5 tips - How brands achieve success with content marketing. My experience with Three Birds Renovations

We all know that content collaborations and sponsorships are a great way to get your brand in front of your target audience, but what makes one brand achieve more success than another? How does a brand supercharge its investment to maximise the opportunity to drive the best ROI? The secret sauce isn’t a one-size-fits-all-all, so here are my 5 tips from collaborating with Three Birds Renovations from their House 5 flip through to their latest House 16, Erin’s Urban Farmhouse, and the Three Birds Reno School.

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Tip 1 : Choose the right partner to collaborate with and ensure that the deliverables you want are negotiated upfront

?In the early days, Three Birds Renovations were still emerging, their influence and enormous following wasn’t what it is today. However, they had a clear vision of being the leading home renovation and design content publishers. They were building an audience that aligned with the target market that I wanted to reach to influence and grow brand awareness, consideration, and sales. They had demonstrated they had what it took to create compelling quality video, social, and blog content for their audience, but not only that they would produce content that was organically integrated as part of the project. They would work with us to tell our story and messaging.

To be fair Lana is persistent, she wanted Luxaflex Window Fashions , as we had the best products and the best range, and that benefitted their brand by associating with ours. It was a win/win, the collaboration benefiting both parties, however, beyond the inclusions, mentions, and tags on their platforms, there were specific things we were after for Luxaflex to use on our platforms. Eg.

• Visual assets that tell your brand & product story in photos, and long & short video content.
• Database building eg. Competitions, where we secure a database (with the required permissions) for our email marketing
• SEO-rich long-format blog content for publishing on our site, with high authority score links, as part of our SEO strategy.

The right deliverables for you should be considered as part of your broader marketing strategy. I outlined those up front and negotiated these into the deal. You may not end up with your entire wish list, so ensure you are prepared with a list in priority order

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Tip 2 : Amplify their content on your platforms

A major opportunity is to reshare the fantastic content on your platforms (you must be a paying sponsor partner complying with the terms of your agreement). Leveraging their content like this is helping their content performance in social channels, however, it also provides you with a vast amount of quality content that adds credibility to your content program and it doesn’t cost you any more. Your content plan should include;

• Pre-campaign – teasers of what is coming linking your timing to the Three Birds timing as there is always an embargo lag of when you can publish. Think countdowns & sign up for notifications of when the content drops
• During the campaign – Always have a mix of reshares and your unique content throughout this period. If you reshare, always give it some personalisation to explain how it relates to your product or brand. Eg. It's skirting boards extravaganza week, watch Bonnie talk about the sky-high Intrim skirting boards she selected for the living room.
• Post-campaign wrap-up – This allows you to revisit content you already shared to get more life from it, just give it another spin, headline, image, etc. People are craving the content, and not 100% of your potential audience will ever see everything so providing them a wrap-up and links back to things they may have missed is always a strong performer.

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Tip 3 : Leverage to the max

?Think of every possible way you can use your bespoke content within the boundaries of your agreement. NOTE: Content creators own their content, its intellectual property and you are likely only licensed to use it, so you can’t just use it as your own without consideration of what you have the right to do and when. Read your contract.

?When you are working with a major sponsorship like Three Birds Renovations, I would use key social media channels (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube) and email marketing plus the website home page, style pages, product pages, blogs, and project case studies. Consider building a custom landing page to point traffic if you don’t already have a location on your website to house the content. Plan out the digital customer journey, it will be multi-channel and ensure that a strong call to action is included. Never miss the opportunity to capture lead/sales or tell the audience what to do next.

Mix your bespoke content with the reshares (see tip 2). Be mindful of any embargos and release dates when developing your content schedule. Republish your bespoke content with different angles, images, and messages to further leverage it. What you publish forms part of the brand's content history in social feeds, and case studies provide long-term benefits.

?Bespoke content created for you is a highly valuable marketing asset. You need to push as many eyeballs to see it to generate a strong ROI. ?

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Tip 4 : Measure what works, and what doesn’t

I took each new project with Three Birds Renovations as an opportunity to negotiate a new package of inclusions based on the data of the last project to see what worked and what didn’t. There may be something offered to you, but it just isn’t right for what your data is telling you. There is no point in repeating the same initiatives if those things aren’t as successful as others.

?Be willing to try new initiatives, I call it the ‘play money’. Set a percentage of your spending (and time) on untested new initiatives. Depending on the size of your budget and risk profile will determine how much this should be. This test-and-learn approach is a key to a successful marketers' discovery process.

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Tip 5 – Consider the mix of Longevity

When determining the investment in a sponsorship package consider how long the deal allows you to use the content material and also what is the viewable life of the material. For example, I wanted to grow brand awareness, consideration and sales, so there is no point in a package full of stories with a 24-hour life. However, on the flip side, we could only use their assets during our license period so the risk was we would need to take down content at the end of the license term if we didn’t renew. I would recommend going into any deal understanding how you want to use the content, and the life of the content license and ensure it meets your needs. With a long product purchase cycle, I skewed to longevity to ensure that future audiences that were not in the market today still had the opportunity to be exposed to the content when they moved into the research stage of their customer journey.

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So what content channels work and why do brands keep signing up to be part of it?

We keep hearing about the power of short format video, however long format videos such as the YouTube series have been a backbone of the Three Birds Renovations approach. Combined with a comprehensive digital marketing program and building a large community through reno & styling schools. They have built a huge database for email marketing, and digital advertising targeting to secure sign-ups for their paid schools, and to promote their communities, projects, and brands they partner with. It is the value of those highly engaged relevant target audiences that is so appealing to brands. Paid sponsorships are all about using a trusted third party to influence your target audience. Getting the right message in front of your target audience at the right time is key, and for me, this audience was primarily in the research, consideration or buying stages of the customer journey, so ideally suited.

The content schedule is meticulously planned, which makes it easier for brands to plan their content & supporting programs around it. ?They understand their audience and have built a community of Reno Schoolers to generate new content, which they amplify on their platforms. As a paid sponsorship partner I was involved in providing subject matter content that was written into the program, providing ongoing lasting benefits for the brands I was marketing.

Don't underestimate the power of a community that supports each other through their reno journey, asking questions of each other, discussing your brand and products, and sharing their 'house proud moments' with each other as they reveal their renovations.

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How I know the Three Birds and are they really like their on camera personas?

I first met the Three Birds Renovations trio of Lana, Bonnie, and Erin when they were embarking on the planning for their House 5 renovation. I was leading the marketing for Luxaflex Window Fashions as part of my role at Hunter Douglas Australia and was looking for great locations for product photography. The opportunity to get key products installed in a photography-ready styled home was the original appeal, however, it grew from there to be a major component of our content marketing program. During this time, I successfully delivered Luxaflex to the #1 position in the Australian market for premium window furnishings, supported by a comprehensive marketing program and my amazing team. I went on to lead the marketing for the timber mouldings company Intrim Group and again was able to work with Three Birds Renovations on several projects. It’s been a delight to share in the journey of our mutual success over the many years, and as Erin's #house16 is finally now being revealed it was timely to share my experience.

Yes, they are just the same as you see them on camera. I would describe them as talented, fun, passionate and incredibly focused, surrounded by their amazing team to help them create the magic you see.

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Need help with your Marketing?

I am a senior marketing leader with full-funnel experience leading multi-brand, multichannel businesses. As a generalist marketer, I have extensive experience in all aspects of marketing B2B & B2C including digital, content, and traditional marketing including all media types. As a marketing consultant, I can either critique your current marketing strategy or any aspects of your marketing plan to find opportunities to improve. Alternatively, if you need help creating a marketing strategy, or building your marketing team I can help. Whatever your vision or marketing challenge, I can help you achieve it. Get in touch today via LinkedIn and start your journey to success.

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