In our latest post, we talked about who needs content and why we need it. We outlined why a good content marketing strategy is essential in modern SEO practices and explained the different reasons for implementing it into your digital marketing plan.
Today, we will have a look at how your digital strategy can benefit from content marketing and see how some of the world-leading companies are using content to meet their business goals.
The Purpose of Content Marketing
The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
The main purpose of content marketing is to retain your current customers and attract new ones through the creation of relevant and informative content for your audience. We need to remember that content marketing is not a direct sales method – it is about engaging with your customers, making them want to come back to your website to find content they’re interested in, with the aim of drawing loyalty and future business from them.
Content marketing is an ongoing process that can also be lengthy – we can’t expect to get immediate results from a blog post, a video or a newsletter campaign. Content marketing needs to be integrated into your overall strategy and should play a vital role in other digital marketing areas such as Social Media, PPC or Mobile.
The importance of being innovative
With content marketing becoming the “it word” in the digital marketing world over the past couple of years, it is essential to make sure your business is innovative when it comes to content creation.
Every day, your customers are faced with a constant flood of online content. In order to grab their attention and stand out from your competitors, it is important to focus on quality and provide valuable, informative content.
You should also keep an eye on emerging platforms and invest in new content formats before they become mainstream – the power of content marketing is tightly linked to how innovative you can be, becoming an early-adopter and taking risks in order to do it first ahead of your competitors.
The impact of Content Marketing
The examples below show why you need to risk it if you want your business to become a leading content producer. These companies have proved that investing in content marketing works, establishing their brands as authorities in their respective industries.
Red Bull
If you’ve read about content marketing over the past few months, we’re sure you’ve seen Red Bull mentioned as one of the companies that has taken content marketing to the next level. The energy drink business has put its main focus on sports and music, and has managed to engage with a young global community through their extreme stunt videos on YouTube (over 3 million subscribers), their user-curated images on Twitter (1.5 million followers) and the development of numerous offline projects with a digital element, such as Red Bull Music Academy.
General Electric
When you think of an energy provider, engaging content might be the last thing that comes to your head. General Electric has proved us wrong, showing that any type of industry can create interesting and shareable content.
The American multinational’s popularity decreased during the 2008 recession, but General Electric has made a comeback and the company’s CMO Beth Comstock has stated that they get 30% better returns through smart content marketing.
Over the past few months, General Electric has been in the spotlight for its brilliant use of content marketing in campaigns such as the “#6SecondsScienceFair”, where the company showed 6-second science experiments on Vine that generated thousands of shares and made General Electric become one of the most-followed brands on this platform.
GoPro
A few years ago, almost no one had heard about personal camera manufacturer GoPro. Move forward to 2011 and the American company started to make its own space in the online world when sports enthusiasts and bloggers started to share content filmed with GoPro cameras on their websites and social media profiles.
GoPro has mainly benefited from the rise of user-generated content, but the company’s marketing team has proved that they know how to make the best out of their video content. GoPro’s YouTube channel has almost 2 million subscribers and videos such as ‘Fireman Saves Kitten’ have generated more than 21 million views.
ASOS
The online fashion retailer was one of the first brands to realise that in order to have an impactful content marketing strategy, you need to become a publisher. The British company transformed their homepage just a few months ago to put a focus on content, showcasing daily news and stories that give the website the look of an online magazine rather than that of a retailer.
ASOS also publish an offline monthly magazine, which is supported by an iPad interactive version, making sure that customers have access to the company’s content through all platforms.
Over to You
So we’ve given you a few examples to think about, and hopefully by now your mind is swimming with examples you’ve seen and idea for your own content strategy. Remember, regardless of the industry there is definitely something that you can leverage to get fantastic content – get your creative head on (or find someone that has one) and start producing some amazing content.