How to Run a Lead-Oriented Fashion Ad Campaign for SME

eCommerce and traditional retail businesses should prioritize lead generation campaigns, especially in the fashion industry. It’s important to regularly run these campaigns so your targeted messaging, often your sales emails, reaches your warm leads.

What are leads and why run a campaign to generate them? 

Leads are, simply put, potential customers. Sales teams in all industries differentiate between types of leads in sales so they can categorize leads and determine which ones to prioritize through marketing efforts.

Lead-oriented campaigns are especially powerful in fashion advertising because fashion customers are repeat customers. Everyone needs new clothes from time to time, so it’s important to nurture the leads who have expressed interest in your business.

Set goals

Before creating a lead campaign, it’s important to define your goals. Do you want to collect any and all leads, or target a specific type of lead, such as married women or 20-somethings interested in athleisure wear? Typically it’s best (for results, and your ad budget) to narrow your focus so your campaign reaches the right people.

Create a marketing plan

Determine where your ideal customer spends their time—on a particular social media channel, reading ad-supported articles, or simply Googling to find a specific type of clothing. Focus on spending your PPC ad dollars and content marketing efforts in those places.

It can be helpful to use cross channel marketing, which prioritizes reaching customers through multiple marketing channels. Repeat exposure, three times to be exact, is important for closing the first sale.

Create a lead magnet

A lead magnet is a free resource, discount code, or invitation to an event in exchange for customer information, typically an email list signup. Once you’ve located your ideal customer, you need to attract them with a lead magnet.

In fashion, the go-to lead magnet is a discount code (BOGO half off, 15% off any product, etc)  in exchange for an email signup. It works for two types of customers: one who has already determined they want a product and would like a discount for it, and one who likes something about your brand—such as the aesthetics or type of clothing—and wants to browse through your site to find a way to use their discount.

Nurture your leads

Once you’ve got their email list signup, you’re in! Email marketing is the gold standard for retail, especially for a seasonal product with regular launches like fashion. From now on, they will receive direct messaging with all of your product launches, helpful fashion guides, upcoming sales, and special “insider” discount codes.

A great way to sweeten the deal and increase lead retention rates is to create a nurture sequence—a sequence of emails that a lead receives right after signing up that are full of value, before you ask for the sale at the end of the sequence. This can be fashion guides, quizzes to find their fashion style, or style tips.

Need help?

Building a lead campaign is a powerful tool, but it can be time consuming and has many intricate details. We’ll take it from here!