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New marketing services for emerging fashion designers

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Earlier this year we launched a number of support services for emerging fashion designers: web design, marketing and social media and public relations.  Our crowdfunding website can now be found at preorder.luevo.com and we are getting ready for next season!

For the last 2 years we’ve been working with dozens of fashion designers and we’ve learned some things about their business process and what defines success:

1. Good designers DESIGN. We’ve talked to designers that went to school or that were self-taught, and they all share the same passion: to design. If they are good at it, they live and breathe design.

2. Designers are CREATIVE minds. They work well with shapes, colors, they have a visual memory. They are not as good with numbers and analytics.

3. Designers lack TIME. You see, if they are good designers they spend most of their time designing and use their creativity to get inspired and keep designing. They don’t have the time for much else.

The problem is a business is not just the product. It’s just not good enough to have amazing products. The online space is an opportunity and a curse. It is an opportunity because you can reach so many people around the world virtually instant. But you are a small fish in the biggest ocean there is, so you will have a very hard time getting on that opportunity.

I was fortunate to be able to build an amazing team around me and that we share the same common values: to help emerging designers succeed in their businesses so they can create more jobs locally and further grow our textile industry.  We decided to put forward our knowledge, our skills and our experience and continue our work a lot more hands on that we were doing it before.

So here is how we can help aspiring and emerging fashion designers:

1. Fashion Branding & Web Design Services

Remember that “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it” – and for that you need cohesive branding and a strong online presence that tells your story.

I know that web design might be overwhelming, and I also know that design agencies take advantage of those that are not tech savvy. We build wordpress based websites that offer our clients a variety of options and e-commerce built in. The advantage is that your website will be search engine optimized (SEO) and responsive (mobile friendly) and we offer free coaching to teach you how to do your own small changes and updates and how to further optimize your content to get more online traffic.

2. Fashion Public Relations

We created a unique new method of running public relations campaigns for our fashion clients. Our formula is easily customizable, and we can either teach you how to do it yourself or we can run a complete PR campaign for you. Be aware of agencies that charge ridiculous amounts of money and request monthly retainers. We can help you on a project based basis and we only charge a one time fee, there are no hidden fees with us!

3. Social Media for Fashion Brands

With this one we really have fun! While I teach Social Media at the George Brown College Fashion School, I make sure that myself and our team is always up to date with the latest tools and techniques.  We can work with you on a one time basis where we evaluate your social media presence and build your strategy, or we can get our hands dirty and manage your channels month to month.

As a side note, I am also personally available for hourly consultations if you just need me to come in  for a couple of hours and give support. And always remember, that we don’t start a project until we communicated the solution with our potential customer. So not only do we analyse the state of your business and your goals but we also offer our recommendations for free.

 

This article was written by our co-founder Ana Caracaleanu.

 

 

Social Media Planning for Emerging Fashion Designers

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This past fall I taught Social Media Applications for Fashion Marketing at George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. I made sure each of my classes had an application to the fashion industry, but truth be told, the basics of how to use social media for your business are the same, it doesn’t matter what industry you are in.

Yes, of course whether you are a B2B or a B2C company, if you are small or large, or your industry matter when you consider your tools and platforms, and even your execution, but the strategy stays the same:

Plan, execute, measure and repeat. – Click to TWEET it!

I find planning puts people off. It takes time and you don’t see immediate results. But good planing can be efficient, and it saves you more time and money later on.

I am going to tell you the 4 main stages for building a social media plan, whether you are a tech startup, a fashion brand or a biotech company.

1. Social Media Plan – Target Audience

Don’t start using social media channels for your brand before knowing your target audience.

  • Where are they online?
  • Where are they offline?

Create a user persona for your product/services:

  • Demographic profile (age, physical attributes, family and friends)
  • Psychographic profile (attitudes, beliefs and opinions)
  • Professional profile (education, work experience)
  • Environment profile ( physical)

2. Social Media Plan – Goals

List 3 goals for your social media strategy that are:

  • Specific
  • Realistic
  • Measurable

Set a specific timeline for achieving your goals.

3. Social Media Plan – Track & Measure

Remember that “likes are not buys” ( I have to give credit for this to one of my clients, clever and true!). Your goals shouldn’t necessarily mean you have to reach a certain number of followers or likes. Rather, you should strive for high engagement rates and for receiving positive feedback from your customers.

Use analytics tools:

  • Google Analytics
  • Twitter Analytics
  • Facebook Insights
  • Hootsuite

Always measure against your goals. What worked and what didn’t?

4. Social Media Plan – Adjust & Repeat

This is the end of one learning cycle. Eliminate the tactics that didn’t work for you and focus and improve on those that did.

Keep it lean! – Click to TWEET it!

If you are an emerging fashion designers use these 4 key elements to social media planning to help you build an efficient and solid strategy. If you need any help setting up your social media profiles or you have any questions about social media tools, platforms and practices, contact us and we will love to chat with you!

This article was first published on LinkedIn by our co-founder Ana Caracaleanu.

 

Top 3 Social Media Practices for Fashion Designers

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You are a fashion designer and want to grow your brand and ultimately you want to grow your sales. You might think using social media is a good start to spread the word about your brand, and hopefully achieve your sales goals. You are on the right track! Indeed, social media are online tools that can help you grow awareness, connect with people you otherwise could have not and they can help you get closer to your audience.

These are the top 3 social media practices we’ve implemented at Luevo and proved to be successful for us. It led to partnerships, media coverage, and more happy customers.

Social Media Practice #1

LISTEN. Use social media channels to get valuable feedback about your products or services. Your customers will use Twitter, Facebook and other channels to mention and review your products, and even suggest new features.This practice can help you with your product development; it is key to an eCommerce retail business that may lack the face to face interaction with its customers.

Social Media Practice #2

LESS IS MORE. Post valuable information that your fans, readers and potential customers may find useful and less about your own products (self-promotion). Be less promotional, do less product pitching: try to be helpful to others and become a great resource for what they need.
TIP: You can easily test this: post only about your brand and products and you will see no growth in your number of followers or even a drop.

Social media practice #3

MONITOR. You can learn a lot about your market by monitoring industry specialists, your competitors and their customers. Add your business to Google+ communities and join LinkedIn groups, set up Twitter lists and monitor the pulse of your industry.
This article was first published on LinkedIn.
 Keep in mind that if you make it about them (your customers, your audience), your social media tactics can only have a positive impact on your business. If you need any help with your social media strategy, feel free to connect with me personally and we can talk! We’re also launching a Social Media Guide, so sign-up to get it first!