Make Good Fashion: A Fashion Business Podcast · Jasmine Rennie

The BEST Marketing Strategies for Emerging Fashion Brands with Samantha Mellone of Coco Marketing

·55 min·3 clips

Samantha says emerging designers should focus on design and outsource marketing because they already do everything else.

Jasmine Rennie frames the episode around a problem she hears often from fashion founders: how to get more visible and reach more customers so sales can grow. Samantha Malone brings a background in marketing for larger consumer brands and turns that into practical advice for emerging labels. The conversation starts with trust capital. UGC shows up as an early proof point. Reviews matter too. So does a credible feature or mention in a respected publication or trusted fashion blog. PR is treated as a signal that can help a brand feel real before anyone has bought anything. The discussion stays close to the realities of fashion marketing rather than drifting into theory. Samantha keeps pushing on the question of why a customer should care. She argues that a brand saying it is sustainably made is not enough on its own. It has to say something more specific and more memorable. The example of a hat maker makes that concrete. The brand has a lot going for it, including ethically made materials, vintage deadstock, and hand-finishing on every hat. Those details give people a reason to pay more. But if they never make it onto the website or product page, they may as well not exist. That point leads into the importance of building the foundation before chasing growth. The episode treats marketing as layered work. A brand needs a story. It also needs to tell that story more than once. Samantha notes how easy it is to assume a single post will carry the message, even though only part of the audience will see it at any given time. Repetition is not a flaw here. It is part of how a brand gets remembered. The episode also makes room for channel-specific thinking. SEO comes up as a real opportunity for a niche product with search-friendly variation, like hats in multiple shapes and trims. The goal is not just to make content. It is to match the language customers already use when they search. That makes the product easier to find and easier to understand. Retail appears as another useful lever. The episode suggests that putting a brand in front of customers through the right retail context can support the same trust-building work as PR or social proof. The broader lesson is simple enough: marketing for fashion brands works best when the story shows up in more than one place. Jasmine keeps the conversation accessible by asking questions that pull process out of the guest. Samantha answers in a way that stays practical and supportive. The episode never loses sight of the emerging founder trying to figure out what to do next. By the end, the message is plain. Know what makes the brand worth caring about. Put that message where people can actually see it. Then keep saying it across the channels that fit the business. The episode's value lies in how it connects branding, content, and distribution without making any one of them sound optional. It is especially useful for founders who need to turn a good product into a clearer market position. The conversation is most useful when the next step is not more inspiration, but better execution. It is a good fit for listeners who want a practical marketing reset for a fashion brand. It is not for listeners looking for a trendy growth hack or a shortcut around the basics of brand story and foundation.

As heard by us

A grounded look at how fashion brands build trust before they try to scale.

It treats fashion marketing as a trust problem rather than a visibility trick. The piece is strongest when it moves from UGC, reviews, social proof, and PR to the harder question of whether the brand story is clearly stated on the site and repeated often enough to be noticed.

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Why you'd press play

Build trust first, then make people care enough to click.

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