It is not a surprise that content is king when it comes to online business. Content marketing is the most important strategy acquired by businesses today.

A majority of PR & marketing professionals will focus & increase their content marketing activities in 2016.

Content has been able to catch the limelight in recent years owing  to its effectiveness. In the year 2015, most of the B2B marketers (70%) rely more on creating content than in the year 2014.

With the improvised content quality, you also need an inspiration. Hence, I am going to state some of the most effective examples of content marketing. These campaigns are individuals ones, a big property, a new podcast, and similar.

1. Red Bull

You must have noticed the brand Red Bull. This energy drink always ensures to keep its focus on ‘extreme sports or high action events’. The fun part is their majority of consumers are not participating in these events.

This is because Red Bull knows that it is a greater content marketing.

Red Bull’s marketing strategy is such that they never market on their product attributes. They will talk about everything else, but not about their product, even once.

There is no sales pitch for Red Bull.

Red Bull instead uses different ways of increasing their brand’s visibility. Ways like blogs, images, videos, magazines, social media, and amazing TV spots.

If you want to see how content marketing works, just check out Red Bull on YouTube.

Currently, Red Bull has over 3 million subscribers on its YouTube channel. Content posted by RedBull is customer-centric on all level

The video series which made the impact was about a series of event in Seattle. Redbull also features sports such as mountain biking, extreme truck racing and parachute jumps.

In October 2012, Red Bull covers the Stratos jump from the edge of a space. This video created the benchmark in the content marketing game.

It was Felix Baumgartner, who did a free fall from the edge of the space and it was live on YouTube.

2. Go Pro

Nowadays generation is well aware of Go Pro, but for people, who still don’t know it, let me help you out.

Go Pro is an HD camera, which is waterproof and also acts as a video recording device.  The marketing implementation of Red Bull and Go Pro is like each other.

Go Pro never advertise about its own brand, not even once. Instead, it covers the extreme sports adventures and represents these sports events.

In fact, most of you might not know this, but Red Bull and Go Pro works together. Red Bull provides sponsorships to the athletes. Go Pro ensures to provide the equipment to capture these astonishing stunts.

Most of the content on Go Pro comes from normal professionals, and not only by sports freak people.

For marketers who are looking for some amazing content marketing examples should look forward to this duo of Red Bull and Go Pro. The majority of the content of Go Pro comes from fans only. To marketers’ amaze, these contents are also directed towards customers only.

Like Red Bull, Go Pro also ensures to cover the interest of the target audience in an effective manner.

Most important social media channel for Go Pro is YouTube. Currently, their channel has won millions of viewers.

Go Pro also ensures to respond to the comments and feedbacks of their customers.

The case studies of Red Bull and Go Pro are an amazing piece of example for effective content marketing. The question is how can you use the learning from these case studies. How will it help you survive in this cut-throat competition market?

I am going to present some more case studies that will further clarify your thoughts on content marketing completely.

3. HootSuite

As a marketer, what will be your strategy to increase the popularity of the product? You will try to follow the impression of some other successful brands. If possible collaborate your marketing theme with their to reach a wide audience!

That’s exactly what Hootsuite did. Viral video of Hootsuite ‘A Game of Social Thrones’ hiked to the peaks of popularity. This happens owing the amazing success of ‘Game of Thrones’.

With tagline such as “Let’s do you more with social media”, Hootsuite achieves a buzz in the market.

Hootsuit's campaign includes engagement, listening, analytics, collaboration, security, and apps.

HootSuite creates some appealing and stupendous content for their blog.

See how Hootsuite choose these blogs headlines. This is what content marketing demands.

“The capability of thinking like a customer. Ability to produce content in compliance with target audience. These are the factors that help you to get & convert more prospects into your clientele.”

4. Buffer

One of the strongest and related to examples of content marketing is Buffer. The way buffer chooses the content of its blog, it is just commendable.

Let’s just take a look at how does Buffer actually does it?

Let us take a look at the top 3 topics in last 1 year. Each post incorporates 2,289 words and around 20 odd images on an average. This shows how authoritative and authentic content Buffer does produces.

Buffer has been getting more customers to their base by understanding the emotional aspect of their audience.

For all those thinking Buffer is just a blog, No; it’s not. Buffer is a social sharing tool. It schedules content for increasing the brand’s visibility.

Buffer tells other social media platforms such as Twitter to tweet particular content at some time. It tells Facebook to post an update at other time. Buffer also makes sure that tweets under 40 characters and FB posts are under 100 characters.

Buffer actually adopts and maintains its own research. When it comes to creating, publishing and promoting its content, Buffer is just incomparable.

Buffer knows the relevance of the high-quality information in the blog.

Majority of the blog articles of Buffer ends with a CTA like mentioned below:

Buffer also ensures to exhibit the shares in end of each article. This encourages the reader to further share the content to their social media platforms.

So, content should be quality wise informative. Informative part increases the chance of user sharing your content. Which result in generating better revenue all along?

Another example of buffer’s awesome content marketing example is Buffer Open Blog. The kind of transparency and openness it provides to customers is just amazing.

Reading their blog is like reading all their secrets that are revealed on blog itself, exclusively for you. This sort of providing ease relationship is quite attractive and astounding.

For a prosperous customer-engagement, Buffer speaks to an audience that encourages social sharing.

All marketing professionals looking for an effective content marketing strategy remember that it is important to share the content as it is to make the content relevant.

5. Microsoft

People just love it when you tell them stories.

The story makes people get connected. Every brand wants to connect with users on the psychological and emotional level. If you are able to touch these 2 virtual senses of the human body, you are on right path.

Being a software giant, Microsoft hardly fits the profile of content marketers. After all, Microsoft creates software right!

Microsoft hits the emotional pedal in viewers’ mind by their storytelling blogs.

And the stories Microsoft tells are not fictional stories. Instead, they are just the story of people; people like you and me.

Microsoft presents each aspect in human life with much thought. Aspects such as challenge, redemption, and triumph in its storytelling are mentioned.

On Independence Day, Microsoft posted an amazing article with short version of people telling their story of helping others.

So, why actually a company that design software telling stories?

It is simple. Stories connect people with the brand. An inspiring story of a coder won’t compel you to go out and buy a Microsoft product. But it will actually remain inside your head for a long time.

This longevity of warm feeling makes brand recall much easier in customer’s mind. This increases your brand’s visibility and lead to increase in revenue generation.

For example on LinkedIn, Microsoft has a page that tells about behind-the-scenes insights from the core team that’s working on it. Similarly a page from enterprise team on marketing and tips from the founder itself Bill Gates have clearly put the content marketing strategy of Microsoft on the top.

Conclusion

All said, content was, content is and content will remain as a king in the online business industry.

It is totally up to smart marketers and brand owners like you that how you are going to take forward the content marketing strategy.

I would love to hear a suggestion from your end too. A discussion is always more fruitful than a conclusion, so I am all ears.

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