10 Brilliant Content Marketing Examples And Key Takeaways

Content Marketing takes a lot of time among other resources. And the results usually come only after 9 months.

Still, there are some brilliant people who are absolutely killing it and bringing millions of dollars of business through smart content marketing. We will present 10 such examples together with the key takeaways you can apply in your campaigns.

1. Red Bull

Red Bull reportedly had a 44% share of the exploding energy drinks market by 2011.

There is no doubt you would recognize the blue and silver can from a mile away. While most brands decided to harness more standard forms of marketing, Red Bull decided to create their own media house. Today, they have over 5 million subscribers on Youtube, partnerships with best — of — the — class athletes and sales of $6.5 billion.

Red Bull realised that people will not spend time on the website watching a 45 minute video about the drink. So they decided to sell the lifestyle itself. A lifestyle where ideas and brave people “grow wings” thanks to their drink. By promoting extreme sports and active lifestyle, they jumped onto the same wagon as GoPro. They produced high quality videos, photos and partnered with world class athletes to build their image. Customers, majority being men between 18 and 34 years old, obviously enjoyed all the amazing footage, felt inspired and resonated with the brand.

The key lesson here is that content has more potential than just to be educating. With some audiences and markets, entertainment might be a better choice.

2. GoPro

GoPro produces absolutely brilliant camera, which initially was mostly used by extreme sports enthusiasts. Now, you probably know at least 10 people who own one of them and you see at least couple of videos filmed by GoPro on your social feed daily. Musicians use them, families trust the brand with their holiday photos and wild life enthusiasts film their expeditions with the same device.

The brand reached the heights of content marketing success: there are at least 6 000 videos with GoPro tag uploaded to YouTube daily, GoProing is now a noun (and a hashtag) and they have over 380 videos with more than 50 million views each, according to this article by Content Marketing Institute.

GoPro found an ingenious way to promote and produce their content. Since they have a great product, which films extremely engaging and shareable footage, they encouraged their users to film and upload their videos by distributing the very best of them. They also partnered with top-tier musicians and athletes, giving others a glimpse onto the life from, for example, professional skateboarders perspective.

The key lesson here is that brands should encourage customers to promote the brand. Of course, this is more applicable to one product than to the other, but with a bit of creativity almost everyone can apply this lesson to their strategy.

3. IBM

IBM was on the frontier of technology for more than half a century for now.

They developed a top — notch marketing program, based on educational content. Which is definitely a smart choice given that they have decades of experience with highly complex products. Even when the digital services market became over saturated, IBM managed to leap over the competition.

IBM has engaged in many different educational activities to maintain relationship with their customers and to generate new leads. They used videos to educate about their products and ideas behind them. They adjusted different forms of media to different target markets. And they did an amazing job by building relationships with key influencers, who already have huge followers base. According to the Leslie Reiser, the Program Director for Digital Marketing Worldwide, the latter point was key to their success, even if other strategies have played a significant role too.

The key lesson here is that brands should not ignore powerful voices outside their company. Reaching out to various influencers and building relationships means that there will be authoritative and credible people advocating for your brand publicly.

4. Hubspot

Anyone in online marketing knows HubSpot. They produce tremendous amount of content daily and use it in a very smart manner.

While many companies blindly blast blog posts, videos and ebooks, HubSpot uses their content to turn a stranger into a customer and eventually into a brand promoter! In addition, they have developed a software which allows to measure the performance of each piece of content you produce and conveniently adjust your campaign to find the optimal strategy.

If you would check their blog, you would find tremendous amounts of content. In addition, the blog has multiple sub-blogs, where each sub-blog is updated few times a day. Also, there are countless resources to download for free, such as ebooks, white papers and excel sheets. In addition, they have video courses, where every marketer can learn something useful.

However, we believe that the key lesson at HubSpot is not the quantity they produce, but the brilliant way they use it. They have systemised the function of each piece of content to guide the website visitors from being a complete stranger to finally becoming a customer and brand promoter.

The key lesson here is that brands should not blindly post videos, infographics or blog posts. Instead each piece of content should have a predefined function, which seduces visitor to explore more, until finally he or she becomes a customer. Each step of your customer should be monitored and measured, to drive conclusion on how to optimise your content marketing strategy. If you would like to learn more how to do it, check out this ebook.

5. Buffer

Buffer is a social media scheduling app, now known to just about anyone. However, when Buffer started out, they had problems pitching to about anyone. Thanks to their content marketing efforts, Buffer team can now proudly boast about over 3 million users and having a go — to blog status for anyone who wants to learn about social media marketing.

Having problems being featured by media channels, Buffer Co-Founder Leo Widrich had a moment: “That was the realization for me. It was like, ‘Well, if all this power of marketing something lies with the writer, then maybe I need to become a writer myself.’” So they started a blog, where they primally focused on educating readers how to use Twitter. Later, they did the same with other social media platforms.

While this helped them to grow steadily, the true success hit once co-founders realised that instead of focusing on the potential customers, they should focus on the influencers, who already have those customers in their follower base. This new revelation inspired buffer founders to produce content which is targeted to the influencers rather than to the potential customers. The topics included creativity, life hacks and psychology. As a result, they quadrupled their social media shares from 250 to 1000 per post.

The key lesson here is that brands should explore the possibilities beyond the content relevant to their service or product. Sometimes bringing that traffic to your website is just what you need to filter the relevant audience and turn them into customers in a long run. And just as in IBM’s case, reaching out to influencers is a must for anyone thriving to expand their audience.

6. LELO

LELO is intimate lifestyle toys manufacturer. While some might say using such a controversial example in the blog post is not a a good idea for ones PR, the genius of their strategy just begs to be acknowledged.

Starting with only 10 employees in 2002 they now have over 600 of them, offices in major cities and have dominated over 50 international markets.

According to the Steve Thomson, LELO CMO, the biggest change in the past few years was that the focus shifted towards the production of content which stresses the companies beliefs. For example, LELO runs design awards, where emphasis is put on general well being of people rather than on their intimate toys. They have noticed that quick explosion of technology made people to drift apart. They challenged designers to come up with solutions to bring couples together. They took this strategy even further and produced a movie called “Beyond the Wave”, which featured post — apocalyptic scenario and focused on relationships and value of open, honest communication. They did a great job with crushing through taboos in this rather young and notorious niche.

In addition, one has to admit that the level of design is world class. It is subtile and premium, with a pinch of intimacy on the top. They even won Cannes Lion Design Award in 2014!

The key lesson here is that brands should put an emphasis on the bigger picture — on their vision. Associating yourself with powerful values through various forms of media and content helps to build a positive image to general public, and in return to elevate your brand.

7. Starbucks

Starbucks is now a company known to everyone. They are known as a caffe, but they sell much more than that: they sell personality.

Most of the brands use content marketing to educate their audience about the needs audience does not yet know. Starbucks employs content marketing to promote their purpose. Their ads and Instagram page feature people enjoying the coffee with their friends. They emphasise that “Good things happen when we get together”, which warms the viewers hearts. Starbucks associates itself, though its content, with what is good, pleasurable and relaxing.

At same time, their blog features how to guides, recipes and stories. Their content is engaging , shareable and of high quality. It radiates with the same peaceful and relaxing values.

The key lesson here is, however, that Starbucks associates itself with a fundamental need a typical person has — social comfort. Showing how your product helps to enjoy life and connecting your brand with good emotions through stories, images and videos builds an emotional bond between your brand and your customer.

8. Transfer Wise

Transfer Wise is a UK based start — up, which offers a service allowing to save £50 per every £1000 you send abroad. It is no secret that FinTech is extremely tough field to play in, yet Transfer Wise succeeded. They got people like Sir Richard Branson and Peter Thiel backing them up and start — up is now estimated to be worth 1 billion dollars.

They produce a lot of content, however, what is brilliant about them is how they resonated with their audience. Transfer Wise is on — boarding people to their ship of banking revolution. They put down banks and openly speak about the hidden fees one is charged if using the traditional ways to transfer money.

Transfer Wise employed form of content marketing known as hero — hub — hygiene. This is a move where the emphasis is put on “keeping the conversation burning on the particular matter over long periods of time”. In our highly visual world this means that Transfer Wise produces a lot of memorable visual content, which focuses on “purging the hidden fees”. They go as far as encouraging hundreds of people to strip their shirts in the middle of London because they have #Nothing2Hide. They even give away T — shirts for people who decide to leave banks.

The key lesson here is that if your company sells or provides a product and or a service, which truly revolutionises something for the better, it is a good idea to be aggressive about it and encourage people to jump on the wagon. In fact, this a truly powerful psychological principle, described in the book by Drew Eric Whitman.

9. Backlinko

This one is great. Brian Dean used the content strategy we are about to describe to grow traffic to 119k per month.

While it seems that everyone is just posting a couple of blog posts per month, Brian decided to produce one kick-ass post per month and promote it with all stamina he has.

The result? Brian succeeded in the SEO niche, which is one of the most saturated competitive markets one can get into right now. This strategy helped to build SEO and social traffic streams, build email list and is the quickest way to rank high even in highly competitive markets.

The key lesson here is that in case you are new to the content marketing, it is much more efficient to promote a single piece of content and grow your fan base, instead of blindly throwing content darts into untested boards.

10. Shredz

In less than 3 years, Arvin Lal created a $18 million health supplements company without any external investments.

Arvin Lal worked in marketing & business development field for a 8 years before founding Shredz. They started to actively promote themselves on a social media and soon enough found that fit male and female models attracted a lot of attention on the Instagram. Once they actively started to market on this platform, things really took off. Now, they regularly post fitness tips, feature models and share entertaining content.

Shredz launched a programme where fitness models could become sponsored by Shredz. In turn, Shredz would then be exposed to them massive amounts of followers the models already have. This way the whole network was built, and Shredz popularity started to grow exponentially.

The key lesson here is that brands should always find on which platforms to focus. For some it is Linkedin, for some it might be Reddit or Facebook. For Shredz it was Instagram.

Content marketing is an exciting field to be in. It requires creativity and it requires analytical mind. It involves those breath taking moments when you launch new piece of content and see the traffic curve skyrocketing. The methods examples described above come from world class marketers and hopefully will help you out to succeed. Do you have anything to add? Here at Cinnamon Infographics we would love to hear your thoughts — leave a comment below!