Especially in the skate world, people are overwhelmed with new content.
New video parts, Instagram clips, skate photos, and countless other forms of skate content cover our screens every day.
Just like ABD tricks that have been done at famous spots, nowadays you really have to go big or get creative to stand out.
The same applies to content marketing.
So, in a world filled with skate content, how can your skate shop not only stand out but also increase the odds of getting a return on your content investment?
Creating a content strategy is a great place to start.
A content strategy coordinates the planning, creation, delivery, and management of content you produce.
In other words, it’s creating a thought out approach to reach real business goals instead of just randomly posting whatever skate stuff you have.
Having a content strategy can put you ahead of most skate shops today.
The steps to creating a skate shop content strategy are as follows:
- Clarify your business goals
- Identify your target audience
- Create a customer empathy map
- Create a customer experience map
- Establish a content creation process
- Create your skate shop content plan
- Monitor your content’s success
7 Steps to create a content strategy for your skate shop
The steps below offer guidelines to direct your skate shop content strategy. Before you begin, we recommend opening up a blank document to create your content strategy step-by-step as you read through the steps.
Step 1: Clarify your business goals
Increasing sales, creating brand awareness, or retaining customers are all valid reasons to invest in content marketing.
However, there’s a key issue with these goals: They aren’t specific enough.
A common mistake that people make when content marketing is not truly understanding what they’re after.
One of the best ways to prevent this is to set SMART goals within your content strategy.
SMART goal examples for skate shops
SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Here’s a few examples of skate shop content marketing goals with these traits:
- By the end of the year, we will increase our Google search results page position from 10th to the top 3 for our decks product page selling X skate brand.
- In 6 months, we will increase our social media following from 800 to 1500 by creating and posting a new local skate video series with 2 videos per month.
- In 3 months, we will increase the number of monthly visitors to the footwear section of our skate shop website from 500 to 1000.
Step 2: Identify your target audience
Once you’ve identified one or several specific business goals, you can then work on a bit of customer analysis to identify your target audience.
Most skate shop owners and employees are either skateboarders themselves or quite knowledgeable about skate culture. Because of this, customer analysis can really be a strong point for them and it may even come easy.
Based on the business goal(s) you’ve established in step 1, customer analysis often begins with considering your existing customers and their habits.
Ask yourself and your team things like:
- What age and gender is your target audience?
- Where do they consume content?
- What skate brands do they like?
- Who are their favorite pro skaters?
- What disciplines of skating do they enjoy (street, park, bowl, etc.)?
- How long have they been skating?
- How skilled are they at skating?
- Where do they skate (local park, street spot, etc.)?
- What do they value about a product (durability, style, performance, etc.)?
- Where are they located geographically?
- What’s their financial situation?
- How do they prefer to make a purchase (in-store/online)?
Your answers to these questions can help you create a detailed buyer persona (a fictional target customer).
Check out the free Make My Persona tool from Hubspot which you can use to establish a clear understanding of who your content is targeting going forward.
Want help with all this? We’re here for that…
Step 3: Create a customer empathy map
After identifying who you want to target with your content, creating a customer empathy map can help you dig deeper into the things they’re saying, thinking, doing, and feeling.
Considering these things about your customer will increase the odds of creating the most helpful and/or interesting content for them.
The four sections of a customer empathy map are as follows:
Says: Direct quotes the target customer may say.
Thinks: The customer’s thoughts, needs, or motivations
Does: Typical behavior of the customer
Feels: How the customer is feeling throughout the process
Skate shop customer empathy map example
Below, you’ll find an example empathy map made for the skaters shown in the center image. Use the example to create an empathy map for your own target customer.
Step 4: Create a customer experience map
So, you now have a detailed description of who your content is tailored for.
Finally, we’ll look at the process your customer goes through before, during, and after making a purchase before we create our content plan.
A customer experience map helps us deeply analyze the emotions of customers at each stage of interaction with your shop.
In addition, it helps us figure out how we can improve at each step and identify where and what content can help our customers the most.
Skate shop customer experience map example
The customer experience map below offers a simple example of the process a customer may go through when buying a product (deck, shoes, etc.) from a skate shop.
Use Excel or just a pen and paper to create an experience map for your own skate shop and the process customers go through to buy from you.
Step 5: Establish a content creation process
Now, we can lay out our content creation process to get a better idea of our timeline for content production.
Successful content creation requires consistent work over a prolonged period of time. Therefore, it’s best to establish a process of steps to keep yourself or your team on track.
Generally speaking, you’ll want to break down big projects into small steps with deadlines.
To keep track of each of these steps and the due dates for each, Asana is an excellent platform with free options. You can assign each of the tasks to different members of your team to coordinate things easily.
Example content creation process for a blog article
For example, to create a single blog article, your content creation process may look something like this:
- Identify the keyword(s) your article will target by X date
- Brainstorm X title ideas for the article by X date
- Create an outline for the article by X date
- Create a rough draft for the article by X date
- Source images/video for the article by X date
- Create a final copy of the article by X date
- Install the article on your blog by X date
The example above is to create a blog post for your website. The process will be different and have different timelines for things like social media posts, videos, photos, etc. However, there are still steps for each of these tasks which can be broken down to have due dates.
When you understand the steps to create your piece of content with estimated due dates for each step, you’ll then have an estimation of how long it should take to complete an entire piece of content.
Finally, we can use this to create a content plan.
Step 6: Create your skate shop content plan
Your content strategy establishes the “why” of your content (aligning business goals with engaging content).
Your content plan establishes how you will actually make it happen.
Once you have an idea of how long it takes to create a single piece of content, you can then assess your own resources to actually create it.
For example, if you’ve established in your content creation process that it takes 2 weeks to complete a blog article with the help of one employee, you should be able to create 2 blog posts a month.
Expanding on this, we then know that we can expect to create 6 new blog articles over the course of 3 months with this one employee.
Consider creating a content calendar to track your content creation progress.
Your content plan should not be overlooked as it gives a clear, realistic direction to your overall content strategy.
When your content plan is complete, the only thing left to do is create and publish content!
Cut to the chase. I want more customers in my shop!
Step 7: Monitor your content’s success
After your content is published, there are many metrics to track to monitor its performance.
Knowing your highest performing content can be valuable in determining what content your viewers find the most engaging/helpful going forward.
Key website content performance metrics
The following website-related metrics can be tracked in Google Analytics.
Page views – Page views show you how many times users are viewing a piece of content on your website. The more views, the more users are seeing your work or returning to view it again.
Time spent on page – Time spent on page can indicate how engaged users are by your content. A longer time spent on page also indicates to search engines that your content is valuable and can influence the content’s rankings.
Users – Users refers to the number of unique visitors to your site or page. The more users, the more people are seeing your work.
Bounce rate – Bounce rate refers to the number of users who access a page and then immediately click away from it. A high bounce rate can indicate problems with your page, poor content quality, or the wrong target audience accessing your content.
Traffic sources – Traffic sources refers to where users are coming from to access your content. Sources can include things like organic search, social media, referrals, etc. and can tell you where the most people are finding your content.
Key social media content performance metrics
Likes – Likes are a basic level of engagement that can help promote your content within the social media algorithm.
Comments – Comments are more valuable than likes in that they show a greater level of engagement with your content, amplifying the reach of your content further within the algorithm.
Mentions – Brand mentions show that users are actively supporting your brand and they can be highly valuable as they act like a referral to that user’s network of friends.
Shares – Shares can indicate that users were engaged enough by your content that they want to pass it on to others in their network.
Followers – Followers can indicate the potential reach of your content.
Key business performance metrics
Conversions – A conversion is when a user completes a desired goal of your marketing. For example, buying a Santa Cruz deck after reading your blog article about Santa Cruz. Conversions can be a key indicator of whether your marketing efforts were successful.
Cost per acquisition – CPA measures the cost to acquire one paying customer. It can be calculated by dividing how much you spent on a campaign by the number of customers you acquired from the campaign.
Content marketing ROI – Your content marketing ROI can be calculated with the following formula:
Revenue from content - Content marketing spend / Content marketing spend X 100
Note that your content marketing spend includes your spend on all channels of content marketing combined over a period of time, not just for a single campaign.
Bonus: Update existing content and adjust going forward
Truly effective content is relevant.
One of the most overlooked aspects of content management is updating it for relevancy!
Especially with content on your website, you should ideally review and update it every 6-12 months.
When reviewing, be sure to check that all links are still working, photos/videos are loading, dates are still correct, and that the content itself still discusses the topic in the most up-to-date way.
In addition, content relevancy is a ranking factor for search engines.
By updating your website, it shows Google that you have the most current info to share, increasing your chances of appearing higher in search results.
You don’t need to do all this alone… It’s what we’re here for!
10 Content ideas for skate shops
Many skate shops struggle during the ideation phase of content creation.
Below is a list of skate shop content ideas to get you started.
The best skate shop content ideas for your business will combine providing value/entertainment for your target audience while simultaneously driving that audience towards your greater business goals.
Ideally, follow the content strategy steps above first before using the list below to brainstorm the best ideas based on your business goals.
- Create a skate spot guide for your city
- Tell your shop’s story in a video or blog article
- Create a short or full-length skate video sponsored by your shop
- Post photos or videos of new products, your employees, skate team, or shop location
- Review skateparks in your region
- Interview local skaters or pros and post written or video content
- Start a podcast
- Create an FAQ’s page for things your customers often ask
- Show people behind the scenes of your shop (Getting new products, working on shop projects, etc.)
- Work with brands to create collabs and write about the collab
Why is having a content strategy important for your skate shop?
Some shops have a tendency to simply create as much content as they can. Especially with the fast pace of social media, it can feel necessary to post things frequently to stay on customer’s minds.
In contrast, some shops may lack content. They may not be sure what to post or they may post irregularly and wonder why their content lacks engagement.
Regardless, content posted haphazardly won’t have nearly the impact as targeted, high-quality pieces of content posted strategically.
Content creation costs your business time and money. A content strategy brings a systematic approach to your content so it actually benefits your business how you need it to.
Your content strategy will ultimately have a big impact on the ROI of your investment in content.
Get help creating your skate shop content strategy
The Skateboard Agency can help your skate shop or brand create a content strategy from start to finish.
Whether you just have questions about a strategy you’ve already created or would like an entire strategy created for your business, contact The Skateboard Agency to learn more.