Tailored Content to Engage
TrendTex Fabrics
Social Media Strategy | Editorial Content | Social Media Content | Campaign Development & Execution
It’s often tricky to market to two very different audiences at once. But that’s exactly what TrendTex needed to do—all while creating an efficient content system to maximize their budget.
TrendTex is well known as the leading wholesale distributor in Canada for independent retailers focused on the quilting and home sewing markets. But when they initially approached us in 2019, they were working on launching an online shop where independent quilters and sewers can shop some of the industry’s best fabric lines directly—Moda, Hoffman California, Cotton + Steel, RJR Fabrics, Stof, Benartex, Michael Miller, Lewis & Irene, Shannon Fabrics and Poppie Cotton, to name a few. They successfully launched the shop, and online shoppers earmark their nearest local quilt shop to receive the retail margin, in order to ensure TrendTex doesn’t undercut its own suppliers.
It’s a solid business model for TrendTex, but it initially presented some marketing challenges. Specifically: with finite resources, how could the company appeal to B2B and B2C audiences, addressing the differing needs and pain points of each?
At the time, TrendTex had just dipped its toes into social media and content marketing. At the time, the team posted only a few times each month on social channels and occasionally on its website. They understood that the brand required a more recognizable and consistent content presence to grow its audience and cultivate leads, but their small marketing team had very little extra bandwidth.
Getting to know the brand, its competitive landscape, and the audiences to target is where we began to craft fresh strategy.
We began our work with TrendTex by auditing and analyzing the brand’s current content and marketing strategies, and by surveying their competition. Ultimately we worked with the team to create two fresh, on-target marketing personas to represent the B2B and B2C audiences.
Noting the company’s higher engagement and a larger following on Instagram, we recommended an Instagram-first strategy for both audiences, targeting growth in followership as a key objective. A brand social look-and-feel refresh would support consistency, follower growth, and higher engagement from new/existing audiences, as would an increased cadence, with more dynamic content and high-quality imagery, tutorials, Stories content and short videos.
We also suggested that TrendTex consider more actively commenting on, liking and sharing audience content, and encouraging user-generated content with giveaways, contests and more. Quilters and sewers just adore a space to trade ideas, get inspired and post up their projects—so this was an easy win.
With an audience of experts in quilting and fabric, we knew we needed subject matter expertise in developing content, too.
After our initial work to nail the content marketing strategy—including developing personas, a channel plan, and a suggested calendar—we set out to create monthly batches of social content that mix in pieces targeted to B2B & B2C.
To do so at a premium quality level, we knew we needed to bring in a writer and creator who knew their subject matter: in this case, fabric and quilting. Thanks to our deep roots in magazine publishing, we were able to bring on board contributors with experience writing and editing for quilting magazines—who just so happened to be quilters themselves.
We began by producing social-only content batches alongside a monthly blog post and associated social posts. We quickly noted, however, when we analyzed monthly reporting data, that one content type was vastly outperforming all others: project tutorials (with sewing tips and techniques coming in a close second). We’re talking upwards of 20,000 views vs. 1,500 on previous content—whew!
Enter our in-house quilting experts. These multi-talented folks began, and continue to, regularly complete and document some stunning quilting and fabric projects that we profile in our content.
Our monthly long-form pieces are now exclusively project tutorials based on these projects. And we’re proud to have now built up a large library of helpful and inspiring free sewing/quilting how-tos on the TrendTex website—using gorgeous TrendTex products, of course! Other types of quilting inspiration, fresh project ideas, free pattern shout-outs, new-arrival spotlights and seasonal themes have also been hugely successful.
Our savvy editorial team regularly reaches out to TrendTex audiences to ensure content is landing as it should—and to ask for ideas, too. In fact, we polled our followers just this year to generate a slew of fresh content ideas and sewing tips. And we see healthy engagement on posts featuring products and new fabric lines. Our client tells us that sales of specific products and lines invariably jump when we feature them in social posts and tutorials.
And why not provide training in content development for TrendTex’s network of quilting shops, too? Count us in! We’ve created training sessions for shop owners in social media promotion (including a Going Live webinar) to ensure that their content marketing is top-notch, too, benefiting the entire community.
Why We Love Them
This content is so much fun to put together, and a delight to read, too. The TrendTex team is wonderful to work with, and we never get tired of our front-row seat to their passion for fabric craft, or their warm openness to suggestions and ideas. We even had the pleasure of visiting and touring their (huge!) warehouse last year. There were so many beautiful fabrics… we’ll never run short of gorgeous things to post!
How can we help solve your unique content challenges?
Check out more of our client projects here—and reach out for a free call to discuss how we could support you in your own content marketing journey.