Best Content Marketing Examples
Content Marketing: How it’s been done in the past
Have you ever seen an ad for something? Read an article that’s given you links to the number one’s website? Or looked at the social media page of a brand?
If you have, you will have seen what is known as content marketing or content strategy. With the internet being one of the most common ways that we tend to live our lives, the value of content marketing is becoming more prevalent.
Today, we’ll be going over some of the best content marketing examples.
In this article, I want to speak a bit about some of the people who have made content marketing work for them.
Content Marketing explained
Firstly though, let’s talk about what content marketing is. To put it bluntly, content marketing is when you market content.
I know that sounds kind of obvious, but I feel it’s necessary to put it in layman’s terms because sometimes, people speak about it like it’s more complicated than it actually is.
When we say “content“, we’re referring to something that people are going to see, which will lead to you getting more money. It could be an article, a video, a website, an image, and many other things.
Marketing is a fancy way of saying “promoting”. You want to promote your content as much as you can.
Why is content marketing so Important?
This does, of course, lead onto the question of “Why is content marketing so important?”. And there are several reasons why content marketing can help to build your brand and bring in more customers.
Firstly, it gives you the ability to track leads. Leads are people who are not yet customers but are the kinds of people who have the potential to be customers one day. For example, if you work in real estate, your leads are going to be working professionals of childbearing age.
With so many people using the internet, it will be wise for you to capture as many of them as you possibly can. With content marketing, you’ll be able to reach more people than you would otherwise be able to.
When people see a lot of you, your brand name is going to stick in their minds more. If they see content that you have produced which they enjoy, chances are, when they think of you, they’ll be feeling some positive thoughts.
If you get it wrong
However, it’s also important to remember that you need to do content marketing right. If you get it wrong, there may be some nasty consequences.
The first one is a loss of time and money. If you put a lot of effort into content marketing and find that the results are nowhere near as good you had hoped, you will find that all of the time and money that you spend will have gone down the drain.
When done right, content marketing can give you a brilliant reputation. But when done wrong, it can have the opposite effect; people will think of your failed campaign whenever they think of you.
For example, think of Pepsi’s failed campaign with Kylie Jenner. It was supposed to be a political statement, but most people ended up mocking it for a variety of reasons.
Metrics to check if your Content Marketing is bringing positive results
Metrics are what we use to measure the success of our marketing campaigns. Without metrics, there is no way of telling how successful your campaign has been.
However, just like in life, there is more than one way of measuring success.
Traffic
Traffic refers to how many people visit your page or website. This is going to be particularly crucial for people who run websites whose income comes from Ad Revenue.
Clicks
It’s no use having people visit your website if they aren’t going to stay there. You’re going to want people to use your website.
Using a cookie tracker, you keep on top of how many clicks your website gets, and what pages tend to get the most clicks.
Social Media Data
On social media, likes and follows matter.
By keeping track of them, you can see how successful your marketing campaign has been.
Similarly, you can see how keen people are to show your work to others by keeping track of the number of “shares.”
2020 Content Marketing at its Best!
Buffer
One of the best ways to do content marketing is to do blogging. This is a method that makes it feel like you’re just sharing some cool information; it doesn’t even feel like marketing at all.
One company who has managed to do a great job at blogging is Buffer, a social media helping tool. As well as getting people to blog on their website, they’ve also written guest blogs for other websites.
This has enabled them to be more recognised by Google’s algorithm.
GE
Social media is a growing industry. Just 20 years ago, most people hadn’t even heard of Facebook. But today, even the President of America is on Twitter.
One company who has mastered its social media game is GE, a company who makes turbines, jet engines, and trains.
Being a B2B company, many would think of them as dull and boring. But their usage of Instagram has brought the dull to life using influencer marketing. Currently, they have 429k followers on the site.
John Deere
Many think that content marketing only came about with the rise of the internet. And whilst the internet has made it more important, it predates the internet by a long time.
The company John Deere is known for creating machines that help with forestry. One hundred twenty years ago, before even I was born, they started a publication called “the furrow”, a magazine written for people with interest in forestry.
Even today, the magazine is still being written and published. People who enjoy the magazine are more likely to buy from John Deere.
Zomato
As human beings, we are visual creatures, and many of us have a split second where you can grab our attention.
One of the best ways to grab people’s attention is by using humour. This is something that Zomato knows well. In case you don’t know them, Zomato is a restaurant finder.
If you’re in a new area, you can use Zomato to help you to find the best places for you to eat. Because going out to eat should be a fun event, Zomato uses humour to show that even though they know about the best places, they don’t take themselves too seriously.
As a result of their comedy, they currently have 1.3m followers on Twitter.
BlendTec
Because we are visual creatures, many of us would be more likely to watch a video than we are to read an article. But when we watch a video, we don’t want to feel like we’re watching an ad.
BlendTec has overcome this problem by making their ads feel like fun viral videos with their series “Will it blend?”.
In the series, the host places all sorts of random objects into one of BlendTec’s blenders and lets the viewer see what happens. Because of the videos, BlendTec has seen sales rise by 700%.
For people whose target audience are professionals or people with a keen interest in a particular area, Ebooks can be incredibly useful.
Writing an Ebook shows that you know what you’re talking about, and people will be able to trust you!
One company who’s Ebook has paid off is the social media website LinkedIn. They have written a book called “The secret sauce”, and it’s a free Ebook all about marketing.
Everyone likes a freebie, many of us will even take things we would never pay for, simply because they’re free. And LinkedIn grew their brand by writing a book and then giving it away for free.
Coca-Cola
And finally, we have Coca-cola.
Do you remember when they had that big campaign where they would write random people’s names on bottles? It caused many people to buy a bottle of coke, and post a coke with their name on social media.
It also caused people to complain that they couldn’t find one with their name on, but they could find obscure names that they hadn’t heard about in the past.
Because of this campaign, even people who wouldn’t typically have brought Coca-Cola did because they wanted a bottle with their name on.
Summary
Content marketing is an incredible thing. When you use it properly, you can increase the number of people who buy from you by a lot. And there are many ways that you can do it.
If you want to know how to do content marketing efficiently, check out our other article on how to come up with a strategy plan.
Because as one expert says “What you do after you create content is what truly counts”.
Content marketing is going to be even more significant in the future, which is why it’s best for you to gain an understanding of it now.
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