check whether you're on the same page with the content and goals, and effectively utilize who they are as a creator. After all, they've built an audience that you want to leverage, and they know that audience better than anyone. Keep these best practices in mind.
Understand your creator's audience
You should collaborate on content that feels native to your creator. If your influencer's account is full of shoe reviews, don't ask them to focus on jackets. If they mainly create content for older women, don't ask them to promote products to teenage boys. Odds are, such content will fall flat, squandering the relationship. Play to their strengths rather than trying to turn them into something else.
Collaborate, but don't control
Provide your creator with clear briefs that outline what you want them to highlight about your brand or products, but don't restrict their creative freedom. If they can't be themselves, the content will come off as an advertisement, not an organic post.
When creating briefs and discussing content plans with influencers, don't just hand them a finished script to recite. Identify the most important parts of your message, but then let them take it from there.
Data is your friend
Successful fashion and apparel influencer marketing is backed up with data-driven insights. You should be tracking engagement, conversions, and sales based on the curated content.
Use this information to optimize your content, so every post is well-informed with real-time data. Tools like ROI calculators and analytics platforms can help you see what is and isn't working with your influencer content.
Fashion influencer marketing ideas
For inspiration to create your content plan, consider the following fun ideas. Keep in mind that not every single type of post will work for your specific brand, so choose ones that make sense for you and the influencers you're partnering with.
When in doubt, you can always ask your creator what content they excel in and what they think will work. Again, they know their audience and content style and can help you curate posts that align with your target customers.
Outfit-of-the-day (OOTD) campaigns
OOTD campaigns can show off one outfit at a time or a week-in-the-life series. What's effective about these is that they can be posted every day to increase awareness and engagement. And they inspire people to think more about their daily fashion choices, often spurring them to make new purchases.
Style challenges
Style challenges are fun for consumers and ask them to directly engage with the creators and, ideally, your brand. A creator could pose a style challenge for a pair of Adidas sneakers, calling on their viewers to share how they like to wear these shoes. Influencers can highlight the many ways one product or brand can be worn and styled, opening viewers' eyes to all the possibilities.
Capsule wardrobe content
While the idea behind capsule wardrobes is to curate a small collection of clothes, these campaigns can still drive conversions and sales. Similarly to style challenges, a capsule wardrobe series can show the versatility of a product and inspire conscious shopping. They're especially effective when targeting people creating capsules for traveling.
Behind-the-scenes series
What's wonderful about behind-the-scenes series is that they feel fully transparent. You let the creator explain how you design, manufacture, and distribute your products, giving you the chance to highlight your products and brand identity, as well as showcase any sustainable or socially conscious aspects of your business. People care about how brands behave, and this content feels honest and authentic.
Design story series
Behind-the-scenes content can tell the design story, but the two types of content are not identical. A design story series should be more about the inspiration and thoughtfulness behind a product, rather than the production process. It gives consumers a rich understanding of your brand's aesthetic and elevates your status as a player in the fashion industry.
Influencer takeovers
Influencer takeovers are when a creator "hijacks" your brand for a day or so. Rather than post to their own account, they might post on your brand's account and then repost it on their account. This is brilliant because it turns them into a brand ambassador and drives their audience directly toward your social media accounts. Takeovers are also an excellent opportunity to syndicate influencer content across multiple platforms, boosting all your accounts.
Styling tips
These posts should be like advice clips. Influencers can use your products to explain how someone can refine their aesthetic and reinvent their look. For example, they might help their audience master the "Dark Academia" aesthetic and promote your brand's thigh-high socks or moody sunglasses in the process.
This is a fantastic opportunity for brand collaboration. You might team up with a beauty brand, so your clothes complement their makeup.
Fashion influencer marketing campaign examples
The proof is in the pudding, as they say, so here are a few servings of what fashion influencer marketing with Later can do for an apparel brand.
The Men's Wearhouse prom campaign
Men's Wearhouse partnered with Later to activate creators for an Instagram prom campaign, engaging younger audiences. They launched the campaign when prom season was in full swing, highlighting its rentable line of prom fashions. High school creators were selected by looking for profiles that included terms such as "high school," "sports," "dancing," "prom," and "fashion."
The posts included the required hashtags #MensWearhouse and #MWProm. Creator partners also tagged and mentioned @menswearhouse with the Paid Partnership Tag on Instagram, and allowed business partners to promote it, which enabled Men's Wearhouse to share content on its brand-owned social media channels. Ultimately, the strategy resulted in an impressive 7.3% engagement rate across just 40 posts.
The MeUndies story
MeUndies is a powerhouse on social media, and influencer campaigns have made it even stronger. With Later's help and influencer expertise, the brand grew its Instagram following by 40% in just one year. They've used social media to create deeper storytelling and bring the company to life, combining curated brand content with micro- and macro-influencer campaigns.
A meticulously planned social media calendar on Later made it easy for the brand to stay on top of all its influencer content, keeping consumers interested and engaged. From brand photoshoots to organic social proof and #MeUndies hashtags, they leveraged fashion influencer marketing while sticking to their brand identity.
The Sperry & PFLAG National collaboration
Sperry & PFLAG National teamed up with LGBTQ+ creators on TikTok and Instagram using Later, leading with positivity and inclusion. This influencer marketing campaign leveraged Pride Month by prioritizing allyship and support for the LGBTQ+ community through influencers from within the community.
It resulted in an engagement rate of 5.1% and garnered 391,000 impressions across 44 posts. Creators tagged @Sperry and @PFLAG and include the hashtags #SperryPride, #SperryStyle, #MakeWaves, and #ad to help Sperry and PFLAG track campaign progress while adhering to FTC regulations, allowing the brands to collect real-time data and hone the campaign as it evolved.
How to find fashion influencers
As you can see, finding the right influencers for your brand is crucial to success. If you're not sure where to start, Later is always here to help.
You can use the find brand influencer tool to track down the ideal creators for your campaign.
Search by niche
When searching for influencers, start within your niche. You can look up hashtags and profiles associated with your fashion category, such as "streetwear," "sustainable fashion," "luxury," or "sneakerhead."
Identify brand fit
Once you've found an influencer candidate, check that their identity aligns with your brand's messaging. If they're an edgy creator and you're a romantic brand, that might not be a great fit. On the other hand, an elegant, emotional influencer could be perfect.
Look for quality content
Follower counts aren't everything, and you need to protect your brand's reputation. Select creators who produce high-quality content. Avoid people with poorly lit videos, fuzzy camera quality, or inconsistent messaging. Work with influencers who put everything they have into every video. You can tell, and your customers can, too.
Consider engagement
Use Later's engagement calculator to determine how well your posts are doing compared to other accounts in the same industry. Compare this against influencers you're considering collaborating with. You want to choose creators with high engagement in your industry. Look at likes, comments, saves, and shares—not just follower count.
Grow your fashion brand with influencer marketing
Apparel and fashion influencer marketing isn't just about creating buzz; it's about building trust, expanding your reach, delivering top-quality content, and driving conversions. It looks much easier than it is, so it's essential to use the right platform to scale your fashion and apparel influencer marketing strategy. And that's where Later comes in.
Schedule a demo of Later Influence and learn how our expertise with creator content and advertising can help your brand soar.
