In present times, appropriate advertising is considered far more significant than opening a physical store. Retailers, designers, and manufacturers create awareness regarding the product and make it a brand before the launch so that prospective buyers know about the product's existence. Stressing the product's uniqueness and superiority has become inevitable for the fashion world, as new competitors emerge in the market every day.
The options for advertising apparel brands are many. However, apparel designers or manufacturers analyze the target market and plan the advertising strategy accordingly. When targeting elderly customers, retailers often choose electronic or print media to create awareness of the clothing line. In the case of young consumers, internet advertising and electronic media are preferred. The purpose of advertising is not only to generate more sales but also to create a niche market for the apparel brand. If a brand has not progressed to a brick-and-mortar store, it is important to create virtual shops in one or more online marketplaces. Creating a virtual shop via a personal website can help the retail store customize the shop.
Apparel retailers and manufacturers have shifted their focus from conventional marketing sources like billboards, print ads, and electronic media commercials to mobile advertising. These days, more and more people are using smartphones to make retail purchases on the go, and marketers are taking notice. The simple explanation for this is that consumers, both young and middle-aged, are constantly staying in touch with the fashion world through smartphones, and online shopping is gaining momentum. So, whether it is about finding choices in colors or searching for a bigger size, mobile phones can do it all. According to a report presented by xAd, mobiles contributed to over U.S. $200 billion in offline and online sales of apparel in 2013. xAd also revealed that 77 percent of transactions related to smartphones are actually happening within stores.
Retail apparel marketers are also progressively using techniques like geo-targeting, aiming for mobile ads to draw consumers to brick-and-mortar stores. The success of mobile ads and online advertising is also easy to measure. Marketers measure ad success by the number of times consumers click on links, and to understand buying behavior, marketers and advertisers also study what people do after clicking the link or visiting the sites.
The affordable and less popular brands often invest in only some of the advertising options like giving a print ad or running a one-minute ad film on local television channel. The more a company spends on advertising, the costlier the apparel brand gets. Nevertheless, luxury apparel brands set aside a budget specially assigned for marketing and advertising the brands. So it is more common to spot luxury apparel brands on billboards, watch the ads on television, internet, mobile or see celebrities endorsing the brands.
The experts recommend that the first step of apparel brands should be to find out the advertising to sales ratio in the apparel market. There are some companies that give an estimated figure regarding the marketing or advertising spending in the financial statements, which can help the new entrants in calculating the estimated budget.
The marketing team of a particular brand can easily calculate the percentage of budget that needs to be allotted for marketing and advertising. Some experts also recommend beginning at 5 percent and then adjust the projected spending up or down based on the size of market, the cost of media, the amount being spent by the competitors, and the speed at which the brand would like to grow.
In spite of all the benefits of advertising, there are many retail apparel brands that have considerably cut down the advertising budget in order to cope with the economic slowdown. Even as the apparel market is predicted to grow to US $ 540 billion by 2025 in China and US $ 200 in India, apparel stores have shown increasing resistance to invest a high amount in advertising.
Unlike a decade ago, there are far more segments that a single retail apparel store caters to and these include lifestyle segmentation, geographical segmentation, gender related segments and age related segments. The cost of advertising has gone high and considering that there are several issues from finding right labour force to getting the right country for outsourcing, there are never-ending issues and thus advertising often gets sidelined.
But, with global economy recovering gradually, apparel advertising is once again gaining momentum and with e-retail becoming popular, advertising for apparel is being done through newer media channels like mobile apps. The global internet advertising revenue from 2013 to 2018 was calculated to be around US dollars 117.2 billion. It is also estimated that by the end of the year 2014 it will touch U.S. dollars 133 billion.
In 2015 the internet advertising revenue would be somewhere around U.S. dollars 149.2 billion and in 2016 it will be approximately U.S. dollars 164.2 billion. By the year 2017 the global internet advertising revenue for apparel would reach a staggering U.S. dollars 178.9 billion and in 2018 it would be around U.S. dollars 194.5 billion.
In the U.S.A. alone the apparel industry spent 17.87 million dollars on outdoor advertising in the year 2013-2014. The sector's total ad expenditure amounted to 646.6 million dollars in this year.
The definition of apparel industry has changed now, as today a single garment shows the hard work of many from artisans to designing team to technical team. Apparel industry refers to the phenomenon of the society. Advertising industry helps the apparel sector to grow beyond the set boundaries and the journey of many brands reveal that apparel sector cannot do without advertising. So more budget or low budget, advertising has become an integral part of apparel and fashion industry without which it would be impossible to survive the rising competition.
1. Businessinsider.in
2. Businessweek.com
3. Smallbusiness.chron.com
4. Statista.com
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