5 Brands with the Best Digital Marketing Campaigns
Original Article by: Eric Siu at Single Grain
Best Examples of Successful Marketing Campaigns
1 — Zappos
Zappos, a leader in shoe e-commerce, sets the gold standard for online customer care. In fact, their CEO, Tony Hsieh, wrote the book on it. So it’s no shock that they have a stellar digital strategy.
Not only does Zappos provide a 365-day money back guarantee, but they also have free shipping both ways, should consumers decide to return or exchange products purchased on the site.
As a result, Zappos doesn’t have to work hard to market its online presence — its policies are so appealing to consumers that shoppers are eager to sing the company’s praises to one another in a completely organic (and viral) fashion.
Of course, Zappos does still invest heavily in online marketing, and its social media campaigns shouldn’t be missed! Notice how they focus on what the customer wants and needs, not on what they wish the customer wanted or needed. This is a key part to any effective digital strategy. Listen to your audience and plan accordingly.
The Lesson
Content marketing must be managed appropriately to be effective. Online content marketing campaigns should strive to produce measurable results in proportion to the resources committed to them.
2 — Single Grain and Eric Siu
As a digital marketing agency, we know how important it is to set the SEO and brand-building foundation with amazing content marketing marketing. That’s why we make an omnichannel content strategy a huge priority.
Everyone has their platform of choice, whether it be getting their content from Twitter, Instagram influencers, Facebook groups, Quora, blogs, email newsletter roundups, podcasts… the list goes on.
Single Grain, and CEO Eric Siu, are all about omnipresence — bring your content game to all the channels. Eric has a daily bite-size marketing podcast (cohosted by Neil Patel), hosts Growth Everywhere, where he interviews entrepreneurs and thought leaders, as well as a thriving YouTube channel — with new series Leveling Up getting tactical with fellow marketers and business owners.
Then there’s the Single Grain blog, which publishes marketing content 4x weekly. The blog is definitely not bite-sized — we’re very selective about choosing 2K+ word articles that are tactical and actionable. And the Growth Everywhere YouTube channel, with awesome interview series like Leveling Up, where Eric takes you behind the scenes with fellow entrepreneurs.
And Facebook Lives, webinars, content collabs with companies like Intercom, ImpactBND, interviews, speaker events, Fireside Chats…
OK, so we’re publishing this on our own blog but this isn’t to toot our own horn.
The Lesson
Your potential customers are hanging out online, but they’re not all on the same platform or respond to the same media. Create a multi-channel, multi-media strategy. And we’ll give you a peek behind the curtain: The best thing is you don’t have to come up with separate topics for each channel. Take the topics that performed well on one channel and repurpose them into a piece of content for another segment of your audience.
If you don’t have time to put your own digital marketing campaigns into place, Single Grain can provide SEO and content marketing services. Get a free strategy session here!
We also offer DIY offerings like the Evergreen Traffic Machine and the Agency Accelerator — which include content and SEO courses, proprietary software, and consultation.
3 — American Express (AMEX)
Plenty of companies talk a big game about “the communities” they’re creating online and the inherent value of the “online conversation.” However, very few actually create any community of value.
Far from being all talk and no game, American Express puts its money where its mouth is by leveraging the value provided by industry experts on its Open Forumwebsite.
Open Forum is a collaborative website, on which American Express invites guest authors from a variety of sectors to share their business knowledge and wisdom. The result is a content-rich mega-site that’s popular with the search engines — all created without American Express needing to shell out cash to content contributors.
The Lesson
The creator of your content does not need to be you. Find industry leaders that create great content and ask them to contribute an expert article on your blog. It will build their audience and your traffic, as long as the content provides value. Good content marketing strategies draw on a range of user-generated sources to both grow online communities and minimize financial investment.
4 — Mint
Entering a popular niche like personal finance is a daunting task for any new startup, but the approach that financial tracking tool Mint took early on proved that it’s possible to stand out in a crowd through well-executed online marketing strategies.
Although the company was a relative unknown amongst its more popular predecessors, Mint committed to a digital strategy in which they published hundreds of high-quality content pieces — from informative blog posts to viral attention-grabbing infographics (like Data Privacy Day: Keep Your Financial Data Safe) –which gave value to their customers and grew their business.
As a result of Mint’s digital marketing efforts, the tool gained a massive online following before being sold to Intuit for a whopping $170 million.
The Lesson
Investing in content marketing often requires significant amounts of time and money, but committing to content production and high-quality standards can build substantial market attention in a short period of time.
5 — Lyft
This rideshare company is built upon a luxury that most of us dream of, but few can afford: a private driver. Tap a few buttons on the app and in a matter of minutes, a shiny new car arrives at your exact location to take you anywhere you want to go. The service is so great that the need for expensive marketing is practically non-existent.
Lyft started as the campus-based Zimride, branded itself as a “socially conscious alternative in a crowded, cutthroat field” (donating $1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union during a recent New York taxi strike to protest President Trump’s travel ban), and grew almost entirely through word-of-mouth marketing, which is a very high-converting channel. In fact, 81% of customers make purchase decisionsbased on recommendations from their friends.
They offer incentives for riders to act as advocates for the business by providing referral codes to their friends in exchange for free rides. Between a service that saves people time by making transportation easier and cost-effective and their powerful referral system, Lyft is spreading like wildfire.
The Lesson
Word-of-mouth advertising is worth more than any exposure you could ever buy, and in the digital age, it’s faster and more effective. Lyft actively targeted the tech community in San Francisco in the early days, knowing that they would share their experiences both off and online. By providing consistently exceptional service since then, they’ve made it easy for users to spread the word for them.
