Content Marketing in the Fashion & Beauty Industry

The first step to developing a winning content strategy is to create a profile that accurately describes your company, your audience, and your marketing goals. This is the best way to get organized and ensure that you have a clear vision to move forward. Generally speaking, this company profile should answer the following questions:

• What services or products do you offer?
• Who do you want to reach with your content?
• What does your voice or brand sound like? Casual or formal?
• What are your marketing goals as a fashion & beauty brand?

Having these questions answered and ready for any potential writers or marketers you add to your team is essential to the success of your content. Here at Scripted, we require all our customers to fill out a company profile answering these questions so our writers know exactly what their clients want and what they are trying to achieve with their content.

Now that you have a generalized outline, it's time to get more specific about your goals. These goals should be both long- and short-term. For instance, an example of a short-term goal could be to gain 2,000 subscribers on Instagram while boosting engagement to over 50%. An example of a long-term goal could be to generate lots more traffic to your website by gaining 100,000 website visitors per month. No matter what your goals are, take the time to write them down and work towards them. While there's some value in being realistic, with great content you may meet or even exceed your own expectations.

So, for instance, if you have a sustainable beauty brand, your marketing goals may be to become a highly recognizable brand that caters to girls and women of all ages. This means your marketing goals would be to create content that attracts ladies of all ages who care about creating a more sustainable planet. The type of content you create could be anything from blog posts and pictures, to videos and more. Consider "unboxing" videos or how-to videos showcasing actual customers using your products, or even make-up tutorials.

In order to properly market to your target demographic, you first need to know who they are. What qualities make them unique? What's important to your audience? Your answers help you create the perfect buyer persona.

To create a buyer persona:

• Search your contacts database: This will help you better understand how certain types of people are finding and viewing your content. Are they going to your website from Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc.? The method in which they find your content tells you a lot about the customers you are already attracting.
• Gather more information: After searching your database to uncover trends, you may discover that you need more information about your customers. This provides the perfect opportunity to reach out. For instance, if you're having trouble figuring out the average age of your customers, you can simply add a field on your sign-up forms that requests their age.
• Interview customers: If you need a more direct approach to getting information about your customers, you can reach out to them to interview them. As an incentive, you can offer them products, services, or discounts to answer a few questions. Interviews can be held over Zoom or through a simple online survey. ‍
• Grab a template: Once you have gathered enough information, you can simply search for free buyer persona templates. This will allow you to take the information you've gathered and create a persona that helps you understand your target customers better.
  

Now that you have created your buyer persona, this should enable you to better understand their needs and how your products can help fulfill them. For instance, if you have a beauty brand for all ages, your target customers could turn out to be mothers who enjoy using natural products and use beauty rituals as a way to bond with older daughters or just have some precious "me" time. Therefore, their needs could be finding products that are safe for both moms and daughters of all ages, while also providing them with a safe, non-toxic way to beautify themselves regularly.

By researching comparable fashion and beauty brands, you will get a better idea about the types of content you want to create for your brand. Search Google, YouTube, and the Big 3 social platforms to see what types of content are trending. For instance, if you find a bunch of people laughing and sharing beauty makeover videos, you might create a series of makeover videos that feature mothers and daughters. Tutorials and how-to videos also seem to be evergreen in popularity.

Checking out your competition is also a way to figure out the type of content that's currently popular. It's also great for discovering the types of content you don't want. For instance, if you see a fashion page that is constantly posting pictures that don't get many likes, seem to have low engagement, or otherwise make the brand appear unprofessional or even off-putting, you may want to make a note not to include that type of content on your page.

Now it's time to nail down the type of content you want to create. Some options are:

• Ebooks: Ebooks or electronic books are essentially PDFs that users can download, either directly from your website or from a link to your site. If you want to create eBooks that are useful, write about a subject that people already want to learn about. For instance, you can create an eBook that gives tips on how to give yourself makeovers at home. This eBook can also include links to the products, links to videos with more information about those products, and even discounts for your subscribers.
• Interviews: Interview professionals or influencers in fashion and beauty that can give your audience first-hand knowledge and tips.
• Long-form blog posts*: Long-form blog posts are typically over (or at least) 700 words, while most of them are 1,200 words or more. You can write these blogs on just about anything that's currently trending or useful to your audience. For instance, write a long-form blog post on the current trends in the beauty industry or the changes in beauty standards over a period of time.
• Infographics: Infographics are cool, visual ways to present data and other useful information in a colorful way. Many sites enjoy creating these because they allow their followers to receive a lot of information at a glance, and they're easily shareable.
• Email courses: These are essentially courses you create that can help your customers learn new information and/or a new skill. For instance, you could create an email course that shows your customers how to do a proper manicure, step-by-step. Obviously, this can also be a great way to introduce your products or services.
• Explainer videos: These videos help your customers better understand how to use the products you offer. For instance, if you offer a face mask, you could create an explainer video to show your customers how to apply it, how long to leave it on, and how to remove it. Offer before-and-after photos on Pinterest or Instagram to show the product's efficacy.
• Case studies: If you are offering a cutting-edge product or service, you could create case studies to show why consumers should try your product. For instance, if you have a natural product that promotes soft skin, you could create a case study that shows your customers how many people have used it and the results they achieved with testimonials and before-and-after pics.
  

Now that you've figured out who you are marketing to and the type of content you want to create, it's time to find a fashion and beauty content writer. Consider the following:

• Figure out where to find them: The first thing you need to do is figure out where to find the writers you need. Are you going to search on social media, use a job posting site to find in-house writers to onboard, or a content creation platform for professional writers? No matter what method you choose, you need to be sure it will lead to finding writers who are qualified to create the content you need. You should also keep in mind that when it comes to choosing high-quality content writers, you get what you pay for. If a writer quotes you a price that seems too good to be true, it probably is.
• Create a job description: Your job description should include text that explains the types of content you need and their subject matter. It should also tell the writer the style and tone of the content. Also, if this is going to be a recurring job, you should let them know how frequently you want new content created.
• Vet the writers: No matter where you find your writers, you must be sure to vet them. Ideally, you would stick to just one or a handful of writers. This ensures that your content is all relatively uniform in terms of voice, style, tone, etc. Properly vetting writers includes asking them about their experience (also, request samples, if possible) and rates. Putting together a brand book can help during the writer hiring phase, as it showcases your brand's style, voice, and tone. With your brand book, a professional writer can nail your brand's intention.