Why Your Suit Business Marketing Is Stuck in 2018 (And Bleeding Money)

Gentlemen, I'm gonna tell you something that might sting a little.

If you're still running your marketing like it's 2018, you're not just wasting money, you're actively funding your competitors' success while wondering why your appointment book stays empty and your cash register does not ring as often as you want to.

Here's what happened, and why everything changed...

The Party's Over (And Most Tailors Missed the Memo)

Back in 2013-2018, online advertising was like finding money on the street. You could throw up a Facebook ad, target "men interested in suits" within 25 miles, and watch the appointments or store visitors roll in.

Those were the golden days. Low competition, dirt-cheap clicks, and customers who'd become clients from a single ad.

But then something massive happened that killed the party: every big company on earth finally woke up and realized the arbitrage opportunity was there.

Multibillion-dollar corporations suddenly started pouring their budgets into digital advertising. And it wasn't just your direct "competitor" companies – we're talking about businesses in completely unrelated industries. Real estate agencies, photography studios, luxury car dealers, insurance companies, banks, cosmetics brands – everyone realized they could get cheap attention online.

The law of large numbers meant these massive players didn't need to be efficient or smart with their spending. They could just throw enormous budgets previously used for TV ads, radio or offline advertising at the problem and get higher returns.

The result? Ad costs for everyone went through the roof. What used to cost you $2 per click now costs $15. What used to generate leads for $50 each now costs $300+.

And here's the kicker: most suit businesses are still trying to play the same game with the same strategies, just with 10x higher costs. If something didn't work, the most common solution is to just change the agency or hire another freelancer, thinking it was their fault, and try again, doing the same thing....

That's like trying to win a street race against a Ferrari while you're still driving a bicycle and just changing bicycles instead of getting into a proper race car.

Why the Old School Direct Sales Approach Is Making Tailors Go Out of Business

You know the approach I'm talking about. The traditional marketing playbook that promises you can "scale to 7-figures" or "get X amount of leads in Y days" with cookie-cutter templates.

"Just drive clicks to a home page, get them to book an appointment, close them on the phone/meeting/walk-in visit!"

Sounds simple, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong.

Here's why this approach is killing suit businesses

1.The Volume Trap

Traditional direct sales funnels need massive amounts of traffic to work. You're trying to generate thousands of page visitors per month, hoping 2-3% will convert, and some of them will actually buy. But here's the problem – there are only so many people in your market who need a suit right now.

So every lead you generate makes the next one more expensive. You're literally bidding against yourself in an auction that gets more expensive every day.

2.The Dead Lead Cemetery

With the old approach, you pay for traffic, push people through your "conversion process," and if they don't buy immediately, they're dead to you. You've got this graveyard of page visitors and leads you paid good money for, just sitting there doing nothing.

3.The Pushy Sales Dependency

Because you're pushing cold traffic to immediate conversion, and buying intent is low, you need to be quick to engage. Someone calls or writes an email? Answer instantly or you lose a sale. Busy servicing a client, and a walk-in visitor wants to learn more? If you don't have extra staff to take care of that, you just lost a sale...

This whole old-school approach requires expensive infrastructure/extra staff just to hopefully sell to the leads you're overpaying for.

It's a losing game. And the tailors who are winning right now? They're playing by completely different rules.

The New Game: Building Your Flywheel Instead of Burning Cash on Funnels

The smartest suit business owners have figured out something the old school marketers don't want you to know: you don't need hundreds of leads per month. You need a few more of the right leads, nurtured properly, and converted efficiently.

It's the difference between a funnel (where leads go in one end and most fall out the bottom) and a flywheel (where every interaction builds momentum for the next).

Here's how the flywheel approach works for the suit industry businesses:

Instead of trying to convert strangers immediately, you have to focus on building relationships with people who might need your services someday. You provide value, showcase your expertise, and stay top-of-mind until they're ready to buy.

Think about it: when someone decides they need a custom suit, do they want to work with the business that's been bombarding them with "Please Book Now!" ads? Or the tailor they've been learning from, whose content they enjoy, who they already know and trust?

The Growth Investment Strategy That Actually Works

Here's a concept that'll change how you think about marketing: treat a percentage of your revenue as a "growth subscription fee."

Think about it this way: if you hire a salesperson/marketer, you pay them a salary because you want them to bring in more business. They're promoting you, getting meetings, organizing partnerships, publishing posts, sending emails, etc – all with the goal of getting more customers through your doors. Hiring that person isn't an expense; it's an investment in growth.

A growth subscription fee works the same way, except it's working for you 24/7 and is flexible and scalable.

Just like you set aside money for taxes, you should set aside a certain percentage of your monthly revenue that you feel comfortable with using for amplification of your message for the long term. Every business owner should determine their own percentage based on their situation and comfort level.

The results won't be instant. They won't be quick. But in a few months, you'll start seeing it pay off. And as soon as you see that it's working, you can re-evaluate this percentage and increase it as much as you see fit.

Most tailors either spend nothing on marketing (hoping referrals will magically multiply) or blow their marketing budget on expensive experiments. The smart approach is systematic reinvestment in proven strategies.

Your Secret Weapon

Here's something the big corporate players will never have: your personality.

Major suit retailers, e-commerce, and shopping malls can copy and even outcompete your prices. They can copy your services. But they can never copy your voice, your humor, your opinions, your unique way of seeing style and craftsmanship.

Your personality is your intellectual property. Your stories, your perspective on fit and fabric, your hot takes on men's style – that's what makes you irreplaceable.

When you consistently share your unique viewpoint through valuable content, you're not just marketing – you're building a personal brand that can't be commoditized.

The tailor who shares behind-the-scenes videos of his process, gives style advice with his own twist, tells stories about interesting clients (with permission) – he becomes the obvious choice when someone needs a suit.

Strategic Visibility: Being Everywhere Without Breaking the Bank

Here's a reality most tailors don't understand: even your own followers don't see most of your content.

Social media platforms show your posts to maybe 10-20% of your followers organically. (If you are lucky) That means 80% of the people who chose to follow you never see your best content.

The solution isn't posting more – it's amplifying your winners.

When you create content that performs well (high engagement, lots of comments, shares), that's your signal to boost it with a small advertising budget. You're not creating ads – you're ensuring your best organic content actually reaches your audience.

This approach costs a fraction of traditional advertising because you're not competing in expensive auctions for cold traffic. You're just making sure the people who already know you see your valuable content.

The Compound Effect of Relationship Marketing

Here's the beautiful thing about the flywheel approach: it gets more effective over time, not more expensive.

With traditional direct sales approaches, every month you're starting from zero, competing for the same expensive traffic. But with relationship marketing using the flywheel method, every piece of content builds on the last. Every follower becomes a potential referral source. Every email subscriber is an asset that appreciates over time.

You're not only getting leads – you're also building an audience. You're not only making sales – you're also creating a community of people who know, like, and trust you.

And when someone in that community needs a suit, or knows someone who does, guess who they think of first?

The Bottom Line: Evolution or Extinction

The suit industry is changing, whether you adapt or not. The tailors who cling to 2018 marketing strategies will keep burning cash and wondering why nothing works anymore.

But the ones who understand that modern customers want relationships, not sales pitches? They're building waiting lists while their competitors fight over scraps.

You can keep playing the old game and hoping things change. Or you can start building a marketing flywheel that compounds your success month after month.

Ready to Stop Wasting Money on Dead Marketing Strategies?

We spent years figuring out what actually works for suit businesses in today's market. I've seen what happens when tailors try to compete with corporate budgets using outdated strategies, and I've seen the results when they switch to relationship-based marketing.

If you're tired of throwing money at marketing, trying to make it work, and in return only seeing a hole in your cash flow, let's talk about building a system that actually works in 2025.

Apply for a FREE strategy session here:

https://calendly.com/sartorialdigital/45min

to see if our services are right for your suit industry business. We'll show you exactly how to build the kind of marketing flywheel that grows stronger and more profitable over time – without the massive budgets or crossed fingers.

To your success,

Andris