Good Content Marketing = Big Advantage!
Does your startup or business do content marketing? Have you ever wondered what successful businesses using content marketing are doing well? Well, look no further.
This article examines 5 of the most successful content marketing case studies. Regardless of the size of your business, you’ll discover great ideas that will help you take your content marketing to the next level.
Each of the below 5 businesses use unique content marketing approaches to great success – no mean feat considering the competition on the web at the moment.
There’s no need to re-invent the wheel. Instead check out what others are doing and tweak these strategies to make them your own –whether it be for your blog, startup or business.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a form of marketing that involves publishing useful content, for free on blogs, books, videos or podcasts. By helping prospects and customers solve their basic problems at no cost, you gain their trust and they look to you for leadership. Also, they’ll often buy your stuff. This is good.
It pulls people to you rather than you pushing your marketing message at them. This is Seth Godin marketing.
Hubspot
Where do I begin?
Since its launch in 2006, Hubspot has grown to 200 employees, received $33 million in VC funding and is on track to sell $20 million in services in 2011 (a 350% growth from 2010).
They’ve done it all through content marketing.
Hubspot is one of the leaders in the areas of content marketing. Think blog, videos, webinars (one had over 13,000 registrants), viral tools – they pretty much do them all. Fantastically. As a result they generate 25,000 leads per month for its 60 person sales team. One hundred percent of its leads come from its content marketing efforts.
Not bad.
What content to expect?
- Free tool to ‘grade’ your website (More than 3 million people have now evaluated their sites using it)
- Webinars with lots of people
Kissmetrics
Probably my favourite business blog out there, Kissmetrics have built a blog that received over 1 million unique visitors in 10 months without paid traffic. How did they do it?
They achieved it by publishing some of the best how to content that you will find anywhere on the web.
It’s really that simple. Each blog post teaches its typical user (entrepreneurs, marketing managers in small businesses) how to overcome the problems their experiencing. Their content is always very visual (infographics) and well researched. With this they built a huge amount of trust and loyalty.
I haven’t bought anything from Kissmetrics yet – but I look forward to the day I will.
What content to expect?
- [Blog Post] Breakdown of Colour Preferences by Gender
- [Blog Post] 70 Link Building Resources
Man of the House (Proctor & Gamble)
Man of the House is an online magazine (blog) that Proctor & Gamle helped create.
P&G’s Man of the House site covers topics guys care about, while subtly placing ads for company products off to the side. The site drew more than 500,000 people each month to the blog (albe-it some of them may have been paid traffic) – when it was just 6 months old. That’s pretty sensational by any standards.
Why would P&G want to get involved in blogging?
We saw this need among guys, in particular dads, whose lives had changed, and their roles in the family, was very different than [the one] their dads typically played – explained Jeannie Tharrington, a P& G spokeswoman
What content to expect?
- [Blog Content] How to make a great smoothie
- [Blog Content] Root Beer Brewing Kit
Mint.com
Mint was up against some big competition when it launched in 2006. However it became market leader in the areas of personal finance and three years after launch was sold to Intuit for $170 million.
Mint built its strategy around a core strategy of personal finance focussed tips posts, link roundups, slideshows, videos and (most famously) infographics. Mint were the first company to really push infographics and experience great success (I share some of these infographics below).
This combination of great content helped convert readers into buyers of its actual product.
Infographics are 40 – 50 times more likely to be shared than written content. Mint are the Dons of the infographic.
What content to expect?
- [Infographic] How Do Americans Feel About the Recession
- [Infographic] Economies of the world cup
American Express
A credit card company turned Media Company? A credit card company actually doing something useful? Yep, I haven’t been Guinness tasting all morning – American Express are doing just that, and doing a damn fine job of it too with Openforum.
Openforum has two main elements: Ideahub which is essentially a blog driven by user generated content (‘guest bloggers’ to you or I) and Connectodex which is a private social network for Amex user entrepreneurs (they help each other out and provide leads for each other).
They hit 1 millions unique visitors back in 2010 and continues to grow.
By combining great content and great people, Amex attracts people to the site with the hope that they will signup for an Amex card.
What content to expect?
- [Blog Post] 7 Golden Rules for a Great Website
- [Blog Post] 5 Things entrepreneurs can learn from J K Rowling
What can I learn from all this?
We’ve seen examples of 5 case studies of companies kicking ass with content marketing. With Content marketing you can by pass your competitors and become a market leader. But it does take commitment and its certainly not a short cut.
Take note of all the content marketing strategies used by these 5 companies and see how you can incorporate them into your next startup or marketing plan.
