How To Break Into Fashion Marketing
The Fashion industry offers exciting opportunities for marketers who love Fashion and want to turn that passion into a career. But breaking into Fashion marketing can feel challenging without a clear path.
This post lays out practical steps to help you build frame your relevant skills, build new ones, gain experience, and connect with the right people to start your journey as a Fashion marketer.
It's not about your Fashion Experience, it's about their Needs
Having worked for multiple industries without prior experience and still able to drive triple digit growth, I can tell you not every hiring manager is expecting an extensive history in the industry.
Think about the way that job roles are opened. The annual Business Goals are released, these are tied to the Operating Plan, this is tied to the Marketing Strategy and the projects that need to be worked on or delivered.
If the Business and the Marketing team currently do not have the internal skills to deliver on those projects, they need to source those skills externally.
Keyword: skills.
They can find millions of people passionate about Fashion. But not everyone will have the skills they need.
"THEY LOVED IT! They were impressed with the comprehensive deck! All thanks to you! Also [the manager and peer to the role] were floored and slacked my referral saying [...] they really love my level of data and depth" - Providing panel presentation feedback. Largest retailer in the World.
Target Specific Roles in Fashion Marketing
In the current job market where industry changes are very difficult due to the sheer volume of candidates, focus your job search on positions that match your skills and interests almost 100%, it's not impossible to get a more senior role, but you may need to consider a horizontal move as well.
The closer match you are to the skills required, the less important the industry experience. But this means you need to have very impressive results to show for those skills, highly relevant not only to the job description, but to the conversations you will have during the interview process where you will find out more about their Objectives and Business Goals (make sure you ask!).
And that section that mentions "nice to have", those skills are a must have in this market. and you need to have your data-driven achievements ready to tackle those in the recruitment stage.
Use Transferable Experience to Your Advantage
Many fashion companies value marketers who bring fresh ideas from other industries although this may highly depend on the manager and how much of a visionary they are and based on the Business Goals.
This is why is is absolutely key that you understand the Business Goals to the detail during your interviews, so you can tie your prior experience to how these can be achieved and how you are different from the other 1,000 candidates applying for the same role.
I'll give you one of my examples of how I landed a role in Fashion.
For my role they needed someone that could help developing a Global strategy. They needed someone who could collaborate with the different departments and enable it. They needed someone that would understand their point of view but also help them understand the wider Business Strategy and Goals and mobilize towards a unified approach to International Marketing and Media channels expansion. They needed someone who would ensure, over everything else, local customer understanding was incorporated into Media Plans. Because they needed to drive grow via market expansion but always ensuring it was done efficiently.
