6 content marketing lessons from the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show

While Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is worth the hype every year, it’s normal to be confused about what in the world a famous lingerie brand has to do with your business’ social media efforts or your brand’s marketing.

Well, if you just look at it as a fashion show, you will not be able to look any further. But, if you take a seat and explore this runway extravaganza, you will see American pop culture at its finest. And when you put on your business guru goggles on, you will see Victoria’s Secret as an epic example of marketing success.

Victoria’s Secret was introduced in 1977 as a lingerie brand. Soon, it became the most popular and instantly recognizable apparel companies in the world. The company continued to grow and evolve despite the intensifying competition in the industry. It entered the fragrance and beauty market and continued to be the dominant force. The parent company created history when its sales figure hit $2.2 billion in 2014 – an excellent record for the label.

Content marketing lessons from a luxury lingerie brand

So what made Victoria’s Secret such a hit in the industry in such a short period?

In addition to their excellent line of luxury lingerie, fragrances, and beauty products, their smart marketing strategy is the real secret behind the success of Victoria’s Secret. Whether it’s their digital marketing approach or content marketing, the focus stays on conversions.

The smart digital minds are operating behind the incredibly glamorous facade to push the brand to even higher levels of success. Here’s everything you want to learn about Victoria’s Secret’s secret content marketing lessons.

1. It’s all about the audience

What’s Victoria’s Secret main audience? Does it comprise more men or women?

If you guessed ‘men’ – for all the obvious reasons – you are wrong by a long shot! More than 75% of the audience is female. The brand keeps its focus on the audience means that whatever marketing strategy they plan should be appealing to women. That’s the primary demographic for the company.

No wonder they have The Weeknd and Justin Bieber as their musical performers for the show.

The lesson to learn here for the content marketers is to carry out their basic demographic analysis to determine more about their target audience. Find out if there’s a change in the demographics as a result of the content and how it is published and distributed.

Details as simple as the gender of your audience can help you customize your message accordingly. Use these factors to create content that’s instantly appealing to your target audience. In addition to details like location, age, and personal preferences, learn about the medium they prefer to know more about your business. Once you have this information, you can easily adjust your content to the desired formatting and design styles.

2. Keep up with the theme

Victoria’s Secret is all about its unique and incredible themes it showcases every year. Different collections have been set as the standard for runways. Each look is designed according to the theme, so everything looks organized. Anything that fails to align perfectly is removed from the collection.

The 2012’s fashion show had six amazing themes: Dangerous Liaisons, Circus, Silver Screen Angels, Pink is Us, Calendar Girls, and Angels in Bloom. The key is to offer what interests the established audience.

After you have identified your audience, the next lesson you learn is identifying the categories that your audience finds compelling. What type of content do they like? What do they like to read on your blogs? What areas do they want you to cover?

The idea is to provide them with non-repetitive, original content for each category or theme on a regular basis. Creating a consistency gives people hopes, so they look forward to the variety you keep offering them.

As far as the choice of the theme is concerned, it can be as per the expectations of your audience. For instance, if you have a cake baking business, you can further categorize this broad topic into smaller themes like recipes, baking trends, cake ideas, tips on bake-ware, etc.

Similarly, if you have a leather jackets shop, there are so many ways to categorize your collection into smaller themes just as leather skin shop has done it. However, try to stick to fewer themes, so it’s easier to keep up!

3. Focus on the tradition

Aren’t we totally in love with the angel wings Victoria’s Secret gave its angels in 1998?

Those wings keep on appearing and evolve to become more interesting, intricate, and elaborated every time. They have become the highlight of the Victoria’s Secret model’s outfit. Some of those large and fancy wings can weigh up to 25 pounds.

Another tradition they initiated was the ‘Fantasy Bra’ they would feature annually. Every year, there’s one incredibly and spectacularly fancy bra with a price tag worth millions. While not everyone would like to have one or could afford it, it definitely makes the audience curious with anticipation.

What content marketers can learn here is ‘content tradition.’ Try to look beyond the annual report publishing and think about carrying out interesting yearly surveys, holiday contents, weekly polls – you get the point!

Regardless of which idea you approach, all of these can help you create the hype and anticipation in your audience. What you really need to pay attention to here is creating very compelling, unique content that people are instantly addicted to.

4. Put big money into production

The more money you put in, the better!

As compared to the budget in 1995, the shows now cost more than $15 million to produce. The shift from attainable, sexy lingerie to models flaunting outrageous costumes have been quite prominent too. And not to forget, the fancy runways at expensive locations and chart-topping performers like Bruno Mars and Rihanna gracing the show with their music.

What exactly changed here?

The brand cannot afford plain and boring shows, or it will lose the audience. What they need to show, they must show beautifully to keep it exciting and compelling.

Let’s face it: we live in a visual world, where ignoring this crucial aspect is wrong. As a content marketer, your focus shouldn’t be only on the message, but how you present it. Find out if your message is best told in words, in a video, a series of photographs, or a chart.

Find out the response of your audience and see what works best for them. Observe and track your traffic, the social sharing trends of your audience, and the conversion rate for better understanding.

Try different formats to gain experience and notice what works best for your specific audience. Once you get there, put money in high-quality production. The best way to expand your content is to work with a skilled writer, a trained videographer, a talented photographer, and of course, a graphic designer. This will eventually expand your audience too.

5. Utilize multiple distribution strategies

In addition to showcasing the runway show in front of a live audience, there are multiple different platforms that Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show covers. These mediums include:

• Television – that showcases the edited version of the show immediately after the real event.
• Victoria’s Secret website – featuring photos, videos, countdown clock, and contests details.
• Other news websites – featuring photos, videos, and preview clips.
• Facebook – the fan page run by CBS will share similar information.
• Twitter – there’s a specific hashtag for the show that promoters and models are already using to share content.
• Youtube – videos for tips and tricks to train like Victoria’s Secret angel.

In short, it makes the most out of every available platform for its best interest.

As a content marketer, if you have a huge budget for online marketing, go ahead and utilize suitable strategies. However, if you want to keep it simple, affordable, and effective, use your website, social media platforms, and all possible online forums to promote your content.

Content can do magic for your business’ marketing strategies. Also, make sure whatever strategy or distribution platform you are choosing is relevant for your business. If you decide to skip a method, make sure you have a good reason for doing so.

6. Don’t hesitate from failure and disappointments

Victoria’s Secret may be a huge success, but it’s not always successful. Not every fashion show is a winner. You may find some disappointing, average, and some absolutely weird themes and outfits calling out ‘failure’.

But it didn’t stop them. They made it a point to learn from their mistake and improve it. They would make a few mistakes again but then come up with something that would easily cover up those little flaws. The risk of failure and disappointment didn’t stop them.

This is one of the most crucial marketing lessons you can learn from Victoria’s Secrets. Not every content you will publish will be outstanding. Some will be average while others would be bizarre and non-sense. But it doesn’t mean you stop there.

Failure to communicate your idea through content can be very disappointing, but there’s always a chance to make a strong comeback. If you put an effort to improve, the misfires will disappear, and the focus will be back on the winning content.

Don’t emphasize too much on the failure and keep going!

Final Word

When you look at all the bling-bling and the multi-million business that Victoria’s Secret is all about, it’s natural to assume its because of a killer content marketing strategy.

But it’s actually the simplest of strategies, that most businesses are already using, that they have implemented with significant expertise and with a better approach.

So now that we have revealed the marketing secrets of Victoria’s Secrets, all you need to do is learn, plan, and make your move. Use all of this information in your best interest and take your business to new levels of success.