You’ve heard about how powerful content marketing can be in terms of returns on investment (ROI).
You’ve even seen statistics proving its effectiveness. And you’re thinking of investing in content marketing.
But there’s still a little doubt in there. You need to see real-life situations where content marketing has produced results.
To clear your doubt, I’ve compiled 7 content marketing case studies and the lessons you can learn as a business.
Of a truth, when we talk about content marketing, it’s often easy to assume we’re only talking about the written content.
However, other content formats that people often ignore include:
- Videos
- Infographics
- Slides
- Podcasts
In this post, you’ll see case studies involving various content formats and on different channels.
By the end of this post, you’ll have enough pieces of evidence to convince you that content marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels out there.
All hail the king? You decide.
Let’s get to it.
1. UAV Coach
This is a blog about drones. It provides information about drones that beginners and enthusiasts would find interesting.
But the blog needed more traffic and leads from search engines. And that is where Michael Karp came in.
He had to create a piece of content that would rank high on search engines and pull in the right traffic. To achieve this, he began with keyword research to find the best keywords to target.
The reality is that some keywords, even with high search volumes, should be avoided. Because the competition for such keywords are so tough that they’re almost impossible to rank for.
He went with the keyword “how to fly a quadcopter” as it has enough search volume but also possible to rank for. Moreso, there are many possible variations of this keyword.
After keyword research, he created a 4,400-word guide to provide all the details a reader might be looking for. Compared to the pages already ranking for the keyword, this page provides much more detail.
Over the years, long-form posts have come to dominate search rankings. In fact, research by Brian Dean showed that the average page ranked number 1 on Google has 1,890 words.
In another study, Moz and BuzzSumo found that long-form posts attract more social shares and backlinks.
However, this is only a correlation. The most important lesson here is: posts with more details meet the visitor’s intent better. As a result, they gain more social shares, backlinks, and higher search rankings.
Added to these, he also carried out on-page optimization for the target keywords. This includes adding the keywords to important parts of the page such as title, subheadings, meta description, etc.
Having said this, creating a great post alone won’t give it the needed boost. Michael also promoted this post through social media, forums, and other channels.
Furthermore, he reached out to other websites to acquire backlinks to the page. Considering that backlinks are one of the most important ranking signals, it’s a vital step.
So what are the results?
After 6 months of publishing the post, it got an amazing 27,722 page views with 20,314 of them coming from Google. Furthermore, UAV Coach acquired 2,335 leads through this post.
2. Buffer
Even as a social media company, Buffer understands the importance of content marketing. And by taking advantage of content marketing, the company has grown into one of the biggest social media management platforms.
Initially, the company engaged in a guest posting campaign. This was to increase exposure for the tool, which was unknown at the time.
Buffer co-founder, Leo Widrich, claimed that he published about 150 guest posts on authoritative websites. The aim here was to increase exposure and refer many potential customers to the Buffer website.
Guest posting is one of the best content marketing strategies to gain exposure for your brand. Through this, you can also increase your authority as an industry expert.
However, to get the best results from guest posting, you have to feature your posts on the right blogs. This includes research into authoritative websites in your industry.
Because these are the websites likely to have a huge audience of your potential customers. After research, send your pitch to these websites.
Apart from guest posting, Buffer has a thriving social media blog. Here, the company publishes content about social media trends, research, its tool, and others.
Blogging is an effective way to gain more valuable traffic to your website through channels such as social media, search engines, email, etc.
Added to that, leads acquisition goes up as a by-product of more traffic. For instance, a HubSpot study found that companies that publish more than 16 blog posts monthly acquire 4.5 times more leads than those that publish 0 to 4 posts monthly.
What are the results of Buffer’s content marketing efforts?
Through guest posting, the company increased its user base from 0 to 100,000 within 9 months.
Also, the website gets over 1.5 million monthly sessions on its blog.
3. Coca-Cola
Back in 2011, Coca-Cola had a goal of doubling Coke’s worldwide consumption by 2020. Now, that’s an audacious goal for a product that’s already known to most people.
To achieve this, Coca-Cola also embraced a new marketing strategy which the company called Content 2020.
The company’s vice president of global advertising strategy and excellence, Jonathan Mildenhall, said the strategy is to move from creative excellence to content excellence.
He said: “All advertisers need a lot more content so that they can keep the engagement with consumers fresh and relevant, because of the 24/7 connectivity. If you’re going to be successful around the world, you have to have fat and fertile ideas at the core.”
Without a doubt, the company’s biggest and most successful campaign during this period has been the “Share a Coke” campaign. As a matter of fact, this is a big lesson in personalization.
Over the years, personalization has become a big trend in content marketing. People only pay attention when your pieces of content are relevant to them.
Having said that, one of the most relevant words to an individual is their name. The “Share a Coke” campaign started in Australia by personalizing Coke bottles with the 150 most popular names in the country.
The campaign went viral as people wanted to see their name on a Coke bottle or buy one for a friend.
What are the results of this campaign?
As a result of the campaign, Coca-Cola sold 250 million pieces of these personalized bottles during that summer.
This becomes even more impressive when you consider that Australia has a population of about 23 million people.
Since then, the campaign has spread around the world as Coca-Cola sought to replicate the results. And no matter where you live, you’ve probably seen one of these bottles before.
Personalization has come to stay. Therefore, you must personalize your pieces of content to your ideal buyers.
4. Shutterstock
This is a popular online marketplace where users can find royalty-free videos, images, and music. Considering this, it’s no surprise that Shutterstock will make visuals an integral part of its content marketing strategy.
Shutterstock carried out research to find new trends for the next year based on its current users’ preferences and download data. This type of data is beneficial to both contributors and customers of the platform.
Contributors can see the types of content that will be popular in the near future. Likewise, customers can see new trends and use them for various purposes.
But rather than creating an ebook or a whitepaper, Shutterstock presented its results in an infographic.
What results did Shutterstock achieve through its content marketing strategy?
Through this infographic report, Shutterstock got 6 billion unique site visits, 5,300 social media shares, 11,000 social media engagements, and mentions in over 100 articles.
Visuals have grown in popularity over the years. Perhaps, this could be because the brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text.
The point here is that you need to integrate visuals into your content marketing strategy.
5. Blendtec
Depending on the type of business you do and your audience, video could be your best type of content. And that’s why Blendtec embraced videos to market its blenders to potential buyers.
Telling prospects through a blog post that your blender is reliable will convince some of them. But what if you show them a video showing these benefits? You’ll achieve even better results.
But there’s a little problem: there are already many blender videos available. And a blender can hardly be categorized as an interesting topic.
However, with the “Will it blend” campaign on YouTube, Blendtec introduced a unique twist to make blenders interesting.
In these videos, Tom Dickson, Blendtec founder, put different hard objects into their blenders to show how powerful they are.
What results has Blendtec achieved?
This campaign has gone so viral that the videos have amassed over 100 million views on YouTube alone.
Added to that, the company achieved a 700% increase in sales as a result of this campaign within 3 years.
6. Busabout
Marketing your business can bring in many benefits. But what if your customers market your business for you?
This is even a more trustworthy form of marketing to convince prospects. According to Stackla, 79% of people say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions.
As a tour operator for millennials and Gen Z, Busabout offers hop-on hop-off tours to 47 destinations across Europe. For such a business, customers can show benefits through the images they capture at different locations.
So, Busabout collected user-generated content from customers.
Then, Busabout created a map of Europe where potential customers can select a location and view images from tourists.
With 110,000 traveler images, this is a big library that any prospective traveler will find pleasing.
What results did Busabout achieve from its UGC campaign?
As 99% of content on Busabout’s website is user-generated content, this led to a 65% reduction in content cost for Busabout.
Also, the company got a 72% increase in hop-on hop-off page views in the first 6 months and a 39% increase in average time spent on the main hop-on hop-off webpage.
Most importantly, Busabout saw a 33% rise in web bookings in the UK.
7. AARP
This is a magazine for people over 50. Considering this, it’s incredible that the magazine is also one of the most popular in the United States.
For instance, it has the second-highest readership of any print publication. Also, it’s the largest consumer magazine by base rate as it reaches 22 million households.
AARP uses analytics to find the best pieces of content for its ideal audience. This means baby boomers can receive relevant information they need about health, technology, fashion, and finance.
But even more, the magazine asks for feedback from its audience. What types of content do they want to see in the magazine? What pain points would they like to see addressed?
Due to these steps, AARP continues to grow in popularity among its audience as the magazine helps to improve their lives.
What are the results of AARP’s content marketing strategy?
The magazine has a readership of over 37 million. What’s even more impressive is that 54% of its readers read at least 3 of the last 4 issues.
This shows that having a content marketing strategy supported by hard numbers helps to produce the type of content your audience wants. Furthermore, it’s vital to ask for feedback from your audience. Sometimes, they understand what they need more than you do.
Conclusion
If you want to grow your online business today, content marketing is a must. And that’s because it has proven to produce results over the years.
This post has only shown 7 content marketing case studies that produced results for businesses. But you’ll literally find hundreds of cases where content marketing has led to incredible results.
Having said that, content marketing can be a tough task. If you need someone to do the hard work for you so that you can achieve similar results, check out my writing services.
