Executive Summary
The Body Shop’s digital content creation activities have been carefully planned to help the company combat competition and establish a strong brand identity. This analysis examines the company’s content creation approaches by exploring its primary target audience, needs, and requirements. The Body Shop has effectively appealed to its environmentally, socially, and ethnically conscious customers by focusing on transparent practices, sustainability, and a commitment to community development.
The paper also examines its competitive analysis by comparing its activities with those of other companies, such as LUSH and Origins. The Body Shop differentiates its contentment creation from these firms by enhancing its commitment to environmental safety content and promoting sustainability practices.
The analysis has further explored the company’s content creation, revealing that the company implements various grassroots marketing strategies to enhance its online presence. This involves discussing and implementing different media platforms, as well as providing engaging content that compels its target audiences. Its success is vividly apparent in the massive number of followers it has gained over the last few months of its content creation. However, it must enhance its strategies by creating a more personalized consumer experience through the analysis of customer personas, leveraging User-Generated Content (UGC), and refining its social media strategies by diversifying content creation.
Introduction
The Body Shop has taken significant steps to enhance its online strategies, supporting its marketing efforts. It is a British cosmetic, perfume, and skincare company notable for its ethical commitments and desire to resonate with customers’ values (The Body Shop, n.d.). It has recognized and adapted to online marketing efforts in response to the current shift toward online strategies (Raihanah, 2022). This study analyzes the company’s online content creation and compares it with that of its key competitors to recommend a viable approach for the firm to engage with its customers.
Target Audience Analysis: Needs and Requirements
The Body Shop’s Primary Target Audiences for Communications and Their Buying Stage
The Body Shop caters to a diverse range of customers with unique characteristics and preferences. It targets environmentally conscious customers who understand and embrace the value of maintaining a safe environment. This particular audience falls in the consideration and decision-making stages of the buying process. They want products that align with their values and help them live a lifestyle that promotes environmental safety. Their desires can be fulfilled by the company’s commitment to using ethically sourced ingredients and providing products that do not harm the environment.
Cate is a particular customer who showcases these features. She is 32 years old and works as a beauty blogger. She looks for current beauty trends and innovative products that appeal to her audience. Thus, she constantly tests different products.
The company also targets health-conscious individuals who seek naturally made and organic skin care products. Their desires and values are driven by the current life challenges and the emergence of multiple diseases that require people to maintain a healthy lifestyle. They are in the awareness stage of buying, as they seek natural and healthy beauty products that can replace the current market developments. The Body Shop will resonate with this audience’s values and the company’s determination to explore natural product ingredients.
Moreover, the company aims to address the pain points of socially-conscious customers. These individuals understand and value the need for a well-developed and supported community. They participate in community-building programs and support brands that address community development needs and promote environmental safety measures. As they seek companies to meet these values, they can be classified as loyal and fall in the buying stage’s advocacy stage.
Alex Iwobi is an excellent customer to refer to in this case. He is 40 years old and frequently gives gifts to close relatives. He cares more about new brands, limited editions, and high-quality products to impress her daughters in their early twenties.
Needs and Requirements
The Body Shop’s audience values products that meet their environmental and healthy lifestyle needs. They also require firms to participate in community building programs, helping to protect the environment and avoid using cruel products that can harm their well-being. Their needs and desires can be met by adhering to ethical considerations and sustainability requirements when producing and distributing beauty products. They want to understand the processes and the ingredients used to make the products.
Quality also matters as the company’s audiences want to see an innovative mindset in product development. The products must offer value for their prices and ensure an exceptional experience. The company must consider all these aspects to effectively resonate with its customers’ values and shape their perceptions of the brand.
Differentiation from Competitors
Competitor Analysis
The Body Shop has two key competitors, LUSH and Origins. LUSH has well-coordinated and offers content that appeals to customers’ environmental sustainability values through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube (De et al., 2023). Its Instagram page has gained over six million followers, Twitter has about 724,200 followers, Facebook has about 4.5 million followers, and YouTube has over 1.3 million followers. All these platforms have been critical to enhancing the company’s content creation, providing engaging content, videos, images, and viable messages informing customers of its value provision.
In contrast, Origins emphasizes visually appealing posts. It has about 690000 followers on Instagram, 23.5K on Twitter, 699K on Facebook, and 29.7K on YouTube (Cosmetic Executive Women, 2023). The company utilizes distinct content on each platform, featuring visually appealing posts about its skincare products on Instagram, sharing updates on product development on Twitter, conducting product promotions and educating users about skincare products on Facebook, and providing product review videos on YouTube.
Integration Across Digital Platforms
The Body Shop focuses on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube with its content. Each platform focuses on creating visually appealing content, including vivid videos that highlight the critical features of its products, and emphasizes the value it presents to its targeted audiences. Over the last month, the company has targeted Facebook, offering targeted adverts to meet consumer needs.
It has also included content highlighting its sustainability initiatives and ethical production process. However, LUSH has implemented the same platform to promote its diverse products. It provided numerous images, product pictures, and tutorial videos to educate its clients on the features of its new products.
Similarly, Origins has leveraged social media resources, with a focus on Facebook, to advertise its natural skin care products. It focused on informative content, blog posting, and tweeting to equip audiences with the information they need to understand skin care. The three companies have used unique approaches and different content features. However, they aim to reach a large number of customers and communicate their value.
Critical Evaluation of Content Strategy
The Body Shop’s primary content creation strategies focus on its ethical sourcing, community engagement, and sustainability practices. This enables the company to align with its audience’s values, fostering a safe environment and appealing to socially conscious individuals. Its content also provides reliable information to help its audiences learn and make informed product choices. It enhances its support for consumers’ empowerment and ability to comprehend their values and how they can support them with sustainable products. The firm has enhanced its reputation and credibility, catering to customers’ desires and interests.
Furthermore, customer feedback and sentiment analysis have pinpointed the significance of the company’s content creation. In the last month, the firm has shown a significant rise in its influential followers, attaining over 6.9 million followers on Facebook, 2.31 million on Instagram, and about 10,000 on Twitter (Net Worth Spot, 2023). Its content creation on various social media platforms has engaged and attracted numerous customers to follow its brand. As it continues to generate meaningful discussions and education about its products, the company has managed to lure customers into sharing its values, offering positive comments and reviews, and driving more customers to its social media and online content.
Grassroots Marketing Initiatives
The Body Shop incorporates grassroots marketing initiatives to complement its online content strategy. It is engaged in various community partnerships, including collaboration with other bodies that promote environmental sustainability, to help it connect and align with the communities it serves. The company is deeply determined to succeed in these collaborations and please its customers, enhancing a positive impact on them and helping them support environmentally safe actions. The effect of these grassroots strategies is critical to the company’s success in content creation.
Key Elements behind the Body Shop’s Successful Content Strategy
The Body Shop’s success in content creation is linked to various factors. The company emphasizes authenticity and transparency in its strategies. It provides enough evidence to support its brand values to customers, helping the audience to understand how the company’s products align with its environmental values.
It also focuses on storytelling and prompting customers’ emotional appeal. In addition, the company offers engaging visuals and interactive content, which are irresistible to view and enhance audience engagement. It provides straightforward video content, engaging images, and compelling illustrations to showcase its environmental and sustainability initiatives.
Recommendations for Enhancing Content Strategy
Personalize Content Experiences
It should also develop sample personas and diversify content formats. Focusing on different customer personas can help with this, as it will draw insight into what they want and how they want to be served. Here are the sample personas the company can check on to enhance its offerings and customer value.
Persona 1: Eco-conscious Alvarez
- Demographics: 27-year-old male
- Interest: Sustainable living, environmental activism
- Content preferences: well-structured content on online platforms, product reviews on YouTube, and ethical packaging.
Persona 2: Beauty Enthusiast Cate
- Demographics: 32-year-old female
- Interest: Skincare and grooming, staying updated on the latest trends
- Content preferences: well-modified visual content that appeals to beauty enthusiasts. She also wants product comparisons and appealing demonstrations.
Enhance Social Media Strategy
The company’s content must be diverse to meet every customer’s needs. The firm must analyze customers’ desires through polls, live questions, and surveys to find and include customer feedback in its content (Zafar et al., 2021). Dealing with micro-influencers can offer the company a fair chance to connect with their loyal and numerous followers (Appel et al., 2019). This will show the firm a potential strategy to enhance its customer reach and tailor its services through content creation to meet their desires.
Implement User-Generated Content (UGC)
As the firm strives to enhance its content creation, embracing the role of UCG can be critical. It should leverage this approach to advocate for its brand, offer more engaging content, and drive customers to its strategies. This requires introducing various promotional activities, encouraging customers to share their testimonies, and interacting with the company’s products to reach more people. This is included in the company’s social media and online platforms, including messages that trigger people to review and share the information with their friends.
Conclusion
The Body Shop offers a personalized connection with customers to meet their desires. The company has well-defined content creation practices that set it apart from competitors, including stiff competition from firms like LUSH and Origins. It has successfully utilized digital platforms to strengthen its brand messages. It offers an insightful view of how the company can enhance its digital creation to resonate with its brand values. Consequently, the Body Shop must collaborate with micro-influencers, diversify content formats, develop sample personas, and enhance its grassroots marketing strategies to support its online content creation.
Reference List
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The Body Shop International Limited (2023) Social Media Guidelines, Beauty, Skincare, Bath & Body Products. Web.
Zafar, A.U. et al. (2021) ‘Social media and sustainable purchasing attitude: role of trust in social media and environmental effectiveness’, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 63, p. 102751. Web.