If you’re scratching your head and wondering how you can take your brand’s marketing efforts to the next level, you might look at companies like Apple, Google and GEICO for some inspiration or ideas. After all, we see these brands’ ads regularly and they stick with us. They’re effective.
But believe it or not, you don’t have to look at industry juggernauts to figure out how to make your own team’s marketing efforts more successful. Just take a look at CJ Pony Parts, a Mustang parts dealer headquartered in Harrisburg, PA.
Here are four lessons you can learn from their marketing initiatives:
Know Your Customers Well
In order to be successful in your marketing efforts, you not only need to know exactly what makes your customers tick and what they’re interested in, you also need to know where they live on the web.
The crew at CJ Pony Parts clearly knows their customers well, and they also know where they live online. That’s why the company has a comprehensive YouTube presence (with nearly 40,000 subscribers – not bad for a local Mustang dealer, eh?) and regularly adds great content to its blog and other social channels.
Provide Content That Truly Adds Value
Thanks to the Internet, many folks call themselves do-it-yourselfers these days. Understanding that many of its customers fall into this category, the crew at CJ Pony Parts regularly releases a steady stream of great videos to help people restore their own Mustangs.
For example, check out this video that shows exactly how to rebuild drum brakes on 1964-1966 V8 Mustangs. CJ Pony Parts decided to make and release this video (and many more like it) completely for free, giving people access to enriching content without asking for a cent. Talk about developing a great relationship!
Repurpose Your Content
There’s a good chance that even your brand’s most rabid supporters don’t digest every single piece of content you use to promote your company. To get the highest return on content – while at the same time providing real value to customers – CJ Pony Parts repurposes content often.
Take for example this infographic:
They chose an excellent topic of interest to anyone who ever drives a car.
They then repurposed into a video and then combined two of their infographics into this colorful SlideShare:
By creating different pieces of content that add value and appeal to a wider audience, the value of the time that went into research is multiplied.
Influencers use media in multiple forms to drive traffic back to a particular page on a site. Giving them many forms of content allows them to share more often without annoying their followers, resulting in more visibility and traffic for your clients.
For ideas on how to repurpose your content, check out these posts:
- 50 Places to Repurpose Your Content
- How to Reach More of Your Target Market By Repurposing Your Content
Hop on the Bandwagon When Appropriate
You can’t simply follow what’s trending on Twitter and try to market around those topics. Just look at what happened when Epicurious tried to promote itself in conjunction with the tragedy at the Boston Marathon in 2013.
But every now and again, it’s appropriate to capitalize on what’s trending.
Case in point? The team at CJ Pony Parts took part in the Ice Bucket Challenge, the viral video challenge that raised money for ALS. And beyond simply putting a video together, the team took it to the next level – take a look for yourself.
So hop on the bandwagon when it makes sense for your brand to do so, but be careful not to focus on your company too much.
SOURCE: Growmap – Read entire story here.
