Fender New Players Initiative
Content Strategy
Collaborated closely with product marketing, learning strategists, marketing, and video production teams to launch a game-changing content strategy in support of a new, large-scale digital learning product for the world’s best-known guitar maker.
Insight
Armed with qualitative and quantitative research showing that nearly half of all new guitar buyers were first-timers and 45% of guitar sales went to a new player—primarily female—who wanted to learn the instrument, Fender needed to focus on finding, engaging, and educating this audience segment, leading to a new large-scale new digital learning product—Fender Play.
Challenge
The content strategy not only needed to reach an audience of beginning players, but also required the support of ongoing new product launches and e-commerce initiatives, as well as reinforcing the brand and its legacy to these newcomers while delivering the kind of inspirational content that leads new players to pick up a guitar in the first place.
Strategy
The content strategy focused on breathing new life into Fender’s digital experience by combining learning-focused content, engaging creative, and SEO to find new players as they searched for beginner topics, including how to buy the right guitar, understanding instrument and amplifier anatomy, primers for guitar effects, and song theory and education.
Creative Content
Thoughtfully designed, easy to parse content arrangements fused multiple needs—drive beginners to Play product, bolster newsletter signups, bolster e-commerce, and support product launch marketing—to create an engaging and unique content package that addressed all four.
Interviews were broken into bite-sized thematic sections and tied to the new player initiative through a focus on each artists earliest learning experiences—how they started, their first instruments, what they struggled with, and how they overcame it.
Where applicable, products represented in the online store would be embedded in layouts and called out in context of the story.
Execution
In-depth guitar, amp, and effects buying guides lead new players to make the right purchase while supporting new product launches and in-house e-commerce goals and initiatives.
2. The how and why of chord shapes and scale theory create an easily referenced library of fretwork basics.
3. Articles revealing guitar anatomy and promoting instrument care, along with illuminating control guides, help beginners to understand their instrument and how it functions.
4. From the many variations of distortion to a reverb review, effects primers help teach beginners how to find their sound while supporting the launch of new Fender pedals and the Mustang GT modeling amplifier.
5. Encouraging articles detail the art of practice, the myriad benefits of playing an instrument, and the joys of performing with other musicians.
6. Deep dives into beginner song favorites (Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”) and how-to articles lead learners by outlining classic artist (Kurt Cobain) playing styles.
7. Articles illuminating brand history and interviews with the world’s most-loved guitarists about their learning stories boost brand presence and inspire players to continue engaging with the Fender Play product and improving their skills.
RESULTS
3X
Increased content-driven PVs 3x over previous site within only 6 months, driving thousands of new players to Fender Play.
42%
New content responsible for 42% of inbound traffic within 6 months, adding 22% to the e-commerce team’s total revenue.
