Content Marketing Success Stories

Don’t you just hate spending hours and hours creating good quality content, only for you to put it online and nobody see it or very few people see it? Well, that doesn’t have to be the case. It doesn’t have to be the case at all. My name is James Perrin, and I’m actually an SEO copywriter here at Koozai. Today we’re going to talk about content marketing success stories.

So how are we going to do it? Well, we’re going to go through three key classic content marketing campaigns, and crucially, we’re going to look at some key characteristics of each of those campaigns for you guys to apply to your own content marketing campaigns.

So let’s kick off with Brick-gate. Brick-gate is with reference to a lady called Samantha Brick, who wrote this really controversial piece for the Daily Mail online, and it was titled, “There Are Downsides to Looking This Pretty, Why Women Hate Me for Being Beautiful.” So cue online bedlam. The piece itself received about 5,720 comments, 220,000 Facebook likes, and Twitter was a key driver for this story online. A lot of people gravitated to Twitter. She was trending as “Samantha Brick”, as well as Brick-gate in the days following.

But why was it successful? It was highly targeted. When they created the content, they knew who they were targeting it to. The Mail’s online audience is predominantly made up of females and women, but also people that like to go onto their website to criticise, to be negative, and just to say nasty things on their stories. These people are known as haters, and so it transpires that when you create content like this, what you’re actually doing is creating troll bait. It’s another kind of link bait, and it’s kind of specifically done just to get under people’s skin. So this particular piece itself that they created was controversial.

Now, a lesson for you guys, if you want to think about that and apply it for your own content marketing campaigns, would be to make sure you don’t compromise your brand values. So whilst writing controversial and provocative to get people irate is great.

It’s fantastic. You’ll get that kind of peak in traffic. It might not necessarily get you long-term traffic, but you want to make sure you don’t compromise your brand values when you create it. Crucially, this particular campaign was really effective because of social media. The use of Twitter was a key driver, and what you’ll notice is that when you go to create something controversial, people will naturally gravitate to social media anyway to talk about it. So you don’t necessarily need to give it a push yourself. Samantha Brick and the Mail online didn’t. Everyone else did it for them.

The second content marketing campaign we’re going to look at is, “Will it blend?” Now, this is with reference to a company called Blendtec based in America, and it’s quite a few years old, this particular story, but it’s a great success story. So Blendtec creates these specific blenders and they had an issue. They had these brilliant blenders, but no one knew about it. They had poor sales and lousy brand exposure. So they created this excellent video marketing campaign where their CEO stood there in a lab coat and some lab goggles, and he basically blended anything that was suggested to them. They had about 190 million video views, an uptake of 650 percent in web traffic in their first year. Crucially, the sales of their product went up by 500 percent in 2008 and 700 percent in 2009, and that’s something key to remember here. Your content marketing campaigns are not only good for driving traffic to websites, but it’s also to sell products and services because, ultimately at the end of the day, that’s what you’re doing it for. As mentioned, it was highly targeted because they used their community followers and they created a community of followers by asking them to suggest to them ideas of things to blend. So it started off with things just like broom handles, but eventually got to things like iPads and iPhones.

Now, when you watch the videos, and I highly recommend that you do, after watching this, of course, what you’ll find is that you’ll be shocked, you’ll laugh, you’ll be scared, you’ll cringe, and it’s a brilliant way and a very effective way of evoking these emotional responses. It taps into human curiosity. You’re amazed. You don’t want to watch it, but you still sit there and watch it. This is a very effective way for your own content marketing campaigns. So look at the products and services that you guys offer, or that your clients offer, and look at the ways in which you can evoke emotional responses and use that and apply that to your own content because it’s incredibly effective.

Something else, this particular content was highly targeted because they’re asking their followers to give them suggestions. They’ve been creating this content and giving it to them. So they know that it’s going to be effective because people are asking for it. These people then, in turn, become what are known as your brand ambassadors or your brand angels, and they kind of do the hard work for you. So once you’ve created it, they then tweet and talk about it amongst their friends, and their friends talk amongst their friends, and the snowball effect applies.

None of that would be possible if it wasn’t for social media. Crucially, this particular content marketing campaign was successful because they started their social media work right at the start. They used that to source their ideas. So again, that might be something else for you to bear in mind. When it comes to creating content, ask your followers, because then you’ll know the stuff you’re creating is targeted.

Now, the final content marketing campaign, Old Spice guy. This is with reference to the video marketing campaign that was launched off the back of the success of those adverts. You know the ones, it’s the guy with his top off. He’s sat on the horse and he’s got two tickets to that thing that you love. You know the ones. So basically what they did was they got that guy back in and they mocked up a bathroom set and they’ve got him stood there just in his towel. They asked their followers and fans on Twitter and Facebook to ask him questions and he would reply in character in a humorous way. Really effective. They had 35 million video views in the first week and, crucially, an increase of product sales of 100 percent after one month. As we’ve mentioned before, that’s the bottom line when it comes to creating your content marketing campaigns is how effective it is in selling your product and services. So just like with “Will It Blend?”, they sourced those ideas and they sourced questions from their community followers. This made the content that they were creating highly targeted, but in addition to that, it was also humorous and actionable.

Now again, after you’ve watched this video, go away, check them out, because they’re really, really funny. What you’ll find is, throughout all of the campaigns and throughout all of their adverts and videos, you’re constantly reinforced of this idea of using their product over everyone else’s. Their product is superior. Any other product is inferior. That is actionable because afterwards, you want to go and you want to do something. You want to use that information you’ve learned and apply it, and again, that’s very effective for any content marketing campaign. Just like with “Will It Blend?” and with Brick-gate, none of this would be possible if it wasn’t for social media. Just like with “Will It Blend?”, they used their social media at the start of their content marketing campaign to source those ideas, which, again, is a brilliant way and something for you to consider for your own marketing campaigns.

We’ve gone through the three key classic marketing campaigns, and we’ve sourced some really good tips. So let’s just go through those again, just to summarise. Targeted – make sure you know your audience. Make sure you know who you’re targeting your content to. Then create the content specific to that audience. Think about writing something controversial, some link bait, some troll bait. Remember not to compromise your brand values though. Create something that’s highly targeted, something that evokes emotional responses and taps into human curiosity. Try to write something or create something humorous, and finally, make sure it’s actionable. Make sure that it drives behaviour and you get people doing what you want them to do. Finally, social media, none of this would be possible if it wasn’t for the use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and all the rest of it. So use it to your advantage.

That leaves me just to say thank you very much for watching.