Apparel brands who decide to follow the online path have opportunities to grow exponentially, even in such a competitive market. Small and mid sizes business have to be creative to fight against major players like Macy’s and Amazon.

Success doesn’t come overnight, and apparel companies should work hard to stand out in the crowd, attract visitors and convince shoppers to buy.

One of the most common strategies in generating leads to your website to later convert them into buyers is through content marketing.

Examples of Content Marketing

• Blogs – Several fashion brands have their blogs, where they share articles regarding styling tips, outfit ideas, advice on caring for clothing and so on.
• Newsletters – These strong allies can remind your customer about abandoned shopping carts, or highlighting the latest trends.
• Social media – often the sole component of a brand’s content strategy. It gives you a chance to show off looks, styles and engage directly with the customers. Campaigns asking users to share their outfits and creations are usually a great approach.
• Videos – On YouTube or other platforms, videos can include runaway shows and general topics on clothing and style.

How to Succeed with Content Marketing

Fashion and content marketing have co-existed for a long time. Fashion printed magazines are proof of that. When the internet came, nothing was more natural than to start developing content to now so-called lifestyle blogs, online magazines, and social media. Although this might seem a blessing, brands need to put some extra effort to develop a strong strategy and leverage competitive content.

Check some of the following tips while preparing your strategy plan.

Your Brand’s Identity Should Be Concise

The mission, values and target audience of your brand will be the driving force behind your content marketing strategy. All your future efforts should be consistent with your company’s “soul” and focused on who your customers are. Don’t confuse your target audience with different messages and positioning. People will eventually lose interest when they notice a brand does not know what it stands for.

Know Your Target Audience

To engage with your potential customers, you need to know who they are. Demographics are essential, but it is not all. Identify what kind of content your audience generates and likes to consume, and where they do it. Understand their language, values, and interests. Also, check which influencers, fashion blogs and YouTube channels your audiences relate the most.

Create Buying Personas

If you run a T-shirt business for example, although everyone wears it, not everyone will specifically be interested in your brand or product. It is crucial to narrow your audience and profile your ideal customer based on what you are offering. Creating buying personas are one of the steps that will help you throughout your entire content strategy and will guide your decisions about where to engage, which content formats and message to use. A buyer persona is the representation of an ideal customer, which can be semi-fictional or based on customer’s interviews, surveys, and sales data.

Define Your Goals and Metrics

Content marketing can help you achieve several objectives, depending on what stage your brand is. Your plan might involve increasing your brand’s awareness, engagement, customer acquisition or support selling. Define your goals and metrics, and always check if your efforts are bringing the expected results.

Don’t Be Too Promotional

Focus on delivering quality content and in trying to connect with your customer. Remember that content is not the same as advertising or promotion.

Share Your Brand’s Story

Sharing details on how you built the company, and its success and failures build trust and makes your customer feel closer to you. Offer sneak peeks into your business, how the latest collection was created, manufacturing process and so on. These personal stories help to build your brand’s image to the customer and standing out.

Encourage Your Customers to Share Their Stories

When a customer shares his experience with a brand, it shows to peers what they also could achieve. You can use this authentic and cheap strategy encouraging your customers to share their looks and leave reviews on your website after purchase.

Have The Buyer’s Journey In Mind

The process before a customer decides to buy from you is “The Buyer’s Journey.” This process consists of four stages: awareness, consideration, decision, and customer. You should have this in mind before creating a piece of content. Utilizing the correct type of content on each buyer’s stage can influence your leads and convert them into customers.

Extra Tip – Work with Influencers

Influencers already have a social standing with your target audience, and they can advocate on behalf of your brand. Partnerships with influencers may vary, and it is expected an exchange of benefits in this process. Best results come when the influencer includes your product on their daily lives, organically and not too sales-pushy.

In Conclusion

E-commerce can be highly competitive, but with the right tools and strategies, your business can thrive. Marketing content can help you build your brand image and drive sales without the need for high investments in traditional media. Keep learning from your competitors, be always updated on new technologies and stay ahead in the curve.

The post How Online Apparel Stores Succeed with Content Marketing appeared first on Relevance.

These plans can take a little while to make if you’re working on a truly fantastic content marketing plan. After all, most of the time you have to start with a content audit and then move onto consider aspects such as your audience. Then, of course, you have to implement new content that matches your strategy.

However, it isn’t always all toil for an immediate payoff. Instead, many times, businesses create their content marketing plan only to run into barriers preventing them from implementing it as seamlessly as they want to. Some marketers try and infuse compulsory acquisition as a part of their content marketing plan but whether it can really deliver results or not is debatable. That’s why, in this article, we are going to look at 5 common barriers that you might run into when you are implementing your content marketing plan and how you can break through them and move forward.

Fear of Spending

If you are a small business, the thought of putting money into a plan can be scary. After all, the majority of small businesses fail in part because they don’t make a profit that outweighs the costs they endure. After all, a new content marketing plan could include training so employees can learn the new plan or even extra labor costs to get your content up to speed.

However, you can’t let your fear of failure hold you back. One thing that many small businesses need to come to term with is that some risk has to be taken to get the results you want. After all, if you don’t take steps to market your content, no one is going to find it. In turn, if no one finds your content, you might not get any business at all.

The idea of having a successful small business without sticking your neck out is a great one but ultimately rather unattainable as well. As a small business owner, you need to take note that there are certain risks that you need to take and you need to know when the right time to take them is.

Lacking a New Model

When you implement a new content marketing plan, it can be tempting to write up your plan and leave it at that – a simple report detailing the changes you think need to be made.

However, that probably isn’t going to lead to a smooth or easy transition. Instead, take the time to work up a new workflow model. This way, employees at the company will have a template to follow while they commit the process to memory.

You could always work without a model but you will probably end up with confusion in the office. Even though crafting a model can take a few extra hours, that time spent working doesn’t even compare to the time it would take to fix every employee mistake as they learn the new method.

The Process Isn’t Working

When companies implement new content marketing plans, they often run into a similar problem – friction in the transition period. Even if you have a solid model to follow, there is still a learning curve. After all, you are working through a period where everyone is learning a new plan.

So, is this just something you have to endure? Well, part of it is patience. You do have to give your employees time to learn the new process and implement it properly. However, if this carries on for weeks or months, you might find yourself in a position where you need to give your employees a push in the right direction.

Another thing that can help immensely, though, is documenting your content marketing plan. With detailed documentation, it will be easier for employees to see what they need to change and help them learn how to make those changes more quickly.

Finally, to avoid this, try to make an efficient plan from the start. Imagine how your employees and coworkers will react to the change and account for that. If you think they’ll struggle with a particular concept, do your best to break that down into simpler terms.

Lack of Resources

Up to this point, we have referred to the employees in a company learning the new method. What if, though, you don’t have any employees? After all, for many small businesses, they have only the owner and perhaps a couple others who were influential in getting the business running.

Of course, this might seem easier because there is less friction in the transition because there are less people trying to learn a new process. On the other hand, though, there are also less people to pick up the workload necessary with the new plan.

The best answer to this is to plan carefully and prioritize. If you only have a certain amount of time a day to get things done, start with what’s most important and work your way down the list.

Change Is Hard

Finally, any sort of change can be difficult to handle. Not only can it be difficult to learn but individuals in your company may resent a change in the way things are run. When this issue comes up, what can you do? After all, you can’t avoid change and still be a dynamic enough company to succeed.

To counter this, you need to prove the change is for the better. When you present the new plan, be ready to field questions on why the change is being made and what about it makes the newer plan the better option. The more your coworkers and employees feel the change is a necessary one, the more likely they are to welcome it with open arms.

The post 5 Common Barriers to Implementing a Content Marketing Plan appeared first on Relevance.