How to Build a Winning Apparel Influencer Marketing Strategy in Pakistan
From the fashion stories of Karachi to the boutique reels of Lahore to the street style shoots of Islamabad, Instagram and TikTok have become the true showroom of Pakistan’s apparel industry. Consumers are no longer impressed with crowds of billboards and instead turn to social media to get inspired.
Put differently, an effective social media post from the right influencer can lead to a sale of an entire designer lawn collection, and apparel influencer marketing has become the go-to tool for brands seeking out new customers.
Having run enough influencer marketing campaigns in the region, we’ve learned over the years that blindly following marketing formulas from the US or India will do no better than producing sheer mediocrity. Pakistani shoppers are a unique mix of customers who have their own buying preferences, price expectations and trust indicators.
So listed below are six best practices for apparel influencer marketing we’ve implemented for our fashion & apparel clients and saw a noticeable increase in better engagement and sales.
1. Go for micro-influencers that resonate with your brand’s voice.
The idea of working with a popular influencer with a million followers may sound good on a business presentation but usually such an influencer does not have a high conversion rate compared to a micro-influencer with 15,000 to 80,000 followers. The average engagement rates of micro-influencers in Pakistan range from 4% to 9% while that of celebrities ranges around 1%.
It is better to go with 5-6 creators whose personalities fit your collection than going with a famous person who wears from sports clothing to bridal wear within a week. The creator who actually wears lawn suits, shares her fashion sense with followers and addresses her followers in Urdu/Roman Urdu language will sell more units of your product than a famous person reciting the script.
Some points to consider before finalizing the influencers are:
- Their average comments per post, not just likes
- Whether their followers belong to Pakistan
- How many times they have promoted similar brands in the last 3 months
2. Choose local content over copy-paste global campaigns.
The fashion influencer marketing in Pakistan needs to resonate with the local weather, local festivals and local shopping trends. A content piece promoting layered winter wear as seen in New York would not work as effectively with a local shopper looking for an Eid ensemble.
Therefore, we always insist that the creator creates their content in connection with some specific occasion. For example, for Eid collections we recommend creating content two-three weeks prior to the festival, wedding season collections starting from October, and winter shawls just after the first chilly air comes to North Punjab. We’ve observed that whenever we’ve aligned content with these dates, it has performed a lot better than any standard social media calendar and led to at least a twofold increase in bio link clicks.
Lastly, whenever possible, use the local language when captioning. Formal captions written in either only Urdu or English will never yield the same results as captions written in a colloquial mix of the two languages to resemble the mobile phone text messaging.
3. Track KPIs that prove real business impact.
Anyone can screenshot their Instagram likes and declare the campaign a success. We focus on metrics that tie directly to your revenue, retain existing customers and increase the lifetime value of new ones acquired through the campaign:
- Cost per click (CPC) on a swipe-up or bio link
- Promo-code redemptions from a specific creator
- Add-to-cart rate on the first 48 hours of a post
- Return on ad spend (ROAS) after including boosted posts
As a rule of thumb, a clothing account’s influencer marketing campaign should be able to score a CPC below PKR 15, a promo-code redemption rate above 3%, and a ROAS over 4x within the first month. We advise replacing or re-negotiating the terms of the contract for any campaign underperforming the benchmark after two posts.
4. Give influencers creative freedom within a general scope.
A script written to sound like a legal document will be delivered in the voice of a lawyer. Your creators know your audience better than you, so let them have some freedom in how they present your message. Giving them a general idea of what you want to say and how you plan to say it is all that is needed. This could be as simple as a short paragraph or even a bullet list with three or four major points.
That said, creative freedom within a brief framework is one thing, but every creator should also know:
- The price you expect them to quote on camera
- Hashtags and a reminder to tag your brand
- And a short list of claims to avoid, e.g. exaggerated fabric quality
This way, you get authentic content from people who know how to talk to their consumers without burning bridges in the process.
5. Combine Instagram reach with TikTok’s fast growth.
Instagram is still the dominant social media network for clothing brand influencers in Pakistan, but TikTok has seen a faster rise in shopping users over the last two years. Gen Z buyers in the target age of 18-24 spend the highest amount of time on TikTok among all social platforms, and a try-on haul there gets hundreds of thousands of views within days.
Our recommendation to our clients usually is to invest around 60% in Instagram influencers and 40% in TikTok for clothing brands, but then reallocate the budget in six weeks depending on which platform has a better CPA. The two social media networks will have similar content (since Reels and TikTok videos are basically the same), so the increased 60% budget allocation will not raise production costs.
6. Pay influencers fairly and always on time.
When you’re working with influencers in Pakistan, word gets around fast about who pays well and on time. A brand with a reputation of being fair and transparent about budgets and compensation can expect the cream of the crop to work with them, while brands that try to undercut their influencers will have to work with whoever is left.
Establish clear payment terms for every influencer you work with, preferably within 7-14 days of content being up online, and ensure that everyone you work with knows this, even if it’s a smaller creator. It’s not only the right thing to do, it will also give you access to the best influencers for your next campaign, since they’re likely to stick with you if they know they’ll get paid properly and on time.
Grow Your Apparel Brand With The SquarePeg’s AI-Powered Marketing
Running a full-time influencer marketing operation in parallel with all the other tasks required to operate a clothing brand can pull a company’s attention in several directions at once.
The SquarePeg offers AI-powered digital marketing services that take care of the research into the creators, planning of the content calendars, and performance tracking to free up a brand’s team to focus on their core duties, such as designing and selling clothes.
By taking care of the most time-consuming and repetitive parts of the influencer outreach, sales growth, and ad performance tracking, The SquarePeg’s marketing services allow brands to get the best value out of their ad spend and operate more efficiently.
