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Let’s talk about BTS. When I say “BTS” I’m actually referring to two separate but great things for you and your business.
The first BTS refers to “behind the scenes” content, which you’ll find both easy to execute and of value to your business. BTS content reveals the inner workings of a company by breaking the fourth wall between a brand and it’s customers. BTS content is a marketing tool that educates and entertains customers via the three P’s of business: people, process and product.
When done well, BTS content creates transparency and trust (vitally important) between a brand and it’s customers. In 2021 producing BTS content is as simple as picking up your phone.
The second BTS referenced is the chart-smashing popular boy band, The Bangtan Boys (aka, BTS). This is a personal entertainment recommendation. But, if you have the budget to do business with BTS, do it. You'll make a lot of money.
I’m bringing these two topics together because I’m a music nerd who loves to connect pop culture to things outside of it. Besides writing about BTS content, I want to demystify BTS (the boy band) as I’m sure most of you don’t listen to them. I’m here to say you don’t have to be aged 12-25 to enjoy them. I promise!
Today we’ll focus on behind the scenes content and how it can advance your business. Rest assured I will devote time next week to BTS (the boy band) to get you on your listening journey.
To explain the power of BTS content, we’ll review a case study featuring 3pts subscriber, Peg Woodworking.
BTS Content Case Study: Peg Woodworking
Weaving From Home
Peg Woodworking is a Brooklyn, NY furniture business founded by designer and woodworker Kate Casey. Kate’s business specializes in producing hand-woven furniture that incorporates unique patterns and colors, as well as other home furnishings. Since its founding in 2014 the business has remained all-female run with Kate, Sally Suzuki and Catherine Woodard as the core team.
Pre-pandemic the team primarily fabricated their furniture in-house. But after social distancing became a requirement they brought their work home like everyone else. For the Peg Woodworking team, “working from home” meant completing large furniture fabrication jobs (benches, tables, wall hangings and more) in their apartments to keep business going.
With both sales of their popular woven benches picking up and the pandemic progressing, they had to “pivot” (2020’s word of the year) their operations to ensure their team was safe while continuing to meet customer demand.
Before Covid they primarily produced bench frames in-house; but after Covid hit they began outsourcing frame production to a vendor in Philadelphia. Once completed the bench frames were sent to the NYC apartments of Kate, Sally and Catherine for weaving and final touches. Their apartments became make-shift furniture workshops.
“Catherine had stuff in her house, I had a bunch of benches in my house and Kate had stuff in her house,” Sally told me in an interview.
It was a critical time for the business and the team knuckled down to keep things moving. Each of them would receive a batch of five benches; the benches would be weaved, the finished benches would be shipped and they would get a new batch of unfinished benches to start the process again.
The process of weaving is long and repetitive (an average bench takes a day to weave). The work can be monotonous, especially when you’re weaving the same patterns day after day, by yourself and at home. Understanding this, the Peg Woodworking team looked for ways to create energy, inspire themselves and generate new opportunities for their business.
During this time, they weaved new bench patterns to mix things up and to challenge themselves creatively. This approach provided them with new patterns to photograph for brand marketing materials. Working from home also allowed them to revisit a pre-pandemic idea they never got around to: a time-lapse video capturing the intricacy and beauty of weaving done in collaboration with Sally’s partner Ben, a professional cinematographer.
“It was luck bringing together a bunch of different things and resources I had in my house,” Sally said when telling the backstory of the project. Ben, also working from home, was itching to film. Sally was weaving from home and they had time on their hands. So they produced a behind the scenes video that has created great value for the business, including going viral. By sharing their process, Peg Woodworking made what was previously not seen by customers visible to them, resulting in online buzz for the brand.
If a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words, a Video is Worth Ten Thousand
The video is simple and effective in its storytelling. It’s a time lapse of Sally weaving a bench in an apartment. Edited and sped up, the video shows the high-level expertise and skill required to weave such a detailed pattern.
To make the video “pop,” Sally selected contrasting chord colors and accentuated her weaving motion. To provide the viewer with before and after context, six finished benches were placed in the background of the frame. “Our finished products look really clean and polished. It’s easy to forget or to not know what goes into making it,” Sally told me. She added, “I think BTS brings a personal side to everything you’re putting out and that was the reason we wanted to do it, because we know that people respond well to it.”
The video succeeds because it tells the brand’s story without words, a masterstroke. Sally agreed, “the intricacies and physicality of weaving is something our team is used to. Being able to capture it visually says more than describing the value of the product to someone. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth ten thousand.”
BTS That Involves The Team Always Yields Value For The Business
The team quickly knew they had something valuable on their hands after the video was posted on Instagram. “It was a mind blowing experience to see how much more people were willing to engage with video,” Catherine explained when discussing the success of the content. The video is now their highest performing post on Instagram (it has a ridiculous 84% engagement rate) and on Pinterest (“It blew all of our previous posts on Pinterest out of the water times twenty,” Catherine quipped).
After seeing the reaction to the video and other BTS content, they’ve learned customers care more about them and their creative process than they do the brand's product posts. "BTS that involves the team always yields value for the business,” Catherine explained summing up the insight. “Any chance people have to get to know us and our process helps our business,” she said, confirming people buy people, not their product.
10 Ways BTS Content Has Helped Peg Woodworking:
- It tells the story of the brand in the most simple and powerful way: visually.
- It clearly communicates the brand’s value proposition: premium hand-woven furniture made by skilled creative professionals who pay attention to detail.
- It educates their customers on the length and depth of work involved in creating the product.
- It has built trust and created deeper bonds with customers.
- They’ve received various press opportunities from it.
- Their social media followers have grown exponentially because of it.
- It provides them with dynamic assets to use in marketing materials.
- It diversifies their online content, humanizes the brand and ensures their content isn’t one note.
- They went viral.
- And, of course, it has helped their business close sales.
What Can BTS Do For You?
So how should you build a simple BTS content strategy to benefit your business? And for gods sakes, when am I going to share some BTS (the boy band) music for you to bump?
In next week’s newsletter I’ll provide answers to both of these questions so you can make BTS content work for your business. And if you're ever interested, you can join the BTS army.
P.S. Does your business create behind the scenes content? I’d like to hear from you!
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