The brands that are winning at content marketing

Good content marketing will help a brand to grow and increase its customer base. Great content marketing will help to drive traffic to a website and, ultimately, lead to an increase in sales and revenue generated. The internet is full of good content marketing, but these brands are the ones that have managed to get in front of their competition with great content marketing.

Innocent Drinks

Innocent is a brand that was built on a foundation of content marketing. At the time of its launch it was an unknown company within a very competitive drinks market, selling smoothies, a product that was virtually new to the market. Through clever, original and witty packaging backed up by great content marketing the brand grew to become a household name and is now popular worldwide. Today, Innocent Facebook posts often receive over 200,000 likes and reactions, along with hundreds of shares and comments. It is equally successful on Twitter. As well as this, its website relies heavily on content with a blog and ‘bored?’ section that is content-based.

Innocent’s content marketing works so well because it always keeps to the brand’s unique tone of voice that is instantly recognisable to its target audience. The Innocent success story not only shows the power of content marketing in growing a brand but also the importance of knowing your target audience when creating content.

Expedia

The holiday industry is fiercely competitive, with so many claiming to offer holidaymakers the best deals possible. Expedia has become one of the world’s biggest online travel companies and has a huge social media following, with over 6 million Facebook likes, over 14,000 Twitter followers and over 106,000 followers on Instagram. Along with its social media, Expedia also regularly updates its onsite blog, as well as strives to have a presence on high authority and relevant websites through placing eye-catching infographics and guests posts. Expedia has also produced a series of travel videos that focus on engaging its target audience.

One of Expedia’s biggest challenges is that its customer base and, therefore, target audience is so large. The company has successfully managed to overcome this challenge by using a diverse range of content, from onsite blog posts to engaging travel videos, that ensures its entire target audience is covered.

John Lewis

Christmas is a competitive time for retailers but John Lewis has not only managed to get itself ahead of the competition, but its Christmas advert is now considered the start of the Christmas period for many British shoppers. John Lewis has been able to do this by combining traditional advertising, its Christmas advert, with content marketing. The John Lewis Christmas advert only runs in full a few times on television, taking up expensive advertising space, and then can only be seen in full via YouTube; its 2015 advert Man On The Moon has had over 24,773,400 views. The company doesn’t just produce an advert but promotes this further with products including books and an area of its website dedicated to the theme of that year’s advert. To help ensure the success of its Christmas advert John Lewis will start establishing itself as a key Christmas retailer early on social media and will start promoting its Christmas Shop on Facebook as early as September.

The success of the John Lewis Christmas advert demonstrates the impact a well thought through content and social media campaign can have and how well traditional advertising and content marketing can work together.

Zoella

You might not have heard of Zoella but if you have a teenage daughter or niece it is highly likely she is a big fan. Zoella has been included on this list because although originally starting out as a blogger she has grown into a multi-million brand. Amongst other things, Zoella now has books, a beauty range and has recently launched a range of interior design products (launched in time for freshers to buy before heading off to University). As well as this, brands will spend small fortunes for her to promote their products and receive a return on investment in doing so. Just to give you some stats: Zoella’s main Facebook page has over 2,673,900 likes, her main Twitter account has over 6.31 million followers, her main YouTube channel has over 11,154,700 subscribers and her main Instagram account has over 9.5 million followers (these are her main accounts and does not include the following of her sub-accounts such as Zoella Beauty); through her blog and vlog she has become a multi-millionaire.

Zoella shows the power of bloggers in influencing people’s retail habits. While it is easy to dismiss bloggers and vloggers as not offering a substantial return on investment, in fact they have huge followings and know how to engage with their target audience and provide an authentic voice their audience trusts. This means that partnering with the right blogger or vlogger will ensure you reach and engage with your target audience, without you having to do the hard work yourself.    

Written by Derin Clark, Content Strategist