There’s always a new marketing trend on the horizon; but one trend that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon is content marketing.
A new report from the metric-analysis platform Semrush reveals that content marketing is now an essential part of pretty much every brand’s marketing. In 2021, a whopping 97% of businesses used content as an important part of their marketing strategy.
Looking at first-rate content marketing examples that have delivered measurable results for businesses can give you valuable ideas for your content efforts.
We’ve handpicked a few just for you!
The secrets to content marketing success
Content marketing is all about sparking a connection with your ideal audience.
“A great content marketing example is one where the content interests and engages the audience,” says Sarah Spence, founder and strategic director of Content Rebels.
“It is repurposed and amplified across a range of channels and encourages a response from your audience: it makes them engage more, spend more and share more.”
When it comes to content, prioritising quality over quantity will lead to a stronger relationship with your customers, as you’ll see in the following examples.
Byrdie
It’s great to see a brand that knows how much of an impact visually pleasing long-form content has. For this reason, it’s no surprise that blog posts and success stories were two of the top three most successful content types for 2021.
A stellar example of how content marketing can help with SEO comes from high-performing beauty publisher Byrdie.
On Byrdie’s site, you’ll find many deep-dive articles that are designed to educate their audience on a range of beauty topics. Rather than placing its products centre stage, Byrdie helps its audience understand their problem and how to solve it.
The results?
By responding to its audience’s needs with original long-form content, Byrdie has dominated organic search results.
Their authenticity also yields greater customer loyalty and trust.
Microsoft Stories
If we haven’t yet convinced you of the value of long-form content, consider the vision of Microsoft Stories.
Good storytelling that triggers our emotions is proven to promote trust and relationship building, so here’s where the success of Microsoft Stories lies.
The blog offers site visitors a wealth of interactive narratives, each crafted with bespoke imagery, video and formatting. First and foremost, Microsoft’s aim here is to give people something interesting to experience — something they’ll remember. For them, conversions are simply an additional benefit.
The results?
Prioritising good storytelling over selling may seem counterintuitive from a marketing perspective, but it’s enabled Microsoft to tap into the core emotions of its audience.
Through innovation and authenticity, Microsoft Stories has cultivated a meaningful connection with its customers, the kind that naturally drives conversions.
OVME
If your sights are set on long-term growth, strong SEO is a must.
Medical aesthetic practice OVME is one of the best SEO website examples out there. During an overhaul of its website, the brand simplified all its content and leveraged conversion opportunities — including mobile optimisation.
OVME applied SEO across all elements of its site, ensuring target keywords were used in page titles, content and metadata. Link building helped lift the site’s domain authority and search positions.
The results?
OVME achieved a 10% increase in organic site traffic in just three months, with 60% more calls coming in from organic search. Online appointments soared by 1,217%, meaning the practice’s investment in keyword research was a success.
Healthylife
When Woolworths made plans to relaunch the healthylife brand as an eCommerce website in 2021, they needed a high volume of quality content created quickly. Content Rebels was ready. We were able to develop a strong brand identity for the site, attract visitors and help convert them.
To craft Healthylife’s content marketing strategy, we:
- analysed the online search behaviour of the ideal audience
- interviewed health experts for a high level of content value
- planned content that would meet the audience’s specific needs.
A Pillar and Cluster Content Model provided structure for the long-form content we produced while boosting site visibility in organic search results.
The results?
Site visitors who viewed our content were more likely to:
- purchase products
- keep browsing the site
- return to the site
- engage with more content.
In its first twelve months, Healthylife achieved over 320,935 organic site visits. Find out more.
Inauro
Innovative Internet of Things startup Inauro came to us wanting to tap into the construction and equipment rental sectors. So we decided to pique the interest of relevant businesses through the creation of insightful industry reports.
We conducted in-depth audience research along with interviews with industry leaders and the Inauro team. We then presented our key findings as industry-specific reports that were easy for the target audience to locate and download.
Great! But how though?
We developed content ecosystems for each report to drive traffic to the Inauro site. These included:
- website landing pages with search engine optimisation (SEO)
- ‘teaser’ infographics to encourage report downloads
- SEO articles for search-engine visibility
- email capture.
The results?
From just two content ecosystems, Inauro now has impressive resources to send to prospects, materials to adapt for advertising, higher conversions and a richer client experience.
The two industry reports converted 250 prospects and provided a strong demonstration of how to generate leads through content marketing. Throughout this time we were also actively building high-quality backlinks to Inauro’s website which boosted Inauro’s domain authority by 266% and increased its website visitors by 71%. Now that’s a win. See our work in action.
Now it’s your turn
Feeling inspired? Great, because it’s time to put your own strategy into play.
According to Semrush, 78% of businesses that believe their content marketing was very successful in 2021 had a documented content marketing strategy.
So if you want to prosper, you’ll need to follow suit and formalise your plan.
7 content marketing strategy must-haves
Identifying the similarities between successful content marketing campaigns will help you craft a strategy that hits all the right notes.
Here are seven proven tactics for bolstering online visibility, driving leads and convincing prospects to take action:
- Know the difference between a content strategy and a content marketing strategy.
- Identify your audience’s problems and where they spend their time.
- Create quality, engaging content that meets your audience’s specific needs.
- Humanise your content with storytelling and a defined, honest brand voice.
- Increase your organic search ranking with SEO and a Pillar and Cluster Content Model.
- Repurpose and amplify your content (perhaps by trying a Waterfall Content Strategy).
- Don’t sleep on your performance analysis — it’s crucial for success.
If all this looks daunting, don’t worry. Almost 65% of B2B marketers outsource their writing. Engaging an expert content marketing team will secure long-term lead generation and improve productivity for your business, as long as you choose wisely.
Good strategy is not one-size-fits-all
Seeking ideas for your content strategy and checking out websites with good SEO will give you an edge in the ever-changing digital landscape. Just make sure the tactics you cherrypick meet your business needs.
Content Copywriting specialises in content marketing strategies that improve the online presence of brands while strengthening audience engagement and boosting their bottom line.
