1. Find your target audience. Who exactly are you selling to? This involves knowing your price point, your target market’s age and demographic, and your overall style philosophy, meaning knowing what you’re trying to trying to convey. How should the wearer feel and want to convey while wearing the clothes/shoes/accessories? Knowing your target audience, meaning who will bring in the most interest and revenue to the brand, allows you to work with your PR team to carefully target your audience through the publications, websites, blogs, fashion bloggers, and celebrities they look to and trust for the latest trends and style inspiration.
2. If you are a new brand, start small. As an indie or small label designer (especially just starting out), you can’t expect to compete with Chanel right away. In this case you want to do some research on fashion bloggers – those who post Outfit of the Day shots and do their own photo-shoots – and find the ones who have a solid social media following and comments feedback on their site. Start by targeting bloggers and then drill down to the more mainstream traditional media outlets.
3. Stay in tune with trends. It’s difficult to sell, if you don’t stay on the pulse of the industry, know what others are selling and, more importantly what the public is buying. One of the easiest fashion pitches is “Get the Look” – do you have a product that looks similar to what a celeb wore on the red carpet last night? If so, send that as a media pitch. Your pitch can be “get the look for less”. This “Get the Look” approach can also help when introducing editors and website writers to your product, by relating it to their needs. Remember, what they need is what’s happening now and tomorrow trend-wise. If you keep this in mind, it won’t be long until editors are asking you for pieces for their stories!
4. Play to your strengths – For example, are your items unique? Is it made of vintage materials, use new technology, or handcrafted? Does your line offer a lot of style for a great price? Is your brand functional? Can you dress it up or down for work and dates? Is it stain or wrinkle resistant)? What is it that sets you, your brand and your line apart from the rest? Use what sets you apart in the marketplace, to set you apart in the eyes of bloggers and editors.
5. One final tip, position yourself as an expert who can comment on fashion style and beauty. If editors get to know you as an expert in the field and like what you have to say, you can start to position yourself as a go to media resource.
Keep these point in mind when launching a PR campaign for you and your brand and you’ll be set on the road for success.
This post originally appeared here
