Content marketing is one of the biggest buzzes in the industry right now but many companies are still wondering if it’s really worth it?’ We decided to find out using a few real case studies given in an article for Marketing Week.
“The Support Group” by Domino’s Pizza
The article points to pizza chain Domino’s and its campaign from last year when the brand posted five-minute episodes with recaps of the previous weekend’s football games, distributing them over all of its paid, owned and earned media channels. The campaign, named The Support Group, gained around 1.5 million views. This is a pretty nice figure, but what’s nicer is that frequency of purchase grew 30% among its viewers. So, if you want proof that content marketing works, here it is.
Quoted by MarketingWeek, head of digital at Domino’s Nick Dutch explains that his company’s success came because it didn’t get involved into content marketing simply for engagement’s sake. Instead, the pizza chain realised this type of marketing is meant to transform someone who’s interested enough to browse its site, into someone who buys its product.
Know your audience and what channels it uses
The key to succeeding in this is getting to that interested, potential customer first, so you have to know your audience and what channels it uses to communicate. But in Dutch’s words, there is something even more vital to the strategy’s success: the quality of the content itself. He explains that the best type of content you can offer customers is the type that doesn’t look like it is created by a brand. In hindsight, Dutch even criticises his company’s campaign for not being edgy enough and sometimes taking the safe road.
The free magazine by Vue cinemas
Another example the article gives is Vue cinemas. For them it was all about finding the right channel to get to customers. Recently, the company launched a monthly tablet edition of its bi-monthly free print magazine – one that featured exclusive behind the scenes coverage of films as well as reviews, interviews and a release calendar. In the first three months, Vue’s magazine app reached 20,000 downloads.
Communicate through content
And according to the company’s subsequent research of customer behaviour, those who used the application were five times more likely to buy tickets for a film. They had no trouble measuring this result, because the same app is also the one people buy tickets with. Furthermore, a reader survey revealed that 74% of people bought tickets after watching a trailer on their tablet, while 67% of visitors went to the site to watch trailers in the first place.
So, for that company too, content marketing really helped drive sales. In fact, Vue’s marketing director Joanne Webb is pretty blunt about its benefits. According to her, if the cinema chain wasn’t communicating with customers through content, it would’ve hardly had any business at all.
From the results, it’s plain see how content marketing can be hugely beneficial for brands.