“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”- Benjamin Franklin.
When incorporating a startup, every founder dreams of making it big and turning it into a multinational conglomerate. However, not everyone can crack the code and make it big. But now and then, some founders manage to understand the emotion of their target customer by marketing their product in the right way and fast-track their business growth.
One of the top secrets of startup success lies in product-market fit and how the product is marketed. And in the online world, YouTube and Ad marketing are not enough. Instead, content marketing is also used. With proper use and orientation, and a well-planned strategy, it can propel a brand to glory.
Top 10 Content Marketing Examples
The following are some of the best examples of when startups broke barriers and achieved unicorn status via content marketing:
Company #1: Birchbox
Incorporated in 2010, Birchbox began as a subscription service in the beauty and grooming domain. It aimed to provide customers with 4-5 sample pieces of beauty and grooming products monthly to make the subscribers accustomed to the products.
With initial funding of $1.4 million, Birchbox oriented itself as an informative and educative brand. They provided users with an experience of using high-end products correctly at throwaway prices. The initial days were about conventional marketing through media adverts, TV commercials, and few online ads.
However, in 2014, the brand launched a full-blown targeted social media campaign to increase customer acquisition. They reduced TV advertisements and increased Facebook and YouTube marketing campaigns to non-subscribers. It would be further reinforced via messages on Facebook.
According to a manufacturer of automatic labeling systems, the campaign was targeted to an audience comprising primarily multitasking women with a casual interest in beauty. The campaign’s main aim was to increase the informative and emphasizing content that was put on blogs and social media channels.
As a result of this, awareness of the brand rose by 73%, and a 43% increase in customer acquisition. Today, the brand services over 300,000 active subscribers and over 500,000 active customers. Out of the subscribers, the brand has a conversion rate of 5% from the active subscribers.
Company #2: CopyBlogger
Copyblogger Inc. started in 2006 with Brian Clark and Sonia Simone trying to create an online community. Fifteen years later, they are one of the most profitable media houses in the business, with the capability to rank in the top 1% of all related searches and over 150,000 shares per day on social media channels.
Instead of churning out mundane content, they found that the entire community of content marketers ad-libbed their way through the domain. There was no set or defined way to be a successful marketer. Some were not adapting to new methods, while others were just changing their strategy constantly.
So, they started to curate content that any successful content marketer would need to be their best self. They showed how headings, openings, and content should grip the reader whilst being informative and creative.
Copyblogger has even been heralded by Neil Patel, the guru of digital marketing, for the way they have worked their way on content marketing. They even applied the same approach of keeping it simple with email marketing and saw 400% growth through those channels.
Company #3: Airbnb
Most of us dream about travelling the world, and a crucial part of the process is lodging. About 60% of the budget revolves around that factor. So Airbnb allowed homeowners to earn extra revenue by opening up their homes for travellers and took a small percentage of the earnings.
However, today, Airbnb has taken a massive leap in how it markets its content to become the phenomenon. Their blog is full of articles, galleries, and experiences about cultural norms, business ownership, and the obvious one, world travel tidbits.
So, instead of marketing their product, they sell their experience to customers by availing their product. This is how Airbnb proved that content marketing does not feel like marketing and this strategy is the one that works the best.
Company #4: Scentbird
Much like Birchbox, Scentbird also employed a subscription-based business model. However, they catered to a particular product. As the name suggests, “scent”, the startup is part of the fragrance domain. The company was incorporated in 2014 and scaled to an MRR of $75,000 without any investment.
Before moving towards the marketing, Scentbird concentrated on making their product right, which was high-end fragrances in a small tester pack of 140 sprays. This included products from Dolce and Gabbana, Versace, Chanel, and many more in a small refillable spray bottle available for subscription for $14.95/month.
What they did was take the YouTube route to build an organic audience. Instead of just focussing on content marketing, the brand resorted to influencer marketing to build brand awareness. Narrowing down the prospects and carefully choosing the influencer to cater to the right audience is the key, as per Sergey Gusev.
To increase the product base, the brand then resorted to Facebook marketing and targeting the right audience. With re-emphasis on getting a designer fragrance for low dirt prices, the user base grew, and Scentbird grew the community to 5,000 paying subscribers.
They further dropped NPAs by automating the ad campaigns and marketing the content that was bringing the most results. Today, the brand has raised $18.6 million to expand into home fragrances and increase customer acquisition.
Company #5: Beardbrand
Almost everyone is growing a beard these days, but Eric Bandholz managed to turn that passion into a business back when the trend was just beginning. Beardbrand was born in 2014 after Bandholz quit his job because it wouldn’t let him grow his beard out (talk about passion).
Initially, the company only concentrated on content creation via YouTube, Tumblr, and a blog. As the content creation grew, brand awareness also grew. Bandholz stands as the poster boy of the brand with his now-famous “Bandholz Beard”.
Instead of simply going all out in content creation, Eric went out of his way to understand the target audience’s emotions and what problems they were facing. This revolved around educating them about beard growth, grooming it, and the products needed to make it look good or its upkeep.
The content was created to stay true and promote this idea, and not the products. The sales were just a result of content creation and precise marketing strategy.
They used a 13-point marketing strategy that helped them generate revenue which now stands north of $100k/month. Some of the critical points were:
At first, the marketing strategy was to use free channels. Still, as the brand started growing and the business became cash positive, paid marketing via Google and Facebook was adopted. With a strategy catered around these aspects, Beardbrand has scaled to 20 employees and a 7 figure valuation with two manufacturing facilities, one in the U.S. and one in the U.K.
Company #6: Zomato
When it comes to food cravings and ordering food online in India, the go-to brand that comes to mind today is Zomato. The company started as an online directory for all the restaurants in an area that entered into the food delivery business. Today, it has changed the face of the dining and food delivery industry. On April 28, 2021, the company even made a $1.1 Billion IPO.
So, how exactly did Zomato propel to such heights when offering something as basic as food delivery?
Check out Zomato’s business model to know the roller coaster journey of the company in detail.
A carefully targeted and well-planned content marketing strategy is the key for them. And it is still working its wonders in 2021 as they continue to give a “food twist” to pressing matters of the world.
Instead of just randomly targeting every person, Zomato chose 18 to 35-year-olds as their target audience. And among these, those who had smartphones. Then, it streamlined the targeting as per people who wanted to order in and those who wanted to dine out.
They used the conventional SEO, SEM, and SMO practices by using the target keywords even in their URL, which helped them reach the right audience. This, backed by paid marketing, helped them rank higher for the relevant keyword in front of the target audience.
Once they started to gain traction, they built backlinks and started churning out content on their blog and social media channels. Ranging from advert videos, customer reviews, coupon codes, discounts, and infographics, they upped the ante with emotional branding.
This was further emphasized via Facebook ads and marketing, which brought interaction to a whole new level. That, combined with a customer satisfaction rate of almost 70%, helped Zomato’s cause. With a well-planned, precise targeting, Zomato has managed to become a unicorn in its space in the present day.
“We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.”- Craig Davis, CCO J. Walter Thompson.
Company #7: Hubspot
Another example of a tech giant that made it big through content marketing is HubSpot. With an online presence that spans the length and breadth of marketing, HubSpot is among the big leagues in inbound marketing, sales, and customer service.
Though all the fields are pretty diverse, HubSpot has managed to carve out its identity as a leader in all of these with a well-defined content plan. They started with informative blog posts that led to content upgrades. Content upgrades are the additional articles related to the current reports but help dive deeper into it with extra “spice” whilst the reader is already hooked.
All of this became possible because the founders went through the journey of their probable buyers. Hence, they were able to pinpoint every place that a person could encounter a pitstop. This helped HubSpot to find a niche where they could help other businesses improve and grow.
Even with the new age approach, staying true to the classics of SEO, SEM, and SMO with keyword first, experience second, and third interest approach has helped Hubspot rank in the top 3% of all Google Search results that concern their domain.
Company #8: KISSMetrics
While the name sounds quirky, KISSMetrics is a brainchild of Neil Patel. So, it is pretty easy to understand why the company has scaled to great heights today—he is a man with a plan when it comes to SEO and digital marketing.
KISSMetrics kept their approach quite simple and very targeted. The content is targeted towards teaching customers’ habits to budding and existing CEOs, marketing executives, and everyone else. Not just content, KISSMetrics even publishes usable resources and conducts free webinars to help their community.
All of this has helped cross 1 million unique, organic views in just ten months of its launch. They added infographics to their arsenal and were the first to reach a traffic valuation of $16 million. For those who don’t know about the gravity of that number, that is a pretty big deal!
Company #9: Glossier
Another beauty brand that crossed the billion-dollar mark with its content is Glossier. Stemming from the growing readership of Emily Weiss’ blog, Into the Gloss, the brand was born after identifying the gap in the users and products of the beauty industry.
With the growth of the millennial population worldwide, the spending power and their influence on customer marketing have increased significantly. And Glossier understood this well in advance that turning millennials into their loyalists will help drive business.
Hence, the posts were catered to rope in Millenials with carefully crafted content that appealed to them on a much deeper level. Not only did the founder understand the customers, but they also paid heed to their words and came up with products to bridge that gap.
Thanks to their carefully targeted Instagram tactics for Millenials and Gen Z, 80% of their customers choose products to buy via Instagram. Through YouTube, Glossier started many series like “Get Ready With Me:”, product launches, product teasers, and guest appearances from the favourite stars of Millenials, including Beyonce, and the former first lady of the U.S., Michelle Obama.
Facebook and Twitter were reserved for community building, interaction with customers, and a broader audience base via targeted ads and marketing. All of this happened because of the simple idea of hearing to your customers and giving them a platform where their cries were heard and answered with real-time solutions. So it's safe to say that Glossier does deserve the “Cult-Following” it has garnered.
Company #10: Canva
We all love to use the design tool to create our posters, presentations, banners, and whatnot; Canva is also one of the most prominent players in content marketing. However, now they are not just a design and publishing tech giant, but also content generators. And their blog is called “Design School.”
This design school generated 4.7 million views in 2 years and one month of its incorporation. A staggering number indeed. The $6 billion enterprise relies heavily on the content it generates. With one design being produced every second, Canva boasts of a user base of 30 million.
However, their marketing campaign is probably the most unique. Instead of in-house content generation, it relies on user-generated content and influencer marketing. The latter came with the revival of the chief evangelist designation for Guy Kawasaki, who held the same tag with his stint with Apple.
Using targeted keywords and SEO-centric search intent, Canva marketed their products Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise very meticulously. And that product is now giving giants like Microsoft and Adobe a run for their money by making their service more accessible to the users.
Conclusion
With all of these multinational conglomerates resorting to content marketing, it is pretty easy to understand that content marketing is one of the most significant areas for growth. Do right, and your startup’s future will be bright!
Do you know any such startup that rose to fame with its content marketing strategy? Let us know in the comments the name of the company! We’ll research it to update this list!
