The fashion world is changing, so how can brands stay competitive when faced with the influx of promotion-heavy competition?
In this episode of The E-commerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives, host Kailin Noivo is joined by Phil Clark, Senior Director of Digital Marketing and Media at Canada Goose. Together, they explore how the luxury fashion brand maintains competitive advantage in the current fashion market, measure the right KPIs, personalize experiences, and leverage social commerce and influencer marketing.
Maintaining a Competitive Edge
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the fashion industry has been overwhelmed by an influx of fast fashion brands offering promotions almost every day on almost every product. Not only has this trend reduced the impact of events like Black Friday, it has made it increasingly more difficult for luxury brands like Canada Goose to stand out from the crowd.
They rarely, if ever, offer promotions, and so they cannot rely on competitive pricing to gain traction in the market. Instead, they focus their efforts on three main strategies: dynamic targeting, relevant messaging, and digital placements that allow for storytelling.
These strategies allow them to engage with customers where they are at, putting the brand front and center.
However, as the market is constantly changing, they have to keep testing their strategies and products to ensure they are getting the best ROI possible. This is the only way they can maintain their competitive advantage.
The key to testing is to measure the right KPIs. Phil explains, “It doesn’t feel like the sexy stuff, but it is the most important thing to ensure that we’re measuring the right KPIs and we’re using the right sources and the right models.”
Their main approach is to use an MMM (media/marketing mixed model) to understand the value of their offline media and brand building. They then do incremental testing on these insights to validate the MMM and understand what KPIs make a difference on a regular basis. Following that, they adjust their media mix to ensure it is maximizing their revenue.
The Power of Personalization
At Canada Goose, they use first-party data to segment their customers into groups based on purchase behavior, interests, timelines, and life cycle. Through doing so they can personalize the experience at every touch point, communicating the products that are relevant to each customer in both online and offline experiences. They use some AI for this, but maintain a human approach to fully understand their consumers.
Social Commerce and Influencer Marketing
In recent years, social commerce and influencer marketing have increased in popularity, with platforms like Instagram and TikTok now offering direct commerce options.
Although Canada Goose now has a greater retail footprint than e-commerce, it used to be the opposite, and they still maintain the same approach: creating a frictionless journey, whether that be on their website or on social media, and they will continue to take this approach when working with influencers.
Consumer attitudes towards influencers are changing, and so they are only working with those that can connect with customers in an authentic way. This way they will avoid losing their brand integrity but will still benefit from the advantages of partnering with influencers.
“The younger, more tech savvy consumer is really becoming aware of a glossed over facade of some influences and ensuring that we’re curating and working with really authentic influencers to maximize that connection with our consumers is very important.”
Listen to the Full Episode Below!
Tune in to this episode of The E-commerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives with Phil Clark and Kailin Noivo to learn more about staying competitive in the fast fashion market.
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