Create better SALES ads for fashion

There are a lot of mixed emotions when talking about discounts, sales, promotions, etc. for fashion brands.

This is mainly due to the brand factor of fashion brands, as they don’t want to come across as cheap.

However, sales ads are a great way to clear out stock and inventory, especially in the fashion industry.

Because fashion changes all the time, retailers need to sell way faster than other industries.

If they don’t sell their inventory by the end of the year, there’s a chance they won’t be able to sell it next year.

Let’s take a look at some ways to make your sales ads as effective as possible!

More text for sales ads works great

This might come as a surprise, but using more text in your sales ad content gives you a better performance.

This is because more text means more information, which comes across as a better offer than an ad with a low amount of text and/or no text at all.

Keep in mind that this is for sales ads.

When running an ad about new products or collections, the opposite is true; the less text, the better.

Read about the best practices for creating eCommerce sales.

Use a high text amount when running sales ads to increase performance.

However, just using a high amount of text in your ads is not enough, because not all sales are created equal.

What are the best types of sales you can run for a fashion brand?

The type of sale you’re running can drastically affect your performance.

One of the best-performing types of sale is “x for y”. For example, 3 pairs for $99 or 2 for 1.

This also increases the average order value, so it’s a win-win!

The worst performing sale-type for fashion brands is seasonal sales. Things like “summer sale” or “winter sale”.

This is probably due to consumers wanting what’s fashionable NOW, not buying something from last season.

Some other sale types like “sales on everything” or “outlets” are the second best types, only around 12-14% worse than “x for y”.

Test out different types of sales to see which kind creates the best association with your brand.

However, whatever type of sale you are running, simply showing the word “sale” may not be enough.

Make sure to mention savings in your fashion ads

We highly suggest going into even further detail like mentioning exactly how much they are saving (30% off, half off, etc.).

The more specific you are about the offer the better, and mentioning the savings is a great way to do this.

Remember, the more information you provide, the better the offer comes across to consumers.

Try your best to be as specific as possible about savings in your sales ads.

After optimizing the text and choosing what type of sale ad you want to run, you might be thinking about how your ads associate with your brand, like for example, showing your logo.

Logos do not increase sales ads performance

Marketers in general want to associate ads with the brand, which is normal.

But surprisingly, having your logo in a fashion ad doesn’t make the performance better.

In fact, for sales ads, it decreases performance by 7%.

The one message type where it might work is shipping, like ads that say “free shipping” for example.

One place where the logo significantly hurt performance is ads about new products; with a decrease in performance of 41%!

Something to consider, however, is because performance only fall 7% with sales ads, it might be worth it to consider having your logo in your content.

But this will depend largely on your brand and how you want to build it long-term.

You have to decide whether or not you want your brand to be associated with having a sale.

Maybe you don’t want to build as many associations between sales and your brands, which also may increase the performance a bit.

But in general, having your logo in your content doesn’t increase performance.

Learn about using logos in eCommerce content. Even if you decide you’re not showing your logo, there is still an opportunity for you to boost your performance by utilizing models in your content.

Models increase performance for fashion sale ads

Consumers of fashion brands typically want to SEE not READ your products.

That’s a big reason why using models works so well for fashion brands.

Sales ads with models typically perform better than just simply showing the product.

Buyers can see what the product looks like on a person and as a result, what it could look like on themselves!

With ads that are about new products and shipping, the increase in performance is huge (109% and 69%, respectively).

Even though the performance difference is not as noticeable for sale ads, using models still increases performance by 49%.

No matter what type of messaging you’re using in your ads, using models drastically increases performance.

Test out these tips for yourself

To create better sales ads for your fashion brand, make sure you know how to structure and mention discounts/sales:

Use more text so that the offer comes across better.
Try to utilize “x for y” sales.
Use models in your content.

Try these tips out for your brand/niche and see what kind of results you come up with!

Dataset

The dataset from this article is based on 967m+ impressions and 9500+ pieces of individual content on Meta (Facebook) platforms from Fashion brands ONLY. It takes into account data from only brands within fashion industry in all countries, with the campaign objectives of conversions only. The period is from 01.09.2021 - 16.09.2022.

Numbers are looking at correlation only, not causation. Remember to check your own data: numbers for different brands, industries, and contexts will vary. If you were intrigued about a specific insight, you can go in-depth into the various dimensions and how data can be segmented in Confect, here.