Does content marketing work?

What we have done and what's the result?

First of all, we decided to make use of the potential and knowledge of our employees. Right now they have the possibility to share their knowledge on the corporate blog and to write specialized tech articles, which have become an opportunity for both Merixstudio and each of the writers. In this case we can talk about the win-win situation – employee is able to show his/her knowledge and experience that are also the knowledge of the whole company, which builds thus an expert image in this way.

It was the first step to increasing brand awareness. We have observed a traffic increase on our corporate website and the number of requests we've received has boosted too. More and more people (who often later become customers) find us “somewhere on the internet”. It is always worth to ask how a potential client has found our company – it's a hint that suggests whether content marketing activity is successful and what has to be changed.

Content marketing activity is supported by social media, so we also reported the increase in the numbers of fans / followers, the engagement and the post reach. This is how since the turn of May and June 2015 (when we timidly started our journey with content marketing) we reported increase by 30% of fans and 68% of posts reach. Several dozen more followers follows our Twitter profile, what is an increase by 8%. The information that we are more known are passed to us also in the traditional way - “my friend said”. Believe me, there is nothing better than hearing after couple months of work “your series of interviews is awesome! It made us realize us what we're doing wrong and it has inspired us to make some changes in our communication”.

The title of “Corporate Blog of the 2015” for Merixstudio was the perfect capstone. The prize we gained in the contest organized by BlogiFirmowe.com made us aware of advantages of content marketing. Patience and time dedicated to it and paid off.

Get out and meet people

Therefore, we decided to get out of the comfort zone (our blog) and shoot for media relations and external channels of distribution. After all, people likes what we write, so why not to publish something somewhere else than our corporate blog? We are very glad that journalists want to publish our articles, what results in publications that you can read in such magazines as Smashing, Marketing w Praktyce (Marketing in Practice), Nowy Marketing (The New Marketing) or Antyweb.

It turned out that not only people from our industry but also marketers follow us. And this is how we were invited to take part in EBKreator – the employer branding contest organized by GazetaPraca.pl We decided to take up the challenge and, as a result, we came back from Warsaw with the Special Jury Prize. We were awarded for consequent, coherent, creative and cost-effective employer branding activities.

When it comes to recruitment, there is nothing better for employer branding than well-built brand image. As previously mentioned, you can create the perfect image by using content marketing. I'm always really happy when a recruit says that he/she read our blog and is following our social media profiles. I'm even gladder when it turns out that it was the reason why he/she has sent CV to us.

To sum up

Aforementioned benefits of using content marketing to promote your company are only the tip of the iceberg. Behind them lies great amount of work of different people. If you have enough knowledge, patience and determination, don't hesitate and make a usage of a potential of CM. These activities are noteworthy because of their advantages and also because of the steadily weakening effectiveness of traditional media advertising. Zapping or banner blindness are more and more common. Thanks to the flexibility of content marketing, it perfectly adapts to today's reality, in which social media start to dominate over the old media. Certainly, content marketing is a future. But I would like you to remember that without good strategy you will probably waste a lot of your time, energy, and money.

The article is also featured in Marketing w Praktyce (March 2016).