Content marketing is one of the most effective ways for your brand to reach your target audience, grow brand awareness, and boost sales, but where do you start? I'm going to explain the building blocks of great content marketing for your outdoor brand.
Strong and Engaging Brand Story
Having a strong, engaging brand story is the first thing you need to consider when it comes to content marketing, even before thinking about things like your target audience and the type of content you want to create.
For anyone who doesn’t know, your brand story is a detailed narrative that fully encapsulates everything your brand/business stands for.
This includes key facts like how your outdoor brand started, your brand mission but also, the feeling that you want your brand to portray. Some brands want to evoke feelings of empowerment to women, a sense of adventure, or sustainability, something that might apply to your outdoor brand.
Unlike ‘traditional marketing’, which aims to showcase or push specific areas of your business, such as the products, your brand story must inspire an emotional reaction.
It's also important to consider your customer when developing your brand story and how your product or services relates to them. Specifically, how they relate to their pain points.
Think about what specific problem or 'pain point' your customers have, then think about how your products/services help resolve those problems. Finally, think about the results your customer will see after working with you.
If you can encompass these three points throughout your brand story, it will be easier for your customers to understand the benefits of your outdoor brand. It will also make it a lot easier when you’re trying to think of and create your content.
Cohesive Marketing Strategy
A key building block for any business is creating a cohesive marketing strategy.
A detailed marketing strategy will allow you to get into the ‘nitty-gritty of your business and help you to focus your marketing efforts on specific areas that will get you results.
Remember, every marketing strategy is different and will vary depending on the business and target market, so do your best to make it bespoke to your brand rather than following the same old template. You can go into as much detail as you want but as a minimum, your marketing strategy should include the following:
- Target Market
- SWOT Analysis
- Brand Story
- SMART Objectives
- Content Plan
- Distribution Plan
- Marketing Budget
- Timeline
Consistent Social Media Content
A big part of your marketing strategy should be your content and the marketing channels you’ll push your content across, one of the key channels being social media.
Even if you create the most engaging content in the world, if you’re not consistent, you won’t see much growth, or if you do, it’ll be extremely slow!
Another important thing to remember is social media isn’t going to give you instant results, it can take months or even years for brands to establish their online presence.
Think of the long game when it comes to your social media and content creation.
You should be posting quality content every couple of days across your platforms as a minimum, drip-feeding key marketing messages to your target audience.
This content could be created for a specific purpose or to document your business's journey.
Lifestyle Photography that Captures Your Outdoor Brands, Products and Services
Quality is important in marketing, especially when it comes to photography.
Not only do people want to see more content from their favourite brands, but they also want to see quality content. If the quality of your content is questionable, you’ll see a huge drop in engagement, sales, and followers.
Every few weeks or months (depending on your brand and strategy), you need to be taking quality lifestyle photography that captures your brand, products and/or services.
Although professional photography isn’t cheap, it’s worth every penny.
If you can’t afford a huge photoshoot from day dot, start to build a bank of photography over time that you can use throughout your marketing, whether that’s on social, on your website or in print. Think little and often.
A lot of the photos you capture can be reused time and time again but don’t forget how important it is to refresh photography on a regular basis if you want to keep your audience engaged and invested in your outdoor brand.
Videos that Tell Engaging Stories and Enhance Human Connections
Unless you’ve been living in a bubble, you will know just how powerful video content is.
Social media platforms are heavily featuring video content because it’s quickly become the most popular type of media.
Although every brand should be creating video content, don’t just create videos for the sake of it. Create video content that tells engaging stories and enhances human connections.
Everyone wants to be able to relate to their favourite brands, and what better way to tell your story or the story of your customers than through video?
Don’t be afraid to play around with video. Create DIY-style video content yourself but also get professional videos made. Creating a mixture of video styles for your content marketing will give you the best results.
