Shoes are big business.
Women’s shoes are huge business and men’s shoes are big business. Women buy lots of shoes. They purchase shoes for various occasions and outfits. Men do the same, but not the same extent. Yet there is a segment of the male population that loves quality dress shoes.
One company that has stood out to me as an innovator in the men’s shoe space is Stacy Adams. The company has some of the most unique shoe styles available for men today. They have also found a great balance of quality and price. This is an important issue today. Men are looking for value in shoe purchases. They want to look good while not emptying their wallet. There is also the issue of paying little and getting little in return. Sometimes it’s worth more now to get quality shoes that will last a long time.
It’s not uncommon for men to own a pair of dress shoes for decades. Shoes can be polished and maintained and if worn only for true dress occasions, shoes can last for years.
Stacy Adams has a good balance, in my assumption. Their shoes are stylish, affordable, and durable.
The one thing I wish Stacy Adams had to offer is a blog. I thought I’d go ahead and offer my thoughts on what a blog strategy could be for Stacy Adams.
Stacy Adams Blog Strategy
A good blog strategy starts with the target customer. The customer of Stacy Adams is male. The likely age is 30 to 45. This age group can skew up and down, but there is always a core age range of about five to ten and maybe fifteen years. This helps merchandisers when planning to make purchases and developments.
The Stacy Adams customer, let’s call him Damien, lives in the city. He’s a single guy with a career that is on the rise. He likely works in an office setting where he works around people all day. He wears suits or dress up for his work. He also dresses up when out having dinner with colleagues or when on dates with a girlfriend.
So there is a brief background on Damien, the Stacy Adams customer. I’m sure the company has many more details on the customer, but for this purpose I think it’s a good start.
What Damien Wants to Read
The next step in the blogging strategy is to determine what Damien will find interesting. The entire blog strategy will revolve around attracting Damien’s interest. There is much competition online for attention and the only way to win the attention of a core audience is to offer something more interesting than all possible attention competitors.
I have a few thoughts for potential posts for Stacy Adams. I’ll follow my previous thoughts on three different post types:
- News Commentary
- Featured Stories
- How to
For Stacy Adams, the news commentary will be shorter posts discussing the latest fashion news. The articles will need to focus on innovations in male fashion. This can include footwear, apparel and accessories. The commentary should present the news item (ex: purple is a popular color for the upcoming season) and offer insight into how Damien should react to this news (ex post: Purple is In, But Not for Shoes).
Featured Stories is where the real value could come in for Stacy Adams. The company seems to have connections with actors and possibly even athletes. Many mane, even if they don’t realize it, take fashion cues from men they look up to. Damien is likely a fan of the NBA. A solid Featured Story post could revolve around the fashion a popular NBA player was recently seen wearing. The player doesn’t even have to be associated with Stacy Adams, but if that player was seen in public with a nice suit, a purple shirt, and nice dress shoes, a blog post could discuss how Damien could copy this style while including information on the proper dress shoes for the occasion. More Feature Stories posts could include a background story on a person in merchandising and development at Stacy Adams. It might be interesting to see a video of how the shoes are made from the drafting of the design to the end result off the factory line.
How to posts are pretty straight forward. A great post idea might be something like How to Properly Tie Dress Shoe Laces.
What is Good for Stacy Adams
It’s important to focus on the core customer, but it’s a little more important for the business to focus on what’s best for the business. This means that a blogging strategy will need to generate profit for Stacy Adams. This means finding new customers through search and social and capturing these customers with an email sign up or another form of subscription.
Creating a list is something all blogs should focus on. The money is in the list.
Execution and Reporting
Now for the important question: Who will execute this strategy?
Stacy Adams may have one or multiple potential bloggers on staff. The company likely has someone in merchandising that could offer great insight into the customer. The company coud bring in a write full time to work with the merchandiser on this strategy. It’s important to understand who will execute the strategy. Writing is tough and it’s even more difficult to write consistently and frequently. These are two important factors for blogging success and without commitment the blog will fail.
Reporting will also be important. There need to be goals so the writer or blog manager are responsible for sales and profit just like sales reps are. The company is looking for profit and blogging needs to be held to the same standards.
Final Thoughts
A blogging strategy may not fit in with the current priorities at Stacy Adams. This was just an exercise to show you how a blog strategy is developed. Stacy Adams is a smart and growing company. It is a company I have admired for a few years and they seem to be doing the right things for their company.
If they or any company approached me about blogging this is the exercise I would go through. It has worked in the past and is something you can use to create your own blogging strategy.