Content marketing has been slowly but steadily transforming the way products and services are marketed. Gone are the days where a company pushes its wares through outbound marketing strategies, tempting with discounts and begging for attention.
Nowadays, a company can be successful by working it’s way in, focusing on advertising content to “truly understand its customers”. In this blog post we will take a look at ten successful examples of content marketing gone right.
The simple truth is that people don’t buy things they don’t want or need from companies they don’t care about. Here at https://fomoconews.com/ has some more examples of successful content marketing strategies.
Long before Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, people knew that if they wanted to sell something, the best approach was to give something away first.
Network marketing became popular. A pharmaceutical company would hand out free samples at a local pharmacy and then offer consultation on how to purchase their products. It is a tried and true strategy: do something nice for someone else and then ask for their business.
This practice is known as content marketing . The “content” part of the term is derived from the fact that the company is not giving away physical products, but rather information or incentives such as discount coupons or e-books on subjects of interest to prospective customers.
The “marketing” part is derived from the assumption that it will be more difficult to reach customers for free than to simply provide them with something that is very valuable. To quote Jim Collins, “this practice is known as content marketing.”
The most obvious advantage of content marketing is that it very rarely involves spending money on advertisement, which for many companies can represent a considerable amount of money.
It also allows the company to develop a relationship with new customers, something they are likely not able to do through out-of-home marketing, or even by having someone be their salesperson in person.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the best examples of successful content marketing strategies.
1. Salesforce.
How is one of the top companies in software content marketing? By being an industry leader in using social media to create opportunities for their customers to share information, creating an ecosystem where they are able to learn about potential customers’ problems, even before they are aware of them.
This company has mastered the art of high-quality free e-book to share information with their prospects. Case studies are particularly popular.
For example, to market Sales Cloud’s “campaign builder” feature, they provided a downloadable case study on how Pandora used this feature to increase donations by 34%. They also provide daily updates on what is hot in their industry for their twitter followers.
2. Zappos
This company makes a practice of providing so much content that it is almost impossible to resist. By offering free shipping and returns on all of their products as well as an unconditional guarantee, they effectively eliminate unwanted surprises as well as the risk of buying online.
Additionally, they offer numerous guides to help people select their perfect shoe or outfit on their blog called “Insider’s Advice”. Zappos also has a selection of “Best Seller” and “Editor’s Pick” lists on this page to further assure customers that what they are getting is the best product possible for their money.
3. B.B. King
This example of a successful content marketing campaign is not for a company, but rather for an artist. By keeping the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center going through donations and ticket sales, he has been able to provide a free online archive of all of his hundreds of recorded concerts as well as an extensive list of articles on his career and advice on how to succeed as a musician.
This is very valuable information, but it required considerable time and effort to create, which makes this example stand out among the others on this list as one that takes advantage of time as part of the content marketing strategy.
4. Boeing
This company has built itself a reputation for providing information about their planes to their customers via the Internet. This has allowed them to gather valuable customer data and by sharing it on their blog, recognizing risks so that customers can be warned if problems occur.
They constantly provide tutorials on how to use their planes as well as how-to videos of users making modifications so that people can get the most out of them. Finally, they constantly update their blogs and social media pages with useful and relevant information that keeps customers engaged and happy.
5. Chase
In a blog by Greg McKeown, titled “How Chase Bank Turned Bank Marketing on its Head”, he talks about how they effectively provided content to customers by selling them something that was not really needed. In the article, he says : “Chase recently went back to the well one more time and, for a brief time after it made its announcement, thought it had stumbled upon an incredible marketing opportunity.
And it had a free CD with unlimited download of music through its website… But there was a catch ,you had to download an app from the iTunes store and make a purchase through Chase’s portal. That’s right ,Chase used iTunes as part of its marketing strategy”.
6. Apple
7. Kiva
8. Kickstarter
9. Dropbox
10. Coca-Cola
