From remote work to loss of business, things are changing fast during the COVID-19 outbreak and figuring out how to monetize your fashion businesses is a top priority. Our panelists discussed the best practices for successfully taking your business online and explored creative ways to find and engage new customers through social media and digital ads.
Here are some of the best tips our industry professionals gave to help you monetize your fashion business.
Lori Riviere, owner of The Riviere Agency, thinks digitizing your business is the way to go. “You can really use this time to try and listen to podcasts and read books on doing some DIY digital marketing. There is a lot you can do yourself.”With the current pandemic, many people are looking for work including influencers. Lori said, “There’s an opportunity for you as a small business owner to potentially work with influencers that you may not have had access to from a financial perspective previously.”
True Model Management Founder and CEO, Dale Noelle quickly took her services online to experiment with strategies to monetize her fashion business. Her solution was using video conferences to keep clients in contact with models. She said, “Right away, we started organizing video conferences, we’re working out shipments that clients ship products to the models and are working directly from their computers and doing video casting. We’re doing video castings as well. But the clients are doing video conferences with the models, taking pictures and videos of them from their computer.”
What’s another way to stay in contact with people online? Claire Perez of the New York Make Up Academy created a podcast. “We did it within 5 days. All of the educators within the academy have their own episode, and really it’s a call to action. Each episode inspires people, everyone’s got their own topic that they talk about, and at the end of it, they have something to create.” She’s also using the live option on Instagram and Facebook to keep followers engaged and reach a new demographic that she usually doesn’t reach while posting in the evenings.
Shirin Movahed, a practicing lawyer with years of experience, says many of the brands she’s working with are using the live- streaming platform Twitch to stay connected to their audience. She also gives advice for starting an online business; “If you are setting up your e-commerce business, one of the things you gotta make sure to do is to be in compliance. Set it up, whether it’s through WordPress or Squarespace, any of those other platforms that have them, they’re not gonna give you the default. I mean, they have these default settings to make sure that you are up to date with the current consumer product legislation.” Shirin is also working to keep everyone informed on the recently passed Stimulus Bill and how this package can help you and your business.
Dee Rivera, CEO of DCG Media Group suggests you take the service you currently offer and “transfer it to virtual perspective. Educational and informative, but make it fun.”
For example, Fashion Mingle Co-Founder, Beth Smith asked how our frequent sponsor, Tessie’s Tea’s could interact with her followers during the pandemic. Dee’s idea was: “you could do a virtual tea party where you can show how you can drink it hot, how you can drink it cold, what are the benefits, and every week you can do something different on each tea and each flavor and then have a tea party with your audiences on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on Twitter, and invite health bloggers and health influencers to your party.” Her idea digitized the business, got influencers involved and allowed the brand to interact with customers all at once.
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