Great eCommerce content marketing campaigns in 2019

Care to share?

Some online sellers may say that tech is king now—but it is content that drives the web. Behind every great brand is a huge portion of valuable and relevant content that really connects with the company’s audience.

According to Zazzle Media, 65% of companies find it a challenge to produce engaging content. Too many online store owners and marketers ignore the power of content marketing. And not engaging your visitors means your company is losing money.

2019 is almost over, so we have prepared a list of best practices for content marketing ideas and actions which took place during this year.

7 amazing content marketing campaigns in 2019

Adidas – content marketing built with strong influencers

Beyoncé and Adidas announce a new partnership and the relaunch of the Ivy Park brand purchased by the pop star in 2016. Now Beyoncé plans to contribute creative and design ideas while Adidas will take care of production and distribution. 

“Beyoncé is an iconic creator but also a proven business leader and together we have the ability to inspire change and empower the next generation of creators.”

Eric Liedtke, executive board member of Adidas

When Beyoncé posted her first photos hyping her partnership with Adidas on Instagram, they quickly went viral—the first photo had 2 million likes in less than an hour! Such incredible results can bring massive benefits to a brand. Advertisers should track this partnership because it could provide a road map for how companies can build their brands.

marketing campaigns

Source: www.instagram.com/beyonce

In this partnership, Adidas is not paying Beyoncé to endorse its activewear. The brand is paying her to design the clothes in her specific, individual style. Thanks to that, wearing Adidas clothes becomes more about dressing like Beyoncé. Now the German brand has Beyoncé fans interested in what they should be wearing in order to connect with her, not only with her music. 

Here’s a pro-tip and lesson learned from the Adidas-Beyonce collaboration: let influencers be your creative partners, influence your audience, and provide power to your brand.

IKEA – content marketing built around iconic TV series

Brands and trends are rapidly changing but there is one thing that remains constant: IKEA is a content marketing master. This year, the brand launched a new marketing campaign, “IKEA Real Life Series”, in which it recreated the interior design of three iconic television series – Friends, The Simpsons, and Stranger Things.

The campaign was originally implemented for the needs of the United Arab Emirates market but caused an impressive buzz in social media around the world. The marketing idea has been a hit. Traffic in the network’s Middle East branches has increased by almost 50 percent.

IKEA is a perfect example of how to do content marketing right. In addition to great campaigns, we can also find a large dose of home furnishing ideas or inspiration on the official website.

IKEA – content marketing built around iconic TV series

Source: www.hiptoro.com/p/ikea-sell-you-stranger-things-friend-simpsons

Lush – content marketing that surprises and engages

Lush tries to use different types of content marketing techniques to reach its audience, which is why it’s hard to put it in just one category of content marketing examples.

Odd and unique product names, strong ethical values or behind the scenes videos of the making of its products encourage users to share and hashtag photos by the community surrounding the brand.

Instagram plays a key role here, with the main Lush account attracting about 4 million followers. Lush is not afraid of experimenting with the content or adding some humor to it—that is something that makes the brand stand out from the crowd.

Lush – content marketing that surprises and engages

Source: https://uk.lush.com/

Sephora – user-generated content and VR

Sephora’s Virtual Artist app and Beauty Insider Community is a good example of interactive content that lets customers buy the way they want to and manage their own relationship with content.

The app allows you to take a selfie, simulate trying-on the product and see how you’d look wearing it. Sephora says it’s seen 200 million shades tried on and over 8.5 million visits to the feature. The app is designed to emulate the knowledge of a personal shopping assistant, or a Sephora sales associate, in that it provides product recommendations, reviews, and pricing information in a simple format which makes it easy for a customer to purchase products.

Sephora and the Beauty Insider Community also provide truckloads of user-generated content. Groups, conversations, galleries, events—everything that keeps up with breaking beauty news is in one place. We can easily say that Sephora leads digital strategy in the beauty industry, and more than 19M members of their Instagram community can confirm that.

Instagram community

Image source: sephoravirtualartist.com

Santander – marketing with a “Prosper and Thrive” content hub

Digital banking pages are trying to attract and gain young consumers with different methods.  Designed for millennials, Santander’s hub provides them with helpful tips, articles, and ideas to navigate their finances.  

Travel destinations, questions you have to ask yourself before you buy a house or pursuing a promotion, reasons to evaluate your current spending—it’s just a little sample of the quality content that can improve your daily finances and living standard. 

Great content that solves millennials’ most pressing problems—there’s no doubt that it sounds like a recipe for success.

Great content that solves millennials

Source: thehub.santanderbank.com/

Mazda – community stories woven into content marketing

Mazda, a leading Japanese car brand, is focusing on creating a community thanks to sharing rich content connected with the brand’s experiences.

Discovering, for example, how a soccer injury can be the inspiration for the forward-thinking approach to Mazda’s next-generation architecture or how new technology is based around a human-centric approach to design can be a really catchy subject for all automotive fans.

Everybody can be part of the brand’s world by sharing a story on the Mazda page. All you need to do is to write an email, mention @mazda_stories on Instagram, or post a video or picture using the hashtag #mazdastories. 

Mazda puts a strong focus on building a community that shares their personal stories and lets them feel more engaged with the brand’s creative process. This kind of strategy is becoming more and more popular because a devoted community is the best ambassador a brand could wish for. You can see how it works in the case of Starbucks Stories. 

Starbucks Stories.

Source: www.mazdastories.com/spring-2019

Walmart – content, and products in tasty videos

Walmart and BuzzFeed’s Tasty are today serving up a brand new feature—shoppable recipes. It allows customers to add recipe ingredients directly to a Walmart online grocery cart for pickup or delivery. Now, customers can add the entire ingredient list from a menu of 4,000 Tasty videos right to their Walmart Online Grocery carts with just one click. From this moment, they can place their order for pickup from more than 2,500 stores nationwide or have the groceries delivered to their homes.

“Finding that perfect recipe, creating a grocery list and finally getting to the store can keep any chef out of the kitchen. We’re excited to create a fun solution that feeds customers appetites to put time back in their busy schedules all while saving money with Walmart’s everyday low prices.”

Janey Whiteside, Chief Customer Officer, Walmart

It is a brilliant move by Walmart to engage consumers. Integrating recipe content with links to the ingredients will save consumers time and money, which will fuel e-grocery engagement and sales. Will shoppable recipes become a major driver of online grocery sales? We’ll see. Will it drive some new traffic? Definitely!

Is content marketing really worth the investment?

According to 74% of companies surveyed, content marketing has increased their marketing leads, both in quantity and quality (Curata). When a content marketing strategy is done right, your brand immediately comes to mind when your audience is ready to make a purchase. If brands can develop an effective strategy for creating content, they’ll not only drive leads but will also increase sales.

“The attention auction” called content marketing is not as easy as all that though. The best brands fights each other with ideas and innovations so you have to be vigilant and carefully plan your digital strategy. According to DemandMetric, though content marketing costs about 62% less than traditional marketing tactics, it generates about 3 times as many leads, answering the question: yes, content marketing is definitely something worth investing in.

Perfectly tailored content helps you build a strong community around your brand—remember that united customers are the fuel of your brand’s car.

Deciding on influencer marketing can also be a highly profitable choice because it’s not only connected with content promotion, but also with relationship development with the brand. 

The requirements of internet users are constantly increasing. Ideally, everything should be served “on a tray” and require just a little effort from the user’s side. This means that the message should be simple, useful, specific and attractive. Consumers prefer to watch video material rather than read a product description or article on a website. That’s why video material is currently the undisputed king of e-commerce content.

Check the state of mobile-first eCommerce. Download the report >

Published December 19, 2019