We’ve all had those moments. Those bosses. The ones that don’t believe the statistics that proclaim the effectiveness of content marketing. At those times, you need to show them some examples of content marketing that not only tell — but prove — its effectiveness.
Key Examples From Your Own Content Marketing
As Forbes’ Joe Escobedo points out in a Twitter guest blog, content marketing is all about building trust. Your customers’ trust.
Giving them the information they need to solve problems does just that. That’s the point of content marketing.
If you have a content analytics program, you can track how well your content meets your customers’ needs. A few key metrics can prove how well a piece of content hits the mark.
Those same numbers will prove how effective your content is on the ROI side of the equation.
Bottom line, that’s what will likely matter most to your boss.
Track Leads
Like buried treasure to your sales team, qualified leads bring in revenue. The secret’s in the word “qualified.”
Use blog posts and videos that provide just enough information to solve a small problem. In your call to action, offer them an ebook, white paper, or another valuable resource. To get this resource, they need to provide you with their email address.
Make sure that this long-form content solves an even larger challenge. As your call to action, invite them to request a call.
Track Sales
Similarly, use blog posts, videos, podcasts, or events to inform and build trust in your expertise. Remember, you’re there to help.
Track engagement with your posts. Create more of the types of content that people comment on, ask questions about, or become a subscriber after reading or watching.
Make your customer the hero in your content. Let your product or service be the sword they use to slay the dragons in their lives.
At the end of your content, invite them to sign up for a free trial, buy your product, or request more information. When you can show the suits in the C-suite that your strategy pays off in real money, they’ll be more likely to loosen their purse strings.
Content Marketing Examples From Top Brands
Sometimes your own numbers aren’t enough to convince the decision-makers. They want to see what other companies have done.
We understand. Some people need other examples to inspire them. Here are some of our favorites from brands that are trend setters in content marketing:
Subaru
Whoever came up with Subaru’s tagline, “Love. It’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru,” was brilliant.
But whoever created the content that transformed that slogan into stories about everyday heroes, is a pure genius. Their videos use subtle demographic targeting to position their cars not as the heroes of the story, but rather as the car that drives the hero home.
Grabbing the hearts of their dog-owning customer segment, Subarus became the venue for romance. How?
Through a guy building a relationship with his dream date’s dog. Love me, love my dog.
Soothing parents’ fears of sending a new driver out into the night, Subaru brought sighs of relief to moms and dads everywhere.
That kind of content doesn’t happen by accident. To get such viral appeal, you need to dig deep into your target customers’ needs — and their pain points.
With those concerns at the core of your content marketing, your company too, can publish heartstring-grabbing content — just like Subaru.
American Express
Startups need actionable advice on the moves they need to make. If they want to hit the ground running, they need to know about the latest trends.
American Express nails it. Rather than using “Blog” as its content marketing home, it labels its content “Trends and Insights.”
With savvy advice and incredible insight into their target market, American Express backs up its promise. Its insightful content has helped untold numbers of small businesses get off on the right foot.
The move produced stellar results. American Express’s content strategy delivered a huge part of the total leads for its small business cards.
You, too, can use creative wording to attract your target customers. Just make sure, as did American Express, to make good on your promises.
Cisco
Innovation and a multi-pronged strategy propel Cisco into the content marketing hall of fame. Who would have thought that a graphic novel would make an effective way to solve their customers’ problems?
Someone on the IT company’s content team did. Sensing that busy companies want to solve problems — fast — Cisco’s team created an eight-page graphic novel that showed their customers how to handle security loopholes.
Memorable, heroic, and easy to read. Your content should be, too.
But that’s not all. Cisco also takes that innovative mindset inside.
Their #WeAreCisco program empowers its employees to become brand ambassadors. That move helps them attract top talent and turn potential customers, into paying ones.
Content marketing programs like Cisco’s are worth their weight in gold. Attracting top talent, keeping them, and empowering them to spread the word, are as important as customer-facing content.
After all, you can’t have a winning customer experience without the employees to deliver it. Use that strategy in your own content marketing to see similar results.
The Cleveland Clinic
This world-class healthcare provider doesn’t just use a self-serve tool to answer patient questions. That tool is only the tip of its content iceberg.
Its “Health Essentials” blog explores a wide range of topics, all answers to questions real patients ask their doctors. It doesn’t stop there.
Another content portal provides patient resources, including healthy recipes. It’s no wonder that the hospital’s content has attracted over 43 million views in a single year.
Its secret? Content that answers questions. Content that solves problems.
Content that focuses on the customer.
To drive that laser focus, the clinic’s content team creates customer personas. Customer personas, like “Wilfred Worrywort” and “Diabetic Devon,” give content creators a human face to aim their content at.
So can you. With the data that pours in through your content and social media analytics programs, you can put a face on your own customers.
The only thing you might be missing is a content marketing platform to analyze data, create customer personas, plan content, schedule it, and publish it.
That’s where we come in. Our comprehensive platform does everything but create your content. Plan, create, collaborate, and publish content. And then use those analytics to prove its effectiveness to the company skeptic.
Get in touch for your 14-day free trial today.