In the 80s-90s, some brands used television ads, radio commercials, and billboards to create awareness. These ads were usually funny and exciting to watch, sometimes with catchy phrases that were memorable in our minds. The ads had relatable phrases, images, colors, and symbols that made it easier for the audience to resonate with them. The strategies between these ads easily created a community or fan base for the brand. This is because they focused on the lifestyle, values, and beliefs of the audience.
With the rise of social platforms, famous lifestyle brands have used various social tools to create awareness and grow their community.
In this article, we will discuss:
- How start-up lifestyle brands can take advantage of social media marketing in their online marketing to increase and nurture community. We will discuss this using famous lifestyle brands in the industry as an example.
- How to select the best social platform to use for your marketing and how to maximize it; with a free social media planning checklist to guide you.
- How to use social media tools and features to foster community building and increase sales.
Before we go deeper, for context:
What are lifestyle brands?
Lifestyle brands are brands or companies that aim to sell products by embodying the culture, values, aspirations, and motivation of a certain group of people in their marketing; with the idea of making their products contribute to the consumer's way of life.Lifestyle brands do not include only fashion and beverages, but also marijuana brands, perfume brands, food supplement brands, and accessories brands.
Examples of lifestyle brands:
These are some examples of brands adopting lifestyle and culture into their marketing:
- Patagonia :
Patagonia is a designer of outdoor clothing and gear for silent sports: climbing, skiing and snowboarding, fly-fishing, trail running, etc. Patagonia creates an intimate connection with its audience by celebrating the love and connection between man and nature among people who love outdoor sports, games, and nature.
Red Bull is a brand of energy drinks that has been able to grow its market and fan base to 38% market share, making it one of the most popular energy drinks in the world. Red Bull is an adrenaline-fueling brand that promotes wings to fly high as its unique story and lifestyle. With its old TV ad with animation and the memorable catchphrase "Red Bull gives you wings!", Red Bull has one of the most memorable ads and slogans. Red Bull celebrates a culture of strength, confidence, stability, and stamina.
Lululemon is a yoga and fitness apparel brand promoting friendship and community, as stated in their recent manifesto. They describe their customers and audience as a “community” where they host free yoga classes to foster their mission.
How do I grow my lifestyle brand using social media marketing?
Now you have gotten an insight into how some lifestyle brands create a connection with their audience, we will discuss how they use social media as a marketing tool to foster their marketing. It is important to remember that as a lifestyle brand, you are not selling a product but a lifestyle. It is not just about your product or services but about the emotions, values, and opinions surrounding you as a brand and that of your audience.
Using social media marketing strategies begins with selecting the right platforms.
"New lifestyle brands and other businesses find it confusing at the first stage of their marketing to decide what platform is best to build with." - Gigii
Selecting the right platform begins with the basics of understanding the audience or market you want to sell to.
- The first step is to understand who the target audience is, what content they prefer to consume, and what platforms they hang out on most of the time. This can be stated in a business or marketing plan. For example: If your target audience is women interested in holistic wellness and lifestyle, they would enjoy content on wellness, love, vulnerability, self-healing, and self-development. In this case, they enjoy video content or read content on these topics. They are most likely hanging out on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube
- The second step is to consider the business and marketing goals. For example, if the goal for the next 18 months is to focus on awareness only or awareness and email lead generation, then platforms with higher organic reach or high paid ads ROI might be considered before platforms that need longer time to build with.
All these should be stated, planned, and organized in your social media strategy.
Strategies (with examples) on how you can use social media marketing to grow your lifestyle:
- Mix it up with content marketing:
Content marketing is simply using relevant, valuable, and strategic content and content strategies to attract and engage an audience, build trust, market a product, and generate leads. Applying strategic content marketing on social media can help your brand build trust and nurture an audience. It also helps in lead generation. You can do this by:
- First define your target audience, their pain points, and their worries. For example: If you are a brand that sells holistic wellness items like journals, pendants, or t-shirts to women interested in holistic wellness, one of their pain points could be how they can create emotional intimacy with their partners.
- Secondly, create content that solves and answers the problem. This positions your brand as an authority in the field.
Example:
Hekaya is a women's fashion brand founded in Kenya. It celebrates women of all diversity, inspiring and empowering the rising generation of women to look, live & feel their best. On Hekaya's Instagram, it mixes content marketing strategies including live webinars and event series on topics like mental health and motherhood on its Instagram to empower its community. This helps the brand to build awareness and trust amongst its audience. They also generate leads for their podcast channel through content marketing.
Hekaya Futures is a content series the brand uses to nurture and grow their community.
2. Tell stories with video content:
Since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 video content has been on a rise. Lifestyle brands can use storytelling in their video content to tell their unique story and values. These videos can be created by the team, creators, or even customers on social media. Video content is an excellent medium to increase brand awareness, engage your audience, and also show new collections or features of your products.
An example:
Savage X Fenty by Rihanna is a fashion and apparel brand celebrating fearlessness and confidence with their several collections of lingeries and sportswear. The brand uses its Instagram to share video content showing off its products and the sexiness it portrays; it also shares videos of its latest collections and fashion helping the brand to create awareness of the new launch and how the audience can participate.
Above is a video content by Savage X Fenty showing off the theme of their valentine 2023 collection on Instagram
3. Expand reach and tap into new audiences using social media influencers:
Social media influencers are known to have a wide range of audiences and engagement on social media. Collaborating with the right influencers on social media can help your lifestyle brand increase sales and also tap into a new audience. You can collaborate with influencers by paying them to advertise your product or gifting them a free product in exchange for a shout-out on their pages or stories.
Example:
Adidas:
In November 2022, Adidas a sports apparel brand launched the "Be the inspiration" campaign targeted at GenZ. One of their marketing strategies to sell out this collection was using social media influencers to invite their followers to share their stories and journey to inspiration. 23 influencers delivered Instagram Posts, Stories, and TikToks, the campaign was successful with 83% positive comments, over 67% of the audience, and 10% more purchases from the campaign from a Gen Z audience.
GenZ influencer (Wednesday movie star) wearing a sportswear from the GenZ 2022 Adidas collection.
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4. Play around and maximize with social media tools and features:
Some of these tools and features include:
- Twitter spaces on Twitter
- Stories on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook
- Instagram shop
- Live tools (Facebook live, Instagram live, etc)
- Pinboards
- Hashtags
- Story highlights
- Groups and communities etc.
Example:
- Twitter spaces on Twitter:
You can host virtual audio events on Twitter with your in-house teams, industry leaders, and even the audience to discuss topics around your products, services, brand, and the industry. This tool can be used to boost engagement, drive traffic and increase brand loyalty.
- Stories on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook:
Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook stories can be used to boost engagement and drive traffic. Instagram and Facebook stories have tools like link stickers, music, and polls that can be used for engagement and driving traffic. Accounts below 10,000 followers on Instagram can use these tools without worrying about the swipe-up feature in stories.
With an Instagram shop, you can easily market your products and increase product discoverablity on Instagram. Customers can shop directly from your Instagram shop which can make the buying process easier and help increase your average order value.
Nike on Instagram shop
- Pinboards and buyable pins:
Pinterest boards allow you to save, create and organize your pins, images, and videos for your business. With Pinterest buyable pins, people can shop directly from Pinterest without having to leave the platform. These tools can help drive traffic directly to your website and increase sales and lead conversions.Pro tip: People use Pinterest as a search engine for visual content like pictures of a product or a piece of content. I have used Pinterest to search for templates and I signed up for newsletters I find on Pinterest.
A pinboard of Tree Tribe a nature inspired brand on Pinterest. Tee Tribe uses Pinterest to showcase their brand and drive traffic to their online store.
With story highlights on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you can save and categorize your stories into different sections so followers can view old stories after the 24-hour duration. You can optimize your story highlights by categorizing them into parts meaningful to your brand. For example: for clothing, brand stories can be categorized into new collections, shipping updates, sizes, etc.
Lululemon uses story highlights on Instagram to categorize product options and opinions, and direct page visitors to other resources in and outside their Instagram.
Facebook groups and Twitter communities can be a useful tool for nurturing and increasing brand loyalty. With this feature and tool, you can create a community for new and old customers as well as potential customers to discuss topics within your brand and products and industry trends. Customers can also give feedback directly on your product in groups and communities.
➝ If you are a new brand starting with social media marketing and you need a template or checklist to start building with social media, grab this free social media planning checklist here.
5. Use data and insights to better your marketing:
As a lifestyle brand, data and insights can help in understanding audience behavior on social media. You can use inquiries, opinions, and replies in the comments from your audience to under their point of view on a matter. Results on surveys or polls from stories, comments, the number of content shares and saves and other data can tell what kind of content your audience enjoys more. As a brand that sells by embodying culture and values, with social media data and insights you can learn:
- what kind of content to create more for your audience
- their needs from your brand through reactions and comments on posts
- how they react to certain topics, and how they analyze and engage with certain conversations.
Build and grow your lifestyle brand with social media marketing.
Social media marketing is a long-term strategy that yields growth in businesses. As a lifestyle brand social media marketing should not be neglected or downplayed, it is a great way to foster brand loyalty, and increase conversions and brand awareness – through social media influencer marketing, community building, content marketing, etc.
It is important to remember that as a lifestyle brand, you are marketing more of a lifestyle than a product. It is important to create an emotional connection and use a human touch throughout your marketing on social media.
FREE social media planning checklist for the start
If you are a new brand or business starting with social media marketing and you need a template or checklist to help you start building with social media, grab this free social media planning checklist here.
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