Want to make sure your ideal customers never pass your website by again? The best way to do that is with an epic content marketing tailored to your target audience’s needs.
Effective beauty content is the best investment you can make in your relationship with your target group because people buy from brands they already know and trust. We’ll show you how to develop an epic content marketing strategy that’s fun, fits you, and strengthens your expert status.
Why Do I Need A Content Marketing Strategy?
What do the online perfumery Douglas, the beauty brand Catrice Cosmetics, and Paula’s Choice skincare label have in common? They all provide their customers online with an entertaining mix of topics that sometimes more, sometimes less specifically revolve around their offerings.
When Douglas compiles tips for an uncomplicated everyday look in the “Beauty Stories” video format or Paula’s Choice provides information about the perfect skincare routine in its newsletter, this is part of a well-thought-out content marketing strategy.
Online perfumery kills two birds with one stone: it invests in customer loyalty and is rewarded with increased sales. By providing their customers with helpful content free of charge, beauty companies create trust in their brand and, at best, encourage them to discover their range. Those who feel inspired by the simple make-up look à la Douglas will find the links to all the products in the content tidbits and can shop directly.
Content marketing means picking up your target audience with helpful and entertaining content.
- In this way, you strengthen trust in your offering
- Enhance your image as an expert
- Cultivate relationships with your existing customers
- and, ideally, attract new prospects.
The epic content marketing strategy works like a roadmap and ensures that you stick to it long-term and publish high-quality content that reaches your desired audience.
Develop A Content Marketing Strategy In 7 Steps
Step 1: What Do You Stand For?
A content marketing strategy that fits you and feels precise needs your personality. Before you romp around on all channels and make wild posts, you should reflect on your company profile. What makes your beauty brand stand out? What goals do you want to achieve for your customers? It would help to focus on that as part of your marketing strategy.
Your Mission
Why did you start your beauty business back then? What inspires you and motivates you to keep going even when faced with challenges?
Your vision is to create a high-quality skincare line that everyone can afford. You may want to help your customers feel more comfortable in their skin again and appear more confident. Or do you want your offering to advocate for a more diverse concept of beauty?
Articulate the mission behind your beauty brand.
Step 2: What Makes Your Target Audience Tick?
With your content marketing strategy, you want to become visible to your target group and draw their attention to your offering. You can do this by diving deep into your buyer persona and their needs.
When defining your target group, focus on something other than demographic data such as age, profession, and marital status. It is more important to know your target audience’s wishes and everyday problems. That’s where you should start with your content production to provide helpful content.
- What beauty problem is your target group currently dealing with?
- What do they want most?
- What unsuccessful measures has she already taken to address her problem?
- What aspect of your offer is most interesting to them?
- How can you clear up any doubts they may have?
- Where do your customers look for answers? On which channels do you find them?
Step 3: What Goals Do You Want To Achieve With Your Content Marketing Strategy?
You alone decide what you want to achieve with your content marketing strategy – and above all, how you get there. After all, there are many ways to become more visible online, attract more customers, or revitalize your corporate image during rebranding.
You should also set the time frame for this so that it doesn’t stress you out and you feel comfortable with it. No beauty start-up needs to generate a 5-figure turnover in the first three months.
Once you’ve defined your primary goal as concretely as possible (e.g., two website inquiries per week or 200 new newsletter subscribers per month), it’s helpful to formulate several subgoals that will get you there. That way, you can focus all your energy on marketing efforts that will move you forward and keep your motivation high.
Possible goals of an epic content marketing strategy:
- more traffic to your blog
- more appointment bookings directly from your website
- more customer inquiries for your online seminar
- more followers on Instagram/LinkedIn/Facebook
- more subscribers to your beauty newsletter
Make Your Goals Measurable
No matter what you set out to achieve: Ideally, you’ll link your goal to a specific number, such as 1000 clicks to your website each month. This way, you can easily measure afterward if your marketing strategy is working or if you should rethink your approach.
If you have yet to reach your goals, this does not necessarily indicate that you have chosen the wrong marketing approach. Maybe your methods are promising, but your numbers are too high.
Therefore, formulate realistic goals that reflect where you currently stand with your beauty business. A freshly founded start-up naturally has an entirely different starting point than an established beauty salon.
Step 4: How To Find Hot Topics For Your Content Production
Let’s get to the heart of your epic content marketing strategy: exciting topics that match your interests AND those of your target audience. You’ve probably read online often to stick to your target audience strictly, but that’s only half the truth. If you’re listlessly slogging away at topics because you feel like you have to, your readers will feel it. And the quality of your content is likely to suffer as well.
What topics are you passionate about? What’s on your mind in your day-to-day business life? It’s better to plan your content and interests, building a bridge to your ideal customers. The perfect content mix consists of personal issues and your expert knowledge, which you package as helpful information tidbits for your community.
Stay Open To Experimentation.
That being said, as a content creator, you are allowed to experiment with your topics and don’t have to cater exclusively to your customers’ supposed expectations for an epic content marketing strategy. For sure, there are topics that only marginally touch your offer but are still interesting for your target audience. Surprise your readers now and then and infect them with your enthusiasm.
Step 5: Choose The Proper Channels
You now know what topics you want to share with your audience – but where and how do you want to distribute your content? Choosing the proper channels should be based not only on your target audience but, more importantly, on your personality.
You’re not comfortable speaking in front of a camera, but you love to write? Then instead of YouTube and TikTok, a blog or newsletter are much better suited to provide your customers with exciting topics about your business. Choose channels you feel comfortable with and where your target group regularly visits because even the best content marketing strategy will only succeed if you force something on yourself that doesn’t really suit you and, as a result, quickly lose interest in it.
Can I Become More Visible Without Social Media?
You may be worried your ideal customers won’t notice you without a constant social media presence. Then it would help if you realized that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to effective marketing. The dazzling world of Instagram reels and TikTok videos is just one of many ways to become more visible online, and it can only suit some.
An Example From Practice
Some time ago, we received a request from a customer who had been in an on-off relationship with Instagram for years. Time and again, there were gaping posting gaps over several months where she left the motivation because she wasn’t the type who liked to show off on social media. She also had yet to receive a single request on Instagram. But she still felt like she had to be present at all costs.
Your energy is valuable. So do it differently, and save it on fun and functional measures for your business. Instagram only works as a marketing channel if you invest your time in high-quality posts, experiment, and stay consistent.
The good news is that you can do it without it. You can use other channels to grow and drive your business without risking a revenue crunch. Stay true to yourself – and attract the people who really suit you and will buy from you.
Step 6: Implement Your Content
Once you’ve determined the content, formats, and channels for your content marketing strategy, it’s time for content creation. Your target group analysis pays off because successful content picks up your readers where they are right now.
That’s why you should also base your wording on your target group. What words do your customers use to describe their problems? How much do they understand about what you have to offer?
As a rule, it is best to avoid complicated technical terms, which can be off-putting in the worst case. After all, you want to encourage your clients to try your treatments, and that works best by remaining accessible.
More Structure Thanks To An Editorial Plan
At the very beginning, a loose collection of topics you can fall back on might do the trick. However, a well-developed editorial plan makes sense if you want to grow your beauty company.
This way, you can always keep track of the range of topics you cover, coordinate your content, prevent content gaps, and be better prepared for upcoming events in the beauty industry (holidays, events, etc.). A well-maintained editorial calendar becomes necessary as soon as you outsource your content production to an external copywriter or creator.
Here you can find tips on creating a functioning editorial schedule and reducing stress during content production.
How Much Free Content Makes Sense?
You may be wondering whether all this free content won’t eventually become unhealthy for your business. Doesn’t it hurt my business to give out my knowledge for free? But as a beauty service provider, you can only win by getting your expertise.
After all, your online content can never replace a direct appointment with you – but it creates trust and makes people want to work with you. Moreover, being transparent about your expertise signals openness and willingness to help, and that’s something that hardly any potential customer will hold against you.
Nevertheless, it makes sense to reserve certain content exclusively for paying customers. For example, if you have invested a lot of time and love in developing a skin analysis method or offer certain aspects of your knowledge as part of individual coaching sessions. So think about what you want to give your readers as a bonus and what you’d rather sell.
Step 7: Is Your Content Marketing Strategy Working?
How well is your content marketing strategy working? Of course, you should notice if one of your posts becomes a viral hit or you suddenly receive enthusiastic reader comments under your blog articles, where there was only yawning emptiness before.
But does this result in more order inquiries? Does your website traffic increase, and with it, your visibility? Are your newsletter subscribers growing steadily or stagnating? Critically review the numbers you set as part of your goal analysis at regular intervals.
Patience Pays Off
Nevertheless, your focus should be on more than just pure mathematics. In online marketing, specific effects are difficult to measure, but they can make a huge difference. Maybe your inbox fills up slowly, but you strengthen the perception of your (personal) brand through your content marketing strategy.
That way, your readers are repeatedly reminded that there is a suitable expert for their problem – you! And as soon as interested parties have passed through enough points of contact on their customer journey (according to the marketing rule of thumb, there are seven on average), their inquiry ends up with you in a roundabout way.
Take Your Customers’ Feedback Into Account.
You are welcome to get customer feedback to optimize your epic content marketing strategy. “How did you hear about me?” or “What convinced you to book an appointment with me?” are exciting questions you can ask your customers directly. Ask your regular customers about their content wishes for the future. This will not only inspire you but will also strengthen customer loyalty and give your target group the feeling that they have a say in the process.
Adapt Your Strategy
If your content marketing strategy needs to deliver the results you’re looking for, it’s time for some introspection. How can you make your content even better? At what point in the customer journey are you losing prospects, and why? Where can you get valuable feedback? Do you need professional support from a marketing expert to get your website up to speed?
Of course, you can optimize your marketing processes even if things are already going well. For example, through an improved workflow, a more diverse mix of topics, or automated postings. Keep experimenting with your strategy and revise it regularly because customer needs can change – and so can the demands on you as a content creator.
