Content marketing is a powerful way to promote a company and spread a specific message to consumers by engaging them with media that they genuinely want to read, view or interact with.
Creating dynamic content that appeals to your target audience can inspire loyalty, engagement with your brand, spread the message via social media and build momentum for a full-blown viral campaign.
You only need to look at successful brands who have used content marketing to realise its potential. Here are five household names that have nailed content marketing and used it to capture their target customers’ undivided attention.
ASOS understands that its customers love more than just clothes – the fashion choices that they make are dictated by the culture around them. Using the power of content marketing to appeal to its customers, the websites publishes regular blog posts for both men and women, looking at fashion through the lens of pop culture. Blogs on topics such as music, film, TV and showbiz draw traffic to the site and establish ASOS as a leading authority in both fashion and culture. The company even manages to reach its customers when they’re offline by producing a high quality magazine and mailing it to shoppers.
Far from the uninspiring safety videos that you expect to watch ahead of your flight, Virgin Atlantic proved that they are pioneers of in-flight entertainment when they unleashed this beautifully animated and well-pitched short film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XNxZh9_YN0
Repackaging safety procedures in a journey through cinema’s most iconic genres, the video tells passengers where to stow their handheld luggage via a tense cowboy shootout, explains how to use the escape slide in a far-out ‘60s head trip montage and even makes the non-smoking section engaging by in a conversation between a pair of cigarette -toting film noir stereotypes. The video is so memorable that Virgin customers have felt inspired to share it with friends post-flight, leading to thousands of YouTube and Vimeo views while establishing the airline as a fun and creative brand.
Price comparison websites aren’t the most glamourous or exciting pages for customers, so it’s understandable that their advertisers channel their efforts into creating memorable characters to represent their brands – think the cute meerkat and plump opera singer.
Go Compare certainly understands this, using content marketing to drive traffic to its website by producing ‘Covered’; an online magazine containing helpful, fun and shareable articles that translate unexciting topics into engaging pieces of content. For example, a subtle plug for Go Compare’s motor insurance comparison service is hidden in an article titled ‘Five awesome vans from TV and film’, while an informative piece like ‘How to make your rented property feel like a home’ proves that the firm understands its customers’ needs and wants to help by providing genuinely useful advice.
Establishing itself as the energy drink for people who need energy the most, Red Bull’s branding is centred around dynamic content that includes dramatic daredevil stunts and incredible athletic feats. Hosting everything from short viral clips to full-length episodes of its own extreme sports TV show Red Bull Signature Series, the company’s YouTube channel has amassed over four million subscribers – a whole lot of potential customers.
Waitrose customers are typically more affluent than shoppers at discount supermarkets, choosing to buy food that’s fresh, flavoursome, attractive and healthy. The brand’s content marketing strategy conveys these values beautifully – its loyalty card holders benefit from free copies of its high quality customer magazine, which includes columns from idealised celebrities like Pippa Middleton and Philip Schofield. Online, its recipe site is packed to the brim with gorgeously shot photos and seasonal dishes, with dedicated sections for chef ambassadors Heston Blumenthal, Paul Hollywood and Delia Smith helping customers to find ideas meal ideas tailored to the personalities they aspire to be like.
So there you have 5 brands who we feel have one some of the more exciting types of content marketing strategies. Are there any brands that you feel we’ve missed that you’ve been impressed by?