Planning Your Content
Regardless of the time of year - your content should always have a strategy. Otherwise, you are unable to measure the return on investment.
You need to be asking; What are you aiming to achieve? How well did you achieve it? And what would you change next time to ensure higher success? This should be your thought process throughout the entire year.
However, if you are a brand which will benefit from the increased customer activity throughout the final quarter of the year - it is now that you need to be taking what you have learnt (from seasons and years past) and start to implement it.
When building a monthly strategy, we focus on 5 key focus;
Your Customers - new and loyal.
Your Product - the variety.
The Data - what you have learnt.
Forward Planning - what you know will be coming.
And, your Content.
Content is what we will be walking through here. The variety of content you must create each month ensures you are building a well-nurtured audience. One that, when prompted, will be encouraged to make purchases.
Here we’ll discuss the five focuses we look at when creating content for the brands we support..
Engaging Content
Content that will encourage your audience to “physically” engage with you (comments on social media) - or emotionally engage. This is mainly due to the content being relatable. Whether that is copywriting which resonates with their aspirations or aligns with a problem they are experiencing, they need to feel a connection. It could be content that allows them to “see” more into the brand; we know from post-pandemic data that consumers want to buy from people and brands they connect with.
Ensuring that you allow your customer to “engage” with you or your produce - rather than continually selling to them is vital.
Selling Content
This brings us to the most obvious form of content yet, often poorly executed within independent businesses. The purpose of selling content is not to say, “please buy this”. The aim of selling content is to fuel your audience with all the relevant information so they decide, “I want to buy that”. Independent brands are far more passionate about their product than some corporate retailers - but cannot portray that enthusiasm in a way that becomes infectious to those who enter their stores.
Value Driven Content (Saveable)
On social media, this content would be called saveable - to encourage followers to “save it” - often still seen as the most recognised compliment in the eyes of the algorithm as being “good” content. Across your email and website content - this is known as value-driven or serving content. Its purpose is to a) allow you to talk to your audience without selling - and b) elevate you within your industry as an expert.
Community Driven Content
This form of content puts your customer at the centre. It can be customer feedback and reviews; nothing is more powerful than a current customer praising your product. It can be a topic that encourages your audience to participate in a conversation or discussion—may be asking for their thoughts on a current product - or a new product coming soon. The purpose is to allow your online space to be a place of collaboration between the brand and its shoppers.
Trending Content
This type of content will often change based upon what we’re told either a) the algorithm is looking for - at present, this is video content on Social Media such as Instagram. Or b) what you believe your audience is resonating with at that moment in time. This can sometimes be harder to deliver. Every brand, product or service based can achieve the previous points. Often a “trending” style of content can be more difficult within some businesses. However, we always encourage our clients to monitor the return on the investment. If it is seeing great results, it will be worth the extra effort to create that style of content. If the results aren’t being seen - the box needs to be ticked, but not to the point of exhausting time and resources unnecessarily.
With this in mind, you should now be able to work out your content strategy for those peak selling windows. Preparation is key. You need to layer this strategy into your marketing 90 days before you wish to see increased results. Are you reading this and know it makes sense, see what you need to be doing - but are still trying to figure out where to start, what to create and how to execute? Then please reach out to a member of our team to discuss which service options could support you.