how to create a successful marketing strategy for your business to seize growth opportunities and boost revenue.

What Is a Digital Marketing Strategy?

A digital marketing strategy consists of the strategic use of select digital channels to reach your marketing and company objectives. Digital channels include content marketing, SEO activities, social media marketing, email marketing, digital advertising, etc.

A strategy can be a holistic plan that covers how different digital marketing channels will be used throughout the marketing funnel or can consist of a channel-specific action plan that supports the main strategy.

Importance of Digital Marketing Strategy In Business Outcome

A well-defined digital marketing strategy helps prospects navigate the buyer’s journey. It enables organizations to connect with and influence users at every possible touchpoint. Here are three reasons why a digital marketing strategy drives business results:

1. Helps You Deliver a Personalized Experience
 

Salesforce found that 53% of customers always expect personalized offers, and 62% expect brands to anticipate their needs. This also made AI essential for companies across industries looking for better customer experience (CX). Digital marketing channels allow you to segment your target audience based on demographic, psychographic, and geographic characteristics. You can also define segments based on their interests, purchase patterns, and product usage. The refined segmentation also allows you to deliver a personalized experience via email marketing. Although digital advertising may not be as personalized as email marketing, it allows you to deliver your message to the right audience through targeting methods such as remarketing and lookalike audience.

2. Allows You to Track the ROI Accurately
 

Gone are the days where you’d spend a hefty budget on print, radio, and billboard advertising without the certainty that they are bringing in any money. Digital marketing platforms have evolved to the point where they are sophisticated enough to help you identify how much revenue each platform is contributing. The digital advertising medium is especially powerful here as it offers plenty of metrics to track your ad spend. Besides this, various attribution models allow you to measure the impact of each customer touchpoint.

3. Provides You the Flexibility to Tweak Your Activities
 

Digital marketing is flexible. You can scale up or down the marketing activities based on their output. By optimizing the better performing avenues, you can manage your expenditure efficiently. And all these tweaks and turns can be performed on the go.

15 Digital Marketing Strategies With Examples

Now that we know how digital marketing helps marketers achieve business objectives, let’s look at fifteen digital marketing strategies for 2020. International social listening and analytics firm, Talkwalker, analyzed digital marketing campaigns in 2019 and listed some of the best and worst digital marketing campaigns in their peaks and pitfalls report. We looked at some of the best campaigns to bring you digital marketing strategy examples from BMW and Pepsi.

SEO and Content Marketing Strategies
 

Content marketing and SEO go hand-in-hand up to a certain extent. Let’s look at three strategies that can benefit you in both these aspects:

1. Aim for Position Zero
 

Position zero is a featured snippet on the first page of Google’s search engine result page (SERP). It appears at the top of the page before other organic listings like this:

The Position Zero Search Result Appears Above Organic Listings in Google

If your content ranks for position zero, your click-through rate (CTR) will immediately go through the roof. There is plenty of competition considering the apparent benefits, but here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Create content for WH-type queries (what, when, why, who, where, and how) and write your headlines accordingly
2. Create instructional or how-to content
3. Structure the content in a list format
4. Answer frequently asked questions in your niche
5. Since the rise of voice search, people look for information on the go. Create conversational content around such micro-moments.
    

2. Create Content for All Stages of the Funnel
 

If your content is ranking well in SERPs but faces a high bounce rate or low average session duration, this could very well be a case of expectation mismatch. The searcher lands on your website with an intention, and your content doesn’t meet their expectations. Marketers spend plenty of time creating top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) content but don’t address the middle- and bottom-of-the-funnel content.

Diversify your content mix in terms of formats and topics. Delve into infographics, videos, podcasts, along with text to improve the versatility of your content marketing initiatives. Similarly, address queries that are not only restricted to the TOFU. Create more in-depth content that will help you convert visitors into prospects and prospects into customers.

3. More Co-branded Content This Year
 

Co-branded content is simply a brand collaboration to publish a piece of content. It allows the participating brands to showcase their expertise and to create brand awareness. You can create comprehensive research reports or topic primers, host webinars, create a video or podcast series, and so on.

In the previous point, we talked about targeting the last two stages of the funnel. Co-branded content can help you do just that. And by utilizing content repurposing, you can amplify your content creation process for different digital marketing channels and boost your distribution efforts.

Example: BMW’s #RoadtoCoachella (engagement: 30.9K) campaign featured a fleet of BMW i8 and BMW i3 models inspired by Khalid’s upcoming album Free Spirit on a road trip to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Paris Hilton, Dorothy Wang, and other influencers documented the ride that included pit-stops with fan giveaways, concerts, food trucks, and exclusive experiences.

BMW USA

✔@BMWUSA

Reimagine the BMW #i8 Coupe from the eye of an artist. See it unveiled now and follow our journey on the #RoadToCoachella. #BMWi

182

6:00 PM - Apr 11, 2018

Twitter Ads info and privacy

39 people are talking about this

Learnings:

1. Brand collaborations coupled with experiential marketing could make a lasting impression and establish you as an innovator.
2. Understand your audience to best engage with them. What could be better than engaging Millennials and Gen Z at cultural events that matter to them coupled with the power of influencers, giveaways, food trucks, and a magical experience?

Learn More: Top 20 Content Marketing Strategies for Your 2020 Plan 

Social Media Strategies
 

It’s been more than two decades since social media was introduced, and it has changed the way we connect with people. While newer features such as stories, social commerce, etc. have kept rejuvenating the social media experience, here are three social media strategies you should consider this year:

4. Build Communities
 

Organic reach on major social media platforms has been dwindling over the years. While major corporations with deep pockets can manage to allocate a good chunk of budget for social media advertising, the pay-to-play visibility model doesn’t work for smaller organizations.

A solution to this is to build communities on social media using native group features. The close-knit nature of communities/groups provides a sense of exclusivity to its members and allows brands to engage on a one-on-one level. Although Twitter may not have a group feature, brands can be prompt while responding to audience queries and complaints and regularly host Twitter chats to interact with their followers. Brands can also create Slack channels to bring together like-minded community members to continue the dialogue.

Bonus Tip: To boost engagement and interaction on social media, organizations should also consider launching an employee advocacy program.

5. Micro-influencer Marketing
 

The macro-influencer marketing wave is ebbing down as consumers now prefer trust and expertise over clout. Brands also have realized that it’s a sensible choice to invest in running micro-influencer campaigns. For example, a smartphone company might engage with a technology YouTuber than working with a celebrity.

Micro-influencers are well-known experts in their niche and are perceived to be trustworthy. Also, since your offerings and the influencer are from the same niche, there’s no mismatch between the audience and messaging. Micro-influencers also prove to be relatively less expensive as compared to mainstream celebrities.

And with brands now encouraging user-generated content, their reach will keep amplifying in due time.

Example: During Superbowl 2019, Pepsi launched its ‘Is Pepsi OK?’ campaign about the age-old competition they’ve had with Coke. Following the commercial featuring Steve Carrell, Cardi B., and Lil Jon that proclaimed Pepsi is more than OK, the brand also had paid social media posts by celebrity influencers including Jay Pharoah. The hashtag #PepsiMoreThanOK (engagement: 465.1K) took off at once. Users were also encouraged to share the hashtag #PepsiSweepstakesOK (engagement: 15.7K) each time they heard “OK” during the game and commercials to win prizes.

The ‘Is Pepsi OK?’ Campaign Featuring Steve Carrell, Cardi B., and Lil Jon

Learnings:

1. Combining humor with influencer marketing can work well.
2. Find a way to cleverly leverage a competitive historic battle or controversy to your advantage.
3. Back the campaign by organic and sponsored posts from the right micro and macro-influencers.
    

6. Explore Other Social Media Platforms
 

Major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn have become saturated. The persistent brand noise on these platforms can desensitize users to brand messaging in years to come.

Organizations need to diversify their social media mix by evaluating other platforms and how they can benefit from them. For example, although TikTok may not be an ideal platform for your brand, it can engage with influencers to run a TikTok-specific campaign.

Identify other relevant platforms in your niche that you can benefit from. For example, brands can create their own server/instance on Mastodon, an open-source social network, and invite users to join it to create a niche social media platform.

Learn More: 20 Winning Social Media Campaign Ideas for 2020 

Digital Advertising Strategies
 

Digital advertising is perhaps the most dynamic aspect of the digital marketing ecosystem. New advertising channels, targeting methods, and ad formats keep emerging on a frequent basis. Try these three strategies to boost your digital advertising initiatives this year:

7. Prefer Contextual Targeting to Place Ads
 

In contextual targeting, the ads appear according to the content on the webpage. This targeting method ensures that you’re reaching out to an audience that might already be interested in your product. The traditional contextual targeting is primarily keyword-driven. Due to the advancement in machine learning-based targeting, semantic targeting evaluates the meaning and sentiment of the webpage rather than just keywords while placing ads hence increasing the relevancy of the ads.

8. Bank on Video Advertising
 

Facebook and Google are two behemoths in the digital marketing space. When talking specifically about video marketing, Facebook has itself and Instagram, and Google has YouTube. According to the Salesforce Digital Advertising 2020 report, brands dedicated 44% of the ad budget to Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Considering users' video consumption habits, video is not going to fade into obscurity any time soon, and therefore marketers should prioritize video advertising.

9. Experiment With Programmatic Audio
 

The rise of podcasts and audio streaming apps has given marketers one more avenue to connect with their audience. Programmatic audio enables you to place ads automatically in the audio content such as podcasts or other digital audio streaming programs.

Ad formats such as companion, ad pods, pre- and mid-roll ads offer distinct benefits depending on your requirements. Companies such as Google, Rubicon Project, SoundCloud, and BBC currently offer programmatic audio advertising features.

Learn More: What is Digital Advertising? The Future of Digital Advertising 

Email Marketing Strategies
 

Email is still one of the most effective channels to reach out to your target audience. The immense opportunities of segmentation, personalization, and automation allow you to enhance the customer experience (CX). You can implement these strategies for your email marketing success:

10. Design Mobile-friendly Emails
 

In 2020, there are approximately 4 billion email users and 3.2 billion smartphone users across the world. If your emails can’t be viewed on a smartphone device, it may impact the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.

A mobile-friendly email isn’t exclusively restricted to a responsive design. Also, consider arranging words in your subject lines in a way that would drive clicks. That means putting the high-impact words at the beginning of the subject line. Here are some other guidelines to help you mobile-optimized emails:

1. Adopt the minimalistic approach. Content hierarchy is essential. The main information should not get buried under the design
2. Don’t make the recipient sweat to find the call-to-action (CTA) button
3. Don’t stuff your email with too much content. You can ideate a drip-email campaign to send out information sequentially

11. Think About the BIMI Email Standard
 

Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is an email standard to authenticate your brand’s identity. It’s a text file that is stored on your sending server. The purpose of this standard is to help users distinguish legitimate brand emails from fraudulent ones. It does so by displaying the brand logo next to your email in the inbox. Many brands have started implementing the BIMI standard.

You need to obtain a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) from a Mark Verifying Authority (MVA) such as DigiCert to implement this standard.

But as you’re planning to implement BIMI, ensure that you have a good sender reputation and already possess other email authentication standards like SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and ARC.

12. Enable the User to Interact With Your Emails
 

Email marketing shouldn’t be a passive channel. When you’re on social media, the platform is constantly demanding an action from you to keep you on the platform. Brands need to think along similar lines to boost email engagement.

Brands can make their emails interactive by introducing surveys or polls or shorten the length of emails by using carousels. And we don’t think that the trend of using animated GIFs isn’t going to go archaic any time soon.

Learn More: What Is Email Marketing? Definition, Tips, Best Practices, Benefits, and Examples 

Using Next-Gen Technology
 

So far, we’ve seen channel-specific strategies. Since marketing is very agile when it comes to adopting new technologies, let’s look at three emerging technologies that marketers need to consider implementing in their digital marketing strategy.

13. Internet of Things (IoT)
 

IoT has shown tremendous offerings for retail marketing by improving the personalization aspect of shopping. Marketers can benefit from IoT by using geofencing marketing. Geofencing is a service that implements a virtual boundary around a location and executes specific rules when an IoT device enters (for instance, sending a push notification on a mobile device).

Besides other IoT devices, a simple smartphone can be effective to use geofencing targeting. For example, marketers can send automated push notifications or messages when the user enters the geofence. This technique can be used to remind the user to purchase a product, provide coupons, and so on.

14. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR)
 

The AR/VR technology provides an immersive experience to users, and it has already been adopted by brands to improve the CX. Social media platforms have used AR to create filters and lenses to keep users glued to the platform.

AR/VR is capable of replicating real-life experiences and can be used to simulate various scenarios. For example, brands are already using this technology to enable users to try their products before making a purchase virtually and providing a virtual tour of their products. While implementing it in your strategy, you can also evaluate the options of using it as a gamification tool.

15. Conversational AI
 

Digital assistants and chatbots are not new anymore, but many brands are still missing out on the opportunity of harnessing them to improve their marketing results. Chatbots and digital assistants are capable of delivering content, helping users with their purchases, providing customer support, and booking tickets or making reservations, and so on.

And as voice search is becoming ubiquitous, it is imperative for marketers to introduce conversational AI tactics in their marketing strategy.

Learn More:  Multichannel vs. Omnichannel Marketing: Key Differences and Similarities

Closing Thoughts: Think Omnichannel

You need to think in terms of omnichannel, not simply multichannel. Think of how you can use these strategies so that they converge well and provide a cohesive CX to customers at every touchpoint of the journey. For example, if a user downloads a gated content, it should initiate the appropriate drip sequence followed by a remarketing campaign.

To be effective, digital marketing strategies need to be incredibly flexible. Digital marketing strategies equip brands to reach a wide audience while being budget-friendly.

We compiled some actionable tips for you from the digital marketing campaigns that nailed it and those that didn’t in 2019.

1. Understand your audience and identify their favorite industry/brand for cross-category promotions.
2. Building campaigns around awareness days and holidays can be a great way to piggyback onto existing conversations. Ensure sensitivity and relevance when doing so.
3. Influencer marketing and user-generated content can be a fun and fresh ways to attract new audiences.
4. Listen to your customers and target audience to know what they want and identify gaps in your customer experience, personalization and marketing approach.
5. Giveaways might seem like a tired concept, but social media sweepstakes are still very much appreciated and a great way to promote your hashtag and increase awareness.
6. Constantly track your brand’s communications and capture what’s working and do more of that.
    

We asked Todd Grossman, Talkwalker CEO, Americas, for his insights into which skills and tools marketers need to equip themselves for the future, and we leave you with his closing thoughts: “Storytelling and creativity remain essential to the marketing skillset. Given that video will be 80% of all online content by 2020, marketers need to brush up on their video storytelling capabilities. In order to future-proof, marketers should also have a strong grasp of data. The ability to tell relevant stories using data and identify insights from data will become even more important in the future. Marketers should also be equipped to identify real influencers based on authenticity and engagement."

Marketing Strategy vs. Tactics

As we mentioned above, a strategy is an achievable and focused set of steps used to help you reach a specific goal.

Marketing or not, there are three parts of any strategy: 1) a diagnosis of your challenge, 2) a guiding policy for dealing with the challenge, and 3) a set of targeted actions that are necessary to accomplish the policy.

Depending on the scale of your business, your marketing strategy may include several moving parts, each with different goals. With that said, working on your strategy can become daunting at time. So, if you're ever feeling overwhelmed about your marketing strategy, refer to these three steps to keep you focused on achieving your objectives.

Marketing tactics, or tactics of any kind, are the specific actions you choose to take throughout your strategy to help you reach your end goal. In other words, a strategy is your destination — it's the achievable, focused plan for getting you to your target. Tactics are concrete and definable steps within

To provide a better understanding of what they may entail, check out the following list of basic marketing strategies commonly utilized by teams across a range of industries.

Basic Marketing Strategies

• Publish a blog.
• Advertise on a specific social media platforms (e.g. Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads).
• Offer free educational resources
• Search engine optimize your digital content.
• Create a giveaway and/ or contest.
• Test different campaign types to determine what works best for your audience.
• Organize a webinar.
• Product a podcast.
• Create an email campaign.

Now that you understand what a marketing strategy is, let's look at how one differs from a digital marketing strategy.

What is digital marketing strategy?

A digital marketing strategy is a plan that helps your business achieve specific digital goals through carefully selected online marketing channels such as paid, earned, and owned media.

What is a digital marketing campaign?

As mentioned, a digital strategy is the series of actions you plan and take to achieve your overarching digital marketing goal. In contrast, digital marketing campaigns are the building blocks and actions within your strategy that move you toward a specific, digital end goal.

For instance, if the overarching goal of your digital marketing strategy is to generate more leads through social media, you might run a digital marketing campaign on Twitter. You may share some of your business's best-performing gated content on Twitter to generate more leads through the channel.

Next, let's look at the steps involved in creating a digital marketing strategy for your business.

• How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy
• Build your buyer personas.
• Identify your goals and the digital marketing tools you'll need.
• Evaluate your existing digital channels and assets.
• Audit and plan your owned media campaigns.
• Identify your goals and the digital marketing tools you'll need.

Audit and plan your earned media campaigns.

1. Build your buyer personas.

For any marketing strategy — digital or not — you need to know who you're marketing to. The best digital marketing strategies are built upon detailed buyer personas, and your first step is to create them.

Organize your audience segments and make your marketing stronger with templates to build your buyer personas.

Buyer personas represent your ideal customer(s) and can be created by researching, surveying, and interviewing your business's target audience.

It's important to note that this information should be based upon real data whenever possible, as making assumptions about your audience can cause your marketing strategy to move in the wrong direction.

To get a rounded picture of your persona, your research pool should include a mixture of customers, prospects, and people outside your contacts database who align with your target audience.

But what kind of information should you gather for your own buyer persona(s) to inform your digital marketing strategy?

That depends on your businesses — it's likely to vary depending on whether you're B2B or B2C, or whether you sell a high-cost or low-cost product.

Here are some starting points that you can fine-tine and tailor to your particular business.

Quantitative and Demographic Information

Location: Use web analytics tools to easily identify what location your website traffic is coming from.

Age: Depending on your business, this may or may not be relevant information. But if it us, it's best to gather this data by identifying trends in your existing prospect and contact database.

Income: It's best to gather sensitive information like personal income through persona research interviews, as people might be unwilling to share these details via online forms.

Job Title: This is something you can get a rough idea of from your existing customer base and is most relevant for B2B companies.

Qualitative and Psychographic Information

Goals: Depending on what challenge your product or service solves, you may already have a good idea of the goals of your buyer persona. Cement your assumptions by speaking to real customers and internal sales and customer service reps.

Challenges: Speak to customers, sales and customer service reps, and any other customer-facing employees to get an idea of the common challenges your audience members face.

Hobbies/ Interests: Ask customers and those who align with your target audience about their hobbies and interests. If you're a fashion brand, for example, it's helpful to know if large segments of your audience are also interested in fitness and well-being to inform future content and partnerships.

Priorities: Talk to customers and target audience members to find out what's most important to them in relation to your business. For example, if you're a B2B software company, knowing your audience values customer support over a competitive price point is very valuable information.

By combining all of these details, you'll be able to create buyer personas that are accurate and highly-valuable for your business.

2. Identify your goals and the digital marketing tools you'll need.

Your marketing goals should always be tied back to the fundamental goals of your business.

For example, if your business's goal is to increase online revenue by 20%, your marketing team's goal might be to generate 50% more leads via the website than the previous year to contribute to that success.

Use a high-level marketing plan template to outline your annual marketing strategy, identify top priorities, and more.

Whatever your overarching digital marketing goal is, you must be able to measure the success of your strategy along the way with the right digital marketing tools.

For instance, the Reporting Dashboard in HubSpot brings all of your marketing and sales data into one place, so you can quickly determine what works and what doesn't to improve your strategy for the future.

3. Evaluate your existing digital channels and assets.

When reviewing your existing digital marketing channels and assets to determine what to incorporate in your strategy, it's helpful to first consider the big picture — this will prevent you from feeling overwhelmed or confused.

Gather what you have, and categorize each vehicle or asset in a spreadsheet, so you have a clear picture of your existing owned, earned, and paid media.

Owned, Earned, Paid Media Framework

To do this effectively, use the owned, earned, and paid media framework to categorize the digital "vehicles", assets, or channels you're already using and decide what's a good fit for your strategy.

Owned Media

This refers to the digital assets your brand or company owns — whether that's your website, social media profiles, blog content, or imagery. Owned channels are the what your business has complete control over.

This can also include some off-site content you own that isn't hosted on your website (e.g. a blog you publish on Medium).

Earned Media

Earned media refers to the exposure you earn through word-of-mouth marketing. Whether that's content you've distributed on other websites (e.g. guest posts), PR work you've been doing, or the customer experience you've delivered. Earned media is the recognition you receive as a result of these efforts.

You can earn media by getting press mentions and positive reviews as well as by people sharing your content via their networks (e.g. social media channels).

Paid Media

Paid media refers to any vehicle or channel you spend money on to catch the attention of your buyer personas.

This includes things like Google AdWords, paid social media posts, native advertising (e.g. sponsored posts on other websites), or any other medium through which you pay in exchange for increased visibility.

Since you have a better grasp on what this framework entails, let's look at an example.

Say you have an owned piece of content on a landing page on your website that's been created to help you generate leads. You know you want to incorporate different parts of the framework rather than just working with owned, earned, or paid media alone.

To amplify the number of leads the content generates, you make an effort to ensure it's shareable so your audience can distribute it via their social media profiles. In return, this will increase traffic to your landing page. This is the earned media component.

To support your content's success, you might post about the content on your Facebook page and pay to have it seen by more people in your target audience.

This is how the three parts of the framework are able to work together — although, it's not necessary for success. For instance, if your owned and earned media are already both successful, you might not need to invest in paid. So, evaluate the best solution to help you meet your goal, and then incorporate the channels that work best for your business into your digital marketing strategy.

Now you know what's already being used, you can start to think about what to keep and what to cut.

4. Audit and plan your owned media campaigns.

At the heart of digital marketing is owned media — and it almost always takes comes in the form of content. That's because nearly every message your brand broadcasts can be classified as content, whether it's an About Us site page, product descriptions, blog posts, ebooks, infographics, podcasts, or social media posts.

Content helps convert your website visitors into leads and customers while improving your brand's online presence. And when this content is search engine optimized (SEO), it can boost your search and organic traffic.

Whatever your digital marketing strategy goal is, you'll want to incorporate owned content. To start, decide what content will help you reach your goals.

If your goal is to generate 50% more leads via the website than last year, your About Us page is most likely not going to be included in your strategy, unless that page has somehow been a lead-generation machine in the past.

Here's a brief process you can follow to work out what owned content you need to meet your digital marketing strategy goals.

Audit your existing content.

Make a list of your existing owned content, and rank each item according to what has previously performed best in relation to your current goals.

For example, if your goal is lead generation, rank your content according to which pieces generated the most leads over the last year (such as a blog post, ebook, or site page).

The idea here is to figure out what's currently working, and what's not, so that you can set yourself up for success when planning future content.

Identify gaps in your existing content.

Based on your buyer personas, identify any gaps in the content you have. For example, if you're a math tutoring company and know through research that a major challenge for your personas is finding effective ways to study — you don't currently have content that speaks to that concern — create some.

By looking at your content audit, you might discover that ebooks hosted on a certain type of landing page convert really well (better than webinars, for example). In the case of this math tutoring company, you might make the decision to add an ebook about "how to make studying more effective" to your content creation plans.

Create a content creation plan.

Based on your findings and the gaps you've identified, make a content creation plan outlining the content that's necessary to help you hit your goals.

This should include:

• Title
• Format
• Goal
• Promotional channels

Why you're creating the content

Priority level of the content

This can be a simple spreadsheet, and should also include budget information if you're planning to outsource the content creation, or a time estimate if you're producing it yourself.

5. Audit and plan your earned media campaigns.

Evaluating your previous earned media against your current goals can help you get an idea of where to focus your time. Look at where your traffic and leads are coming from (if that's your goal) and rank each earned media source from most effective to least effective.

You can obtain this information using tools like the Sources reports in HubSpot's Traffic Analytics tool.

Sources in traffic analytics dashboard in HubSpot

You may find a particular article you contributed to the industry press drove a lot of qualified traffic to your website, which boosted conversions. Or, you may discover LinkedIn is where you see most people sharing content, which increased traffic.

The idea is to build a picture of what types of earned media will help you reach your goals (and what won't) based on historical data. However, if there's something new you want to experiment with, don't rule it out just because it's never been done before.

6. Audit and plan your paid media campaigns.

This process involves much of the same process: You need to evaluate your existing paid media across each platform (e.g. Google AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to figure out what's most likely to help you meet your current goals.

If you've spent a lot of money on AdWords and haven't seen the results you'd hoped for, maybe it's time to refine your approach, or scrap it altogether and focus on another platform that seems to be yielding better results.

Use this free guide for more on how to leverage AdWords for your digital marketing strategy.

By the end of the process, you should have a clear idea of which paid media platforms you want to continue using, and which (if any) you'd like to remove from your strategy.

7. Bring your digital marketing campaign together.

You've done the planning and the research, and you now have a solid vision of the elements that will make up your digital marketing strategy.

To review, here's what you should have solidified so far:

• Clear profile(s) of your buyer persona(s)
• One or more digital marketing-specific goals
• An inventory of your existing owned, earned, and paid media
• An audit of your existing owned, earned, and paid media
• An owned content creation plan or wish list

Now, it's time to bring all of it together to form a cohesive strategy document. Let's revisit what digital strategy means: the series of actions that are going to help you achieve your goal(s) through online (digital) marketing.

Meaning, your strategy document should map out the series of actions you're going to take to achieve your goals, based on your research up to this point.

(Pro tip: A spreadsheet is an efficient format for this — and for the sake of consistency, you might find it easiest to map out according to the owned, earned, and paid media framework we've used so far.)

You'll also need to plan your strategy for the long term — typically, around 6-12 months is a good starting point, depending on your business. This will allow you to overlay when you and your team will be executing each action. For example:

In January, you'll start a blog which will be continually updated once a week, for the entire year.

In March, you'll launch a new ebook, accompanied by paid promotion.

In July, you'll prepare for your biggest business month — what do you hope to have observed at this point that will influence the content you produce to support it?

In September, you'll focus on earned media in the form of PR to drive additional traffic during the run-up.

By taking this approach, you'll create a structured timeline for your activity, which will help communicate plans among colleagues.

Lastly, here a some well-known examples of digital marketing campaigns, and the strategies they employ, to get you inspired .

Digital Marketing Campaign Examples

• GoPro
• Delta Airlines
• Geico
• Wayfair
• Mastercard
• ETF Securities
• Red Bull

1. GoPro: Earned Media User-Made Video

GoPro is famous for its unique point-of-view style footage, all taken from the company's classic fisheye lens.

What you might not know is that so much of the video content you see on GoPro's YouTube channel wasn't made by GoPro — rather, it's created their loyal users.

By populating their YouTube channel with user-made video content, GoPro has encouraged their fanbase to capture their footage and adventures, and then post it online (crediting the GoPro product for their footage and experience).

This ongoing digital marketing campaign has championed the use of video to spread the word about GoPro's product line as well as created a community of loyal customers and fans.

2. Delta Air Lines: Owned Media Twitter Stories

Delta Air Lines is a prolific user of social media, specifically on Twitter. The brand uses the platform to engage potential passengers in a variety of ways that are both timely and emotionally stimulating.

For example, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the company shared personal stories from Delta employees with audience members via the company's Twitter feed.

This type of digital campaign promotes loyalty, positive brand awareness, and gives prospective and current customers an idea of what Delta cares about and stands for.

3. Geico: Paid Media YouTube Preroll Ads

For many, when you hear the word "Geico," you automatically remember you can "save 15% or more on car insurance."

But even a company with such a memorable and successful tagline can risk annoying audience members (repetitive things can become old, quickly) when a marketing campaign becomes too longwinded.

That's why Geico launched a series of preroll ads on YouTube that admit to the ad's brevity. Preroll ads are a form of paid content on YouTube in which you pay YouTube to roll 15-to-20-second ads ahead of videos that have the same audience as the advertiser.

While some companies try to squeeze as much messaging as they can into that short slot, Geico has taken the opportunity to make fun of their brand for taking up your time in the first place.

This makes Geico's YouTube preroll commercials entertaining and unique, and shows the level of self-awareness the brand has.

4. Wayfair: Owned Media Instagram Tags

Wayfair, a home furnishings and decor merchant, has an innovative Instagram strategy — their Instagram photos aren't just photos. That's because Instagram provides companies with the ability to create purchase pages from within the platform.

With Instagram Shopping, Wayfair has posted home interior shots on Instagram and tagged the products in the photos with information and pricing details.

This is a digital marketing campaign that shows people exactly how much each item in the photos cost. It also directs audience members to purchase the items seen in the photos without ever leaving the app. In return, Wayfair can boost conversions and revenue from within Instagram.

5. Mastercard: Owned Media Travel Blog

Mastercard bases its brand on the stories and adventures that cardholders experience. But what good is a travel-based brand without a travel-based digital marketing campaign to go with it?

Priceless Cities, Mastercard's travel blog, is a resource that customers pair with the credit cards that help them pay for their trips.

This campaign allows the company to better align with the things their customers invest in as well as the places their customers travel to.

6. ETF Securities: Paid Media LinkedIn Sponsored Content

ETF Securities is a small, asset management service that caters to wealth managers and investors in Europe.

The company learned their customers spend the most time on LinkedIn, interacting with sponsored, paid content on the platform.

By investing their time here, ETF Securities has driven more interest in investments and has been able to help their customers make smarter financial decisions. With this digital campaign, ETF Securities saw 95% year-over-year growth in LinkedIn followers.

7. Red Bull: Owned Media Lifestyle News

Red Bull has become well-known for the sponsorship of extreme sports, not just the energy drink they sell.

Instead of creating digital content related to the energy drink, Red Bull captures its audience with articles and videos about the latest happenings in the extreme sports community.

In one of their digital marketing campaigns, Red Bull proved what you sell isn't always the focus ideal for a content strategy. Rather, it can be significantly more valuable to tailor a campaign to the lifestyle your customers live, or want to be associated with.

Grow Better With Marketing Strategies That Improve Your Digital Presence

Your strategy document will be very individual to your business, which is why it's almost impossible for us to create a one-size-fits-all digital marketing strategy template.

Remember, the purpose of your strategy document is to map out the actions you're going to take to achieve your goal over a period of time — as long as it communicates that, then you've nailed the basics of creating a digital strategy.

If you're eager to build a truly effective strategy to help grow your business, check out our free collection of content marketing templates below.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy from Start to Finish

September 17, 2018 By Ana Gotter Marketing

Gone are the days where billboards and newspaper ads were the most effective means of promoting your brand and your products. Digital marketing is a necessity for all businesses and selecting the right strategies will be key to your success.

There are a lot of options when it comes to digital marketing, however, and it can be stressful if not downright panic-inducing to try to figure out where to start.

In this post, we’re going to go over how to create a digital marketing strategy from scratch that will be comprehensive and help you accomplish specific goals of your choice.

1. Determine What You Want to Accomplish

What do you want your digital marketing campaigns to accomplish? Do you want to build name brand recognition? Generate leads? Get more sales, or email subscribers?

Great! Whatever it is that you want, though, you need to name it.

digital marketing strategy 

This is yet another way that marketing has an online dating crossover comparison. If you go on a bunch of blind dates with no idea what you’re looking for, you might settle down with the first person who you can tolerate. If you have an actual list of traits you want in a person, you’re much more likely to find your match.

Your goals matter, and you’ll need to take specific steps to accomplish each one. We’ll look at this more in-depth a little further down.

 2. Understand the Digital Sales Funnel

The digital sales funnel is an important marketing concept that you need to grasp before actually developing your strategy. It is made up of several different steps that buyers move through in order to get to the point of purchasing and/or becoming long term customers.

Depending on who you ask, the stages may vary in number and in their exact name, but they generally include the following:

Discovery. People hear of your brand or product for the very first time ever.

Research/consideration. Some name brand recognition has been established, and the user is willing to look into your products or services to learn more. They may also research your competitors at this stage.

Purchase. Users are willing to become customers and purchase from you at this point.

Loyalty. Repeat clients may become loyal to your brand or product and eventually may become advocates for your brand.

how to create a digital marketing strategy

Users who are at the discovery stage aren’t going to respond in the same way to an ad as someone who is at the loyalty stage. They’ll be interacting with your brand in different ways and on different platforms, and your digital marketing strategy will need to be tailored to keep that in mind.

3. Create Buyer Personas

The next step you’ll need to take in order to create your strategy is to get a solid understanding of who your audience is and what motivates them. This will be essential, because it will help you to assess which marketing platforms you can find them on, how they’re interacting with it and what they want to see from you.

Buyer personas should be specific. You don’t want to just say “young moms” as a persona and be done with it. You want to have “Supermom Mary, 25-29 with at least one kid under the age of five who is on a budget in a middle class home. She’s trying to be a good mom and wife but finds personal satisfaction in working. She tries to live an organic lifestyle. but does a McDonalds run on busy weeknights.” This is going to tell you a lot more about your audience, their pain points and what you can do for them.

It’s important to note that your buyer personas should absolutely be based on research. Skip the thinly-veiled stereotypes and instead use the analytics that you already have available, including Google Analytics and Facebook’s Audience Insights.

4. Determine Where to Find Users At All Funnel Stages

You’ve got a good understanding of who your audience is, so now you’ll want to understand how and where to connect with them. Again, refer to your analytics on this and cross-reference them with your buyer personas.

Let’s say you run a home renovation contacting company. You do everything from repairing water damaged floors to giving people the kitchen of their dreams. There’s a good chance that you’re going to have very diverse audiences at all stages of the funnel looking to find you.

Here are a few examples of how they might:

Someone who is taking a lot of time to plan an expensive bathroom remodel might discover you by googling phrases like “bathroom design ideas” or searching on Pinterest. If they find your blog post featuring images of remodels you’ve done, that could be how they discover you and look to hire you.

A person whose home was flooded after a leaky pipe is going to be looking for someone right now to come fix that flooring before the mold sets in. Your best bet will be to connect with them through Google Ads, because they’ll be searching for those services and you want to be competitive.

Some customers are feeling just okay about that run down bathtub but don’t have the money to fix it. You run a Facebook Ad campaign showing how affordable and high quality refinishing tiles or glazing tubs could be and create a demand for someone who wasn’t otherwise looking.

A past customer is thrilled with the work you did installing recessed lighting into their home. You follow up through email to let them know that you’re offering a special on home security upgrades, and they get in touch.

Consider all paid and organic marketing channels and think about which of your audience members are using them and what stage of the funnel they’re in. This will help you determine the marketing channels you should be on and who you’ll want to be targeting in each part of your digital marketing strategy.

5. Implement Specific Guidelines to Reach Your Goals

You’ve got your marketing mix selected and you know how you expect your audience to react. Once you do this, it’s time to start tying everything together and create specific tactics that will help you reach those end goals.

A few of these tactics might include:

Placing lead generation widgets or lead magnets on the sides of all blog posts, along with featuring a CTA at the end of posts to get in touch.

Sharing influencer’s content on social media in order to build a relationship and increase visibility and brand recognition.

Encouraging testimonials with email plugins that you can then place on your site, or request that users submit reviews on Google business to improve your local SEO scores.

Again, specificity is key here. Map out very specific steps that you’re going to take in order to accomplish your goals. Go beyond “write blog posts to attract leads,” and include those CTAs and links back to a lead magnet or a webinar until you start to get results.

6. Incorporate Automation & Personalization

As you get your campaigns up and running, you’ll want to find ways to continue to make your campaigns as impactful and effective as possible.

There are two good ways to do this: more personalization and more automation. And in many cases, these two can overlap.

Sometimes, the most seemingly-personalized and relevant marketing messages that your audience will get will be delivered as a result of their specific actions. This includes ads that utilize retargeting to show users products they’ve viewed on your site, or triggered email autoresponders that show customers similar products to what they’ve seen in the past.

Utilize audience segmentation, personalization, and automation wherever possible to write focused copy for specific groups of people and their exact relationship with your business. They’ll see the message at the ideal time and it will be exceedingly relevant to their needs at that moment. This will take your strategy one step further.

7. Look for Holes in Your Digital Marketing Strategy

I lovingly refer to this final step as “troubleshooting” your funnel. Your digital marketing strategy is up and running. Both in the early days and on a long-term basis, you’ll want to carefully evaluate how your strategy is working. Since there’s often multiple elements, platforms, and campaigns involved, this can be tricky.

Google Analytics is a big help here, along with the native analytics of the networks and channels you’re utilizing. You want to evaluate how customers and leads are interacting with your campaigns, and how that’s translating into helping you reach your goals. It doesn’t matter much if your blog post was shared 5,000 times in two days if you didn’t get a single lead or sale, and that was the whole point.

Set up goals in Google Analytics and check out behavior maps to look out for drop off points in your on-site funnel. You can do the same with pretty much any platform. Are you getting a lot of clicks on a PPC ad but then no conversions, or opens on an email with no clicks? Look at why. Find the place where users are dropping off and look for any tell-tale clues that could be the reason. Run a few tests and see what you can learn.

Conclusion

While it may seem tempting to just dive in and get started on as many platforms as once, telling yourself you’ll figure out the details later, you’re really just shooting yourself in the foot. Running any type of marketing campaign (even just search engine optimization) without specific goals in mind isn’t like walking around in Paris without a GPS—it’s more like getting into a sailboat with no map, where you’re likely to get stuck floating somewhere at sea.

Without a digital marketing strategy, you’re not going to see results because you don’t have the right content in place to actually get the results. And trust me, with all that time and money you’ve invested, that’s the last thing that you want.

Still want more help with implementing your digital marketing strategy? Get in touch with us and see how we can help you.

What do you think? How do you set up your digital marketing strategy? Do you follow the same process laid out here, or do you have a different checklist? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below! 

top 20 Clever Content Marketing Examples with Amazing Results

Ever feel like you’re running out of ideas for your content marketing campaigns?

You’re not alone.

Content marketing is all about using content to attract and retain visitors and eventually turn them into customers. And most people who use it know it’s effective.

There’s just one problem: content marketing can be seriously hard work.

According to Zazzle Media, 60% of companies struggle to produce content consistently, and 65% find it a challenge to produce engaging content. And not engaging your visitors means you’re losing money.

We get it.

If you’re running content marketing campaigns, day in, day out, it can be hard to consistently come up with new ideas and keep the momentum going.

That’s why we’ve written this article. From blogging and social media to video and visual marketing, we’ve got a great collection of B2C and B2B content marketing examples to inspire you.

These marketing examples from the business world will help you find new ways to get creative and create your own inspirational content marketing to win leads and sales.

Here’s a table of contents to help you jump to the content marketing examples you most want to see.

• Blogging Examples
• Social Media Marketing Examples
• Tried-and-True Content Marketing Examples
• Visual Content Marketing Examples
• Video Marketing Examples
• Ebooks and Resources Examples
• Other Content Marketing Examples

Let’s get started …

Recommended Resource: Need to jumpstart your content marketing results? Get more traffic and conversions with our Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing in 2020.

Blogging Examples

When most people think of types of content marketing, they think of blogging as a starting point.

Blogging helps you get visitors’ attention with helpful information and provides content to flesh out your social media presence and fuel your SEO efforts, too. Here are a few examples of companies getting it right.

1. Buffer

Buffer’s one of our favorite content marketing examples, due to their three-pronged content marketing strategy.

The company used guest blogging to fuel their initial growth, writing a couple of times a day and publishing content on high visibility sites. That growth hacking strategy helped Buffer attract their first 100,000 users.

On Buffer’s own blog, the company concentrated initially on writing for the people who influenced their customers, producing high quality, and highly shareable, content.

Buffer now has four blogs, including the Transparency blog and Open blog, where they have shared business ups and downs over the years. And they share their best content via a regular email marketing strategy.

The results speak for themselves: Buffer is a highly recognized and trusted brand, with almost 400,000 users, and around a million followers across multiple social media sites.

2. Hubspot

When you think of examples of content marketing done right, Hubspot’s always on the list. In addition to creating a free tool as a growth hacking strategy, Hubspot has used content marketing by:

• Writing in-depth blog posts about the issues their visitors care about
• Adding content upgrades such as ebooks to their blog posts
• Creating an educational and content sharing hub, Inbound.org(which gets 321,000 visitors each month) and provides a great opportunity to promote its certification and partnership programs
• Creating videos for Facebook and using LinkedIn to send traffic to those videos

It must be working because Hubspot is a multi-million dollar company.

3. Rip Curl

Rip Curl bills itself as the “ultimate surfing company”. One of the ways it shows that dedication is via an online publication known as The Search.

The Search chronicles surfers’ search for the best waves and the ultimate surfing lifestyle and features great photography, and stories told by surfers for surfers.

With more than 100,000 YouTube subscribers and a whopping 2 million-plus Facebook followers, this is a great example of matching content to your target audience to grow your business and make it profitable.

Related Content: 12 Steps to Get Your First 100 YouTube Subscribers

Social Media Marketing Examples

As we mentioned in our guide to social media and SEO, social shares can help indirectly with search ranking, which in turn helps with lead generation. So it’s no surprise that many companies have focused social media content to wow their audiences.

4. GE

When you’re looking for inspiring B2B content marketing examples, GE is a great place to start. We’re not talking about washer-dryers and vacuum cleaners, but about the company’s other business: wind turbines, jet engines, locomotives and so on.

GE’s long been known for taking what some might see as a dull business, and bringing it to life, and this Instagram content marketing campaign is a perfect example.

GE combined the campaign with influencer marketing, getting six Instagram influencers and several superfans to do the #GEInstaWalk. That meant touring their manufacturing facilities and taking, uploading and hashtagging pictures. The results were spectacular:

• 8 million views of GE’s Instagram account
• 3 million reaches per tour
• 3,000 new followers

And it was done without any paid advertising.

Related Content: How to Make Money on Instagram (Without 10K Followers)

5. Glossier

We featured Glossier in our roundup of abandoned cart email examples. This time around, the company’s in the spotlight for using user-generated content to boost its brand on Instagram.

This is genius, because it cuts down on the work of content creation, and makes its audience feels good about being featured, which results in even more reach and engagement. Here’s a recent example where Glossier has reposted a complimentary tweet from a fan on its Instagram account:

Glossier also showcases its latest Instagram content on its homepage, as another way to attract its customers. With more than 1 million Instagram followers, the company must be doing something right.

6. Intrepid Travel

Intrepid Travel’s all about small groups, big adventures, and traveling responsibly. It supports that with a content hub called The Journal.

In The Journal, you’ll find stories from real travelers sharing their experiences, which helps the company connect more with their core audience.

But another facet of Intrepid’s content marketing strategy is posting aspirational travel images from travelers on Facebook, interspersing that with its own content.

That’s given the company nearly half a million Facebook followers, and strong communities on other social media sites.

7. Superdrug

Our next content marketing example uses both publishing placements and social media to get the audience’s attention.

Superdrug wanted to raise awareness around body image issues. To do this, the company asked 18 graphic designers around the world to edit a photo of a model in Photoshop to bring it in line with their own country’s beauty norms.

The company published the results on Buzzfeed and Huffington Post, resulting in:

• International news coverage, and placements with major publications like the New York Times, The Telegraph, and Business Insider
• Celebrity endorsements of the campaign, like the one from Sofia Vergara below
• 3 million views of the original study
• Around 1 million social shares

Plus the company got more than 1,000,000 page views to their site within a five-day period.

Tried-and-True Content Marketing Examples

Next, we’ve got a couple of content marketing examples that don’t rely on social media promotion.

8. John Deere

Anyone who’s read up on content marketing has probably heard of The Furrow, which is generally reckoned to be one of the first examples of content marketing.

First published by John Deere in 1895, this publication aimed to help the company’s customers with the issues they faced, and show the company’s expertise at the same time.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

The amazing thing is that more than 120 years later, the publication’s still going, and is now also available online.

9. AARP

Here’s another content marketing example that underlines the importance of knowing your audience and delivering the content they want.

The AARP The Magazine has won awards for the quality of its content, design, and photography, but there’s nothing mysterious about their success. They listen to their readers, who reach them by email, letter, and social media, and use that information to determine the topics that will resonate with them most.

It’s America’s biggest consumer magazine, going to 22 million households. In addition, more than half of its 37 million readers have read three of the last four issues.

Visual Content Marketing Examples

Images are the lifeblood of social media. Stone Temple Consulting shows that tweets with images have a 65% better chance of being retweeted.

And Jeff Bullas found that including images in a blog post results in 94% more views. These next content marketing examples show how companies are using visual content marketing to increase visibility for their brand.

10. Zomato

Zomato is a restaurant finder mobile app available for 24 countries. The company uses humor liberally in its marketing strategy. In particular, it creates and shares images referencing popular culture, as this recent example spoofing an Oscar-nominated film shows.

They are simple, creative, and entertaining, proving that a minimalist approach can do the trick. It must be working, because the company’s got 1.3 million followers on Twitter, and the same on Facebook, and the app’s been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

11. Shutterstock

Shutterstock’s in the business of images, and it’s used its expertise to make a resource that everyone can use: a creative trends report. This capitalizes on the fact that people love reliable data, and this type of resource gets widely shared.

Last year’s infographic attracted thousands of social shares, and attracted more than 6 billion site visits, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

This year, Shutterstock has made the resource interactive, including not just images, but video and music. So far, it’s been shared more than 10,000 times.

12. Rolex

Just because you’re an iconic brand, it doesn’t mean you can’t totally rock content marketing.

Rolex proves this by conveying the quality and timelessness of its brand through excellent photography which radiates quality.

And the fans love it: Rolex has more than 7 million Instagram followers and around 6.6 million on Facebook.

Video Marketing Examples

Video marketing drives brand awareness, leads, and sales, so it’s no surprise that so many of our content marketing examples include videos.

13. Blendtec

Let’s start with Blendtec, whose viral videos prove there’s no such thing as a boring industry – if you can tap into what hooks your audience.

Blenders might not sound that interesting, but they become a heck of a lot more so when you put weird stuff in them.

The Will It Blend video series put the company on the map and resulted in a 700% increase in sales in a three-year period.

Today, Blendtec’s YouTube channel has more than 885,000 subscribers, and the campaign’s still going strong, with videos regularly attracting hundreds of thousands of views.

14. Hootsuite

When you’re launching your content marketing strategy, it never hurts to tap into popular culture – and one of the most popular shows in recent years has been Game of Thrones.

Hootsuite used this as a jumping-off point to tell a relatable story about their brand via a video titled A Game of Social Thrones.

This video has now had more than 1 million views and is their most successful branded content.

15. Zendesk

Here’s one of the coolest content marketing examples from the business world, where Zendesk jumped on something that could have gone against them and showed their brand values and personality at the same time.

Whenever you offer a product or service, there’s someone searching for an alternative. When Zendesk realized people were searching for Zendesk alternatives, they basically hijacked the keyword phrase, creating a mini-site and video optimized around it.

The result? A page one spot for that keyword phrase, and a heck of a lot of goodwill!

16. Old Spice

For a brand that’s been around since 1937, Old Spice is doing great at staying in touch with its market.

It wasn’t always this way.

Nine years ago, the brand was losing ground to its competitors, when someone had a cool idea: jettison the old world image in favor of something – or someone – new, young and hot.

It worked. In a series of videos and ads delivering humor and in some cases never mentioning the brand, Old Spice changed its image to become relevant for a new generation.

The original ad has had more than 55 million views, and Old Spice is still using this approach with a new series of promotions, targeting teenage boys and their mothers.

17. JetBlue

JetBlue’s one of the world’s leading airlines, and it’s never been afraid to get creative with content marketing. In particular, it’s used video to inspire its audience and to show off its brand values and personality.

Recent examples include the Reach Across the Aisle campaign, which encourage people to find out what united them, a series on flying with infants, and the quirky Flight Etiquette video series.

Video views on YouTube range from tens of thousands to millions, while the perception of the brand remains overwhelmingly positive.

Ebooks and Resources Examples

As we saw earlier with Hubspot, ebooks and resources are a great way to raise awareness of your brand. Here are a couple more examples of this type of content marketing.

18. LinkedIn

If you want to know how to use LinkedIn effectively, nobody’s going to be more expert than LinkedIn itself. That’s why the company’s ebook on its own approach to marketing with LinkedIn is such a winner.

The landing page whets customers’ appetites with a series of tips and stats, and most LinkedIn users will want to opt-in immediately.

LinkedIn has continued to use this strategy by producing more marketing guides, so it’s a sure bet it’s working for them.

Not sure if LinkedIn is for your business? Check out how (and why) you should create a LinkedIn business page.

19. Simply Business

One of the best B2B content marketing examples is from Simply Business, a UK insurance firm that’s known for producing a series of useful tips and guides.

It’s yet another example showing that so-called “boring sectors” can still wow their audience. Their customer education guides have attracted thousands of links and shares, as well as raising their profile.

Other Content Marketing Examples

Finally, here are some content marketing examples from the business world that are a little bit different.

20. Coca-Cola

Coke used personalization to get everybody talking about their brand. They kicked off their Share a Coke campaign in Australia by putting the 150 most common names on bottles. Then they encouraged people to share a Coke with people with those names.

That campaign went viral, resulting in sales of 250 million bottles and cans across the summer, or equivalent to just over 10 for every person in Australia. Unsurprisingly the campaign soon rolled out to other locations. You can now customize your own bottle, as we did here.

21. Grant Thornton

Data analytics is another area that could be seen as dry, but when Grant Thornton ran their Access Granted campaign, it was anything but.

The company took people behind the scenes at the Tony Awards, showing exclusive content on YouTube and Twitter. That resulted in 3.7 million Twitter impressions, increased Facebook reach, and beating their goals for YouTube goals by 115%.

22. Charmin

This content marketing example from Charmin is perfect for its customers. The brand’s always had a sense of humor in its TV ads, and that’s carried through to the Sit or Squat app.

This app aims to help people find clean bathrooms when they need them, so it’s also pretty practical. So far, the app’s been downloaded more than 100,000 times, and nobody’s going to forget the brand.

23. Burberry

Burberry’s most outstanding content marketing campaign was Burberry Kisses, blending mobile technology with the human wish to connect with others.

Via an app, users could press their lips to the screen and send a digital kiss to anyone. The campaign also allowed people to use Google Street View and Google Maps to see the journey those digital kisses took.

24. Buzzstream

Buzzstream combined a number of content types (research-heavy guest content, evergreen blog content, and gated content) to attempt to position itself as a thought leader within its industry.

The nine-month content campaign was hugely successful, resulting in a record-breaking number of new signups.

25. Lush

Lush combines a range of content marketing techniques to reach its audience, which is why it’s hard to put it in just one category of content marketing examples.

From its quirky product names to its well known ethical values, the brand already resonates with its core audience.

But it doesn’t stop there. Its videos go behind the scenes of the making of its products, while on social media, Lush encourages users to share and hashtag photos of its products in use – or at least about to be used. Instagram is one of its key platforms, with the main Lush account attracting 4 million followers.

With these content marketing examples, you’re all set to wow your visitors with fresh, new ideas. Next, use these copywriting templates to get started, or see how you can improve your content marketing ROI.

But there’s one final thing to remember. There’s no point building an audience if they don’t convert.

That’s where OptinMonster comes in.

How OptinMonster Can Help Your Content Convert

You can use OptinMonster’s marketing software to:

• Showcase your best content with slide-in campaigns
• Target content to visitors on particular pages with page-level targeting
• Persuade visitors to subscribe just before they leave your site with exit-intent technology

And that’s just the start. Check out OptinMonster’s other features and see how it could help you get more from content marketing.

Recommended Resource: Need to jumpstart your content marketing results? Get more traffic and conversions with our Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing in 2021

15 Best Marketing Campaigns of 2021 , Ranked by Data

We’ve got new data. Here are the best marketing campaigns .

You’re at a bar and your friend says something absolutely outrageous.

“IHOP’s name change campaign was the best marketing campaign of the year, possibly the best this decade.”

“No!” you shout, filled with more testosterone than a viral LinkedIn post. “What about T-Mobile’s Super Bowl ad, KFC’s FCK apology or Nike’s LDNR campaign?!”

This barroom quarrel only takes place inside my head, of course, but I’d imagine lots of people are interested in which campaigns actually performed best over 2018.

Well, to answer these debates (both real and hypothetical), we got Iris, our AI-analyst, to collect and analyze over one billion posts over the year.

Iris analyzed the total volume of conversation a campaign generated across the web – that includes everything from tweets, Reddit posts, and public Facebook updates, to fiery comments made under news articles. It then ranked each campaign on the volume of conversation it generated to discover which one was talked about the most.

Here are the results.

15. Burger King explain net neutrality with the Whopper

Total conversations: 206,075

Many brands steer clear of controversial topics. Even fewer try to educate people on them. Yet, Burger King took the issue of net neutrality head-on by creating an entertaining educational video on the topic. The video generated 1.5 million views on Twitter, 4.6 million on YouTube and 15 million on Facebook.

Burger King

✔

@BurgerKing

How would you explain the repeal of Net Neutrality? We did it with the Whopper. Watch the video below:

Embedded video

41.3K

5:07 PM - Jan 24, 2018

Twitter Ads info and privacy

25.8K people are talking about this

14. Nike LDNR campaign

Total conversations: 235,025

In what’s surely one of the coolest ads of the year, Nike convinced a host of British sporting stars to explain why it’s great to be a Londoner. The ad won a host of awards at Cannes and would probably place higher on this list if it wasn’t for the British focus.

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13. Apple’s WWDC conference

Total conversations: 508,500

Unsurprisingly, the world’s first trillion dollar company does make an appearance on our list. This came during its June WWDC conference where it announced iOS 12, macOS Mojave and group FaceTime.

12. Pepsi’s halftime show at the Super Bowl

Total conversations: 555,675

Pepsi will be relieved to see that their $33 million spend at the 2018 Super Bowl didn’t go to waste. The soft drinks producer received 500k conversations following the event, some good, some bad.

Justin Timberlake

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@jtimberlake

Thank you, THANK YOU #SBLII @nfl @pepsi! Congrats @Eagles🏆! We out!! @thetnkids #PepsiHalftime 🏈

View image on TwitterView image on Twitter

8,696

10:58 PM - Feb 6, 2018

Twitter Ads info and privacy

1,313 people are talking about this

11. Greenpeace’s interaction with David Harbour

Total conversations: 580,150 

Stranger Things star David Harbour encouraged his fans to give him 200k retweets so he could join Greenpeace’s expedition. His tweet smashed the target, drawing 376k RTs and he joined the expedition a few months later.

David Harbour

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@DavidKHarbour

Internet, listen...

I’m a giver.  I give and I give.

But now I need you.

I need 200k retweets to go dance with penguins.

Please internet.

Please retweet THIS TWEET.

Please.

A man needs his ‘guins. https://twitter.com/greenpeace/status/955408319262404608 …

Greenpeace

✔

@Greenpeace

Replying to @DavidKHarbour

Hmm, if you get over 200k we’ll ask the Captain if you can join our expedition to the Antarctic and dance with the penguins. #StrangerThings have happened http://act.gp/HopperToAntarctic …

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233K

9:14 PM - Jan 22, 2018

Twitter Ads info and privacy

340K people are talking about this

10. SpaceX take a Tesla Roadster into space

Total conversations: 602,775

2018 saw ad campaigns taken to new heights, literally. Elon Musk’s two enterprises, SpaceX and Tesla, worked together to send the first Tesla to space. The stunt drew millions of viewers, thousands of news articles and over half a million conversations.

9. Announcing Smash Bros for Nintendo Switch

Total conversations: 621,025

Gamers are a talkative bunch online, sure. But Nintendo gamers talk more than the rest. And of all the things those gamers talk about, the most popular topic is Super Smash Bros. When Nintendo announced that Smash Bros would be available for Nintendo Switch, 600k gamers started chatting publicly about it online.

8. Google can now make phone calls for you

Total conversations: 887,075

Back in May, Google unveiled artificial intelligence software that books appointments over the phone on behalf of users by conducting voice-based conversations on their behalf. The event drew the attention of millions, with nearly 900,000 talking about it online.

7. IHOP changes name to IHOb

Total conversations: 948,750

IHOP’s name change should be recognized as one of the greatest brand awareness campaigns of all time. The firm was introducing something pretty simple (a range of burgers), yet the virality they generated was greater than any other fast food joint. They generated more conversation than McDonald’s, Burger King and even kings of social media Wendy’s with a simple trick that captured the world’s attention.

Oh, and don’t forget the campaign quadrupled its sales. Major kudos IHOP.

IHOP

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@IHOP

For 60 pancakin’ years, we’ve been IHOP. Now, we’re flippin’ our name to IHOb. Find out what it could b on 6.11.18. #IHOb

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29.7K

8:00 PM - Jun 4, 2018

Twitter Ads info and privacy

26.5K people are talking about this

6. Coca-Cola pick BTS as its FIFA World Cup spokesmen

Total conversations: 1,005,475

The folks at Coca-Cola are a clever bunch. They really understand what it takes to go viral. They know how large events draw in attention, and they know which influencers open them up to more markets. So, last summer, they used the largest sporting event of the year to announce their partnership with (you guessed it) K-pop legends, BTS. The announcement generated over one million conversations.

billboard

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@billboard

BTS become Coca-Cola spokesmen ahead of this year's FIFA World Cup http://blbrd.cm/ZZXiYB 

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68.3K

10:30 PM - Apr 30, 2018

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26.9K people are talking about this

5. K-pop sends Gucci fashion show viral

Total conversations: 1,279,825

If you learn just one thing from this blog, I hope it’s to never underestimate the power of K-pop again. These guys are huge. Kai, a member of K-pop group Exo, appeared at a Gucci fashion show. As you can expect, it went viral.

4. Apple announces the iPhone XS

Total conversations: 1,475,600

Apple isn’t the world’s first trillion dollar company for no reason. The team there are experts at creating unprecedented interest in their product. Some claim it’s down to its luxury products, others say it’s due to its compelling keynotes. Whatever it is, it works. Almost 1.5 million talked about their flagship event this year, making it the biggest product launch of the year.

Download our report to see the top three.

See the top three campaigns of the year, plus the 101 other times brands went viral in our free-to-download report.