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.
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Alicia, like what you have here. I cringed when I see a listicle blog, but hey it works wonderfully for social share. Big numbers are eye popping for people to share on social media.As for expert round ups, I like it because they are insights that are boiled down into one or two sentences. I learned a lot from it and it saved me a lot of time.
Elise Forsyth Mort would love you to read ..Top 5 Massive Facebook Mistakes That Are Costing Your Business
What a fabulous article Alicia!
And your infographics are terrific as well! It looks like that extremely savvy Mustang dealership could hold rather expensive marketing boot camps for their industry, any time they want!
Or they could create a rally cool paid membership site of some kind and the stipulation would be, no other Mustang dealers within a certain local radius could join!
And just teach their proven, comprehensive marketing methods and strategies, to their industry in general and other non competing Mustang dealers throughout the entire country!
And my guess is, they wouldn’t be hurting for any paid clients!
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Hi Mark,
Alicia writes some really exceptional content. Check out her post about Caterpillar, too. https://growmap.com/caterpillar-content-marketing/
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Hi Alicia Lawrence,
You have shared superb post here and I quite agree with you in all of the listed marketing lessons.
Cheers!
Samir would love you to read ..TOP 10 Google Play Store Banned apps
Hi.. Good post about content marketing. I like very much, all points are very interesting, content play vital role in selling beacouse content is the King according to Google so thanks for sharing this wonderful article.
Keeping my readers interested on my Online Marketing blog can be tough as you are reviewing very similar content but today I reviewed a “Gurus” product and it was pathetic so i said so. Most people stay away from telling the truth about these Internet Marketing “Gurus” but I couldn’t resist it, it was that bad…
Hopefully now my readers which have doubled in 2 days see I am not a puppet promoting only for my own gain but am here to tell the truth…Im hoping for new and readers who come back. What do you guys think?
Regards
Marc
Marc Gray would love you to read ..Fastest way to $1k per month Review
Hi Marc,
You have the right idea. The best way to get established and find loyal, regular readers is to comment on other CommentLuv blogs. A couple of months ago I published a list of top CommentLuv blogs in https://growmap.com/how-to-build-blogging-community/ – that is a good place to start.
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Do Not Let Your Images Blow Up Your Blog
Thanks for the reply and advise….I am bookmarking this page and will look at putting into practise what you suggest. I have years of SEO experience and my own SEO company EkkoResources so have been creating a very solid campaign that means i know rank highly almost every time (I’ve made 380$ in the last 10 days through W+)
Id like to start promoting JVZoo products but am unsure how to go about finding the new releases calendar and how to request to promote etc. Any ideas about that?
Anyway thanks again and speak soon,
Marc
Hi..
Good post about content marketing. I like very much, all points are very interesting, thanks for sharing this wonderful article.
thank you
To understand the requirements of reader and healthy content are the major issue in content marketing. I agree with all points. Thanks for sharing this wonderful article with us.
Hi Alicia Lawrence,
Quite interesting post actually, I guess you have listed the obvious points to improve the content marketing strategies.
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Hi Christy! Sometimes we get lost in the details and forgot the obvious. I thought this would be a nice refresher for those who are seasoned in CM, and for those who are new it establishes in a memorable way a few core principles of great content marketing. Thanks for reading!
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I think this will be very helpful thank you. After reading this presentation, I appreciate the information that a diligent person.And plus I’m good to read your post.
These are great tips that are appropriate for practical application, which is what I liked the most. Sometimes you read tips and advice that is difficult to actually adopt. We try and add content that acts as a kind of self help for business owners and is hopefully our way of adding value.
hi
i always try to provide the valuable content to my readers. i think the content your content should fulfill your reader question.
thanks a lot for your tips
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Hello!
Amazing infographic presentation, I think the most important thing for every marketer is his/her content if it’s great and adds value to visitors/customers then you will automatically build your name/brand in the industry and see better results!
Muhammad Asad would love you to read ..Max Payne 3 Game – SickGameStore.Com
Thanks for all the lessons, really they are very helpful for marketing purpose and nicely explained infographics as above.
Thanks for this great article. I have been struggling to create my blog into a brand. Just read your article and I will try the methods you have mentioned. Hope to see Success soon 🙂
I like that you focused so much on the interpersonal aspects of growing a brand. One of the really tricky things to get across to new bloggers (without seeming like a jerk) is that it’s still all about reaching out to other people–you’re not just drawing people to you like some glowing beacon for internet moths, you’re going out there and communicating with them.
Hi Sandhi,
Interacting is the largest challenge because of the time it takes. We all struggle to stay on top of everything.
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..10 Content Marketing Ideas for 2015 You Can Implement Right Now
Hello,
I always focus on “Provide Content That Truly Adds Value” which would make the post quality and fetches more readers.
Thanks
Christy would love you to read ..5 Top Reasons That You Should Host Your Website with HostGator
Amazing post about these 4 Content Marketing Lessons you can learn from local Mustang Dealer. It’s really a great information. Thanks for sharing.
Content play vital role in selling. Thanks for all the teachings, very they’re terribly useful for selling purpose and nicely explained info graphics as on top of.
Content play important role in marketing. Thanks for all the lessons, really they are very helpful for marketing purpose and nicely explained infographics as above.
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Hi Ali Lawrence,
Superb infographic guide very well step by step with infographic.Thanks for sharing with us keep up it
Have a nice week ahead.
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That definitely would be #1…You are creating the content for them :)Thanks for commenting Samantha and have a great weekend!
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Hi,
Well I must say we must set few rules while content marketing and I guess the first rule should be “Know Your Customers Well” and this is thing which would fetch us leads easily.
Thanks
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