Let’s be frank: It’s really challenging to consistently create compelling, buyer-centric campaigns and drive demand. Confined to your desk with a deadline looming, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and lost in your thoughts.
When you reach that level of desperation, sometimes it’s best to look to others for inspiration. Analysts, authors, big brands — even celebrities and politicians — can teach and motivate you to snap out of your marketing rut. This week, we’re providing a quick round-up of informative, best-practice articles to educate and inspire you:
- What do your company and Pop-Tarts have in common? Quite a bit, apparently. During NewsCred’s #ThinkContent Tour in Chicago, Karl Miller, Director of Digital Strategy at The Kellogg Company, discussed the snack food’s evolving content strategy. With such a strong history and heritage, Pop-Tarts has had to keep pace with new industry trends, cultural phenomena and even align messaging and marketing to new target buyers. You may not be in the same product category as Pop-Tarts, but this recap of the session provides some great motivation. For example: “You can’t rely on the same plans every year; it needs to evolve to be bigger and better.” You may find yourself craving one of the fruity, flaky treats, but we can’t take full responsibility for that.
- Box gets all its cooks in the marketing kitchen: We’re all familiar with Box, the online file sharing company. (Some of you may even use it!) But how does the company go about planning and executing powerful campaigns? Alignment is key, according to Anthony Schurz, Online Marketing Manager at Box. “It’s hard to assess the effectiveness of your campaigns without proper alignment — even worse, it can lead to poor allocation of precious marketing resources.” Check out this article from the Oracle Modern Marketing Blog to learn four best practices for aligning all the cooks in your marketing kitchen.
- Content marketing lessons from “The Big Lebowski”: Who doesn’t love The Dude? Well, Ashley Zeckman of TopRank Online Marketing capitalized on the film’s “cult classic status” by using it as the foundation of her presentation at a recent conference. Not only does this blog post provide a solid overview of the session, but there’s also a SlideShare of her presentation, which features fun imagery and great alignment between “The Big Lebowski” and content marketing. You’ll definitely be ready to fix yourself a White Russian afterward!
- Content marketing and Thanksgiving…sort of the same: This article from Curata doesn’t necessarily tie best practices to celebrities or top B2C brands, but Thanksgiving is a cultural marvel in and of itself! In fact, the company does a great job of aligning content marketing strategy to Thanksgiving dinner and all of its bits and pieces, including the turkey, mashed potatoes and yes, even pie.
- (Bonus article) Does your marketing Trump competitors?: We’re breaking the promise of our headline to include this article as a bonus, but honestly, it’s too good to push aside. We’ve all witnessed Donald Trump’s TV outbursts, passive-aggressive tweets and, of course, the hair…but there are actually some very valid tips in this article, which outlines how your business can start taking cues from Trump to brave some real marketing risks.
Do you have any favorite content marketing lessons or tips from top brands or cultural figures? Share them in the comments section below!
