Content is so readily available today in one form or another that we are exposed to it constantly. On our smartphones, advertisements plastered on the sides of buses, pop up ads, TV, there’s no getting away from the images, video, audio and text constantly vying for our attention.
Unconsciously we filter what we actually consume and this is really important when it comes to creation. When on the other end of the smartphone, it is essential that you are thinking about content critically and strategically in order to gain cut through.
Media creation is a huge part of the process, but that is just one step when it comes to building an effective Content Plan & Roll Out Strategy. This post will take a look at some of the key factors you need to consider when it comes to planning, developing and rolling out content to your audience.
Align content with your wider brand strategy
This may seem like a very obvious point, but it is still a really critical factor when it comes to your content production, especially in the context of sales associate learning.
Sales associates can make or break a sale for your brand. Either way, they certainly influence the feeling your customer has about their journey to your products. When producing content to train them this has to be aligned with the wider brand strategy.
Is there a key term or soundbite in your B2B and B2C marketing that is being used for this product line? If so, arm the sales associate with this vocabulary so it is instantly associated to your brand and gives the sales associate an arsenal of brand-relevant tools to utilize.
‘’We have found that the most efficient way to get retail staff comfortable speaking about their products in the style and language that we wanted them to was to utilise the same themes present in the consumer communications and highlight the way that sales associates could relay these in the conversations they were having with consumers’’ Vikcy Stickland, MD Brandwave GmbHn
Find your ‘red thread’
What core elements or single element are you running through a product’s marketing campaign? Can you instill this into your training content? This could be as simple as a specific buzzword or a piece of footage that is being used across B2B & B2C. Allow this thread to weave its way through your entire brand strategy. Sales associates will instantly recognize this as a Brand X content, by reinforcing the message and tone in your training content, that familiarity will manifest itself in high engagement and increased sales performance.
Use H2H (Human to Human) Communication
In our webinar series we regularly remind our delegates of the importance of understanding your audience, this is especially true in the context of sales associate training. A critical concept to consider is the move away from viewing your communication to sales associates as B2B or B2C, but as Human to Human (H2H) interaction.
Speaking to sales associates on a more human level is a great start in building the personal relationship you want store staff to feel with your brand. Content utilising H2H communication is much more likely to be watched, shared, understood and importantly – absorbed to the point that it can be transferred by your audience to your customer.
Relationship building is key to the success of your content as it will truly drive engagement. Speaking to sales associates in a manner and tone that they can relate to,, understand and replicate in a real shopping environment is going to make your brand stand out to them. In turn that will transfer to message delivery on the shop floor and a better sales experience.
One example of Human interaction can be found in a Brandwave Marketing campaign for Adidas. Their Tycane Pro range ran two parallel content strategies. One B2B and another B2C with a huge focus on H2H messaging. This ‘behind the scenes’ video is a great example of making the viewer feel like they are being ‘let in’ on something that otherwise they would not be a part of.
As you probably noticed in the video the product has some technical complexities, but the notion of behind the scenes approach really helps to make the content feel more personal and human- way more than if it was written out on a PDF or PowerPoint deck.
Phased Roll Out & Goal Setting
Timing is crucial when it comes to driving engagement with any content strategy and this is where your plan can really come into its own.
‘Your content can be as good as you can possibly make it, segregated well to all of your audience types, emotionally effective – but if you release all of your content at once, (which I have to say is quite a lazy approach) then you will not get as much engagement – it’s as simple as that’ Vikcy Stickland, MD Brandwave GmbHn
We always advise our brand partners that a phased release of content is much better than one huge upload of content that peaks in engagement in the first few months and then retains low engagement for the rest of the year.
Understandably there are times when you are handcuffed by season, product release date and holidays etc when the release of content is only relevant for that specific time. That being said, tiering the release of heritage information, year-round products, accessories and best practice content pieces is a great way to ensure you have an engaged audience constantly being fed information about your brand, rather than seeing huge peaks and troughs in engagement.
This is where goal setting is really important. Think not only about what you are trying to say with your content, but what outcomes do you want to see from it. Have short, medium and long-term goals in mind that you can measure your content’s success against. Maybe you want to have a huge spike in engagement just in time for a product launch, so short and frequent videos in the lead up would be a great idea.
Maybe you are looking to drive behavioural change with your retail partners, in which case you must make sure to give your content time to do its job and make sure it highly engaging to really sell the message. Then don’t forget to re-share and promote your content to reinforce your objectives over time.
Finally don’t be afraid to adapt and change; think critically about the feedback you are receiving from your user base and check your analytics often to highlight areas of improvement and to capitalise on areas of high engagement.
Every piece of content on the Myagi platform gives viewers the chance to rate how much they liked it and how much they learned from it. Taking this feedback on board not only shows the user you are listening to their viewpoint but will also act as a great quality control for your content. A perfect example of this is brands adopting more and more video to engage users rather than PDF/Tech Sheets as video achieve much higher engagement and greater ratings across the board.
At Myagi, we can help you craft, manage, deliver and track content that will drive engagement with your sales associates. If you would like to know more about how we can help you, drop us a line below, we’d be delighted to hear from you.
