How to sell fashion on Instagram without traditional influencers




As the influencer marketing industry matures, brands are refreshing their strategies to resonate with audiences and drive sales. The global influencer market is expected to reach $15 billion by 2022, up from $8 billion in 2019, according to Business Insider Intelligence, based on Media Kix data. At the same time, the 1 billion-plus user base on Instagram — the predominant Western influencer marketing channel — is constantly growing.
With this growth, it has become more challenging for fashion brands to stand out. Social media platforms are also increasingly saturated by sponsored content, and consumers are becoming more sceptical of influencers who they perceive as inauthentic.
“The sophistication of both the influencer and the customer means that brands need to be a lot more strategic when it comes to their marketing campaigns,” says Alison Bringé, chief marketing officer at Launchmetrics.
“The market is a lot more mature,” says Ryan Detert, founder and chief executive of Influential, an AI company that matches brands with influencers. “[Fashion brands] can't just rely on the hope that one big campaign will lead to a boost in sales for the year.”
Executing a successful social media campaign that delivers a return on investment comes with many challenges and no guarantees. Some labels are finding success with unexpected strategies that have helped to boost the bottom line.

Tap the influencer-editor

An influencer-editor gave Turkish accessories brand Manu Atelierits start in 2014. After Eva Chen, former editor of Lucky magazine turned Instagram’s head of fashion partnerships, shared an image of their Pristine bag that summer, top retailers from Selfridges to Net-a-Porter started stocking the bag, which sold out instantly. (The now-defunct Lucky was owned by Vogue Business publisher Condé Nast.)
Editors who represent well-known publications make for powerful partners, and not only because of the credibility they bring. They’re likely to have a relatively limited schedule and tend to be exposed to more brands. That translates into being more selective about the brands they work with.
Influencer-editors are also seen more as a believable authority at a time when the influencer marketing space is seeing increased demand from brands for “real people”, says Rhea Woods, vice president of influencer marketing at creative communications agency Praytell, whose clients include Nike and MAC Cosmetics.
Deveaux artistic director and street style photographer Tommy Ton chose to dress fashion editors such as The Sunday Times'Jane McFarland and Stylist's Arabella Greenhill in the brand’s first women’s collection when it debuted at New York Fashion Week last September. Today, the label has 33 stockists globally.
“If the clothes have the seal of approval from certain tastemakers, it translates to retailers and consumers,” he says. It is truly validating when someone [like a fashion editor] who sees many collections still wants to feature or wear the product.”
MatchesFashion's "Curated By" series, in which the luxury retailer teams up with "a person of influence" 10 times a year to curate looks for its website, has "seen very high social engagement [and] continues to drive new customer traffic to the site," says Simone Parchment, MatchesFashion's head of partnerships. Previous collaborators include stylist Fran Burns and The Gentlewoman editor Penny Martin.
The importance of an editor’s seal of approval isn’t contained to fashion. Ton hopes to also partner with influential professionals from adjacent industries, such as architecture and interior design. “It’s important to us that our customer is represented in a universal way [and] that the clothes are not just meant for a fashion consumer,” he says
However, this approach raises a separate conversation around disclosure practices, which are required of full-time influencers but remains murky for editors.

Create a #Family

Manu Atelier has fostered a community of individuals called #ManusPeople. “When we first launched shoes, stock ran out after a short while. The success was a result of keeping the right community since the beginning,” says Merve Manastir, who co-founded the label with her sister Beste. The community includes LA-based art director Madelynn Furlong, Dutch Elle’s Yin Fung and Japanese DJ Mademoiselle Yulia. “There is a real relationship between us and them.”
Baum Und Pferdgarten’s #BaumFamily hashtag accumulated over 1,000 posts on Instagram when it launched during the Danish label’s Spring/Summer 2020 show during Copenhagen Fashion Week. Participating influencers include sisters Reese and Molly Blutstein and Forbes’ 30 Under 30 entrepreneur Babba C Rivera.
While a hashtag may first be adopted by the brand and a collective of influencers, anyone can also choose to participate by adding the same to their own posts. This creates a ripple effect. For brands like Baum Und Pferdgarten, it’s helped to boost business: today, more than 50 per cent of sales come from outside of its native Scandinavia
Meanwhile, Danish label Ganni’s #GanniGirls hashtag has been used over 38,000 times. Originally used unprompted by model Helena Christensen, #GanniGirls’ reach now includes influencer Camille Charrière, buyer Tiffany Hsu and fashion director Lisa Aiken.
“The approach of creating a #family [is] a great way to get good cross-pollination,” says Joe Yakuel, chief executive of digital marketing company Agency Within. “If each member of that family can push 5 per cent of their audience to three other members of that family, every member's audience grows much faster, and the brand they are collaborating with gets the benefit of that too.”
“Sometimes when A-list celebrities wear and tag Ganni, it can drive no sales at all,” says Nicolaj Reffstrup, Ganni’s chief executive. “Other times, you can have a girl with a smaller, niche following in a regional area, and we see a huge spike because she makes so much more sense to her followers.”
Traackr, an influencer marketing platform, found that roughly 12 to 15 per cent of overall mentions of Ganni on social media include the hashtag #GanniGirls, and posts with the hashtag saw increased engagement of 57 per cent.
Ganni, which made about €55 million in sales last year, has never had a social media manager and doesn’t plan to hire one. “Personal relationships are how we have built our business and grew on Instagram at the same time,” says Reffstrup.
“Any successful influencer strategy today has to be beyond just exchanging money,” adds Yakuel.

Collaborate instead of transact

Some of retail’s most successful collaborations have included influencers in the design process.
Something Navy’s Arielle Charnas’s 2018 collection for Nordstrom caused its e-commerce site to crash, and ultimately sold more than $4 million of merchandise on its first day. It was the retailer’s most successful partnership ever, surpassing past collaborations with Beyoncé and Rihanna.
“For the influencer, the partnership is low-risk, as they don’t need to worry about upfront costs or inventory. For the retailer, they can expect a huge response from the influencer’s audience,” says Evy Lyons, vice president of marketing at Traackr. She notes that Charnas’s most recent Instagram post mentioning her collaboration with Nordstrom to her 1.2 million followers generated a 30 per cent higher engagement rate than content simply featuring #ad
Los Angeles-based fashion e-tailer Revolve has made influencer marketing a key part of its strategy, so much that up to 70 per cent of current overall sales at Revolve.com are driven by an influencer. In May, the e-commerce firm announced it would introduce a long-term, ready-to-wear collection designed by mega-influencer Aimee Song.
The line marked the first time the retailer has partnered with an influencer with such a sizeable following (Song currently has 5.4 million Instagram followers) on a permanent apparel venture. But Song also has a strong track record for driving sales: a past collection for sunglasses brand Gentle Monster in 2017 sold out in 22 minutes.
“[Branded content] campaigns can move the needle when carefully tracked, but there is a ceiling to the results,” says Praytell’s Woods. “The true potential of these collaborations is realised when influencers are tapped as creative directors and true partners.”

Work with niche influencers

Leandra Medine, founder of the independent lifestyle website Man Repeller, might not initially be an obvious choice for fashion brands, many of which tend to collaborate with women whose Instagram feeds feature beautiful images of themselves. With her “man-repelling” personal style, Medine represents the rise of a different kind of influencer, where authenticity is more important than a pretty image. Today, she counts over 2.2 million followers on Instagram and has partnered with MatchesFashion, Kate Spade and Mango
Similarly, Ukrainian twins Tanya and Zhenya Posternak’s signature style on Instagram — cropped close-ups, pastels — and a love for photography has earned them partnerships with Mansur Gavriel and Amsterdam-based label Kassl
English clothing manufacturer Sunspel, too, has turned to influencers with unconventional Instagram feeds, such as Sarah (76,500 followers) and Joanna Halpin (297,500 followers), who often post abstract photos of their surroundings or inspirational observations from their day. “We felt that we shared an aesthetic code,” says Nicholas Brooke, chief executive of Sunspel, which does £11.5 million in annual sales.
Data from influencer marketing platform Tribe Dynamics shows that the followers of niche influencers tend to be engaged and passionate, often more so than those of macro-influencers with 500,000 followers or more, many of which may have lost interest.
In addition to higher engagement on their posts, niche influencers also compel shoppers to buy at the same rate that macro-influencers do. In 2017, individuals that used RewardStyle affiliate links — these allow brands and retailers to track sales that are generated from a link posted by an influencer — drove 80 per cent of mobile visits to Nordstrom, 34 per cent of the referral traffic to Revolve and 31 per cent to Net-a-Porter
For Launchmetrics’ Bringé, partnering with unconventional influencers who have a clear vision or personality feels “more genuine” at a time when manufacturing fake followers has become a ubiquitous tactic on Instagram. “In a world where authenticity is key, brands are learning to trust smaller communities and embrace the power of these [unconventional] influencers in order to increase the share of wallet within their following,” she says.
Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly stated that How To Spend It's Jo Ellison was dressed by Deveaux. (20 November 2019)