Examples make it easier to quickly grasp a new method or an idea. We have collected several case studies of small businesses who have used content marketing successfully. They had initiative, they took the effort and got amazing results. We hope their stories inspire you to greater success.
There are about a dozen popular ways you can do content marketing. Among those, five methods stand above the rest in terms of effectiveness and ubiquity. They are social media, article/blog marketing, email newsletters, blogs and videos.
Let’s see how a small business succeeded with each of these.
How Plaza Automotive Center Boosted Its Website Traffic by 91% With a Short Article Marketing Campaign
Based in San Pedro, California, Plaza Automotive Center is a comprehensive auto repair and service center.
They aspired for more local web traffic, leads and a strong web presence. They used article marketing, one our five effective content marketing approaches for this.
Their copywriting agency launched a article marketing campaign with nine articles; three for each of their main service offerings.
This got them to the first page of Google for every auto repair and service in the city in which operates. The campaign increased the total number of website visitors by 91%. Their website got to the first page of Google search results for five pages which didn’t show up at all and increased page views by 83%.
Sweetgreen Restaurants Channels Social Media
Sweetgreen Restaurants offers salads, vegetarian and gluten-free food. This small regional chain enjoys a strong online presence owing to their smart approach to social media. They tapped into the power of trending hashtags on social media like #behindthegreens and #farmtotable to bring attention to their own content. This approach has yielded them 26,000 Facebook fans, in addition to over 17,000 followers on Twitter and 40,000 followers on Instagram.
Yale Appliance and Lighting Glows With Blogging
Yale Appliance and Lighting in Boston has taken to blogging quite well recently. With a focused and dedicated blogging strategy, Steve Sheinkopf answers questions customers regularly ask and indirectly helping them take informed purchase decisions. This has reduced in-person selling time as customers come to the showroom after making most of their product research online. This approach has been working for Yale quite well. They have boosted their online sales by 40% since 2009, and tripled their web traffic over the past year.
On a Tight Budget? Let’s Danny’s Success Guide You
Danny’s Meats, a Rancin-based local business, wanted to develop their business, but did not have money to pay for traditional advertising: TV, print, radio. What would you do?
Danny’s Meats turned to email marketing, attracted by its affordability and effectiveness. To attract new and old customers, the company offered a free steak on their birthday if they signed up for the newsletter. Email marketing is an effective tool to automatically bring back inactive customers and be top of the mind on regular customers. Danny’s simple email marketing strategy bagged them 2,400 new subscribers in 6 months, while increasing sales by 15%.
Lauren Beats Her Goliath With Self-made Videos
Lauren Luke used to sell make-up products on eBay. This was her side income to supplement her day job as a taxi dispatcher. Lauren wanted to boost sales, so she started recording original make-up application videos and posted them on YouTube. This has brought her unimagined success to her that now she her own brand of make-up products. She has an enviable following on Youtube with more than 560,000 people, larger even than the make-up giant Estee Lauder.
Let’s wrap up this article with some key takeaways. The 2014 B2B Content Marketing and 2014 B2C Content Marketing surveys by the Content Marketing Institute give us the following findings:
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94% of B2B small business marketers use content marketing
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B2C marketers have rated many tactics higher in effectiveness this year; in-person events and email newsletters top the list of effective tactics.
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90% of B2C marketers use content marketing
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Top 5 methods both B2B and B2B small businesses use in their content marketing: social media (other than blogs), articles on your website, email newsletters, blogs, videos
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Top organization goals with content marketing: brand awareness (for both B2B and B2C), customer acquisition (for both B2B and B2C), customer retention / loyalty (B2C), lead generation (B2B)
We hope this inspires you to take your business to the next level with content marketing.
Please comment or contact us directly if you have any question on implementing a content marketing program in your organization.
