Online competition ideas for fashion retailers
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Online fashion competitions could just be the silver bullet for any marketing department working to promote fashion retailers. How? Because online competitions are a form of content that demands qualified users pay attention.
In the simplest terms, they posit a prize, say, a new coat going into the winter season, or a promotional code that applies to a popular new line, and say, “Enter your details, spin the wheel or push the button, and you have a chance to win.” For not a lot of effort on the user’s part, they could potentially win a great prize, but through the number of entries, assuming the competition has been promoted well, a lot of target customers will have engaged with your branded content and targeted messaging.
Of course, this is the simplest, most bare bones form of an online fashion competition to help retailers. Modern gamification, the application of game mechanics to increase user engagement in non-gaming contexts, allows businesses to create far more sophisticated and nuanced competitions.
Key things to consider when creating online competitions for fashion
Fashion is a very specific area, and regardless of the target demographic, whether it’s a high end boutique, or a mass market chain, it’s really all about the visuals. Branding and graphics carry a lot of weight – not only for the actual clothing and presentation, but also in terms of the promotional material being used to sell it. The graphic design of the online competition needs to reflect the quality of the label, and project the aspirational quality of the clothing or accessories it’s being used to promote.
The nature and mechanics of the competition also needs to consider the target audience. Fashion is specific to the types of garments being produced and the types of users the fashion brands are serving. For example, someone buying a good fitting tee-shirt on the high street will probably be focused primarily on appearance and comfort. A customer shopping for a pair of Manolo Blahniks will be motivated by the label and the design, and they could be considered a true fashionista. Another customer shopping for a highly functional but stylish hiking jacket will likely be motivated by the technical merits as much as the versatility of the garment, so things like hydrostatic head ratings, detachable hoods, and taped seams will become of interest.
While the latter may throw up a few, “But that’s not fashion is it?”-type questions, just look around. Ever since brands like North Face and Barbour started finding their way into pub and restaurant attire, and reflected it in their product design, high-end technical outdoor clothing entered the fashion chat. Suddenly, Nordic clothing stores selling lumberjack couture popped up in malls, with axes and Arctic exploration themes dominating their visual merchandising. Fashion is different things to different people, and it’s important to reflect this nuance depending on the type of fashion brand or retailer you are, and the type of customer you’re targeting, whether that’s budget-conscious students, or glamorous people about town looking for the right label and a striking new style.
Top 4 competition ideas for fashion retailers
The following online competition ideas can be considered jumping off points for putting together your own creations. Creating a contest is easy when you use the Drimify gamification platform, where there are dozens of premade game engines of various types, each waiting to be customised to serve your fashion competition objectives.
The Photo Contest: make your customer the model
Why do people buy nice clothes and develop their own fashion aesthetics? To be seen, of course. If someone’s into their style, they want to show it off. To invest heavily in your attire is a form of expression, so give your customers the opportunity to express their style with a themed Photo Contest.
For example, let’s say you’re releasing a new autumn line of outerwear. You could customise a Photo Contest with the brief of asking your audience to submit their strongest Autumn looks, with shortlisted entries receiving prizes from the collection, and the overall winner receiving the most desirable piece from the collection (you could even give them a choice). You could also specify that at least one item or key piece needs to have been purchased from your store, or be from your brand. Then you will have a lot of quality user-generated content to use in your marketing campaigns year-round, and it’s content that shows real customers using your products.
The Photo Contest: for phygital purposes
Let’s take that Photo Contest idea and try it on with a different ensemble. Let’s say you have both an eCommerce channel as well as a physical bricks-and-mortar boutique. Any mid to high-end fashion store lives and dies by having exceptional visual merchandising, with themes, and even installations to make their physical location an interesting place to go.
By combining an installation, or even a set if you have the space, you could create a Photo Contest with a brief that calls for people to go into your store and create an image using the props and settings set out in the brief of the contest. This works better when you have multiple stores with comparable sets, or if you’re located in an especially fashionable district in a big city, where you can bank on the potential of foot traffic because your area is a destination.
A well executed fashion contest along these lines can work incredibly well across your social media platforms, but can ultimately drive foot traffic into your store – combining the physical with the digital. This allows you to maximise on your digital reach, and introduce customers to your team members, and your hospitality, as well as other advantages linked to your physical premises.
The Product Recommendation Quiz: for the shoppers interested in technical garments
Let’s say you’re a high end outdoor fashion retailer. You sell smart-looking, high quality wool jumpers that look like something Hemingway would wear during the winter, Fisherman beanies of a thickness and practicality that most high street fashion stores can’t imitate, and highly technical outdoor jackets. Some are waterproof, some are windproof, some are highly breathable, and some are using hot new patented material from Japan that does X, Y, and Z that’s never been done before due to an innovative hexagonal weave… Particularly on your eCommerce channels, how do you communicate the value and differentiations between these lines?
This is where creating a Product Recommendation Quiz comes in handy, and to incentivise people to participate, you can make taking the Product Recommendation Quiz a required action to be entered into an instant win game for a big prize giveaway. The prize giveaway ultimately puts more eyes on your quiz, and encourages more people to take part. They answer various questions, such as what they’ll be using their jacket for, how often they’ll be in extreme conditions, and their pocket needs and packability needs. Ultimately, through the multiple choice answers, they’re assigned their ideal jacket, as well as receiving some key information on why said jacket will serve their needs the best.
You could even have the instant win game give every participant a promotional code so they’re incentivised to purchase the jacket they were recommended at a better price. That tends to work best when you have a line of items that are comparable but designed for different user types. This style of game would just as easily work for a fashion retailer specialising in ethically sourced clothing, and could even be more broadly customised to create a gift recommendation type app.
Instant win games: for maximum reach and maximum excitement
You could customise a Spin the Wheel game or a Wheel of fortune game to deliver promotional codes and prizes to entrants at the push of a digital button or the pull of a digital lever. Because it’s so easy to participate, more people will be willing to engage.
Ultimately, this sort of contest allows you to distribute promotional codes to incentivise sales, capture people’s data, encourage newsletter opt-ins, or even include pop-up content to educate consumers about your brand.
Fashion retailers: create online competitions easily to unlock your potential
Everything’s easy when you know how to do it, but creating games and online competitions to help drive sales and connect with your customers is easy when you use Drimify. No technical knowledge or coding experience is required, you just create a free account, and start customising the premade game engines to bring your competition ideas to life.
The online competition is one of the most effective and innovative formats when it comes to generating interest in new ranges because it gives customers a chance to be winners. Collect data, encourage newsletter opt-ins, and use your audience’s attention to your advantage to educate them about your brand.
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