Growing your fashion brand during COVID-19 lockdown

Everyday we receive more and more information on COVID-19. The virus anticipated to have an impact on our socio-economic dynamics. It’s important that fashionpreneurs are prepared to face the business world again after lockdown. Here are some practical ideas on how you can prepare your brand to bounce back from the lockdown.
Build brand trust
Have you ever seen an ad for a product that may be perfect for you, and yet you hesitate to buy it? You may have doubts about the company’s reputation, the quality of the product, or even if you’ll get it at all. Your ability to trust a brand relies entirely on the information provided to you between your first encounter with the brand and the time you reach checkout. As a business owner, there are a few ways you can build brand trust while sales are down.
Get Social Proof
During this time of economic uncertainty, customers are going to be more hesitant about spending money. The more content they see about the effectiveness of your products and services can help to ease any doubts the customers have. With an uptick in services like Tik-Tok and Instagram Live, it is evident that your customers have more “free time.”
Reach out to your past customers for reviews, results, photos and video content of them using your products. Offering incentives like a drawing entry for a gift card or product discount can help to build social proof while also creating a content database for your brand.
Foster your Community
Are you team Apple or Android? Brands like Samsung, Starbucks, and Apple can have high profit margins because they have a community around their brands. People are excited about being elite members or part of a group. Set some time each day to interact with your current and potential customers. Commenting on photos, replying to questions, offering Q&A sessions, sending out DM’s, creating challenges of people using your products, or doing Live sessions help to not only build relationships with your customers but also prompt them to interact with each other.
Build Brand Awareness
How many times have you decided to check out a brand because you keep seeing it on your newsfeed? On average, it takes 7 interactions with a brand for a potential customer to trust it.
If you are running any ads during this time, consider changing your ad goals to brand awareness and reach. The more people see, comment, and interact on your ads, the more likely they are to make purchases. Additionally, directing your past and current customers to your ads so that they can leave reviews about the products they used can exponentially grow trust in your brand.
As people stay at home, time spent on their mobile devices, and online platforms is already on the rise. They are spending more time on streaming platforms for entertainment, social media for connecting with the outside world. What message does your brand project on these platforms?