Dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing is rac­ing ahead at such a pace that it isn’t easy to cre­ate con­tent mar­ket­ing strate­gies that are com­plete­ly reli­able. These are some of the best mar­ket­ing strate­gies that have worked for oth­er mar­keters and brands and could inspire your team’s brainstorming.

There are numer­ous brands that have adopt­ed diverse con­tent mar­ket­ing strate­gies to their ben­e­fit. How and why were these brands suc­cess­ful and how can you adopt their con­tent mar­ket­ing strategies?

We look at sev­en con­tent mar­ket­ing strate­gies you can try, along with exam­ples of brands that suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cut­ed those strategies.

1. Personalize your content marketing

This is a par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult pill to swal­low, but brands need to accept that inter­net users are tired of being sold to. Peo­ple are using the inter­net to be edu­cat­ed, enter­tained, and to read the news.

When they are scrolling through their social media feeds, they do not want to see posts announc­ing the lat­est prod­uct from your company.

But you have prod­ucts and ser­vices to sell. If peo­ple don’t want to be sold to, how are you meant to sell your stock?

Accord­ing to tech trends in 2019, cus­tomer loy­al­ty is a dri­ving force for busi­ness­es, more so than obtain­ing new customers.

Your con­tent mar­ket­ing strate­gies need to go beyond sell­ing your prod­uct. Instead, you should endeav­or to place your prod­uct or ser­vice as some­thing that adds val­ue to your customer’s life.

You can do this by per­son­al­iz­ing the way users expe­ri­ence your mar­ket­ing. Offer tips, tricks, how-to guides, and DIY tuto­ri­als that would ben­e­fit your tar­get audience.

And don’t include vague salu­ta­tions in your brand emails—address your emails to your cus­tomers by name.

Per­son­al­iz­ing your con­tent mar­ket­ing allows you to active­ly cre­ate a con­nec­tion between your brand and your customers.

Example: Netflix

Net­flix is all about personalization—the stream­ing ser­vice stud­ies its cus­tomers and caters to their every need.

The site is extreme­ly data-dri­ven, and it has great­ly ben­e­fit­ed the way that they can per­son­al­ize the user experience.

Every time a user watch­es some­thing, or stops watch­ing it, adds some­thing to their Watch­list, likes or dis­likes a prod­uct, and even when they pause their view­ing activ­i­ty, Net­flix takes note.

Of course, the Net­flix engine is huge and has been fine-tuned over the years, but their sys­tem is noth­ing if not aspirational.

To make your con­tent mar­ket­ing stand out from the crowd, you need to active­ly mine the data you col­lect from your cus­tomers to ensure that you give them the most per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ence possible.

2. Guest blogging

Most brands host a blog on their website—blogs are great for SEO and to gen­er­ate traf­fic to your website.

Cre­at­ing con­tent for these blogs usu­al­ly falls in the purview of con­tent mar­keters with­in the team. But their exper­tise is often lim­it­ed to the realm of their spe­cif­ic workplace.

This is why guest blog­ging is now becom­ing a pop­u­lar aspect of con­tent marketing.

Brands are reach­ing out to influ­encers, experts, and writ­ing pro­fes­sion­als for their advice, tips, and expe­ri­ences in a cho­sen field.

On the flip side, brands are also ask­ing their own mar­keters to guest blog for oth­er sites.

Not only is this a great way to build con­nec­tions between like-mind­ed brands, but brands get to refresh the per­spec­tive on their blog, and place them­selves as thought-lead­ers online.

Guest blogging

Example: Moz

Source: Moz

One of the fore­most voic­es in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, Moz, the SEO soft­ware web­site, has built its brand with the help of guest blogging.

Moz’s blog is reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed with posts from its in-house experts as well as dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing experts from fel­low mar­ket­ing com­pa­nies and experts.

Take a leaf out of Moz’s guest post­ing hand­book and open your blog to guest posters who can write how-to guides and case studies.

And offer your mar­keters’ ser­vices for the same to spread your brand name and val­ue across the dig­i­tal realm.

3. Show products and services in use

We have already estab­lished that peo­ple on the inter­net do not want to be sold to. While per­son­al­iz­ing your con­tent for them is one way to reach the most stub­born of users, there is also anoth­er method.

Tai­lor your con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy towards show­ing poten­tial cus­tomers what they are miss­ing out on by not pur­chas­ing your prod­uct or service.

The best way to do this is by show­ing your prod­ucts in use—on your web­site, social media, and email marketing.

When you cre­ate land­ing pages and prod­uct pages, don’t use pas­sive images of your prod­ucts on their own—show how a per­son would use that product.

This is a tricky propo­si­tion for services—there is noth­ing con­crete to show. What you can do is show hap­py cus­tomers after they have used your service.

Include a tes­ti­mo­ni­al or two, along­side a pic­ture of the cus­tomer to make the endeav­or more personable.

Example: Nike

Nike is an inter­na­tion­al­ly-renowned sports­wear brand and they have had years to per­fect their con­tent mar­ket­ing devices.

This is exact­ly why mar­keters should be study­ing Nike’s con­tent mar­ket­ing strate­gies to see what works—chiefly how they show their prod­ucts in use.

Nike lever­ages the sto­ry­telling aspect of its brand, going beyond what its prod­ucts can do for their customers.

In essence, Nike doesn’t just show its prod­ucts in use—it shows how aspi­ra­tional its prod­ucts and lifestyle can be for customers.

4. Get behind a social cause

Cham­pi­oning a social cause, or fight­ing against social evil, are daunt­ing prospects for brands, which is why so many avoid dab­bling in this area. Every­one remem­bers Pepsi’s deba­cle from 2017, after all.

How­ev­er, choos­ing a social cause to get behind can have sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits for brands.

The most vocal gen­er­a­tions on social media—millennials and Gen­er­a­tion Z—are social­ly and polit­i­cal­ly active.

They are more like­ly to align them­selves with a brand that stands against a social evil, and they won’t hes­i­tate to call out brands that fail to react appro­pri­ate­ly to social issues.

If you want to tap into the younger gen­er­a­tions of cus­tomers, tak­ing a strong stand against a polit­i­cal issue can expand your cus­tomer base, and help you lob­by to cre­ate real change.

Example: Gillette

Ear­ly in 2019, Gillette made waves with a pow­er­ful ad call­ing out tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty. Not only did the YouTube video receive over 32 mil­lion views (to date) but they were loud­ly praised by activists and cus­tomers alike.

The ad was time­ly, fol­low­ing in the wake of the world­wide #MeToo rev­o­lu­tion. It could not have been an easy choice—a small group of men declared the ad, and the brand, ‘anti-men’, but for the most part, the reac­tions were positive.

Choos­ing a social issue to get behind won’t be easy—you don’t want to end up on the wrong side of history.

Study your audi­ence and your con­tem­po­raries to decide which is the best choice for your con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, and then stick by your decision.

5. Try new technologies

Mar­ket­ing tech­nolo­gies are chang­ing con­stant­ly. Your con­tent mar­ket­ing strate­gies need to acknowl­edge these changes and adapt accordingly.

Not so long ago, con­tent mar­ket­ing lived with­in the domain of blog­ging and social media. Now it’s moved into pod­casts, vlogs, AI, VR, and AR.

Even with­in the social media spec­trum, Face­book, Twit­ter, and Insta­gram are only some of the chan­nels being used by brands. Snapchat and Tik­Tok are fast catch­ing up.

Your con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy needs to encom­pass these new tech­nolo­gies. This doesn’t mean you join the lat­est fad—it could die down before your cam­paign has tak­en off.

Assess the sit­u­a­tion around you and exam­ine your com­peti­tors to see what they are doing. Then think of ways to adopt the new tech­nolo­gies in ways that would ben­e­fit your customers.

Example: Toyota

In 2019, Toy­ota unveiled an app that allowed users to bet­ter under­stand their hybrid engine.

The AR app worked by over­lay­ing images of the car’s inte­ri­ors on the product—the user could tap on an area to ‘see’ what the part looked like and how it worked.

This expe­ri­ence ben­e­fit­ed cus­tomers who were unac­cus­tomed to the hybrid mod­el Toy­ota was dis­play­ing. Any ques­tions were answered through the inter­ac­tive experience.

Using new tech­nolo­gies can help you enhance the user expe­ri­ence and allay any con­cerns they may have about a new prod­uct or service.

6. User-generated content

Cre­at­ing con­tent on the go is no longer the best way to cap­i­tal­ize on dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. If you want to pro­duce a steady stream of high-qual­i­ty con­tent, you need to get cre­ative and thrifty.

A num­ber of brands have found the per­fect alter­na­tive to cre­at­ing steady content—leveraging user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent (UGC).

Not only does UGC save con­tent mar­keters the has­sle of cre­at­ing reams of con­tent every day, but it also adds inter­ac­tiv­i­ty and per­son­abil­i­ty to a brand’s con­tent mar­ket­ing strategy.

Often con­duct­ed as an Insta­gram or Face­book con­test, UGC has shown excel­lent results for marketers.

Peo­ple love see­ing oth­er peo­ple on social media—it human­izes a brand and pro­vides evi­dence of how well-loved a brand is. It also makes for great share­able content.

Lever­ag­ing UGC will save your mar­ket­ing team time and will help you expand your reach.

Example: Warby Parker

War­by Park­er is a brand that sells glass­es. One would assume their con­tent wouldn’t be excit­ing but they have lever­aged UGC to show­case their prod­ucts and their customers.

They fre­quent­ly repost videos and pho­tos sent to them by hap­py cus­tomers. Their con­tent acts as social proof for oth­er cus­tomers and makes their social feed more diverse.

Involve your fol­low­ers in your con­tent by request­ing pic­tures or videos of them using or unbox­ing your prod­ucts, and using your services.

7. Repurposing content

We have spo­ken about how UGC helps mar­keters save time and ener­gy. And that isn’t the only method mar­keters can adopt—repurposing con­tent has the same effect on marketers.

Instead of cre­at­ing new kinds of con­tent on a reg­u­lar basis, exam­ine your exist­ing con­tent and see how you can update or use it in anoth­er form—JumpFactor have a great arti­cle on opti­miz­ing old and new blog posts here.

There are numer­ous ways to repur­pose content—for instance, you can turn a sin­gle blog into an info­graph­ic, sev­er­al social media posts, vlogs, or a podcast.

Repur­pos­ing con­tent is as lim­it­less as your imag­i­na­tion, and will not only save you a great deal of time, but will boost your content’s reach beyond its orig­i­nal scope.

Example: Nifty

Buzzfeed’s Nifty repur­pos­es arti­cles as 10–12 minute videos. The site also cre­ates short­er videos for its Insta­gram account and makes GIFs to share on its oth­er social media.

For view­ers who don’t reg­u­lar­ly vis­it Nifty’s web­site, they can still come across their con­tent on social media and YouTube. Their brand is ever-present on all chan­nels because of the way it repur­pos­es its content.

Conclusion

These sev­en con­tent mar­ket­ing strate­gies and exam­ples will help mar­keters be more cre­ative and effi­cient in the way they cre­ate their con­tent and reach clients.

SOURCE: SearchEngineWatch