In our latest examples collection, Get Inspired: 40 Examples That Are Driving Content Marketing Forward, we show how leading B2B and B2C businesses raised the marketing bar with standout content efforts. We hope you’ll love every one of the examples included in the full e-book. Here’s a sneak peek at a few of my favorites – along with some lessons from their success: Lesson 1: Help evangelists tell their stories What’s more powerful than content that tells your brand story? Enabling influential members of your audience to share their experiences with your business. Lesson 2: Place your products in a practical context Creating content that provides exclusive tips and reveals hidden functionalities or offers helpful user hacks, shortcuts, or personalized offerings can deepen engagement and help customers get more out of their investment in your brand. Case in point: Cleveland Clinic’s MyChart Patient Portal A patient journey complicated by the need for ongoing care can present health care industry marketers with a distinct set of informational challenges. Case in point: OppenheimerFunds’ Fact vs. Case in point: Be Vocal’s Beyond Silence documentary This nonprofit organization partnered with award-winning documentarian Shaul Schwarz to launch Beyond Silence, a 29-minute documentary that takes a novel approach to discussing mental health. If you have a hot brand on your hands, why not reward those loyal customers and active subscribers for their passion and patronage by giving them exclusive content they can’t find elsewhere – like a sneak peek behind the scenes, Easter eggs for them to discover, or new platforms on which to connect with others who share their interest? SEMrush is a competitive research toolkit for online marketing with more than 20 research tools for SEO, PPC, and content marketing, and an expanding list of features.
People learn by creating connections between the familiar and the possible. So it should come as no surprise that, as content marketers, we often approach the task of developing new ideas and initiatives by referencing, analyzing, and iterating on the creative experiences we know and love – standing on the shoulders of giants, so to speak.
Of course, discovering the essence of what makes some campaigns rise above so many others is no small feat. Nor is figuring out how to apply those elemental insights in pursuit of our own business goals, audience needs, and competitive opportunities.
To help ease your creative content journey, we’ve just done some of that legwork for you.
In our latest examples collection, Get Inspired: 40 Examples That Are Driving Content Marketing Forward, we show how leading B2B and B2C businesses raised the marketing bar with standout content efforts. An update to one of our most popular e-books, this year’s edition features novel creative formats and platforms, shares insights on the latest technology-driven approaches, and illustrates new ways brands are igniting the flames of long-lasting consumer passion with a spark of ingenuity.
We hope you’ll love every one of the examples included in the full e-book. Here’s a sneak peek at a few of my favorites – along with some lessons from their success:
Lesson 1: Help evangelists tell their stories
What’s more powerful than content that tells your brand story? Enabling influential members of your audience to share their experiences with your business. Give them a way to express their ideas, opinions, or artistic talents – and recognize them for their contributions – and you’ll earn a special place in their hearts.
Case in point: #WeAreCisco
Cisco invited 20 super-ambassador employees from several office locations to an online brainstorming session about how to connect with university students, new graduates, and other members of Generation Z. That group (dubbed the Kitten Rainbow Unicorns to reflect everything that’s awesome about the web) developed a successful ongoing program in which the company’s young go-getters share daily Snapchat Stories about what it’s like to work inside Cisco.
Lesson 2: Place your products in a practical context
Creating content that provides exclusive tips and reveals hidden functionalities or offers helpful user hacks, shortcuts, or personalized offerings can deepen engagement and help customers get more out of their investment in your brand.
Case in point: Orlando Magic’s personalized communication
AI tools can make messaging more targeted and valuable. For example, the Orlando Magic NBA team uses Wordsmith to personalize its emails and in-app messages to fans and ticketholders. The messages are triggered by pre-set rules, conditions, or available offers like ticket resales.
Lesson 3: Solve problems with self-serve utility
Answering customer questions and providing easy access to account data, tech support, or other customized solutions is a great way to increase their satisfaction with your business – not to mention it can save some wear and tear on your sales and service teams and call centers.
Case in point: Cleveland Clinic’s MyChart Patient Portal
A patient journey complicated by the need for ongoing care can present health care industry marketers with a distinct set of informational challenges. But Cleveland Clinic is among a number of digitally savvy health care organizations rising to the occasion with its patient portal and MyChart system. Invaluable content tools like this offer patients direct access (online or through the mobile app) to relevant portions of their electronic medical record (including lab results, diagnostic images, prescribed medications, and physician notes and recommendations), enabling them to easily share information with their health care providers and take better control of any follow-up care they might need.
Lesson 4: Deliver a personalized experience
The best content campaigns are those that linger long past the initial engagement and satisfy a customer’s need for ongoing personal attention. Whether it’s telling a series of universally relatable stories or enabling your audience to process and apply greater emotional intelligence to decision-making, creating content that speaks to their individual motivations and unique situations is a powerful way to build…
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