You’ve just heard the term “content marketing,” and you get the feeling you should know what it is, but you’re too ashamed to inquire. Content marketing is a communication technique that uses related papers, podcasts, and videos, as well as other media, to engage, connect, and retain an audience. This strategy builds expertise, raises brand recognition, and keeps your company front of mind when it comes to the opportunity to purchase what you sell.
Content marketing is the dissemination of relevant, valuable content to existing and potential clients, including through newsletters, blogs, emails, social media posts, and many others. If you are doing it correctly, people or any corporation that is going to buy or sell your content will appreciate you.
Consistent use of content marketing builds and develops relationships with both new and existing customers. When your target audience perceives your business as a partner invested in their development and a valued source of information and direction, they are more likely to pick you when the time comes to buy.
Why is content marketing important?
Content marketing is indeed a tried-and-true strategy. Companies that create content for multiple platforms grow 30% faster than those that do not. It also gives you a competitive advantage. Check out the following things that will happen if you start working on your content marketing:
Attracting New Leads: Companies with blogs receive 67% more audiences than other businesses. Just remember one thing: Your content is what will attract the audience or the main lead. If you write well, you can attract the right audience. The relevancy of your material is a key consideration. If your content attracts the wrong leads, you’re wasting your time.
Enhancing Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO will have a critical influence on your company’s ability to get found on the Internet. (SEO) is the method of maximising the exposure of a web page or a website in the unpaid results of a search engine. By providing material relevant to your sector, you enhance the likelihood that a search engine will offer your information to searchers.
Content Marketing on Social Media Aids in Hiring Top Talent: That is, content marketing on social media applications is an excellent technique to recruit top talent.
How to Increase Your Social Media Followers: Social media marketing and content marketing complement each other perfectly. You create your material and then spread it on social media. The prospects you generate through your content will ideally begin to follow you or your ideas on social media.
Increase in Sales: Content marketing may generate revenue. The benefits outlined above should demonstrate how a very well-crafted content marketing plan can and will enhance sales.
It is cheaper than traditional advertising: Digital marketing, particularly content marketing, is far less costly than conventional marketing and creates significantly more leads.
How much time does a content marketing strategy take?
That depends on how many posts or videos you publish and make, how long it’ll take you to make all of them, or how many hours you invest in advertising them. If you’re just starting, you’ll need to conduct a lot of promotions. As a general guideline, you should devote at least one hour to promotion per each hour spent developing, preferably more. If you begin with one post a week, you’ll need at least 6 hours per week for writing and promotion.
Traits that make great content
It is easy to find. Good SEO is a component of creating amazing content. If anyone is already browsing your website, they ought to be able to locate your most recent updates. People who have never heard of you or your site must be able to easily find your material via a Google search. The most effective technique to improve searchability is to connect your content with an extremely relevant term. Then you should optimise your website for that term. for additional assistance with this process.
It should be shareable. When people come across absolutely outstanding stuff, they want to shout it from the rooftops, or at the very least post it on Facebook. The first step is to create something that consumers want to share, and the second step is to make it extremely simple for them to do so.
Create something awesome! If you’re scared to tell your colleagues about what you have just published on the blog, you can start over; it’s not good enough.
Frame the content. This includes the title, “Share text,” main image, and so forth. Consider the concept of funnels. The more people who see your title and are attracted by it, the more likely they are to read it.
Using social sharing tools Hovering share buttons, a tweetable that reads “Click to Tweet,” and a big, gigantic pop-up that screams “Share this, dude!” Encourage your customers and audience to share your social media posts or blogs on the website or your videos on YouTube. Referrals are really important for content marketing.
People should use it. “Usability” is essential in design, whether it’s an online utility or a fork. And great content must also be usable—that is, it must be simple for others to consume your knowledge. If you start with a very well-designed, highly usable website, any content you build on top will be more useful as well.
People should quote it. A soundbite is an important component of successful Web writing. Some writers excel at this; practically every sentence in an essay is full of piercing wit while remaining under 140 characters. The benefit of quotable information is that it is more remembered and shared.
These are some of the ways to make it quotable.
Read more. Reading good writing is an effective way to improve as a writer. Learn through absorption. Imitate those you appreciate until you “discover your voice.”
Be amusing. Laugh lines are often quoted. You can write funny things if you’re funny in real life.
Avoid cliches: You want your viewers to quote you, so do not use the same marketing platitudes we’ve all heard a million times.
Targeted to a specific persona: Aim to impress a tiny section of your customers or potential audience with a few of your contents. This kind of emphasis on satisfying the demands of a small number of people can have significant returns in terms of better enlightening you on what the broader community wants and requires from your brand.
Is content marketing right for your business?
Here are some questions that will help you find out the answer.
Are you willing to make a commitment to creating extremely valuable content?
Are you ready to commit for the long run?
Do you really have a minimum of six hours a week to devote to creating and promoting content, or the funds to employ others to do this job?
If you answered “no” to these queries, you should avoid beginning content marketing.
Conclusion
This blog demonstrates why it is important for a business to do content marketing. Content marketing can not only help you increase exposure, but it can also allow you to build deeper connections with your consumers.
If you haven’t started yet, your time is now. Understand and find the value of content marketing for yourself. Develop a content marketing plan that focuses on your target buyers. Then you can begin developing valuable content that will aid in conversions and customer retention.
Content marketing is the hot new method of exposure for your brand that puts other methods, like advertising, to shame with its ROI and exponential profit. When done right, content marketing is capable of attracting the right audience for your brand and creating a breed of loyal, sought-after, and supportive customers.
However, many brands struggle to find the right content marketing strategy, leading to a failure in their sales and lack of business growth. This is the ultimate guide to digital marketing that will help ensure that the only struggle your business will face is an exceptional rise in sales and exposure.
Understanding what “content” means
The first and foremost thing in building the perfect content strategy for your company is understanding what the word “content” means. Many brands and businesses miss out on a lot of opportunities because their vision and understanding of the crucial part, aka content, is very limited. As a result of their limited understanding, they produce content that generates no results.
You need to remember one thing about content marketing and repeat it till it embeds itself inside your brain: Your content needs to be perfect.
Perfect Content
Perfect content is not about your brand or the delivery method but about delivering the right information about your prospects at exactly the right point in a customer’s journey.
Let’s look at it through a different lens. Imagine there is an ice-cold prospect who you need as your customer. That customer will travel through a tunnel consisting of three steps:
Awareness
Evaluation
Conversion
Let’s take a trip down this tunnel and find out about all the different stops along the way.
Awareness: The first part is making the prospect aware that there is a problem and that you have the solution to their problem.
Evaluation: The people who make it through the first stop now evaluate the various options available to them, including your competitor’s solutions to their problem. You need to ensure that you provide those options to them in a better way than others do. As they say in the business world, crush your opponents.
Conversion: Only after the customer has become aware of your solutions and evaluated their options will they move onto the next step, buying what you are selling. This is the part where you recognise your success and give yourself a pat on the back. Go ahead, you deserve it.
Just remember that the content needs to be generated in such a way that at the beginning of the tunnel they need content that generates awareness. In the middle, they need content that facilitates evaluations and at the end they need content that encourages conversion.
Let’s go deeper into the various ways in which you can make the above written information useful for yourself.
The beginning of the content marketing tunnel
Take it like this: the prospects entering your tunnel of content marketing are in complete darkness about your solutions and hence completely unaware of their problems. At this stage, they are skittish about going inside your tunnel and putting in their time and efforts, so you need to shine light onto the things that attract them inside the tunnel.
You need to make free content available from the very start so that: (Ask Creative to make this.)
Educates
Inspires
Motivates
Entertains
And you need to make it readily available through the medium of blog posts, videos, social media, infographics, photographs, digital magazines and books, podcasts, and so on.
However, you do not need all these at the start of the tunnel. This is where your blogs and social media platforms come into play, as most businesses post blogs and make regular social media updates to generate awareness. Though, once you have mastered the blogging and social media aspects, you can move onto other mediums like podcasts and, if you have a bigger budget, newsletters.
Middle of the tunnel of content marketing
Unfortunately, most companies stop their content marketing at the beginning of the tunnel and fail in their journey to being successful, but smart marketers like yourself should be aware that entering the tunnel is just the beginning of gaining a larger audience, which generates profit.
Converting “issue aware” and “solution aware” prospects into leads is the main objective in the middle of the tunnel. Here, we make use of complementary content to encourage potential customers to opt in to future marketing and provide their contact information.
This is done through various modes, like:
Educational Resources (Case Study, White Paper, etc.)
Useful Resources (Swipe File, Checklist, etc.)
Software Downloads
Discount/Coupon Clubs
Quizzes/Surveys
Webinars/Events
The term “Lead Magnet” refers to this kind of information.
End of the tunnel of content marketing
Now that you have generated awareness and increased your chances of getting a sale, it’s time to start selling. You need to provide the lead with the kind of information that will inspire them to make an informed purchase decision, like free trials, demos, customer reviews, stories, demo classes, etc.
Here you have it: by the time your prospect leaves your tunnel, you will have a new loyal customer who is ready to invest their time in your content.
Intent-based content
Understanding current intent and predicting future intent, together with developing the content “assets” required to satisfy those intentions on a 24-hour, seven-day per week basis, are the keys to flawless content marketing.
If you already have a business, the content assets that meet intent in the bottom and centre of the funnel will be the most profitable ones for you to produce. Optimize for this existing bottom and middle of tunnel intent before focusing on raising awareness at the beginning of the tunnel with a costly and time-consuming blog rollout.That is not meant to downplay the influence of a business blog.
Having said that, the middle and end of the tunnel are where content marketers may achieve immediate wins.
Conclusion
Content marketing is much more than producing beautifully written blogs; content marketing requires a strategic plan, a 12-month calendar, and the will to power through those days when it’s hard to leave the bed and focus on something else. Content marketing, in the end, is your business’s only chance of gaining the best it can ever hope to achieve.
Have you ever felt like your content marketing initiatives were running out of ideas?
It’s not just you.
The main goal of content marketing is to use content to draw in, hold on to, and ultimately convert website visitors into paying customers. And the majority of users are aware of its efficiency. Before we jump into these 31 amazing examples, let’s understand what content marketing really is.
What is content marketing?
This kind of marketing can be delivered through blogs, newsletters, e-books, forums, webinars, discussion boards, videos, social media channels, and a variety of other platforms.
To put it briefly, content marketing is producing top-notch material to draw in prospects and clients and turn them into enthusiastic followers who will spread the word about your goods and services.
Now let’s see how these use cases have helped businesses and brands grow across the world.
HubSpot
HubSpot is always at the top of the list when it comes to examples of digital marketing handled well. As a growth hacking method, Hubspot has leveraged content marketing by publishing blog posts about subjects that their readers care about and providing content enhancements like ebooks to their blog entries. It is also used to produce videos for social media applications like Facebook and to drive traffic to those films using LinkedIn.
Optum
By integrating data-driven insights with technology and expertise, Optum enables modern health care. Optum modernises system infrastructure, improves care, and assists clients as they take responsibility for their health, which will eventually be commonplace in the healthcare business. Some businesses use a thought leadership strategy to comment on their area of expertise. Optum has an entire webpage dedicated to thought leadership. Their themes and concepts are the ideal marriage of the products they offer and the wide collection of topics site users and prospective consumers desire to read about. Their product offers and intended verticals are quite complex, but there is much “for me” information for a broad range of users.
Groove’s Startup Journey blog reached $500K in monthly income for their customer support software, but the Modern Team blog is on Flow, a project control app. There are a few similarities between the two brands:
Both blogs are centred on a much bigger picture than what the programme itself accomplishes. Groove is a help desk application. Groove’s main blog is all about their startup journey, which most of their customers are also on and which resonates with them. Flow handles task management. The Modern Team article focuses on the larger picture of what it means to be a team. The posts are scarce, but when they do appear, they are the “best of the best.”
They both seem to have a powerful position and a powerful voice. Generic, keyword-laced articles may generate traffic, but they will not generate fans.
Both blogs have planted flags in the ground. They stated that they will not only write on project management, customer service, or challenges related to those two topics. We know who our ideal customers are. They recognise that they are diverse, that they are leaders, that they value progress and self-awareness, and they want to lead stronger teams and generate more income. They’re planning to write about it, gain a far larger audience as a result, and turn customers into adoring fans.
Recess
Recess, a sparkling water brand, was one of 2020’s top company Instagram accounts. However, Recess is more than just a water brand.
And, in a year filled with stress and uncertainty, it’s no surprise that Recess has found its audience by focusing on generating material that connects, entertains, and relieves daily life. While beverage companies are among the top advertisers, Recess has chosen an entirely organic approach.
The brand uses organic Instagram to push its followers to sign up for a weekly, content-driven email, which now has a 25% open rate. In comparison, the industry average is only 14.5 percent.
HAUS –
Direct-to-consumer alcohol firms had their moment in 2020 when many liquor outlets were closed due to the epidemic and consumers were forced to stay at home. Because of their social media strategy, Haus, famed for its handmade canapes, was well-positioned to capitalise on rising demand.
Early in the epidemic, Haus turned its attention to The Restaurant Project, in which the brand collaborated with food outlets, collaborating with chefs to co-create distinct aperitifs for each. The drinks were sold online, with all earnings going to their restaurant partners. This type of promotion was successful because it made customers feel better about supporting their favourite eateries during a difficult period.
As of April, this sort of consumer-focused strategy had helped to raise the impact on ad expenditure by 250 percent. Since January, Haus’s whole business has surged 500%.
BALA BANGLES
Bala Bangles debuted their collection of fashionable wrist and ankle weights in 2017 and quickly grabbed attention for their partnership with Mark Cuban on Shark Tank. The brand’s Instagram feed does not resemble typical fitness-related content. They adopt an aesthetic approach to photography and film that is eye-catching and motivating and has caught the attention of mainstream media outlets and significant retail partners.
Bala had not engaged in any paid advertising platforms when the epidemic surfaced; hence, the need for home fitness equipment surfaced. Despite the increased demand, Bala continued to be active with their community with their Instagram Live fitness programmes that could be performed even without their products.
Tiffany & Co.
Tiffany & Co. is one of the best examples of how a historic brand could use Instagram to modernise its image and reach new customers. To create good brand identification, the brand draws on its characteristic “Tiffany Blue” while enabling latitude to experiment with new creativity. Tiffany mixes excitement and playfulness using modern marketing strategies like Instagram Live in a business that is all about luxury.
The Instagram grid instantly recognises Tiffany, but it draws the customers and audiences further into the brand’s world through storytelling and sophisticated images. Tiffany & Co.’s content has generated 11 times more engagements than that of an average watch and jewellery brand.
So Worth Loving
So Worth Loving is an apparel and accessory brand that promotes self-esteem and worthiness. Their Instagram serves as a forum for reinforcing their objective, communicating positive sentiments, and marketing their product line. So Worth Loving commonly posts quote-style visuals in between product-oriented photographs to achieve a balance between their vision and promotion.
In 2020, content about self-esteem, positive thinking, and diversity was practically ubiquitous on social media applications like Instagram. So Worth Loving comes across as genuine and sincere due to their defined brand objective.
They also live out their objective by extensively investing in community management. Despite having approximately 75,000 followers, they constantly reply to each remark and connect with their audience. As a result, the fan base feels noticed and involved.
JetBlue
JetBlue is a world-class airline that has never been hesitant to experiment with content marketing. It has used video in particular to motivate its customers and to showcase its brand principles and personality.
Some examples include the Reach Across the Aisle campaign. It encourages individuals to discover what brought them together: a video series about flying with infants and the amusing Flight Etiquette video series.
The number of YouTube views ranges from thousands to millions, yet the brand’s perception remains largely good.
Lays
If you want it to receive a huge amount of attention immediately, nothing gives the public more reason to watch a YouTube video than a giveaway. Lays began its “Do Us a Flavor” campaign in 2012, inviting viewers to submit proposals for future potato chip tastes. The sweepstakes awarded a million dollars to a Wisconsin librarian, and the video on YouTube advertising the campaign was viewed over 12 million times.
Red Bull
As Red Bull is an energy drink, its marketing focuses on supporting an active, energy-filled lifestyle. In six years, YouTube will have more than 4 million followers and a billion cumulative video views. Their most popular films feature sports people, daredevils, and other daredevils doing amazing feats like hiking frozen Niagara Falls, making a wooden bike from scratch, and racing on ice.
Red Bull consistently outperforms new media channels and social media applications like Instagram and Twitter. They have tried every idea possible and, in most cases, succeeded. They first appeared on YouTube in 2006 and have amassed 4,902,068 subscribers in ten years. Red Bull knows who their goods and channels are aimed at, and they create videos that explain everything well about the high-energy, risk-taking activity that the brand thrives on.
They associate consuming Red Bull with enthusiasm and achievement, and they demonstrate this through their sponsorship of many unconventional sports and the excellence of their YouTube movies. You should try to dedicate yourself in the same way with your on-brand and on-message videos, and you, too, can crush it on YouTube.
Walmart
Some people have good feelings about Walmart, but the range of videos on their YouTube channel is undeniably astounding. They not only feature simple recipes, but also price match testimonies, new product instructions, and blog partners that contribute their customer feedback.
A good diversity of material not only gives customers new content to see daily but also feeds staff creativity because they don’t have to generate the same video repetitively.
Slack
Slack is a cloud-based organisational communication hub that allows for seamless collaboration and interaction with other programs. It has become a verb as well as a noun. Slack has had around 8 million daily users since its inception in 2013.
Slack has a distinct personality or style of its own. The same could be said about the content it creates, which includes everything from blogging to podcast videos. Everything screams slack. As a reward for staying on brand, the corporation has a pension. When you visit their YouTube account, you’ll notice that they use similar colours, themes, messaging, and video length.
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola was most likely among the first companies to believe in content creation and marketing and construct its marketing plan around it. Coca-Cola’s content strategy at the time was described as “Liquid and Linked.” Every year, a massive corporation like Coca-Cola generates an infinite number of stories.
70% of their content is developed to be “low risk,” often known as “bread and butter” content. Because such content is less hazardous and disputed, it requires less time to implement.
Coca-Cola uses personalization to get people to talk about their brand everywhere. In Australia, they launched the Share a Coke campaign by printing the 150 most frequent names on bottles. Then they urged folks to enjoy a Coke with those namesakes.
This campaign got a lot of attention, leading to sales of 2 billion bottles and cans over the summer, or little more than ten for every Australian. Unsurprisingly, the campaign quickly spread to other cities. You may now personalise your Coke.
Dunzo
Dunzo is one of the top Bengaluru-based firms vying for unicorn status. It is a content distribution app that excels, particularly on social media networks. The brand’s Instagram account is all about current, humorous copy.
Their material ranges from the Easter holidays to Rahul Dravid memes, allowing them to reach a larger audience without requiring large ad costs. They capitalise on popular news that is trending at the time and offer it a trademark Dunzo spin.
Dunzo is aware of its intended audience. The younger audience is constantly in search of entertaining content and spends the majority of their time on social media. Dunzo uses “moment marketing” to ensure that it captures and engages their attention!
Nykaa
The cosmetics industry Nykaa began as a low-cost Indian option to the foreign cosmetics market. The challenge Nykaa accepted was formidable: compete against global behemoths with massive marketing budgets in a brand-conscious country. But to say they were successful is an understatement.
The brand has created a large network of influencers that are continually putting out Nykaa content for diverse audiences across India. They accomplished this by making quality material accessible through their Beauty Book, which includes a variety of content forms such as visualisations, blogs, vlogs, and more.
These are beneficial to both micro-influencers and end-users who sell Nykaa items. Nykaa TV had a 120 percent growth in watch time at COVID-19 as they presented DIY wellness and cosmetic ideas. They also held weekly competitions to engage their clients and noticed a threefold rise in new monthly subscribers.
Ahrefs: “How-to” Content
Ahrefs is one of the best backlink and SEO analysis tools. This company distinguishes itself for its significant investment in educational content. They’ve written numerous thorough how-to guides that address their target market’s pain points and issues. How-to searches give a significant chance to content marketers, which Ahrefs efficiently exploits.
Ahrefs excels in presenting its service as a solution to the problem that consumers are looking for. If you’re struggling to figure out how to construct your content strategy, you’ll certainly need to conduct keyword research.
TED
TED is a global conference platform where writers, academics, and other leaders offer brief speeches on a variety of thought-provoking topics The majority of their films have received massive amounts of viewership, and that doesn’t even include their TED Fellows, TEDx, and TED-ed, as well as other channels. The success of TED is due to its dedication to developing “ideas worth spreading.”
First, they only bring in the greatest speakers with highly compelling topics. TED was originally an invitation-only conference, and the event’s founder was known to kick participants off stage throughout their presentation if he didn’t think it was good enough. The high standards have attracted speakers such as Tim Ferris, Tim Urban, Elon Musk, Brené Brown, and several others.
TED is not concerned with SEO or market analysis. They’re focused on locating and producing world-class material that they believe people will enjoy. This is why they’ve become a global phenomenon, even though the majority of their content comprises 15-minute recordings of someone speaking on a stage.
GoPro
GoPro is a company that makes action cameras, which are typically utilised in adventure sports. These cameras are typically used by their clients in hazardous or enviable settings, making it easy to persuade customers to share their films and hence the product. And they’ve taken the bold step of allowing the product to promote itself through user-generated content. The greatest feature of user-generated content is that 79 percent of consumers feel it has a significant impact on their shopping decisions.
Only a small percentage of GoPro content is created entirely by GoPro.It usually consists of well-edited video collections of users doing something they enjoy.
GoPro took the UGC concept to the next level by launching the Million Dollar Challenge, in which users may upload adventure films for an opportunity to win a million dollars. GoPro used the winning film in a marketing campaign that was enormously successful, not just by motivating users to share their footage, but also by providing free marketing content. GoPro’s YouTube channel is loaded with extreme sports compilations, which attracts other people.
Spotify
Spotify is a genius at personalization. They provide personalised emails and playlists, as well as a data-driven microsite that celebrates each user’s unique listening habits. Spotify is completely customised.
They introduced their first “Wrapped” promotion a few years back, in which customers got an email that displayed their most-listened-to music in a narrative format.
Each year, after the original success, fresh “Wrapped” campaigns are launched. Spotify gains massive brand recognition and influence digitally without developing any new content by sharing unique, tailored data and pushing consumers to share it.
Users want to see and share the song genres they like to listen to most, and musicians with large social followings are eager to brag about how many people listen to their music.
Buffer
Buffer, a social media scheduling service, uses the hashtag #BufferCommunity to highlight the photos and emotions of many of its different users throughout the world. These photos aren’t commercial or even vaguely brand-centric, which is why they’re so effective. Buffer’s features are designed to make it easier to connect and plan on social media, and all these photographs imply that Buffer’s community participants can work from anywhere on a range of tasks.
Digital Marketer
Digital Marketer is one of the largest digital marketing educators and online communities.
They’ve developed a lot of amazing content, just like HubSpot, and leading magnets play a huge role in turning that audience and moving people farther down their funnels. The lead magnet is the first thing you’ll notice when you visit their webpage.
Digital Marketer does an excellent job of demonstrating that lead magnets are not difficult, time-consuming, or expensive to create. It’s probably for the best that they don’t. Long white sheets and e-books can indeed be costly to prepare, and they are more difficult for users to absorb.
Checklists are an excellent, low-effort lead magnet. They are quick and easy to make, easy to eat and use, and still valuable.For example, developing a podcast list like this one provides digital marketers with the ideal resource to promote any of their various podcast-related pieces of content.
Privy
Privy is a SaaS solution that delivers email marketing strategies and e-commerce training to Shopify store owners. Their concentration on multi-channel digital marketing has enabled them to scale to more than $11M ARR and contributed to their acquisition by SMS marketing behemoth Attentive. Privy devotes resources to creating blogs, social media, email, newsletters, and other platforms.
If you enjoy podcasts, you could find Privy on platforms such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and many other podcasts. If you prefer written information, one of their 250+ blogs on email and e-commerce marketing may be found via a search engine or a social platform such as LinkedIn.
Regular clients and subscribers will continue to benefit from the email, newsletter, and social media posts, bolstering Privy’s position as the best specialist in e-commerce marketing.
Apple’s “Shot on an iPhone” campaign
What could be better than a user-generated campaign? It’s inexpensive, and brand loyalists do a lot of the legwork. Apple has a long history of profiting from user-generated content marketing. They created a campaign called “Shot on an iPhone” in 2015, which highlighted photographs taken on iPhones by users.
“Shot on an iPhone” appeals to customers’ interests and abilities. It conveys the notion that they, too, can create art using an Apple product, just like the experts.
The campaign was not only seen on posters and billboards, but it was also a tremendously major social media campaign among influencers. The stunning photographs are more than just a testament to Apple’s technology. They are also examples of long-lasting content marketing campaigns.
Quick victories do not have to be the only goal of content marketing. Building long-term campaigns can save overhead while also generating long-term income and engagement in your brand.
Lush
Lush uses a variety of content marketing tactics to reach its audience. The brand’s core audience already connects with its unusual product names and well-known ethical principles.
But it does not end there. Its videos take viewers behind the curtain of how its products are made, and on social media applications, Lush invites customers to share and tag photographs of its products. Instagram is Lush’s most important platform, with 4 million followers on the main Lush account.
Rip Curl
Rip Curl prides itself on being the “ultimate surfing company.” One way it demonstrates its passion is through The Search, an online publication. The Search follows surfers on their quest for the greatest surf and the ideal surfing lifestyle, with stunning imagery and stories delivered by professional surfers for people who want to surf. With over 1 million YouTube subscribers and over 2 million Facebook followers, this is an excellent example of connecting content to potential customers in order to grow and profit your business.
Intermedia
Intermedia is a communications platform that has launched the Business Innovators video series. Its presenter is the CMO of the company. He sits down and speaks with clients about their businesses, communication tool challenges, and how they overcame them.Many discuss how their organisation changed course during the pandemic.
These spirited debates are in-depth case studies. Furthermore, the brand does not make them think about the goods. The consumer is the star, and Intermedia is delighted to let them shine. One can be seen below.
American Express
American Express adds value beyond a product or service through enriching, memorable, and long-term experiences. That’s just what American Express hopes to accomplish with their online community and blog, Open Forum.
They’ve listened to their clients and paid serious attention to their needs over the years. This technique has aided in the development of their “responsive content strategy,” which is now regarded as a shining example of content strategy. Instead of being product-centric, their blog is driven by the wants of their customers. They have a planned procedure for gathering client requests and then using this information to develop content that will help their readers succeed.
Whole Foods
Whole Foods recognised early on that rivalry inside the food and grocery industries is tough. Instead of stimulating short-term demand through discounts and vouchers, they chose to invest in content creation for long-term gain. The Whole Story, which was previously a distinct blog, has now become a well-integrated feature of the Whole Foods site, which has resulted in increased site traffic.
Visual narrative is what distinguishes Whole Foods’ content. They’ve mastered the skill of visual storytelling to deliver attractive, interesting stories on their site. They focus on the material that appeals to their customers, from unique recipes to cooking instructions to tips on healthy lifestyle choices. They also experiment with other content types such as films, photographs, infographics, and narratives.
However, variety is not their ultimate purpose. They strived to make their consumers’ lives easier through their content, an approach that also helped to enhance their sales pipeline.
Glossier
Glossier, unlike many other brands, does not communicate through its blog. On the hand, their blog provides its customers a voice. Glossier has been sharing client tales through its content since its launch, but this has become its brand. What a masterstroke!
Glossier wants to deliver authentic tales that significantly resonate with its clients through a refreshing blend of personal insights.
Their material is largely focused on interviews, product evaluations, and testimonials, in which the opinions and reactions of their consumers are highlighted. Such content also provides excellent social proof, so it’s no wonder that these consumer endorsements contribute significantly to the success of their blog and products.
To conclude, we can see that content marketing is a tool that is leveraged by the largest brands all across the world to grow their audience exponentially and spread the right message to the right people.
It has been a constant misconception that marketing with content is the same thing as content marketing, and while it may look the same to an amateur viewer, to a keen eye such as those working on it, the difference between the two is of key importance.
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on retaining and attracting a particular audience through the distribution of relevant, consistent, and valuable content with the ultimate goal of driving profitable customer action.”
The key difference between content marketing and advertising is the return on investment and business value it delivers over a period of time. In a time period summed up through technological advances and media outreach, businesses struggle to achieve growth, but content marketing is more likely to deliver results than other forms of advertisement.
Important factors of content marketing:
1) It is customer-focused, answering important customer questions focused on their needs and wants.
2) It allows businesses to engage with the audience they never would have seen by using the keywords customers use and creating the content they consume on their own website.
3) It builds relationships that build brand trust.
However, in order to see a positive result from content marketing, it must be well executed. The content needs to be aligned with customer needs, and recognising the topic, ideas, and questions that your content will answer makes the content highly engaging. The content, then, needs to be edited, audited, and understood again. After that, the production plan needs to be developed to identify subject matters, authors, and contributors to the content. It is crucial to identify the objective of each piece and the method of tracking its performance. Last but not least, the distribution plan, a.k.a. recognising the method of distributing your content, needs to be made.
When a piece of content is marketed through these five steps, the content ensures a valuable benefit to the company. However, it is important to know that most successful content marketers reveal the reason for their success to be a 12-month calendar, optimising and executing the plan’s idea on paper.
Why content marketing?
Content marketing, in the end, is a business opportunity. In a world where companies are trying their hardest to sell you “stuff” with irrelevant information (spam) constantly making your phone buzz beside your bedside table, content marketing is relevant to the customer’s current needs, challenges, and current requirements. There is one word that makes content marketing stand out from other strategies of exposure: sustainable.
There are four key benefits for big enterprises in content marketing:
increase in sales
Cost saving
better, loyal customers
Content acting as a profit centre
There is a reason prominent brands like P&G, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and so on, use content marketing. It might seem stupid to invest in something that seems hypothetical, but remember, numbers do not lie.
Growth in web traffic: Companies with blogs have, on average, 434% more indexed pages than those who do not. More content equals more traffic for the website.
Less is more: It costs 62% less compared to any other form of campaign. Yes, that includes paid search advertising.
Higher conversion rates: Content marketing generates six times higher conversion rates.
Right in front of the viewers: It increases the likelihood that the general public will notice your brand.47 percent of Internet viewers read blogs daily.
Buyer’s choice: 80% of the buyers prefer to know about the company through blogs rather than through ads.
What is not content marketing?
When understanding what content marketing is, it is also of utmost importance to understand what it is not. Content marketing is not strewn-together bits of blogs, social media posts, and so on in the hope that one of them sticks.
In content marketing, it is necessary to get the strategy part correct. Most brands fail in this regard and, hence, fail to recognise their audience and lose focus on the reason behind content generation.
Blogging
Another mistake brands make is failing to understand that while blogging is an essential part of content marketing, it is not content marketing. The central theme of content marketing is providing information to its intended target, and that piece of information may not necessarily be transferred to the intended audience through the format of a text in a blog. Having a blog does not make a person a content marketer.
In order for blogs to be your only source of content marketing, it is important that they follow a key structure of being published regularly with clear information targeted at a particular audience.
Content, in short, can be delivered through videos, emails, pictures, live events, or apps, and as long as it has a specific audience and is generated for a specific purpose, the content is likely to generate profit.
Social media
Much like blogging, social media is a key contributor to content marketing, but it is not the thing that will generate profit. The main function of social media is to bring people to your website, keep them engaged, and generate awareness about your brand.
Unless paid, social media dictates to which audience it will show your content, and if not specific, there is no difference between your post and advertising. Social media is a crucial aspect in the distribution of your content, but it is not your content. In simpler terms, the main objective of social media is to get traffic for your website.
Conclusion
In conclusion, content marketing is basically delivering everything your audience is seeking in all the places they are looking for it. It is the best investment you can make for the growth of your business, and the reasoning behind content marketing’s success is backed up by thorough research, making it a reliable source for generating profit.
The only thing to remember in content writing is the key difference between it and other methods of traffic generation: it is audience-specific and less likely to waste the time, money, and efforts you put into your brand with no results.
