The textile industry and the retail sector did not advertise their products to the general public a few decades ago, and today this seems strange for an industry that is completely customer-oriented. It was only later that exhibitors and retailers devised their own promotions and advertisements without any help from professionals. To this day, impromptu advertising and marketing strategies would have continued if not for the aggressive competition in the apparel market.

In present times, appropriate advertising is considered far more significant than opening a physical store. Retailers, designers, and manufacturers create awareness regarding the product and make it a brand before the launch so that prospective buyers know about the product's existence. Stressing the product's uniqueness and superiority has become inevitable for the fashion world, as new competitors emerge in the market every day.

The options for advertising apparel brands are many. However, apparel designers or manufacturers analyze the target market and plan the advertising strategy accordingly. When targeting elderly customers, retailers often choose electronic or print media to create awareness of the clothing line. In the case of young consumers, internet advertising and electronic media are preferred. The purpose of advertising is not only to generate more sales but also to create a niche market for the apparel brand. If a brand has not progressed to a brick-and-mortar store, it is important to create virtual shops in one or more online marketplaces. Creating a virtual shop via a personal website can help the retail store customize the shop.

Apparel retailers and manufacturers have shifted their focus from conventional marketing sources like billboards, print ads, and electronic media commercials to mobile advertising. These days, more and more people are using smartphones to make retail purchases on the go, and marketers are taking notice. The simple explanation for this is that consumers, both young and middle-aged, are constantly staying in touch with the fashion world through smartphones, and online shopping is gaining momentum. So, whether it is about finding choices in colors or searching for a bigger size, mobile phones can do it all. According to a report presented by xAd, mobiles contributed to over U.S. $200 billion in offline and online sales of apparel in 2013. xAd also revealed that 77 percent of transactions related to smartphones are actually happening within stores.

Retail apparel marketers are also progressively using techniques like geo-targeting, aiming for mobile ads to draw consumers to brick-and-mortar stores. The success of mobile ads and online advertising is also easy to measure. Marketers measure ad success by the number of times consumers click on links, and to understand buying behavior, marketers and advertisers also study what people do after clicking the link or visiting the sites.

The affordable and less popularbrands often invest in only some of the advertising options like giving a printad or running a one-minute ad film on local television channel. The more acompany spends on advertising, the costlier the apparel brand gets. Nevertheless,luxury apparel brands set aside a budget specially assigned for marketing andadvertising the brands. So it is more common to spot luxury apparel brands onbillboards, watch the ads on television, internet, mobile or see celebritiesendorsing the brands.

The experts recommend that thefirst step of apparel brands should be to find out the advertising to salesratio in the apparel market. There are some companies that give an estimatedfigure regarding the marketing or advertising spending in the financialstatements, which can help the new entrants in calculating the estimated budget.

The marketing team of a particularbrand can easily calculate the percentage of budget that needs to be allottedfor marketing and advertising. Some experts also recommend beginning at 5percent and then adjust the projected spending up or down based on the size ofmarket, the cost of media, the amount being spent by the competitors, and thespeed at which the brand would like to grow.

In spite of all the benefits ofadvertising, there are many retail apparel brands that have considerably cutdown the advertising budget in order to cope with the economic slowdown. Evenas the apparel market is predicted to grow to US $ 540 billion by 2025 in Chinaand US $ 200 in India, apparel stores have shown increasing resistance toinvest a high amount in advertising.

Unlike a decade ago, there are farmore segments that a single retail apparel store caters to and these includelifestyle segmentation, geographical segmentation, gender related segments andage related segments. The cost of advertising has gone high and consideringthat there are several issues from finding right labour force to getting theright country for outsourcing, there are never-ending issues and thus advertisingoften gets sidelined.

But, with global economyrecovering gradually, apparel advertising is once again gaining momentum andwith e-retail becoming popular, advertising for apparel is being done throughnewer media channels like mobile apps. The global internet advertising revenuefrom 2013 to 2018 was calculated to be around US dollars 117.2 billion. It isalso estimated that by the end of the year 2014 it will touch U.S. dollars 133billion.

In 2015 the internet advertisingrevenue would be somewhere around U.S. dollars 149.2 billion and in 2016 itwill be approximately U.S. dollars 164.2 billion. By the year 2017 the globalinternet advertising revenue for apparel would reach a staggering U.S. dollars178.9 billion and in 2018 it would be around U.S. dollars 194.5 billion.

In the U.S.A. alone the apparelindustry spent 17.87 million dollars on outdoor advertising in the year2013-2014. The sector's total ad expenditure amounted to 646.6 million dollarsin this year.

 

The definition of apparel industryhas changed now, as today a single garment shows the hard work of many fromartisans to designing team to technical team. Apparel industry refers to thephenomenon of the society. Advertising industry helps the apparel sector togrow beyond the set boundaries and the journey of many brands reveal thatapparel sector cannot do without advertising. So more budget or low budget,advertising has become an integral part of apparel and fashion industry withoutwhich it would be impossible to survive the rising competition.

References:

1.      Businessinsider.in

2.      Businessweek.com

3.      Smallbusiness.chron.com

4.      Statista.com

 

 

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