Bear & Bell's Boutique - marketing & content strategy
Dec 3, 2024
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Introduction
Something a little different for me… I’ve been plunged head first into the world of doggy fashion and accessories.
Jade successfully runs Bear & Bell’s Boutique (B&B) as an aside to her 9-5. Bear & Bell’s is run primarily through Instagram, but Jade is looking to improve her organic reach and SEO rankings, ultimately capturing customers through search.
Bear & Bell’s Boutique began after Jade discovered that such accessories weren’t available. She spotted a gap in the market and began making her own. Jade is a dog lover through and through, and is very passionate about making sure her pooches have access to fun and individual accessories that go well with the training tools she uses.
B&B offers handmade dog accessories, catering to both those looking for general accessories and those perhaps a bit more niche. After successfully training her German Shepherd, Bear, using balanced training methods, Jade found that there weren’t many accessories around that add panache to balanced training accessories, nor were there many judgment free spaces that she could find.
After speaking with Jade, I identified several opportunities to improve her site rankings based on her site in its current form, as well as new ways to attract customers.
Marketing strategy
Jade did not have a clear marketing strategy in place, as she uses Instagram as her main marketing source. This was great for me as it meant I could really get my teeth into the project and start building a structure of what needs doing now, and what we can aim for in the future.
As Jade runs Bear & Bell’s solo, it was important that the marketing strategy wasn’t too overwhelming, and divided into clear tasks and areas for improvement. On this basis, I focused on the following key areas:
Defining a strategy, albeit high level, means there is a clear, documented list of tasks that need to be done. It’s always useful having a written record of these things so can easily refer to the document and you know where you’re at!
Competitor research
I set up a pro-forma for Jade to continue with the competitor research, so she understands how she’s performing in her market and what her gaps are versus her competitors. As Jade had not previously completed competitor analysis/research, it was important to keep this area simple - and not overwhelming - to ensure she does this regularly as part of her marketing audits.
Content & inventory
New content
To improve B&B’s organic rankings, especially as e-commerce sites are usually lighter on written content, I suggested introducing a blog to the site. Adding a blog will help B&B’s SERP rankings as it supports search engines’ understanding of the website.
As Jade wants to attract fellow dog owners who have used balanced training, I began by writing a blog about her and Bear’s journey, through the eyes of Bear. This blog discussed what balanced training is, and why it was so important for Bear. Getting into the mind of a dog when you’re writing isn’t something I do often, but I definitely quite enjoyed it!
To date, I have written two blogs for B&B (what is balance training and why is it important/our journey to balance training) and edited two that Jade produced (a Christmas gift guide and an ambassador introduction). The blog about the ambassadors was necessary as it provides Jade an opportunity for links to other sites with her market’s ecosystem, as well as an opportunity to get backlinks on her partners’ sites. Jade also now understands the importance of consistency with written content so will be posting more in the future - watch this space.
All content was reviewed by Jade ahead of publishing to ensure that she was happy with the message and style. Luckily for me, she loved it! Woohoo :)
A selection of published blogs
Content strategy & inventory
When embarking on a new content strategy, it’s always helpful to understand the content you already have available, what content formats, and where in the funnel it applies (To/Mo/BoFu). As content is a new area for Bear & Bell’s Boutique, I created a content inventory.
The inventory included topics and titles for content pieces, some of which I created, and suggestions for the future based on keyword research. All content within the tracker was tagged with the suggested format (such as blog, web page, social media post, or email) as well as its status and publish date for better organisation.
Events calendar
Jade regularly attends different fairs throughout the year to connect with her customers in person. There are also several holidays for which she will create limited edition or seasonal products.
Introducing an events calendar for 2025 means that Jade can now plan her marketing activities around these and allocate her time to them correctly. Having set events and marketing activities in place throughout the year also highlights any other gaps or opportunities that she can fill with things such as a regular newsletter, or sending out new content to her subscribers.
SEO audit & keyword research
In our initial conversation, Jade mentioned that she wanted to begin getting customers through organic search and her website rather than being driven purely by social media. Following this, I ran an SEO audit against her website to understand her current SERP rankings and for which keywords.
I also identified other keywords that we could aim for, looking in particular at those that had sufficient volume and a lower difficulty. The keyword research also formed part of Jade’s future content strategy as it highlighted topics and areas in which Bear & Bell’s can produce content.
I do love a list, I have to admit, and following the audit I mapped out a comprehensive list of SEO tasks to do across the site before adding any new content. This included checking all the tags had been appropriately assigned and page meta data has been completed, as well as including keywords in page headings wherever possible.
As Jade is within e-commerce, her site has a lot of images! Alt text for images, including keywords. where possible, has now been added to the site. This not only enhances SEO activities, but also assists in accessibility for those using screen readers. Product descriptions were also all updated in line with keyword research.
Bear & Bell’s regularly work with partner companies and ambassadors, which gives a great opportunity to get some backlinks. I identified these opportunities and gave suggestions for how Jade can include these and get more backlinks to improve her domain authority.
Web pages
Working with the web pages’ SEO data highlighted some opportunities to improve the usability of the site, especially around product listings.
Jade previously only had all her products listed on one page. From a user perspective, this didn’t feel very intuitive and also made it so her site had less heading tags. I went through her product list and correctly categorised her products, creating separate pages for each. This meant the URLs and headings matched and I was able to add a small paragraph of copy on each to help search engines understand her site better.
Homepage - before & after
Product pages - before & after
Results
As there have been a lot of changes to the Bear & Bell’s site, it might take a bit of time for search engines take in the updates. However, the site is now much easier to navigate, has extra content for search engines to crawl, and Jade has lots of ideas for growth in the future.
Really enjoyed working on this one, looking forward to the next!
If you’d like a hand in getting your website organised and new content added - drop me a message! :)
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