Digital marketing is a must-have that all businesses, either small or large, should develop to reach an important segment of potential customers. In this scenario, creating content is a marketing strategy that must be designed and implemented across multiple platforms and over months to get relevant results.
Many cases of marketing success stories reflect the importance of content marketing strategies when it comes to making the business grow. So, in this article, we’ll discuss and review nine impressive content marketing cases. This way, you can understand that creating high-quality content is the right path to achieving your business goals.
What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?
A content marketing strategy involves creating content across multiple platforms to promote a particular product, generate interest among your audience, or encourage potential customers to acquire a product or service.
Content marketing generates three times more audience and leads than other marketing strategies, such as PPC and traditional outbound marketing, according to Searchenginejournal. It means organic traffic with an SEO approach is always better than other marketing approaches.
9 Great Content Marketing Success Stories
Below, you will learn about nine essential brands with great websites and amazing content marketing strategies that generate daily and evergreen content.
- Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is one of these brands that have reinvented their strategies over time. Nowadays, Coca-Cola leads the content marketing path thanks to several strategies, starting with the complete change of its website.
Now, Coca-Cola has included a dynamic blog, which the company describes as a “virtual magazine.” The result is more than 1 million users on its website, according to numbers given by the brand.
The new site and blog of Coca-Cola is called “Coca-Cola Journey,” allowing searchers and enthusiasts to read about different topics related to the brand and other trending topics.
In this site and blog, the content marketing addresses themes for different audiences, which attracts people from many strata and segments of society. Besides, through this blog, the brand offers a more humanized version of itself.
Some clear benefits of this approach were:
- Increased leads.
- A higher number of audience.
- A growth of the brand, reaching 1,8 billion daily purchases.
- Over 5.7 million views on its YouTube channel.
- General Electric
Similar to Coca-Cola, General Electric has taken a completely different approach in contrast to its previous strategy regarding its website. Called “Ecomagination,” its new site is focused on content that tells the entire story of the brand from 1892 to the present. But that is not all. General Electric is expanding this strategy to address several media and channels to reach the highest number of readers and leads.
The topics General Electrics content writers usually discuss are mainly focused on sustainability, clean energy, and infrastructure, which reflects the vision of the brand for the present and future.
Ecomagination was designed as an online magazine. It means there is a huge group of professionals working behind the scenes, i.e., an editor, a publisher, and a team of writers and columnists.
General Electric also leverages social media to create content and connect with a specific audience interested in its subjects. On platforms like Instagram, they share stories to engage with their audience actively.
General Electric publishes high-quality images and real-time feeds with a personal touch that enchants followers. General Electric has also implemented crowdsourcing to entice potential customers and make them part of its story.
In 2011, the brand released a campaign called “Instagrapher,” asking Instagrammers to take photographs inspired by innovations and clean energy.
- Crunchyroll
Crunchyroll, one of the biggest anime streaming platforms worldwide, knows that anime stands out due to its diversity, knowing that there are many different types of viewers for its catalog. This way, its content marketing strategy looks to reflect the diversity of its community.
The strongest point of its content marketing strategy is knowing its audience and avoiding stereotypes, offering a variety of anime that cover the entire spectrum of possibilities.
Crunchyroll was launched in 2006. Eighteen years later, the brand boasts 40 million registered users and 1 million subscribers. The content marketing strategy aimed to increase customer acquisition. Over time, the brand has changed its content marketing perspective into a strategy based on customer lifetime value and retention.
Since knowing the anime audience is the crucial element of the brand’s content strategy – according to Joellen Ferrer, VP of communication – the brand has started to create a massive creation of easy-to-understand content. In this sense, Crunchyroll creates valuable content for each episode it releases to encourage users to consume it.
Consequently, Crunchyroll uses social media and digital platforms to promote their content, new anime, and web-page. Currently, its Facebook page boasts over 6 million followers. Its strategy is to create content to turn followers into leads or consumers and retain them by buying a subscription.
Crunchyroll’s website offers a plethora of anime and additional services, including manga reading, gaming, and keeping up with the latest news. Visitors and followers participate in a great community of users that share thoughts and ideas through social media, especially Instagram and Facebook.
Crunchyroll also pays special attention to SEM, which means PPC (pay-per-click) and organic search traffic. If you look for anime, Crunchyroll will likely appear in the first spots in SERPs.
- Spotify Wrapped
No doubt that Spotify Wrapped, the content marketing campaign released by Spotify in 2016, has been one of the most successful in recent times in all types of industries. This is because Spotify Wrapped focuses on the user experience and the personal music streaming story of each user.
Spotify Wrapped allows users to check out their play history and data regarding their activity at the end of the year. This way, they can see what type of music they have mainly listened to and share this info through social media posts. The roundup that users receive at the end of the year is broken down into artists, genres, songs, and more to provide a detailed description of the personal tastes of users. Consequently, Spotify users get valuable insights into their activity and become an active part of the content creation.
Over time, Wrapped has evolved into a viral content marketing strategy, proving to be a success by incorporating social media where users share the brand’s content. In doing so, Spotify creates a harmonious mix of content that bridges the gap between the brand’s offerings and the individual preferences of its users.
Wrapped focuses on developing content and making it personal so that users feel part of the brand and even music creation. Other services included in this marketing strategy are the following:
- Your Audio Aura. A service that allows users to see their aura while listening to their favorite music.
- 2021: The Movie. A feature that pairs favorite songs of users with classic movie scenes.
- Playing Cards. Since trading card games are gaining popularity, Spotify offers a data-based game that you can play and share with friends. The game is about guessing which statements are true or false about users’ listening.
- 2021 Wrapped Blend. With this feature, users can see how their music matches with friends’ tastes and create blended playlists.
- Airbnb – Social Media Content
Airbnb understands visuals are indispensable when generating interest among travelers and people looking for new experiences, and so does the creation of interesting content about destinations and activities to do while traveling.
Thus, the company started to create post content for several media and networks, mainly socials. For example, on Instagram, Airbnb daily publishes outstanding images of destinations that stand out due to their surroundings and particular environments. The concept aims to evoke positive emotions in viewers and followers who are in search of new destinations to explore. Creating this type of content has led to a notable uptick in lodging reservations.
Moreover, Airbnb showed cleverness during the lockdown three years ago by creating a unique content campaign promoting “Accommodations for the coronavirus crisis.” It was a campaign to provide special accommodation for professionals working during the pandemic with special needs such as isolation.
Airbnb has also implemented user-generated content, which means sharing people’s content through social media, promoting unique places, and keeping the audience engaged. Besides, this is a great way to save money on production.
- Hubspot – Blog of Reference
HubSpot is a major software development company for people who want to have their own business and keep connected with their team, data, and customers. This way, HubSpot developed a single platform that seamlessly integrates all these factors, which has turned them into industry leaders.
Since its creation in 2006, HubSpot has stood out for its capacity to adapt to multiple types of businesses and make them grow through optimal services.
The content marketing strategy of HubSpot relies on different resources for users and guests to learn about the service of the brand and how they can improve the efficiency of their businesses, as well as marketing automation and website traffic.
For example, HubSpot has a blog and continuously shares free e-books and guides. Each blog post that HubSpot publishes is an important piece of written content with different topics related to marketing, business management, AI-related topics, and more.
HubSpot uploads posts daily. Beyond the valuable information that each post provides, writers and columnists focus on implementing an SEO approach every time they create content. It means they prepare content to appear in top spots of search engines, especially Google, through a keyword strategy, link-building, and general optimization.
In summary, they establish authority by creating quality content that showcases expertise and genuinely connects with its audience.
- John Deere
The story of John Deere regarding creating content for marketing is special. Experts say that John Deere created the first piece of content marketing one hundred and thirty years ago, in 1895. That year, the American corporation released a magazine called The Furrow, which informed customers about the best practices of the profession.
Nowadays, the magazine is still published, at least in an online form, reaching an audience of 2 million consumers. The Furrow continues publishing high-quality content and content trends for stakeholders and consumers.
Currently, The Furrow generates posts on a monthly basis touching different topics of country life, livestock, and countryside business. The current version of The Furrow is shorter than the original since it includes more high-quality images and content that provide specific information aiming to improve the quality of life of readers.
In general terms, John Deere does not promote its company’s products in The Furrow. Instead, it understands the magazine as an additional source of data for loyal customers, readers, and even third parties, like independent farmers, attempting to work with John Deere.
- Rolex
When you think of Rolex, you probably think of a highly technical company producing some of the best watches worldwide. This is true, but still, the Rolex content marketing strategy is a good example of how a technical and exclusive brand can even benefit from engaging content to get more leads and increase sales.
Even though Rolex has been majorly focused on traditional marketing for decades –which has really delivered good results– it currently has put strong efforts into digital marketing. It has not changed the general image of the brand one bit. What’s more! It has contributed to reaching new customers, especially in new generations.
Rolex has embraced social media marketing wholeheartedly. Its Instagram page boasts over 15 million followers. It has hundreds of outstanding photos showing the beauty of its watches. The brand also promotes current events and adds new content practically every day.
Of course, Rolex does not forget other types of online marketing, such as advertisements through Google Ads, email marketing, or influencer marketing to people showcasing interest in its products.
Rolex also pays special attention to SEO by generating high-quality content to get more visitors to its Rolex magazine. On the website, Rolex inserts blog posts and video content on multiple topics related to the luxury brand.
- GoPro – Stunning Visuals and a Great Community
GoPro, just like Rolex, has opted for a visual marketing strategy. This practice is obvious since the nature of the brand requires it to show outstanding visuals and how GoPros can provide high-quality images.
However, the GoPro website boasts a great news section discussing multiple events and news of partnerships and even clients. Besides, in this blog, GoPro provides successful cases of how the brand improves the lives of users and how its products are involved in many industries.
Thanks to this, GoPro has built a huge community of followers and readers interested in the brand and its tools. The brand also creates competitions for photographers and other professionals who generate content for its website. The strategy includes cash prizes and helps to promote knowledge about the product.
The Bottom Line
Thank you for exploring this article on content marketing success stories. As evident from the varied case studies highlighted above, there exists a wealth of examples demonstrating how brands, irrespective of their prior experience and reputation, can significantly enhance their image and boost sales through effective content marketing strategies. These selected instances serve as a testament to the transformative power of strategic content creation and its impact on brand success.
However, developing a content marketing strategy requires an individual approach. Our professional team of seasoned editors, creatives, marketers, and writers will develop and implement a tailored content marketing strategy for your brand. Contact us so we can start to study your case and create the best campaign to convert your brand into a thought leader in the industry.
SEO enthusiast and digital marketing strategist. My expertise lies in optimizing websites for organic traffic growth and search engine visibility. I carry out, among others, SEO tests, keyword research and analytical activities using Google Analytics. Privately, he is a lover of mountains and bicycle trips.