Solid Water Marketing Agency
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CLIENT CASE

Growth marketing strategy

for a fashion retail brand in London
Time to read: 7 min
An owner of a multi-brand mid-luxury fashion shop with a showroom in a premium Central London location approached us to develop a strategy for her shop relaunch as she was moving neighbourhoods seeking business growth. In this article, we are sharing step-by-step how we worked to relaunch a boutique fashion brand in the British capital, opening up digital channels that were not part of this shop's sales ecosystem before.

If you want to develop a go-to-market strategy, do not hesitate to contact us here: marketing@solidwateragency.com
About the client
Our client is a mid-luxury fashion retail brand selling occasion gowns, party outfits and silk scarves with art prints. Its multi-brand showroom first opened in Chelsea, later moved to St John’s Wood, but the owner eventually decided to move the shop to Knightsbridge to be physically closer to its target audience.

The client approached us with a simple brief: how can marketing help my business grow?

Brand Health Assessment

We started by assessing how the brand is represented across all of its touchpoints and whether, together, they formed a smooth customer journey leading to a purchase. Smooth user journey, clear USPs and well-presented brand assets are the foundations that have a significant impact on the conversion rates.
The website and the Instagram feed

Our analysis identified several problems stalling growth:

  • The brand lacked clarity in positioning and USPs
  • The brand lacked consistency and coherence in its visual presentation across all touch points
    both digital (website and social media) and physical (the shop and its window).
  • There was no connection between the brand’s digital assets and its brick-and-mortar shop

  • No customer data or any metrics whatsoever was being collected and analyzed

    from the digital assets to form actionable insights for development and growth.
To substantiate our findings and recommendations for improvements, we showed the client some best practice examples in her market segment
GUNIA Project guniaproject.com

"Gunia Project is a brand of exceptional things produced on the basis of traditional ethnic cultures."

A multi-brand shop founded by a Ukrainian entrepreneurs Maria Havrylyuk and Natasha Kamenska
"KOIBIRD is a retail destination with a difference. Founded by seasoned traveller and entrepreneur Belma Gaudio (who also serves as creative director), we aim to make shopping an opportunity for adventure rather than a chore."

Our Solution

We offered our client to focus on building an omnichannel sales funnel that will drive repeat purchases.
customer journey before
customer journey after
However, before we had this conversation, we insisted some groundwork needed to be done. Building an omnichannel funnel is a rewarding job but it requires preparing the infrastructure first.
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5 steps towards a well-functioning omnichannel

  • 1
    Conduct a brand workshop
    to define clear USPs, target audience segments and core positioning.
  • 2
    Develop a style guide/ brand guidelines
    For a smaller brand like our fashion retail client it needn’t be anything too comprehensive but defining the basic rules for the brand’s visual presentation is critically important for future work.
  • 3
    Conduct a brand photoshoot
    to create lifestyle visuals for social media and a product shoot for the web and insta shop. For the young brands willing to save up cash, we always suggest some budget-friendly options such as the use of AI tools for the editing of product images
  • 4
    Prepare your digital touch points for action.
    • Apply brand guidelines to all digital assets, including website and social media feed and stories.
    • Improve navigation on the website and Instagram.
    • Create an Instashop and embed analytics in the website.
    • Link the website and social media to create a smooth customer journey between them.
  • 5
    Prepare creatives for the paid campaigns.
    For our client we suggested activating some geo targeted Meta ads supplemented by Paid Search with the view to create awareness of the shop opening and collect emails in return for a shop discount at the launch event.
Cherry on top
We recommended that the client use her shop re-opening as an opportunity to find new customers and re-engage the existing client base (the client had a small database of emails of some of the previous customers).

A shop re-opening is a relatively low-cost opportunity to start bringing the customers on the omnichannel journey. We proposed a Stylist-Led Showroom Opening.
  • Event timing: 2hr
  • Food: Canapés, Prosecco
  • Photo zone with hashtags to get Instagram virality
  • Special discounts for event guests
  • Exclusive stylist support to create a new look
  • Photographer
  • Influencers
Events can become an important part of the omnichannel marketing funnel: generate exciting content for social media, gather customer emails for future engagement & boost sales long-term.
Cost benefit ratio
If you are a young brand on a growth journey and need a go-to-market strategy, contact us: marketing@solidwateragency.com

In this strategy, we clarified how to establish foundations for growth, suggested a strategic mix of ad channels to explore, running a few test paid campaigns to uncover the best acquisition tactics, and designed a customer engagement program that would foster loyalty.

The client had never tried digital marketing tools before and, naturally, was very cautious with allocating budgets to implement the strategy. We were very mindful of her concerns and only offered things which we deemed absolutely necessary for the launch. We also calculated that in order to justify the spend the client would need to sell just under a 100 silk scarves in the span of three months which, in our view, would be totally possible once her shop reopens and the website allows for clear navigation to purchase.

Additional experiments would need to be conducted to determine optimal client segmentation, messaging framework and best loyalty mechanisms
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