3 companies who are doing content marketing in the right way

branches&creaturesAccording to Content Marketing Institute, 90% of the companies are using content marketing, however only one third of third of them are satisfied with the response that they get. According to DemandMetric, it is 62% cheaper than the traditional marketing.

Is content marketing an integral part of your startup? Are you pouring in hours of hard work and efforts to build a strong brand on the plinth of content marketing yet failing in some way to get the desired traction? Often it is beneficial to adopt strategies that made the existing brands the best in business rather than searching for never-before tried techniques.

In this article, lets learn from these 3 companies who do content marketing in the right way to build customer centric brands, increase the product users, signups and get established as thought leaders in their niche.

HubSpot – HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales software started in 2006 with 3 employees, 3 customers that gained more than 10,000 customers, 668 employees and $77.6 million revenues in 2013. A feat almost impossible to achieve for a Business-to-Business enterprise.

How did they grow – HubSpot generates a huge amount of free content in form of e-books, webinars, blog articles and infographics that gets them millions of page views. The CMO at HubSpot Mike Volpe says that the inbound (organic) leads are converted twice more than the outbound (paid) leads. The strategy that worked wonders for them is that below each blog post is a free e-book or webinar based on that topic. The reader doesn’t have to look around for free resources, the relevant freebies are presented to him. So suppose I am reading an article on “How to create my Facebook business page”, at the bottom of the article is a call-to-action link to a free e-book on setting up the Facebook page and how to master all its features.

Key takeaway – HubSpot uses a range of educational, informative and actionable free content and free tools to help the potential customers. The content is separated into 3 categories – sales, marketing and agency to ensure that the content doesn’t mingle with the other niche and they allow their employees to create expert content for the blog.

Dollar Shave Club – Getting a sound footing in the shaving razor industry niche dominated by traditional honchos like Gillette and Procter and Gamble is a thought that would scare most of us. A four year old brand, Dollar Shave Club broke into this market with their own razor blades shipped to men on a subscription model using video content marketing to gain 12,000 customers within the first 2 days of their product launch. They now deliver razors and other men’s personal grooming products to more than 1.5 million happy customers who have a great relationship with the company.

How did they grow – Dollar Shave Club Wiki uses funny and entertaining videos to connect with their target audience and gain their attention. Their CEO Michael Dublin stares in each of these videos, they have no celebrity endorsements, they use such videos to launch a new product and their first video garnered 5 million views within the first 3 months. After understanding their audience’s pain points, they launch products to help the audience and speak in a humorous language that can be easily understood by even layman.

Key takeaway – Your content marketing doesn’t necessarily need a blog. First zero on the social networks where most of your audience is present, (in this case YouTube) and then adopt a content strategy that’ll attract the audience on each of these networks. Conveying your message in a humorous tone and with visual content has a better impact.

Buffer App – For the social media scheduling app Buffer, content marketing accounts for 70% of their daily signups. Each of their blog posts gets on an average 1900 shares! Buffer uses content marketing as their primary channel for growth, they’re known to have built their company on the platform of content marketing and guest blogging.

How did they grow – A blend of data-driven insights, curated content, storytelling and transparency has helped them catch attention of the target audience. Their content focusses mainly on making the job of their target audience (content crafters and marketers, digital marketers and social media marketers) easier. Their founder, Leo Widrich used guest posting to gain from 0-100,000 customers in the first year. Their blogs are an excellent example of content curation, which points to another fact – you don’t always have to reinvent the content creation wheel.

Key takeaway – Actionable, unique, thorough and detailed listicles that help your target audience simplify their task are always well-received by the users and audience. Guest posting unique and valuable content is far from being dead, it helps brands gain immense traction.

Content marketing doesn’t give instant rewards, it takes time to craft the best quality content, distribute it among the media sources, get attention of the target audience and gain the market leadership. When done consistently over a period of time, positive results start showing and it’ll help your brand scale up immensely.