Why retailers should take note of Fashion Week’s popularity on Instagram

The apparel world is just winding down from New York Fashion Week social media marketing statistics the semi-annual designer clothing parade that this year brought us wide-leg pants, cocoon coats and whatever it was that you’d call Kanye West’s collection. The event has been gradually transforming into a digital attraction for everyday shoppers rather than just a cloistered spectacle for industry insiders, with legions of people now getting a peek at the shows, clothes and top social media marketing companies models via livestream or social media. In other words, Fashion Week increasingly serves as a snapshot of how digital-savvy customers get their shopping ideas and interact with their favorite brands. That’s why a new research report on Fashion Week social media engagement is especially revealing about the challenges and opportunities social media marketing training that lie ahead for retailers as they try to use social media to sell you clothes and other types of goods. L2, a research firm that studies brands’ digital impact, analyzed the social media posts of 192 fashion houses from Feb. 1 through 18. That time period covered the shows and the immediate lead-up to them, when retailers would likely be in overdrive working social media marketing classes to drum up anticipatory buzz. In particular, L2 studied “engagement,” a measure of how many users were enticed enough by the social media post to take an action such as “liking” a post, commenting on it or re-sharing it from their own account. There is a striking, even extraordinary, difference between customer engagement on Instagram versus on Facebook social media as a marketing tool and Twitter. On Instagram, the women’s brands posted an average of 20 times and generated an average of 92,000 interactions. The engagement numbers seen on the other social platforms are paltry by comparison: On Twitter, where women’s social media marketing news brands posted an average of 26 times, tweets averaged 490 likes and 1,117 retweets. On Facebook, brands posted an average of eight posts each that generated 8,000 interactions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, men’s fashion brands generated significantly less social engagement overall than did women’s brands. But the pattern remains the same: Instagram accounted for the vast majority — some 89 percent — of social engagement for men’s fashion. “Instagram really is dominating the field,” said Liz Elder, the L2 research associate who produced the Fashion Week study.Retailers social media marketing network and brands have lately engaged in a burst of experimentation around so-called “buy buttons,” or ways in which shoppers can easily purchase their goods without ever leaving the social network where they stumbled on them in the first place. This study seems to suggest that Instagram might be particularly well-positioned to ride a potential boom in social shopping, because users are already engaging especially heavily with brands on the site in a way they aren’t on Facebook or Twitter.Elder marketing through social media points out that forthcoming changes to the runway show cycle might be especially fertile territory for testing the potential of “buy buttons.” This season, several major fashion houses, including Burberry, announced that they’d move to a shop-it-now runway show in which items that are featured on the catwalk are up for sale in stores and online almost immediately. That differs sharply than the industry’s traditional model, in which clothes seen on the social media marketing certification runway don’t hit stores until about six months later.Also notable is how much the social engagement mix has changed over the last three years of fashion shows. As the chart below shows, Facebook has lost quite a bit of ground, not only in its share relative to Instagram, but in overall engagement volume. And that sends a clear message: Fashion conversation and social media marketing consultant inspiration-seeking is moving at an astonishing speed from Facebook to Instagram.

Instagram: Competing with TV or complementing it?

Instagram continues to pitch itself to brands and agencies social media marketing ideas as a complement to TV campaigns but with its cheaper prices and more personalised offering experts believe it could steal ad dollars, as long as brands understand its points of difference.Instagram launched 60-second ads last week with Guinness being the social media marketing packages first UK brand to use them. The activity, part of its ‘Made of More’ campaign, will run on TV, digital, social and PR. But in a first for the brand the ad will initially launch on Instagram before hitting other screens. “Instagram has grown enormously in scale in the past 12 months and is a channel best suited for stylish and striking imagery. We believed it was social media marketing proposal the perfect medium to shine a light on the beauty of our film to a discerning audience,” explains Stephen O’Kelly, the brand’s marketing director effective social media marketing for Western Europe. “The audience we are after seek all new information on their social media feeds. We recognise that our brand content is most valuable to millennial audiences when it is new, so wesocial media marketing for dummies want to give social influencers and brand advocates the chance to share it socially before it airs on TV.” The launch of 60-second video ads is the latest move by Instagram to boost its nascent ad business. In September, it began selling ads to brands of any size in more than 30 countries and has introduced a number of new ad formats including ‘Marquee’ ads, which offer brands high-profile slots, and landscape photos and videos. Instagram wants to get more advertisers on board, but knows it cannot force advertisers into proprietary formats and lengths which mean they have to create content specifically forsocial media marketing definition its platform. Amy Cole, head of brand development for Instagram in EMEA, explains: “People and businesses come to Instagram to find inspiration. With nearly half of Instagrammers following a brand, it’s never been more important for advertisers to have the tools and creative flexibility to tell their story with imagery – whether through landscape ad formats, multi-image placements or various video lengths. “With our new 60? ad format, Guinness will be social media marketing firm able to further amplify their beautifully shot hero creative.” Bringing long-form content Instagram Up until now, brands have only been able to run 30-second ads on Instagram and analysts are concerned that due to the interactive and short-form nature of most content on Instagram the longer format will notsocial media marketing books resonate. Jennifer Wise, senior analyst for mobile marketing and advertising at Forrester Research, explains: “Instagram is a digital site and usually seen on mobile where even the common 15-second ad often falls flat as it’s interruptive, too long compared to the content the user social media marketing firms wants to experience, isn’t contextually relevant and isn’t interactive.” However, Henry Arkell, head of social advertising at media agency Manning Gottlieb OMD where he works with brands such as Renault, says 30-second ads on Instagram “really work” and that adding the ability social media in marketing to run 60-second videos can only be a positive move. “There is a very high completion rate [for 30-second ads] on Instagram. It is higher than many other social platforms so the consumer appetite [for longer form content] is there. Not everyone will watch a 60-second ad but the same is true for Facebook and YouTube. And brands can optimise small business social media marketing towards people that are more likely to complete views,” he says.

Don’t just stick a TV ad on Instagram’

For brands that are considering using Instagram’s new format, there social media marketing plan sample are some basic rules to bear in mind. Guinness’ O’Kelly says the brand worked directly with Instagram to ensure it created creative in formats that users “love to engage with”. Other marketers will need to make sure they are doing the same. Forrester Research’s Wise marketing on social media cautions against brands simply running their TV campaigns on Instagram. She points to the fact that the long story-arc used in TV ads doesn’t apply on Instagram where brands will need to “hook the user in seconds to make an impressions”. “People are scrolling until something social media marketing campaign catches their eye on Instagram. If the brand waits until the 45-second mark, for example, to present its name, offer or action the user can take it’s too late. The user will never see it. “Brands can keep the 60-second ads for interested consumers, but they must make sure social media marketing degree to still front-load the message to make the other quick impressions count.” Where this format could work well is for tent-pole events such as the Super Bowl. The timing of the launch just days before the biggest event in the American marketing calendar is unlikely to be a coincidence, with T-Mobile one of the first US brands to use the format to show an extended version of its Super Bowl ad. Brands should also bear in mind that most consumers will be watching, at social media marketing los angeles least initially, without the sound on and on smaller screens on-the-go. “Depending on the consumer’s location or the presence of headphones, sound is possible but not a guarantee. The creative will have to rely on sight and motion – not sound – to resonate with the consumer,” says Wise. “Brands have to align the ad with the experience on Instagram. Why is the user there? To catch-up with friends and to find new social media marketing strategy template things through imagery. The ad has to do this too otherwise it is irrelevant at best, interruptive and frustrating at worst.” Rival or partner to TV? Instagram, as well as Facebook and Twitter, still ostensibly pitch themselves as a complement to TV rather than a competitor. Arkell cites the example of social media marketing resume Renault, which uses TV and social media in tandem – running big TV brand campaigns but using Facebook to add reach, particularly among consumers aged 30-35 and light TV viewers. Despite this, he also believes Instagram is after TV’s budget. He points to the fact that both Facebook and Instagram have sales structures set up so that the top TV spenders social media marketing campaigns in the UK have their own personal account manager. That is not surprising given that the biggest TV advertisers are also likely the biggest brands with the biggest budgets so they are “simply following the ad dollars”. “Ultimately TV dollars are still social media marketing service the majority of advertising investment that brands make. It would be very naïve to think Facebook and YouTube don’t want to take some of that social media marketing conference money. “It is the role of the media agency to work out what combination of media leads to the best results – whether the outcome is sales or a lift in brand metrics.”