Content marketing takes an about-face from the blaring ads that annoy the heck out of normal people. As the Content Marketing Institute puts it, content marketing provides “truly relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.” It also produces a staggering 200 percent ROI, according to digital marketing guru Neil Patel. Let’s take a look at the most successful content marketing campaigns to see how you can achieve these kinds of results.
What’s the first thing you do when you turn on the TV after a hard day’s work and an ad playing? You flip to another channel, right?
Enter content marketing. It’s hard to flip the channel when a piece of content promises to give you the exact answer you need to solve your toughest challenges.
John Deere – Over a Century of Consistent Content
One of content marketing’s first adopters, farm equipment giant John Deere, began publishing informative content well before blog posts and email newsletters became a thing. The Furrow, Deere’s farming news magazine, began in the days of horse-drawn plows and is still going strong today as a cutting-edge online agricultural news leader.
Nothing runs like a Deere, so it seems. Its consistent publication of informative, technology-driven news has catapulted it to the top of its industry worldwide.
American Express – All a Business Needs to Succeed
Don’t look for a generic blog page on the American Express website. Their content portal, called “Trends and Insights,” arms businesses, particularly startups, with the information they need to gain a foothold in even the most competitive markets.
With actionable content at the ready for businesses to lap up in pursuit of their next dreams, Trends and Insights has become the most fruitful source for leads for the financial services company’s small business credit cards.
Zero in your content strategy on a specific niche and produce content that meets your prospects’ needs, and you’ll be the first provider they think of when they need what you offer. You don’t have to be a massive corporation to provide this kind of content. All you need is to study your content analytics, narrow down to a specific target audience, and create information that these prospects need to live a better life or do business better.
What can you make with Cheerios?
Even in today’s woke, post-feminist era, moms still seem to get stuck with the task of getting Johnny and Jill to eat a decent breakfast. Never fear, Mom. Cheerios has you covered.
Instead of an extended yawnfest detailing all the nutritional benefits of the oat-based cereal (They know that most moms are already well aware), Cheerios goes to moms’ real concern: how to get their kids to actually eat the cereal they’ve so carefully shopped for.
They publish a growing collection of recipes that help Mom get even the pickiest kid to eat his Cheerios. From fruity-flavored bars that look just like Legos to Cheerio-laden smash cakes for Baby’s first birthday, these recipes offer kid-friendly options that will tempt their taste buds while providing them with all the vitamins they need for a balanced diet.
They’ve even expanded their content campaign to include a new market segment – adults and children who need a gluten-free diet. Who wouldn’t want to swap out a graham cracker pie crust for one crafted from Cheerios? With its toasty-crunchy-sweet flavor and vitamin-packed content, even Mom might approve another slice.
Procter & Gamble – Activate Your Tribe
From its legacy roots as an early soap opera sponsor, the consumer products titan has turned to cause-based content to build loyalty in a younger customer segment.
With its sponsorship of a National Geographic TV program, “Activate,” dealing with sustainability, inequality, and poverty around the world, it brings attention to its charitable initiatives, which include providing products to poverty-stricken areas, as well as disaster relief after catastrophic weather events.
With statistics showing that 90 percent of the American public has a more favorable image of a company when it supports a cause, P&G is on its way to not only the public’s purse strings, but its heartstrings as well.
Cleveland Clinic – Keeping Patients Out of the Hospital with Expert Advice
You gotta love a brand that markets with content designed to keep you out of its four walls. “How can they stay in business that way?” you wonder. Yet that’s exactly what the prestigious Cleveland Clinic does with its “Health Essentials” blog. Focusing on providing advice on preventative care, the hospital has built patient loyalty, one changed life at a time.
Since regular preventative care is much cheaper than an extended stay in the hospital, the clinic’s blog has impacted more than its patients’ health. It has made a difference in their bottom line as well.
Progressive – Personality Plus the Practical
We all love the office banter between the charming/annoying “Flo” and her oft-bumbling office foil, “Jamie.” But when you click onto their website after you watch one of their hilarious ads, you find a blog filled with practical, actionable information that provides prospects and customers with a wealth of information to answer their questions about insurance issues.
IBM – Employee-Generated Content Builds Trust
There’s nothing like in-depth content from industry experts to build trust among current customers and prospects alike. When that content comes from your employees, that trust has even more clout.
Statistics show that brand messages that employees share have 581 percent more reach than those that official channels share. And once that content gets out there, it has eight times more engagement than official communications.
IBM has embraced that power in a huge way. It has turned its internal experts loose to demonstrate their mastery of their field on their LinkedIn and other social profiles, as well as on a wealth of blogs.
Rather than having a siloed marketing department to proclaim the company line, the legacy tech company has discovered the magic of leveling its internal silos to share its employees’ generous expertise in various facets of technology.
It’s Your Turn
Take inspiration from these success stories to forge your own content marketing campaign. When it comes time to put that strategy into action, we can help.
Our comprehensive content marketing platform has everything you need for effective content planning and collaboration in a single, intuitive application. Try it for 14 days on us.