Struggling with Marketing Your Fashion Brand? Follow the 30/70 Rule.
If you’re running a fashion business, it should be no surprise that marketing is a huge part of your day to day.
If you want to sell, then you have to promote — right?
We know this. It’s on our to-do list. We have a strategy in place for it. But…
How often does promotion get overlooked?
Here’s a scenario that I see too often:
- You’ve spent several hours crafting the perfect blog post.
- You finally click “Publish” and the post goes live.
- You sit back and wait for people to come across your post and praise its brilliance.
When put that way it sounds a little ridiculous.
And yet there are so many of us who expect it to happen like this.
The internet has made us live by the adage of, “If you build it, they will come.”
But nobody arrives.
If you’re struggling with marketing and being seen by your ideal target customer, then I have one rule for you to implement right now:
“30% content creation / 70% content promotion”
What does that mean exactly?
It means that 30% of your time should be spent on creating marketing content. We’re talking blog posts, emails to your list, guest posts, photography, etc.
But 70% of your time should be put towards promoting that content.
It’s not enough to share a blog post on Facebook one time. That same blog post should be sent out to your email list and shared on social media over… and over… and over again.
“But, Shannon, won’t my audience get sick of seeing the same stuff?”
No, because unless it’s your mom, they’re not paying attention that closely.
Don’t believe me?
Here’s an example:
For the past month I’ve been promoting the launch of Market45, an ethical fashion marketplace, that will go live on November 1st.
I’ve mentioned it upwards of six times on Instagram and it wasn’t until the sixth time that I got a text from my own sister saying, “Just saw you’re launching a marketplace! Great idea.”
And while yes, she’s busy with her own life going on — so is everyone else.
You can’t count on people to retain your message, read your blog post or engage with you on social media the very first time.
Or even the second time… or the third…
And I know what you may be thinking, “Man, this sounds exhausting. I can’t keep up with all of this marketing.”
But what I’m telling you is actually good news.
Because the content creation (i.e. the 30%) is the part that’s usually hardest for everyone.
I know how many of you worry that you’re not a good writer or that it takes forever to write a blog post or newsletter.
But with the 30/70 rule, once it’s done you get to focus the majority of your time on promoting it.
And while it still requires writing, crafting a promotional Facebook post or Instagram caption is a lot less work than writing full content.
To put it in perspective:
I spend at least 1.5 hours every Wednesday scheduling social media to promote that week’s blog post. My assistant spends another hour putting that blog post on WordPress and scheduling it to send to my email list.
That’s 2.5 to 3 hours dedicated to content that took me 30-45 minutes to write.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
So whether it’s an upcoming launch, a Kickstarter campaign or something small like a blog post, focus on doing more with less.
You can’t argue with that.
