“Is there a way to decide how much content brands in a multi-brand family can share, and how much needs to be different among the brands?”
I've been asked that question multiple times recently after delivering Brainzooming social-first content marketing strategy workshops.
My answer?
Return to the fundamentals we teach for building a content marketing strategy. In these cases, however, you can approach things in reverse order, unpacking your brand strategy framework to answer this type of question.
3 Steps to Find Multi-Brand Content Marketing Strategy Similarities
Step 1 - Audience Personas
The first step is to identify what personas are in use across the multiple brands. Are there separate personas or are they the same? If they are different, how much do their interests overlap with one another?
Step 2 - Content Preferences
Next look at how much the personas’ content preferences and profiles match one another. Which themes and topics are going to be of interest to all the groups? Do they represent a large or small portion of the overall content?
Step 3 - Brand Promise Components
Finally, go through a three-question branding exercise that we use in many situations. In this case, it helps you understand your audiences' expectations and tolerances for unique content:
- What does each brand's audience EXPECT in the content the brand shares?
- What types of variations from that content will the audience ACCEPT from the brand?
- If the brand delivers the optimum content, how will the audience REWARD the highly-targeted content?
Across this series of questions, you can begin to form conclusions about your options for creating content that is common across all your brands. – Mike Brown
