Digital Marketing for Boutiques and Fashion Shops in UAE

Being one of the oldest digital marketing agencies with a proven track record, SpiderWorks has been serving a wide range of clients in Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and other UAE regions and across the globe. Through custom tailored and effective digital marketing strategies for boutiques, we have been able to help several fashion shops win new customers and establish brand identity in their respective regions. For every boutique and fashion store that approach us for our services, we custom tailor the strategies for each one, taking their unique selling points and target market into consideration.

Digital Marketing Tips for Boutiques and Fashion stores in UAE

Every boutique is different and every market is different. The approach for a boutique in Dubai may not work for the fashion shops in Sharjah or Abu Dhabi. Even though UAE is not very diverse across the regions, the digital marketing strategies that work best for boutiques in one region may not work well for fashion shops in other regions in UAE. That is why we try to understand the unique selling points of every shop before we even give them a proposal. Our marketing strategy team will understand the specific requirements in detail, do a market study, perform a detailed competition analysis and also understand what the client can do the best within their limitations. Then we will come up with a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that fits well for the fashion store.

If done correctly, digital marketing can get a business in front of the target audience, so they become aware of the brand, purchase the products, recommend the brand to others and ultimately turn into brand ambassadors.

Recommended Digital Marketing Strategies for Boutiques

While every marketing strategy will help in some or other way, there are certain approaches that will be specifically useful for marketing and promoting boutiques. Let us go through some of the recommended digital marketing approaches for boutiques in UAE:

Create a Facebook Fan Page

A Facebook fan page is one of the best digital marketing tools for a boutique. Women are the primary target of fashion shops and they love seeing the pictures and photos of fashion products, even if they are not intending to purchase one soon. However, when they see a tempting picture, it is hard for them to have a blind eye towards it. A fan page on Facebook will help you build a strong follower base for your fashion brand and engage with them regularly.

Just creating a Page on Facebook is not enough. You need to reach out to your target audience and make them your followers. You can obviously share your new Page details to your friends’ circles and local communities and that will bring some followers to you. But to build a large audience for your posts and shares, you will need to advertise your page to your target audience. So, keep aside some budget for building followers for your page.

The budget you allocate for increasing the LIKEs for your page is your initial investment in the digital arena. But that alone is not going to make miracles and bring a lot of customers. Now you need to start sharing the pictures and videos of your best fashion products and make sure they reach your target audience.

Points to consider while advertising your boutique on Facebook:

Stick to local models and avoid foreign models. If your boutique is in Dubai, then try to find some models or celebrities familiar to the people in Dubai. Or, go for celebrities who are popular all over the UAE.

Maintain the frequency of posting. If you can afford to post a new picture every day, do it consistently. If daily posting is too much for you and weekly once is the best option that works for you, then go for that.

Avoid posting the same type of pictures continuously. Variety is very important to keep the enthusiasm and increase engagement.

Engage with your customers by thanking them for their comments and appreciating their feedback.

Ask questions to your followers through your Facebook page so that they will feel their voices are heard and their requirements are given attention.

Build supporting Whatsapp groups

This has been a strategy used by small and big brand boutiques all over the world for quite some time. In UAE, Whatsapp has been ignored as a digital marketing medium for quite some time but is gaining momentum in the last few years. The boutique or their digital marketing agency can form a Whatsapp group of the people and customers interested in receiving updates regarding the fashion trends and new products. The boutique can periodically send pictures of the latest fashion products to the group. Interested readers can visit the boutique and take a look at the product.

One of the limitations of the Whatsapp group is, it can accommodate a maximum of 256 members. In most cases, you will quickly reach the max limit. In such cases, you may form multiple groups based on interests, age group or location. Divide your target audience into several groups within 256 limits and have them all under various Whatsapp groups.

Another challenge with using Whatsapp group for marketing is, everyone can see the contact numbers of all other members. Many of your clients may not want to have their numbers listed to unknown people. Also, Whatsapp groups are discussion groups and anyone can initiate a discussion. Other members of your group may have other businesses to showcase and they may abuse your group to sell their products. An effective solution to this is to use Broadcast Lists in Whatsapp. The broadcast lists work pretty much the same way except that people cannot see each other and they can’t initiate a discussion. Only you can send out a communication to all the members of the group. The broadcast list is an effective one-way communication channel to promote your boutique.

Influencer Marketing to promote boutiques

If celebrities visit your boutique, politely request if you can take a photo of them in your boutique and share it on your Facebook page. When you share the photo on the Facebook, tag the celebrity on the photo and also, personally request them to share it on their page. May be you can offer them a gift or a price discount when they are in your shop and that will increase the chance of they sharing the photo on their popular page.

Many celebrities offer paid influencer marketing services. Sometimes you may be able to approach them directly and ask if they offer such promotions. Many celebrities and social media influencers in UAE accept paid promotions through their digital marketing partner agencies.

If you like to promote your boutique in UAE through influencer marketing, SpiderWorks can help you. We can contact the influencers in Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and other regions in UAE and negotiate the cost for you. We can take up the entire task of bringing the celebrity to your fashion shop and organise the complete influential marketing campaign.

SEO to rank your Fashion shop organically on Google

While most of the marketing strategies we discussed here are paid marketing, Search Engine Optimisation is something that can bring free visitors to your website for a long time. While an SEO company will charge you a fee for optimising your business website to improve its ranking on Google, once you get to the top rank, you will continue to get visitors through search engines for a long time without any additional ongoing costs. In order to rank your website on search results, you will need to pay attention to a lot of factors starting from the time you build your website. If you are planning to develop a new website for your boutique, involve your SEO company in the planning stage itself so that your website will be developed adhering to the basic SEO requirements.

Search Ads – Advertise your boutique with Google

Cities like Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi which have high internet penetration, a lot of people depend on Google for finding the businesses. If your website is not ranking on the first few positions for the relevant searches, then Search Ads is the next best option for you. Through Google AdWords, you can create effective Search Ad campaigns and place your Ads on the top of the search results. For example, you can create Google Search ad campaigns for the specific keywords like “best boutiques in Dubai”, “fashion stores in Abu Dhabi”, Most popular fashion shops in UAE” etc and your Ad will appear on tops of the search results when people search for the targeted keywords on Google.

Conversion oriented Landing Page

A website is a great platform to showcase your boutique to your target audience. You can have a lot of pages on your website showing the photos and videos to generate interest in your store. You can have a contact page on your website giving options for your website visitors to contact you. But there are chances that your website visitors may get lost on one of your pages or may fail to understand how to navigate to the right page. If you spend a lot of money on advertising to bring a potential customer to your website, you must make sure the visitors convert into a Lead and eventually into a Sale.

Landing Pages are the best way to convert visitors to leads and leads to customers. A perfect landing page will be a conversion-oriented micro-site where your visitors will get everything that they need to know regarding the campaign that you are trying to promote. For example, if you are running a New Year Sale in your fashion shop, your Landing page should show all details of the special offer in a single page. And most importantly, the landing page should have a single call to action – contact your boutique by phone or fill a Contact Form or at least explain the days when the Deal is active in your store.

Retargeting and Remarketing to bring back your visitors to your site

People visiting your store or watching your Ads may not purchase your products immediately. The reasons could be anything. They may not like the products they saw on the first visit. They may not need one right away. Or, they may be just waiting for their salary day. Retargeting your Ads to the people who have shown interest in your shop in the past is a very effective digital marketing strategy for fashion shops. The idea is to show your targeted ads to the right set of people who have considered buying your products in the past.

There are several ways you can do remarketing and Facebook is one of them. In retargeting, you will strategically place advertisements about your boutique store on their social media pages so that they will reconsider buying from you. Unlike other advertising methods, retargeting require some skills and careful execution. That is where a digital marketing company like SpiderWorks can help you. We have a pool of talented remarketing experts who can build effective retargeting campaigns to promote your boutique store to the target audience.

Google AdWords is another effective retargeting platform. By setting up retargeting ads on Google AdWords, you can follow your potential buyers on any website that use Google Ads and show them your display ads.

Content Marketing as a digital marketing strategy

If you write an article about your fashion store, not many people may show interest to read. Also, chances of getting your self-promotional article showing up in Google search results is very narrow. But consider writing about a lot of other topics that related to your business and have high chances of people searching on the internet. For example, you write articles on topics like “which dress material is ideal for the climate in UAE”, “what are the latest fashion trends in Dubai”, “where can we buy wedding dresses in Dubai” etc, your article may show in search results when people search for such topics. And when a visitor reaches your website to reach such articles, you may sell your products to them. Or, you can use retargeting Ads to show your advertisements to those visitors even after they leave your website. Content marketing requires producing a lot of quality content and getting them published on quality websites. You can publish some articles on your own websites but it will be a lot more useful if you can publish your articles on other popular fashion stores. A digital marketing company can help you reach out to popular publishing platforms and get your articles published on such websites. Explainer videos, fashion videos etc also could serve as an effective content marketing strategy for fashion shops. Start a fashion blog on your website and keep adding interesting blog posts. They are sure to bring visitors to your websites in the long run.

Email Marketing

Even though it is one of the oldest digital marketing approaches, email marketing still works great for a lot of businesses. Boutiques and fashion shops are some of them. Keep collecting the email addresses of your customers and politely ask them if they mind you sending some occasional emails about your latest products. Most of them would be happy to receive occasional emails with pictures and details of your trendy fashion products. Take care not to be spammy with too many marketing emails to your customers. One email every 2 weeks seems to produce the best results. Don’t fill your email with too many pictures and details. Include only the most trendy product photos in the email that are sure to grab the attention of the readers. Let them come to your store to see the rest of your products.

Remember to include an option to unsubscribe from your marketing emails. The email service providers require that every marketing email should include an option to unsubscribe. If you do not comply with such email marketing requirements, you may be classified as a spammer and your emails may get blocked by the email service providers.

What digital marketing strategies are best for your Boutiques in UAE

I have listed several digital marketing tips for fashion boutiques in UAE. If you are a boutique owner in UAE, you can try all or some of the tips mentioned above. It may not be practical for everyone to use all of the strategies. Instead, you can hand pick the strategies that match your interest, budget and expertise.

Alternatively, you can focus on your work and outsource your digital marketing to a trusted marketing agency like SpiderWorks. We have made several clients succeed in their business through effective digital strategies and we can bring you the same success.

If you are interested in our digital marketing services in Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi or other regions of UAE, send us an email – [email protected]