How long has it been since you thought about your marketing content? Do you need some additional energy brought to it? Have you seen peaks and valleys in site engagement (time on site and bounce rate)?
If you feel like your marketing content is tiresome, you are likely not alone. Approaches to marketing change frequently because we all move at a fast pace these days. Nothing stays the same for long. Making adjustments are not easy and a lot of time and consideration goes into updating your marketing approach.
However, it’s always a good idea to re-examine your audience to understand where they are in their buyer’s journey and what content is a good fit. This takes time but is a worthy investment. The key thing to consider is that shoppers you engage with have various perspectives, experience, and desires. Lifestyle content is a way to appeal to shoppers who are moved to action based upon the dream that your brand provides to them.
One thing to consider is incorporating lifestyle content into your social and blog content. This idea goes further than the call to action strategy, which simply tells your customer what to do. (Think of the phrase, “Click the link to learn more.”). Lifestyle content helps motivate and engage.
Think about what your customer likes to do in their free time, their age, family, entertainment, and where they go for fun. You want to find out any overall interests or lifestyle choices of your buyers, just like you’re trying to build a long-lasting relationship, and create content that appeals to that side of them. This information can educate your choice of content.
Now that you know more about lifestyle content, how do you incorporate it into your marketing? What about any social media pages?
Using Lifestyle Content to Generate Leads
Opening up Emotions
Think about how you want someone to feel or how your customers likes to feel. An example to show this emotion is Ford truck commercials. They show men working construction, on ranches and hauling large machines like bulldozers and tractors because they know exactly who their audience is. They use this imagery and scenery that portrays a hardworking, tough lifestyle.
Relation in Interest
This one can be relatively simple to create because you more than likely already know what your typical consumer’s interests are beyond your products. As an example of how this is done we can look at the brand Patagonia. Most people that wear the brand’s clothing enjoy outdoor sports, being outside and staying active and fit. So, it makes sense for them to use photos of people rock climbing, mountain tops, hiking trails displaying fall foliage and a camping setup in the middle of winter. They want to relate to their customers as much as they can because their consumers can envision themselves using all of Patagonia’s merchandise.
Show You or Your Team Having the Same Interests
Here is a “behind the scenes” idea. If anyone is engaging in any activities that are similar to what your audience is interested in, we can use Patagonia again, take some photos of the experience and post them to your social media pages. It’s a great way to get your name out and promote the lifestyle. If you own your own outdoor marine or power sports store and you have photos of you ATVing, racing, kayaking or anything similar, hang them up in your store. People enjoy being able to relate to who they’re buying from, and it means a lot when they see you enjoy life outside of work, too. This may seem like a small, overlooked task, but small details matter when enhancing your brand.
Lastly, you can have a branding session among your colleagues. Decide what your company stands for and what makes it special (often referred to as your value proposition). Being able to clearly identify your value proposition will assist in creating content that your customers can relate to.
Then, consider your audience, including their hobbies and interests. You can use this information to inform engaging content that will keep your audience tuned in.
This isn’t to say that traditional, call to actions (e.g. contact us, get a quote, etc.) should be completely dismissed. With the right ratio of these two types, you’ll be able to increase traffic and clicks to your website.
Lifestyle content adds value because you’re appealing directly to your target audience’s interests, and that will keep them engaged. Once you get this point across, you’ve probably earned significant respect and certainly a degree of loyalty. This type of effort doesn’t require a call to action, and could even be considered pushy if you add one. But, if your customer planned on buying something from your website, you’ll still gain traffic to your site by adding in a simple link to it.
If you want lifestyle content for your business to work, it’s about being able to align your brand’s values with your customer’s values and sort of becoming those values.
Want to get started creating lifestyle content for your company? Come to the experts! We can help you get more leads by truly connecting with your target audience. See how we can grow your business together by getting a free quote from one of our marketing experts today.
