6 Mistakes All Fashion Brands Make When Acquiring New Customers Through Facebook Ads

There’s no doubt that Facebook, now known as Meta, offers a wide and robust platform for fashion brands of all sizes to acquire new customers through clothing ads. However, the learning and trial and error needed initially can be frustrating for fashion startups with a small workforce. 

There is nothing to worry about as several fashion brands tend to make the same mistakes when they start using Facebook for their clothing ads. If the ads don’t make a single sale on Facebook or if they don’t yield the expected return compared to the spending, the fashion brand is making some mistakes. 

Here are six common Facebook clothing ads mistakes fashion brands make when acquiring new customers. Check them out. 

1. Avoiding Investing in Audience Research Beforehand 

Several fashion brands tend to make good ads for the wrong set of audiences, whereas others make mediocre clothing ads for the right set of audiences. The best decision is to prioritize the right set of audiences first. 

Facebook is a comprehensive platform with a diverse audience. Depending on the fashion brand’s selling product, the audience range can be bigger, smaller, or entirely different from the one they determined as the target audience. 

Fashion brands must test out a few sets of audiences at the start before testing any specific stuff like ad format or ad copy. However, it doesn’t mean that brands couldn’t give themselves a kick-start with some well-educated estimations. 

The best way for fashion houses to perfect targeting is asking themselves whether they’ll be willing to wager on the odds that those people would show interest in purchasing your clothing products. 

For instance, if one fashion brand thinks that people who like ‘Zara’ on Facebook might show interest in purchasing their specialty clothing products. Maybe a few of them will buy, but several others will continue to like and wear Zara products. 

The solution is finding a niche that aligns with the fashion brand’s products. If the brand chooses a niche product for their Facebook clothing ads, say t-shirt for beaches, they’ll find it much easier to acquire new customers than those without any specific audience for their products.

2. Aiming for an Audience That’s Too Broad

One of the common mistakes made by fashion brands while posting their clothing ads on Facebook is going too broad with the target audience. The fashion houses may consider every individual as a potential customer, but what they pay for is the individual their ads reach. 

This is why they should avoid the mistake of paying to reach the wrong individuals. These brands should start targeting a potential audience between the size of 500,000 to 1.5 million people. 

3. Impatience by Fashion Brands 

Facebook clothing ads need money. At times, the fashion houses may consider losing their investment when they don’t receive any results right away. The brands may start to take control over the clothing ads to tweak and optimize them for better performance and quick results. 

However, gathering insight and crucial data is the key to the beginning. This is why fashion brands must consider how much they’re willing to pay to acquire one customer. For instance, assume the cost of goods for apparel manufacturing is $30, and the brand sells it for $90. 

In that case, the fashion brand gets $60 to spend on advertising for acquiring a customer. As they have to test with the audience and clothing ads, in the beginning, the fashion houses should go beyond that with their budget. 

It’s best to avoid making any decisions regarding your clothing ads, like tweaking or pausing them, until they reach out to a minimum of 1000 people. By that point, these fashion brands gather enough data to learn from their past ads performances. 

Also, when these brands resist learning over time, their performance gets affected. All because of impatience. 

4. Not Isolating What They’re Testing 

In Facebook advertising, insight is mostly undervalued for chasing results. Although it’s recommended that fashion brands experiment and test their ads, the best knowledge comes when they test one variable at a time. 

It’s a mistake made by fashion brands to test multiple audiences, each with different Facebook clothing ads, posted at different times. This won’t tell them much, even if they get better results. They won’t get insight into the precise reason behind the successful result. 

Fashion brands should isolate one variable at a time for the test. This will help them go forward with the knowledge acquired from the experiment. They should test at the advert set level with their target audience, especially in the beginning. 

5. Not Extracting the Value of the Ad Spend 

Even if the fashion brand’s main goal is to drive sales, that’s not the only potential return they should expect from their clothing ads. Moreover, these brands should know that their ads ensure a lot of additional value even when they fail to drive any customer for sale. 

For instance, they can collect emails from visitors, get more likes and comments on the post, establish social media influence, retarget visitors, and more. 

It's recommended to set up Google Analytics to check how the fashion brand’s traffic works on their website. This helps them determine whether their issue is with the audience, website layout, or something else. 

For getting visuals of how the traffic behaves on the brand’s website, they can use HeatMaps like Hot Jar. This will let them know what the visitors click on, how far down the page they’re scrolling, and more. 

6. Ignoring the Optimization of Ad Creative for Clicks and Attention

If the fashion brand determines its target audience, it can enhance its clothing ads results by optimizing a good creative. Although multiple things are needed to make a good ad, some best practices include: 

• Make the clothing ad with the focal point on the video thumbnail, image or copy.
• Add visual elements to the ad by including emojis. 
• Every time the brand runs an ad, it should collect social proof (shares, comments, likes) over time. 

Conclusion: What Have You Learned?

Facebook clothing ads can be a bit time-consuming but are considered to be one of the best ways to send any message. It’s undoubtedly one of the best platforms that’s worth all the investment and knowledge from the experience of ad performances. However, the key to success for any fashion brand is the best quality product. 
For instance, if the brand sources its fabric needs from a top B2B platform like Fashinza, it won’t need to worry too much about marketing. Everyday Facebook ads would be enough to give a little edge to the brand’s overall sales. Source from top fabric suppliers, manufacture the best quality apparel, and sell them with the right Facebook ad strategies. Meanwhile, avoid these above-mentioned mistakes and learn how to fix them.