Is your brand using content marketing to attract and retain customers? In 2021, 82% of companies utilized content marketing, up from 70% the year before.
Brands are creating content and consumers are devouring it. The average person spends seven hours consuming content.
Whether your brand is a content marketing veteran or still testing the content waters, you can draw inspiration from this list of brands that know the value of content.
Here are 12 brands that are doing content marketing right in 2021
American Express
American Express gets high marks for its content marketing strategy. Customers can find a wealth of helpful content on Open Forum, a platform where the brand encourages its customers to talk about the pros and cons of managing a business. While it might sound like an old-school chat room; it’s not at all. American Express joins the conversation and creates content based on the ideas mentioned in the forum. Recent topics include how to pay employees overtime and how to buy other companies.
Whole Foods
You might not associate grocery stores with a strong content marketing strategy, but Whole Foods is disrupting the industry with content over coupons and discounts. It’s working too. Statistics show Whole Foods holds a 40% share of voice in the industry, according to IZEA’s BrandGraph.
What’s the driving force for the brand? Its blog. The Whole Story, the grocer’s blog, offers advice on everything from vegan beauty products to recipes for cod.
Undertaking LA
Undertaking LA is a funeral home with a content strategy that’s dead on. The company is led by Caitlin Doughty and Amber Carvaly, who are changing the way people handle funerals. The New York Times recently wrote about the progressive duo who encourage people to host in-home funerals and take a humorous stance on a glum subject. Aside from quirky website content and blog articles, you can also find Doughty’s witty videos that answer questions like, “Can you freeze dry a corpse?”
Glossier
Glossier, a beauty line that’s less than a decade old, tells its story through its customers. The brand interviews its product-savvy users and shares their compelling stories with the public. For example, on the company’s Into The Gloss site you’ll find a slew of clickable content, like “The Angel Investor Who Shares a Manicurist with Oprah” or “The Drag Queen Who Has Mastered the Dimensional Nude Lip.” The brand manages to attract and retain customers with this unique content strategy.
Canva
Marketers are always in need of graphics, but the truth is, a lot of smaller brands don’t have the budget to hire a designer. Canva solves the problem. Its easy-to-use platform gives anyone the power to create cool graphics for use on social, blogs, ads – you name it.
Canva offers its platform for free and then upsells its users. To do so, the company provides a lot of design tips on its blog, all of which have a well-designed call-to-action at the bottom of each article to drive people to the platform.
Slack
Do you use platforms that you feel have millions of capabilities but only know how to do about three things with them? You’re not alone.
Slack is trying to break that cycle. Part of its robust content marketing plan is to educate its users to make sure they’re getting the most out of the platform. Its blog has many articles that can help people with everything from utilizing Zapier integrations to using a sales cloud.
GoPro
The first GoPro came out in 2004. Since then, the company has become a favorite of adrenaline-seekers who want an easy way to record their flips, falls, and feats. Sales of the GoPro jumped 71% in the first quarter of 2021, driven mostly by people feeling a little cooped up from the pandemic.
The company’s blog undoubtedly helped the spike in sales as the brand relies heavily on user-generated content. And some of the users are pretty famous. Actor Zac Efron and Norwegian adventure photographer Tomasz Furmanek offer their tips on the GoPro blog.
Casper
The online mattress store reaches an estimated 163,900 followers over the course of a year, according to IZEA’s BrandGraph. Followers seem to enjoy the brand’s multiple blogs. Yes, multiple. One blog offers specific content revolving around sleep and mattress upkeep, but another blog, Under the Covers, gives people a behind-the-scenes look at how the company engineers its product.
RipCurl
Whether you surf or not, you’ve probably heard of RipCurl. Its notoriety is due in part to its content. The company doesn’t use its marketing channels to sell surfboards. Instead, it hosts events and focuses on the experience behind the product. Its blog and social channels are full of visual stories like this one with legendary surfer Mick Fanning:
TED
Have you attended a TED talk? These global conferences that feature experts, authors, and leaders, are quite popular. The events are often sold out, the website gets a ton of traffic, and many of their videos have close to a million views.
What’s their secret? They aren’t focused on marketing. They focus on what their audience wants first. Then, they market it like crazy with great content.
Hotjar
Hotjar offers heatmaps for websites. It’s a very specific tool, which the company has marketed beautifully by creating several in-depth guides and eBooks that Google highly ranks.
Buffer
Buffer’s social media scheduling tool is well-promoted via guest posts. When Buffer decided to embark on a content marketing strategy, they decided one of the best ways to get an influx of content was to ask experts to contribute content to the site. Years later, guest posts still have a strong presence on their site.
Get Started
Are you interested in creating content but need a little help? You might consider using fully managed content production services from ContentMarketing.com. Request a consultation today.
