location, location, location

 

 

Its 4pm on Tuesday, do you know where your content is? What’s your strategy for attracting the fashionable Millennial?

 

Your website. It’s your masterpiece. You have toiled endlessly on it so you can capture as many users and stickiness as the heavens allow. Well, how is that working for you? Traffic slowed, stalled or timed out?

Well, fuggetaboutit. There is a new way. Don’t worry, your masterpiece is still important and will still be your standard of excellence.

So fuggetabout what exactly? Well, remember how all the masters of best practices say its all about content, content, content? Yes, this is still true. But, now it’s also really about location, location, location.

 

You need both, actually. If you are in the media business and want to win and win big, especially with Millennials, then follow the paths of Refinery 29, Dazed and i-D. These folks are the new paradigm of best practices.

How are these companies doing? Check out these numbers:

• Refinery29 launched in ’05 now has 25 million unique monthly users
• Dazed Media with 3.5 million unique monthly users has LVMH as a partner in one of its entities, Nowness
• i-D, acquired by Vice Media in 2012 went from 200,000 to now 6.5 million unique monthly users

Read more on this @ The Business of Fashion.

To understand this new paradigm, check out the graphics below and look at it this way. Brands want to be as accessible to their customer as possible and drive as much sales out of it too. So instead of just constantly trying to funnel the consumer to a website, the brand now funnels itself to the consumer.

The Answer-achieve scale with specialized content in each environment.  Make each environment it’s own destination.

It is not just about website and landing page effectiveness anymore, it is all about your brand image curated to your customer’s delight everywhere and anywhere they find you.

The analogy is this. Just as your brand has its flagship website, you probably also have a flagship brick and mortar retail location. But, your same brand also is found in many other stores. If it were simply enough to have a single branded store then there would be no need for other retailers.

Consumers want choice and they want it in the environment of their choosing. Any of the best brands be it Apple or Louis Vuitton or Nike know they must be present and curated at a location and in the manner their customer expects.

 You will find Nike in one of their gorgeous company stores and you will also find it in a Foot Locker.

 

 

 The user experience is completely different.

Brands have to look at third party sites as their key retail partners. Just like each retailer has its own image, so does each site. Content must be customized to meet its customer’s expectations and suit each site. Content designed for Facebook will not be the same as curated for Snapchat as it is for Instagram.  Yes, it’s a lot of work to manage all that content. But so is managing all those retail locations.

 

So, its prime time for your content-do you know where it is?

It should be in front of your targeted Millennial.

That’s exactly where they expect it to be.

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Christine C. Oddo is the author of The Christine Report blog and founder of Madison Luxe Group; a beauty and luxury product retail sales and digital strategy agency.

Inquiries to christine@madisonluxegroup.com