In Brand, Night

How to start with influencer marketing for my clothing brand?

Influencer marketing is booming and that won’t change anytime soon. These days, you don’t need a cover photo in some popular magazine or an expensive TV spot to put your brand on the map. Influencers are a nice opportunity to reach your target audience in a credible way. You use the influence and popularity of others to promote your own brand. Potential customers are more likely to trust someone with whom they can relate and they won’t feel played by this form of marketing. That makes influencers reliable and they help you to increase your reach within your target audience.

Interested but you don’t really know where to start? No problemo! We made a list of some things you should pay attention to.


Influencer marketing will be most successful when the right audience is targeted. Your return on investment (ROI) will be disappointing if the content doesn’t reach those people who care about it.

The influencers you choose to work with have to be a perfect match with your brand. On the one hand, that’s important for the influencer, because his/her followers have certain expectations. On the other hand, that’s also very important for your brand, because you have to reach the right target audience.

Tip: It can help to create brand persona’s and then choose influencers to match with those persona’s. That way, you will definitely reach the right audience. You can ask yourself following questions to create a brand persona:

  • What’s the style of this person?
  • How much money does this person spend on clothing?
  • What type of influencers is this person likely to follow?
  • What type of content does this person engage with?

#2 your goals

Define the goals you want to reach through influencer marketing. Do you want as many people as possible to see your brand? Generate extra leads? Generate more sales? Promote one of your products? Get more likes on your Facebook page? In a next phase, you have to make these goals more specific by defining them according to the SMART principle (specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic, time bound).

That’s not only important to find the right influencers, but also to track your measurement afterwards. You can’t start with influencer marketing if you don’t know which goals you want to achieve.

For example: As a brand, it’s easy to generate awareness in your own region. But when you want to expand to other regions, it’s a bit harder. Your goal is to generate awareness in a certain region. You can increase your reach within that region by working with influencers who are active in that specific area. Your SMART goal could be to reach 1000 people per post per week with one influencer who has between 2000 and 5000 followers.

  • Storelaunchers on the importance of finding the right fit for your brand. We at Storelaunchers are literally specialized in commercializing clothing brands. We work with international brands and local start-ups alike and they all have one thought in common when it comes to influencers: Bigger is better.   Well, we know for a fact that this statement is complete bullsh*t. You need to find the right fit for your brand. Find an influencer that cares about your brand and that has the smaller but right following to back it up. It will save you a lot of time and money and will give you a way bigger return than you could have ever expected. Visit Storelaunchers, and learn more about influencer marketing

    Henri-Philippe Gardin
    Henri-Philippe Gardin Storelaunchers

#3 Find the right influencer(s)

Everything starts with research. One way to find influencers is through social media monitoring. There are some tools that help you do that, for example Buzzsumo. It not only helps you to find popular content, Buzzsumo also has an influencers search. You can search influencers based on specific topics, areas or locations.

There is also a variety of influencer marketplaces. An example is Tribe, an international self-serve marketplace that connects brands with micro influencers. Brands pay for the posts they purchase, after the post is approved the influencer publishes it on his/her channel(s).

Don’t just focus on the number of followers when choosing influencers. Rather focus on the content she/he shares and the level of interaction with the followers. When you start a partnership, make sure it’s going to help you to accomplish your goals and reach the right target audience.

Micro influencers vs. macro influencers

Micro influencers are people like you and me, who have most of the time less than 10.000 followers. They stand closer to their followers, which often makes them more credible. If they post a picture with your brand in it, people aren’t going to question it. Not even if the picture looks a little bit staged, it’s just easier to believe.

Macro influencers on the other hand are famous, known by many. These people are often celebrities and have thousands or millions of followers. To give you an example, Kylie Jenner is a macro influencer most of you will know. These influencers showcase your brand to thousands of people, amazing for your visibility and awareness. But of course this comes with a price…

Micro or macro? The choice depends on your brand and what you want to accomplish through influencer marketing. We recommend to start with micro influencers. It’s affordable, authentic and credible.

Socialmediatoday provides some more pros and cons about micro and macro influencer in this article.

#4 Measure your results

Influencer marketing is becoming more and more an established value. It also becomes more and more measurable. It’s not so much trial and error anymore, brands can really use data to know what it actually brings in.

Some things worth measuring:

# Reach

You can measure that through the number of followers an influencer has, the impressions his/her posts generate and traffic data.

# Engagement rate

You can measure that by tracking the clicks, likes, reactions and shares a post generates.

# Google Analytics Demographic report

Make sure you are still reaching the right people during your influencer campaign.Read more about Google demographics and interests.

# Maximise your efforts

Identify the influencers and channels that are generating the most leads. If Instagram is generating more leads than Facebook, your influencers have to focus more on Instagram.

# Sales

Measure whether or not your influencers are generating sales. You can do that by applying promo codes, utm tags and so on.

#5 Examples of influencer marketing

Daniel Wellington

I’m guessing every one of you has already heard of Daniel Wellington. Well… He owes his success to social influencers. The brand became one of the leading watch brands in Europe thanks to its strong branding strategy.

The secret of Daniel Wellington… A strong presence on socials like Facebook and Instagram forms the base of the brand’s marketing strategy. The main idea was to rely on the joint strength of many small influencers, micro influencers, instead of having one famous ambassador. Not only did that strategy save a great amount of money, it also increased the product’s visibility.

Selected influencers get a free Daniel Wellington watch and are asked to post a picture of it on their personal profile accompanied by the branded hashtag #danielwellington. Influencers can let their creativity run wild, that’s why every picture has its own style. A promo code is attached to every post offering followers a discount on the purchase of a Daniel Wellington watch.

A slightly different form of influencer marketing the brand applies is the following. The brand occasionally runs a photo contest in which Instagram users have to post a picture of their DW watch and use a specific hashtag. The winner gets featured on the official Daniel Wellington Instagram page and receives a free watch.

Clothing brand SMTH Smooth

SMTH Smooth also activates influential people as an ambassador for the brand. They have experience that it is an effective way to put your brand in the spotlight. It has not only a positive impact on your awareness, it also radiates trustworthiness. That’s important for Smooth, because people become more and more critical.

The ultimate influencer for Smooth is someone who has a great online reach and who radiates the real Smooth lifestyle. This lifestyle summer feeling and a certain nonchalance. But how do they find those influencers? Simply by looking out on social media like Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter…

Of course, Smooth wants to accomplish some goals through influencer marketing. On the one hand it’s their goal to attract new potential customers. On the other hand they want to create awareness for their brand, both for B2B and B2C. Also, creating credibility for the brand is important.

To measure the results Smooth relies on the reach and engagement created by the influencer actions. When the influencer campaigns are successful, you can notice that very fast by your number of influencers.


Do you need a partner for your clothing brand?

Brand Essentials is a team of fashion-aholics specialised to help clothing brands grow.
Feel free to contact us.

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