Catalyst for Any Business: Content Marketing

“Content is the reason search began in the first place.”

In this digital age, content marketing is as important for a business as the vertebrae are for mammals. It works as a catalyst for any business looking to churn out $s. It has been proven so effective that it outdid outbound marketing that dominated the offline and online mediums for the longest period of time. From the top of your head can you think of a why? Why did it fail in this digital age? Cause……

“Forcing down content customer’s throat”

As the world became more technologically advanced both, the brands and the customers increased in number. However, the customer ratio to the brands remains a million times more. This resulted in brands reaching out to more and more people regardless of the fact of them being their potential customers or not. Outbound marketing ran on this modus operandi for years and still does! Cold calling and spamming emails are two not-so-appealing USPs of outbound marketing.

The marketing strategy not having a targeted audience resulted in its downfall. Compelling people to block the brand’s phone number, marking their emails as spam, and even getting irate on the outbound caller representing the brand. The collapsing nature of this model birthed a structure jungle known as inbound marketing and “content marketing” emerged as “Mowgli”, the prominent protagonist of this jungle. If on the top of the head you are thinking what is content marketing? Let’s quickly run you through it…..

“The strategic marketing of relevant, valuable, and consistent content to attract and retain a targeted audience. This can include blogs, e-books, guides, videos, podcasts, webinars, and social media.”

It has proved to be three times more efficient than outbound marketing because it doesn’t intrude on the digital life of consumers making it non-invasive. In this age of worked-up professionals, a gesture like this is highly respected.

Fun Fact: Not just as a business, but as an individual, you can market yourself, your venture, and your ideas via content marketing. (Keep reading, you’ll come to know how.)

Numbers speak louder than words….

Businesses don’t run on words they run on data. Theorizing concepts hypothetically without any evidential data makes your idea nothing but impractical. In most of cases you can have a million-dollar idea but until you are a wizard from Hogwarts, pulling off that idea without data would be a tad bit difficult, kidding! Very difficult. As they say, “Data is the new oil”. Here’s some data supporting the glorification of content marketing Hubspot.com says inbound marketers are able to double the size conversion rate from 6%-12% (on average) due to content marketing.

Content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less. 61% of consumers in the USA decide to make a purchase after reading recommendations on a blog. Curata says in a survey, 74% of companies admitted an increase in their marketing leads both in quality and quantity. Promoting video content helped in an increase in conversions and resulted in a significantly better ROI as per 72% of the businesses that were surveyed.  Like you need ‘data’ to support your ‘idea’, similarly, you need ‘evidence’ to support your ‘belief’. In this scenario, the belief is pretty evident, i.e., content marketing helps a business to grow. So, here come the pieces of evidence.

5 Examples of Great Content Marketing Strategies

1. Hubspot.com

Hubspot is one of the companies that has used and leveraged content marketing in the best way possible. It’s like you can’t talk about content marketing leaving Hubspot out. They understand content marketing so well that they created a guide on the same.

Hubspot’s blogs are SEO driven and conversion-optimized. This is due to the relevancy of the content in regards to the customer’s pain point which in return increases their conversion rate. 

Following are the USPs of Hubspot’s content:

• Detailed blog posts offering a solution to visitors’ pain points.
• Optimized CTA’s and content upgrade added to their blog posts, targeting more of the customer’s problems and offering a solution.
• A well-connected web of content that revolves around a pillar content (main content).
• Offering certifications and partnership programs that direct towards enhancing knowledge of an individual.
• Using LinkedIn to smartly direct its traffic to the Facebook page which has enormous video content.
• Hubspot hit the bull’s eyes, as their conversion rate increased by 300% in just 6 months!

2. IBM (Internal Business Machines)

IBM is an allrounder in tech, they do everything from producing hardware to IT consulting. They stay true to their tagline ‘think’. They’ve proven that even if you work in an industry that isn’t ‘hip’! You can still publish great content. IBM’s strategy includes taking a non-appealing subject and making it captivating.

The best example of this is a movie they created called “A Boy and His Atom” to project what goes into their work, which apparently is moving atoms! FYI- They broke the Guinness World Record for the smallest film ever created. Some of the notable approaches of IBM include:

• Taking ordinary topics and turning them into extraordinary.
• Creating educational videos and distributing them via multiple video-sharing sites.
• Influencer marketing, reaching out to the main players in their industry.
• Combing blog posts and other content through the voice pages.

Leslie Reiser (Program Director for Digital Marketing Worldwide) mentions taking advantage of influencers to promote their content. She says:

“We’re identifying the right influencers that align with our business priorities. Those priorities align with our product and service portfolio. For example, we have identified and nurtured relationships with bloggers who specifically focus on cloud computing, or business analytics, or data security in that mid-size business space.

Those particular people are influencers within the marketplace. They have credibility. They are authentic. They have independent followings and a network.” This helps IBM to target its audience precisely.

3. Lana Del Rey

Del Rey is a great example of an individual using content marketing to grow their fanbase. The “summertime sadness” singer used Tumblr as a way to promote herself. The content marketing strategy of Lana is quite simple but proved to be very effective.

She created a post about her upcoming album “West Coast”, which featured several beautiful pictures of herself. Within a year, the post received over 27,000 likes and shares on Tumblr. While her celebrity status and strong fan base undoubtedly played a role in her blog’s success, the posts she’s created have definitely helped to build her brand.

Being a celebrity does give you an upper hand. However, if you are an individual and have a venture of your own, you can get creative and work on promoting your venture. This will help you establish your brand better.

4. Zomato

Zomato is a very famous restaurant aggregator app. It has now expanded into 24 countries. The integral part of Zomato’s marketing strategy is using humor liberally. 

Zomato relates with popular culture and creates creative images regarding the same. The images have a minimalist approach and they work like magic. This has helped the company to garner over 2 million followers on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Other than tickling the funny bone, the excellent graphics improve the aesthetic appeal of the content it shares. This is also a reason why people never miss out on checking the updates.

Zomato has also stuck to its niche from the very beginning. They have a clear understanding of their primary audience which is the foodies and therefore, they never deviate from that track. Hence, creating a connection between their service and the content they produce.

5. Coca-Cola

In India “thanda matlab Coca-Cola” isn’t just a tagline. It is an emotion. People directly connect ‘thanda’ with Coca-Cola. This is because the way the brand has marketed its content, the brand has used personalization to get everyone talking about it.

This isn’t just limited to India. In Australia, the brand kicked off a campaign by putting the 150 most common names on the bottles and then encouraged people to share a Coke with people who had those first names. The campaign resulted in sales of approximately 250 million bottles and cans across Australia.

Coca-Cola has realized that content on social media in the 21st century weighs a lot. This realization resulted in creative ideas that are contagious to the common people and is called “liquid content”. The brand has now moved from “static or one-way storytelling” to “dynamic storytelling”.

This means the brand allows its stories to evolve as they interact and converse with their customers via different social media platforms. This genuine collaboration results in creating a buzz about the product resulting in better sales and giving them an edge over their competitors.

Conclusion

Using content marketing in the right manner doesn’t just increase your conversion rate. But, it also educates your potential leads and customers. It forms a trust between the brand and the customer which results in a better connection between the two.