Think Outside the Box: 5 Creative Content Marketing Ideas
When you think about content marketing, getting great content on your website and blogging often come to mind first. However, those are far from the only options to get the word out about your business. Use these creative content marketing ideas to trigger growth faster and more efficiently than you ever thought possible.
1. Launch a side-project
Side project marketing strikes a balance between time-consuming blogging and ads that annoy potential customers. Side project marketing gives away a project or service for free (or for very low cost) that is related to your actual business focus. Those who like the free services or products that you provide want to learn more about the business that provides the product or service, so the side project ends up referring customers to the core business.
Consider a company called Crew as an example. Crew matches freelancers who specialize in design and developing with customer who need those services.
Crew’s side projects are called Labs. Labs include a few free services that will help Crew’s target market. These include a calculator to determine how much it will take to create an app, a tool that allows you to download photos for free, and a tool to create a “moodboard,” just to name a few.
These tools alone provide over 40 percent of Crew’s revenue!
Learn more on side project marketing in this Medium post.
2. Develop your own email course
An email course is a series of emails sent out over a period of time. It provides real value to customers because they are learning information in an easy-to-use way. Whether you want your customers to learn about SEO or email marketing, an email course is a great way to do it because you not only obtain your customer’s email, it also provides the customer with extremely valuable information that they were already interested in. Creating this type of course showcases your company as an authority in your field, which means your customer comes to you looking for answers.
Thankfully, you do not have to develop the logistics for your own email course, because Highbrow will do it for you. You just create the content, and Highbrow sends it out to the 250,000+ lifelong learners that use their services. Highbrow takes care of course creation, design, delivery, and promotion. The best part? It is absolutely free.
Want to create an email course on your own? No worries, here is a guide how to do it.
Email courses are an extremely unique and valuable way to promote your information and services. Each email leaves the customer wanting more, which ultimately drives growth and sales. You can even learn more by using Highbrow’s course brought to you by Hubspot “How To Do Email Marketing The Inbound Way” for more information.
3. Start your own podcast
In-car and on-the-go listening has skyrocketed with the growth of smartphone and mobile device usage. These trends also make podcasts that much more popular.
As of 2015, the percentage of Americans who have listened to podcasts in the past week has increased to 17 percent, and that amount is only expected to increase. Allowing users to listen to information while on the go is just another way to get your content out there in a unique way so you can meet your customers where they are and make it easy for them to access information.
Podcasts are a great way to content market because they are easy to share with others. You can use them as both blogs and podcasts, turn them into giveaways by putting them on flash drives, and you can even cover live events and conferences to drum up interest.
Content marketers can use podcasts to learn new skills and improve their content marketing abilities too. Podcasts like “The Craft of Marketing” or “Content Warfare” may be especially helpful.
4. Design quizzes
Customers love quizzes — a simple task that tells them about their personality or tests their knowledge is a content marketing gold mine. They are extremely addicting and people love sharing the quiz and their own results.
According to one survey by BuzzSumo, the average quiz gets shared 1,900 times, which is significantly more than the average blog or infographic. One quiz, “What colour is your aura,” was shared 4 million times! Wouldn’t it be great if your content could get that kind of exposure?
There are two basic types of quizzes — the graded quiz and the outcome quiz. Graded quizzes have scores while outcome quizzes simply give you a result, without indicating whether it is good or bad.
Quizzes are extremely easy to make because they are based on content that you already have. They might be checklists or top ten lists that have been morphed into a quiz. You can use such apps as Qzzr or Typeform to make them.
A quiz can be the perfect tool no matter what line of business you are in. Quizzes can help determine which career path is right for you, whether you know basic fire safety tips, or whether you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Find even more samples here.
5. Host a webinar
When the best way to share your topic is through a series of questions and answers, a webinar might be the perfect tool for you. These types of topics can be too complicated for an article or a blog, but they are still extremely valuable for your audience. For example, if you are following up on a broad subject (like a recent conference) or you had quite a few people contact you with questions about a particular topic, then hosting a webinar might be the best way to interact with your clients and potential customers.
Even though using a webinar may seem like a new concept, it really isn’t. Webinars are used by 62 percent of marketers, making them the third-most important type of communication in content marketing. Content marketers love webinars because they utilize direct interaction with the audience in a way that no other content marketing tool can.
When you want to build relationships with your audience and encourage interaction, a webinar might be the best option for you. Services like GoToWebinar and Cisco WebEx are great tools to host your own webinar. GatherPlace is also a more budget-friendly option that small businesses may like.
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