How to create strong content marketing strategies? Tips and case studies

It is quite interesting to notice that we are talking about the importance of content marketing strategies through our own content strategy – that is to provide educational and engaging content for our users at Connect Mór.

Following blog post is a highlighted text excerpt from one of our episodes of our podcast series – ‘The Connect Mór Podcast’. In this particular episode we go in length about the importance of content marketing. Further we discuss some of the prime and successful examples of content marketing.

So this is how the conversation goes 

TJ – So Debbie, as we know that you have done various marketing gigs in the past and you also design and create content such as videos, creatives, or websites, ranging from a to z of content marketing. So the question for you is, what is your opinion on how important content is when it comes to marketing. If we talk about content marketing, what are your views on it, and what importance it holds?

Debbie – It holds everything. So it’s one of those things where even if you were to just start off with a design or a message I think the most important thing is making sure that you have content that is adaptable for any sort of platform. So I do like to think with a content-first context second kind of perspective when it comes to these marketing channels and social media. I feel like I’m a storyteller at heart before a marketer, so I think it’s just about bringing everything together. Ideally, things could get more creative, sometimes people like to put their foot on the brakes very quickly and just think about selling when it comes to their marketing strategy rather than entertaining and informing. I do think that I see content three years from now being something really fun and competitive.

James – yeah, talking on the topic of content marketing being fun and very competitive, we notice it on social media in particular, with the brands. A lot of people are familiar with Wendy’s Twitter account, the tweets roast other brands on social media. The other example is Ryanair. Ryanair’s content on TikTok is really engaging at the moment, where they like to have their own little cheeky TikTok videos. These sorts of marketing tactics are becoming very widespread whereas a couple of years ago if a company did something like that, it would have been big news that the brands are behaving as if they were just a regular person on the internet essentially trying to run meme pages. I think that now more and more companies are kind of adapting that strategy because obviously, it’s so effective for them.

Brendan – So I was watching something recently and from the video, I remember three things that make up a recipe for a good marketing campaign – 1) It has to be funny, 2) It has to be self-aware in a way that the company knows who they’re and what they intend to do with the campaign and 3) It is self-deprecating as well in a way that they can make jokes about themselves obviously not too much, this tactic comes across as the company is very honest and consumers tend to like such companies a lot. For example, Ryan Reynolds has his own gin company – Aviation Gin. In his campaigns, he almost takes the piss out of the gin and you know it’s a very good ad as it is entertaining and consumers can relate to the company on a personal level.

TJ– So Debbie would there be any particular campaign that comes to your mind which really delivers on strong content and really does the job which is required from a good marketing campaign.

Debbie – I think the one that I pointed out to James earlier was the ‘Dumb ways to die’ campaign in Australia.

James – So could you please describe that campaign for the people who haven’t seen it.

Debbie – yeah so basically the backstory to it is that a lot of accidents were happening at train stations in Australia, most of the time people just like recklessly being on their phones and not being careful, falling onto the tracks. So the authorities wanted to figure out a way to how to prevent these accidents from happening at train stations so here comes the ‘Dumb ways to die’ campaign which is this really silly catchy animated video song describing various dumb ways to die such as being eaten by a bear that sort of thing, with the last one – dying on a train track. After that campaign was released, other than topping a bunch of charts and going absolutely viral, the campaign included people pledging to be careful at train stations. It actually decreased track accidents by 20%. Also, later on, a game came out of it as well for like little kids and that sort of stuff. It’s just something really cute and positive but it just stays in your head and makes you more aware. So to deliver the overall message, the campaign took a more light-hearted route for a very serious thing. I believe that with the campaign, they just hit it out of the park in terms of encouraging people to be careful to reduce accidents.

TJ– So Debbie, what are your thoughts on how important it is for companies to have a uniform brand message and also how important it is for companies to relay this to their users?

Debbie – It is super important obviously, so I think it is about always going back to the reason – why are we doing this and just constantly peeling the onion. But sometimes trying to be too strict with your brand identity is almost like shooting yourself in the foot, so you don’t want to be too stagnant and do the same thing over and over again. To be honest, though the times are always changing, as you know even if we were to just think about everyone’s brand strategy when covid came along, the way the whole paradigm changed and how we are now embracing the workplace and we’re working remotely. So I think it is important to just not be strict with yourself and figure out what works for who. If we take the example of just the ‘Dumb ways to die’ campaign; they could have just left the video as it was and that’s it, and backed off and they would have still gone viral but they really implemented everything. They created a mural at a train station that people were taking photos in front of so that the campaign got user-generated content that went in a full circle from digital to physical to digital. It’s a numbers game at the end of the day, for example, if you just promote your product, you might get some 20 likes or leads, but then when you post a company photo from an event of all you guys having pints and that’s the thing that would bring more eyes to your company. User-generated content like that’s such a massive thing today and it’s such a high leverage sort of marketing tactic to aim towards that.

James – What’s your preferred side that you would prefer – the social media side or the content creation side or as you say like the artistic side.

Debbie – Um it’s a tough one I think, I would say content-first social media second because I feel like social media now is just there, you’re not going to do anything without it, so yeah I would say content because that’s just that little that goes a little bit further in including podcasts and online events. I had love to work in a bit more of a traditional sense as well and would just love to merge the physical with digital. I feel like if you’re just going to be doing social media marketing with just blindly jumping into it and uploading whatever comes your way or whatever pops in your head, yes you might land a few things but there will come a point where you would become stagnant and you would say to yourself, like listen I need a content strategy. You know there are two kinds of sides to campaigns, there’s the content side, the creative side, and second is the analytical side where you know you do your research, find the numbers, and stuff. I feel that the analytical side, in fact, a lot of that can be automated, but the content creation and the artistic, that’s very difficult to automate. So it becomes vital to put in the needed effort in order to create better results in terms of content creation or content marketing.

We hope that this blogpost has helped you in providing some great insights into the sphere of content marketing and what elements are important to consider when it comes to planning a marketing campaign in order to leave an everlasting impression.

To get more ideas into what kind of content to create or base your content strategy around please do refer to our previously published blog post on ‘Tips and tricks to create engaging content on social media‘.

Do visit our home page – Connect Mór to know more about us and what we do at Connect Mór.