Content marketing is no longer optional. If you鈥檙e not already crafting compelling stories to share with your target audience, you鈥檙e missing out on valuable opportunities to build an emotional connection that fosters trust and loyalty.
Strong brand content meets consumers where they are. It tells a story. And it can stand alone. It鈥檚 the difference between showing adventurers exactly why they can trust you to give a first-time backpacker or fly fisher a good experience they won鈥檛 forget versus simply saying, 鈥渉ey, try this thing. Trust us: it鈥檚 great.鈥
Of course, that鈥檚 an easy goal to set and a more challenging one to achieve. So we asked the experts at Origin, an outdoor-focused creative agency, to share some tips for success. Origin has produced compelling brand campaigns and emotional videos that show, not tell, consumers why these brands understand them and can help them achieve their goals. They鈥檝e been behind clever campaigns for brands like L.L.Bean, lululemon, and The North Face.
鈥淲e really believe content is at the heart of the connection between a brand and a consumer,鈥 said Marie-Jos茅e Legault, owner of Origin. 鈥淚t鈥檚 what builds trust.鈥
Spoiler alert: The short answer on how to execute that well is to dig鈥攔eally, really dig鈥攆or stories hiding amid your existing consumers, and to plan your content distribution strategy even before you shoot a single frame.
Here鈥檚 what you need to do to produce content that will make your audience laugh, cry, tell their friends, and come back to you looking for the next story.
1. Go Back to the Basics. Who Is Your Target Audience?
When lululemon wanted to increase their brand penetration in Montreal, they went to Origin for help. They needed to forge relationships with Qu茅b茅cois consumers, who are culturally different from consumers in their hometown of Vancouver. Simply translating copy and content from English to French wasn鈥檛 enough. For starters, in British Columbia, people wear leggings everywhere, Legault said, while in Quebec it鈥檚 less common to wear them for non-athletic purposes. So, Origin, which has a French-speaking team in Montreal, found passionate local influencers and told stories that connected with the Qu茅b茅cois sense of local pride. Understanding who your target audience is鈥攚here they are and how to meet them there, what their goals are and how to help them dream and achieve, what鈥檚 important to them鈥攊s a vital first step toward producing content that will resonate with them, Legault said.
鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to reach the right person at the right time with the right message on the right channel,鈥 she said. 鈥淪o a lot of the work we do with brands goes back to the basics: Who do we need to tell this story to? Where are they in their journey or relationship with our brand, and what is the key thing we want to communicate to affect them?鈥
2. Clearly Define Your Content Goals.
One of the most important aspects of any campaign is knowing exactly why you want to run it before you even begin to brainstorm what you want to share. And even before that, you need to know what you want to get out of it. It鈥檚 vital to set this intention early on in the strategizing process, said Laura Merino, an account strategist with Origin. Is your goal to engage existing customers and build loyalty, or are you trying to attract new business? Jay Peak Resort in Vermont, for example, wanted to achieve both. So they worked with Origin to create a brand-new magazine that deviates from your standard glossy tourist magazine. Covers feature custom illustrations of monsters, superheroes, and whimsical takes on the resort鈥檚 grounds, each coinciding with a different issue theme. They distributed the magazine at ski shows and around the resort, and mailed it to past guests. The result is a magazine visitors can鈥檛 resist picking up, something unexpected from a ski resort.
3. Play Journalist鈥攐r Hire Some鈥攖o Find the Best Characters to Tell Your Story.
When L.L.Bean wanted to peg itself as the brand of choice for people just starting out in hunting and fishing, Origin鈥檚 team hit the ground with some good old-fashioned shoeleather journalism. Their team includes seasoned journalists from the outdoor industry who know how to sniff out a good story. So they set out to find influential ordinary people bringing newbies into the fold.
鈥淲e needed to unearth people for whom fishing is really at the core of what they do,鈥 Legault said. 鈥淣ot professional fishermen, but actual real people who care about fishing, people who go above and beyond for their communities.鈥 So they walked into shops, talked to community organizations, dug through news articles, and made phone call after phone call. 鈥淚t鈥檚 almost like journalism, in many ways,鈥 Legault said of Origin鈥檚 storytelling process. Finally, they found Will Dunn, founder of Take A Kid Fishing. Dunn started the North Carolina non-profit that teaches underprivileged kids how to fish after seeing what a difference it made in the life of a neighbor鈥檚 kid he regularly took out on the water with him more than a decade ago.
The result is a moving short film called聽鈥淐atching Fish, Changing Lives鈥 that is part of a series聽鈥淲elcome to the Catch.鈥 The video shows how Dunn has impacted the lives of more than 1,500 children after overcoming聽his own challenging childhood.
4. Make a Distribution Plan up Front, and Never Abandon the Content.
“The biggest mistake brands make when producing their own content is failing to distribute it effectively,” Merino said. You could produce a beautiful magazine that your customers would love and want to pass along to their friends, but if you can鈥檛 figure out how to get it into their hands, it鈥檒l fail before it launches. 鈥淲e continually see, over and over again, that brands will invest a lot of money into creating content, and then they get that content back and don鈥檛 know what to do with it,鈥 Merino said. 鈥淭hey just put it on their YouTube channel or social channels, and then [when it flops], they say, 鈥榳hat was wrong with that?鈥欌 Origin has both creative and marketing strategists work together right from the start so they don鈥檛 have to reverse-engineer a distribution strategy once the content has been made and published.
This is important because it affects the way content is created. If they鈥檙e producing a film, for example, Origin will get behind-the-scenes shots they can use to continue distributing the film in new ways and get people to continue engaging with it even after they鈥檝e seen the full finished product.
Merino says it鈥檚 also key not to abandon the content once you roll it out. Regularly check in on each channel you鈥檙e using for distribution to identify and troubleshoot snags in engagement.
5. Make It Useful, or Make It Emotional to Make Sure It鈥檚 Not Forgotten.
You could produce a technically stunning, multi-million dollar film about the history of helicopter skiing, but if it doesn鈥檛 make people feel something, the whole thing could fall flat. What matters most is that your content either helps people in some way鈥攆or example, a blog in which you share epic, under-the-radar backpacking trails where people can use your product鈥攐r has a lasting emotional impact.
Origin worked with Mike Wiegele Helicopter Skiing, one of the world鈥檚 oldest heli-skiing outfits, to both redesign the company鈥檚 website and communicate the brand鈥檚 history. The campaign included producing a documentary about the founder, Mike Wiegele, in honor of the company鈥檚 50th anniversary. Wiegele was a scrappy and innovative guide who essentially created the sport of heli-skiing and built a luxury resort from nothing, in spite of major opposition from people who kept telling him it wasn鈥檛 going to work. The film, 鈥淐all Me Crazy,鈥 is a perfect example of content that has legs beyond its brand鈥檚 audience: It was nominated for an award at the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, received awards at the Whistler and 5points film festivals, and was nominated for a Powder award for best documentary. At the Whistler Film Festival premiere, Legault sat next to a Wiegele guide she鈥檇 never met. He started crying during the film. 鈥淚 hugged him and asked if he was OK,鈥 Legault said. 鈥淗e said he felt so proud and that these few minutes of film summed up a lifetime of knowing an incredible person. That felt like a confirmation that we’d done something right.鈥
Now that鈥檚 successful content.