Natalie Angel from Let Me Try Before You Buy details why fashion retailers need to rethink their marketing to women over 40.
What do I think about fashion marketing to women over 40?
It needs to be completely overhauled because it’s outdated and bordering on offensive.
Fashion marketing teams focus on creating a perfect picture.
While it might look good on their CV, it won’t sell clothes to women over 40.
What they should really be focusing on is: What do women need to know about the garments in our collection?
How can we make women feel welcome in our brand?
To make women feel welcome and boost their sales, fashion brands need to throw away the current marketing practices that have been in place for more than 50 years and adopt these three key principles.
1. Embrace age, ethnic and size diversity
In 2021, fashion brands need to include age, ethnic and size diversity in their campaign shoots and social media advertising. If they want to sell clothes, they need to have a 50-year-old goddess and a 20-year-old goddess.
They need a range of body shapes, sizes and skin colours. They need to help women who have money to spend figure out whether their clothes will suit them or not.
There’s a reason why my Instagram feed has blown up over the past year. Women over 40 who are sick to death of all the overly filtered fashion photos on Instagram have been flocking to my page.
They want someone real who can show them what clothes will actually look like on them. They relate to the unfiltered and unedited videos of me in my underwear because I’m like them.
2. Analyse the data
My advice to marketing managers is to analyse the data they collect. Most retailers ask their customers for their date of birth when they complete a purchase, so they should have a look at the age range of their customers.
I bet the average age isn’t 22, so why is there a 22-year-old model in the campaign?
Marketing teams think older models won’t sell clothes, but they’ll probably be surprised if they try.
3. Talk to customers
Marketing managers also need to spend more time in store speaking with actual customers to understand who they are. Instead of sitting in an office making mood boards, they need to get their hands dirty.
Once they truly understand their customers, they’ll be able to create campaigns that sell clothes. If the image they’re portraying in their campaign doesn’t match their customer, they’ve missed the mark.
The dawn of a new era
As long as retailers continue to alienate women by making them feel unwelcome in their brands, they’re losing money. Changing their marketing approach isn’t just a matter of principle, it’s a question of survival.