Content marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on two things: content and distribution. It’s all about creating content and getting it to the right people. As a beginner, it’s great to see the brands doing it right and what you can learn from them. You want to pick a thing or two from successful content marketing examples.
So, what companies are best at content marketing?
I cover 5 brands that execute content marketing excellently in this post. You can find them online or by clicking the link I will share.
Things I cover:
- Summary of the strategy
- Favorite content (I chose this for those who want to pick tone and style).
- Number of organic visitors as of the time of compiling this list: August 2023
- Website organic traffic is not less than 1 million.
- 1-3 Things you can learn from them.
5 Brands With Successful Content Marketing Examples
#1. Hubspot
Hubspot is one of the brands executing content marketing excellently well. Their strategy is diverse, and it all ties together into their brand. Remember the first definition I put out that content marketing is about content & distribution.
Hubspot content includes courses, blog posts, thought leadership articles, research or reports, tools, infographics, etc.
Distribution: they use blog posts to bring organic visitors, but my favorite is their courses. Most Hubspot courses are well executed, and learning them will make you understand the FUNDAMENTALS of what you’re learning. Many people are good at what they do, but when it comes to explaining the fundamentals, they can’t.
Hubspot’s strategy applies many marketing ideas. For instance, their course has a certificate you can show around. This is user-generated content. You worked for it, then showed it around and shared the words about their brand. They collect emails each time you sign up for tools or download any of their ebooks. They bought an existing business, a big newsletter, to boost their marketing strategy. Nowadays, they sponsor podcasts.
Important Lesson: combine your marketing efforts and expand as much as possible. This is not something a small business can do because of limited resources or team size. However, you can expand into three or four strategies for your product.
You can start with Hubspot courses and blog posts to learn about successful content marketing examples. They are great.
Website Organic Traffic: 17m+ (August 2023)
Favorite posts: The 20 Best Marketing Articles of All Time, According to HubSpot’s Marketing Team
Favorite course: Inbound Marketing course
What do Husbpots sell?: Customer Management Software (CMS)
#2. Shopify
Shopify is an e-commerce company. When it comes to getting traffic, they are doing well in content writing. Their blog attracts millions of organic visitors every month.
Important Lesson: Their strategy effectively involves interviewing famous business owners or influencers. This is like combining influencer marketing with blogging. This kind of content is likely to appear in search when people search for the names of that famous person. The post gets tons of shares and hundreds of thousands of bookmarks.
Favorite content: How to Start A Blog
Content: blog posts, videos, tutorials, and memes…
Distribution: blog, YouTube, Instagram, and more.
Website visitors: 20+ million (August 2023)
#3. Buffer
Buffer is a tool for scheduling and organizing your content. You can plan your content, and Buffer will automatically publish for you based on the tone and schedule you created.
Content: blog posts, videos
Distribution: blog posts are their best. The rest, like YouTube and Instagram, aren’t doing much in terms of views. Note: I have no idea what the conversion is like.
Favorite content: How to Monetize Your Content
Website Traffic: 1m+, August, 2023
#4. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is like Buffer, but they have an excellent content marketing strategy.
I have seen their TikTok content, and I can say they are doing very well. They have a unique style of creating videos that you can learn from. For instance, on YouTube, their tutors or creators wear lab coats and explain the topics in a laboratory. Hootsuite is not a medical center? Moreover, they are humorous.
What is an example of brand content marketing? If you are new to Tiktok, I will recommend following Hootsuite.
Content: written guides, tutorials, and videos
Distribution: website, YouTube, Tiktok (You should check out their Tiktok handle.)
Website visitor: 7.7m+ (August 2023)
Tiktok: 52,000 followers
#5. Waitbutwhy
Waitbuthy is a blog. Tim Uban handles the content. Although it’s just a blog, it has become famous, and some of his posts have been shared by hundreds of thousands of people and read millions of times. The funny part is that he doesn’t post regularly. Sometimes, often, it’s once a month. Nowadays, it’s once when he feels like.
Content: Long-form articles. These are as long as an ebook.
Distribution: Blog, Social media (Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter)
Favorite Post: The Cook and the Chef
Website Traffic:
52K+
This is much lower than the number of visitors for other brands in this post. But let me break it. Imagine creating one post per month for five to ten years and getting more than 50k visitors monthly. Most of the content is essays and deep dives, which you do not search for regularly. They are things you search for once a year — how to pick a career that fits you or why procrastinators procrastinate.
People who blog every day don’t have that numbers.
Important lessons here:
Think of the content as an investment. Five years from now, what will be the value of this post or what you wrote? Another thing is how heavily you are relying on distribution. On a scale of 1-10, how rare is your kind of content? If you put up a paywall on Patreon for it at 5 dollars per year, how many people will say that’s a massive steal? This is also a conversation that’s worth explaining to people who use ChatGPT or AI content. The kind of content you create with these tools is extremely low if you think about them as an investment. No one will pay for something AI created because AI doesn’t generate the kind of thing that makes humans astounded or think about their lives like a theory. The best content marketing examples are like discoveries, not a boring repetition of what has been created.
Read my guide: Content Writing Tips For New Business Owners That Want To Sell More.
When I thought like this, I created content I believed would still be extremely valuable in 10 years. You can check them out and let me know what you think:
Waitbutwhy know their content is not what the average person wants to search for quickly? They need subscribers and people who would be excited to remember their page and come back time and time again. This influences the type of content they create and where they share it. You can read more on how they got traffic here.
By the way, what is successful content marketing?
The definitions of successful content marketing will be different from brand to brand. If you aim to create content and put it behind a paywall, it won’t be effective enough to follow the same strategy as bloggers creating content for Google Adsense. Start with a goal, then find a strategy that works best for your goal. Often, you will have to experiment with a few ideas, but the best thing you should do as the first step is to look at the success of others. Study what you should emulate.
Study These Content Marketing Examples To Inspire You
Visit their websites. Consume their content. You will pick something helpful you can steal for your brand’s website or business.
Good luck.