The Power of Content Marketing

By Victor Cho
Chief Executive Officer
Evite

From Evite's Luau Party Guide

The smart marketer knows that the best way to drive engagement and loyalty -- and ultimately, profits -- is to integrate your brand into content customers would want to consume anyway.

Help users solve problems, deliver real value and make them smile, and they'll reward you with positive word of mouth and remember you when they're ready to buy. Enter content marketing: an opportunity to reach users with your brand messaging seamlessly integrated into content they actually seek out.

And companies are catching on. Fifty-nine percent plan to increase their content marketing spend in 2015, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

Only a year old, Evite’s content marketing program has already helped deliver millions of dollars in incremental sales. Our network of blogger experts distributes our sponsored content, offering tremendous (and scalable) reach. For example, a Coke content marketing campaign that ran for two weeks in January racked up 12 million page views from blogger content distribution on top of the 200,000 from Evite alone.

Over the past 12 months, we've learned what really works for our users and our advertisers. Our top three content marketing musts:

1. Custom-tailor the content to what works for your audience and serves the client's brand and target. If you want your content marketing program to succeed, focus on pursuing advertisers that naturally align with your own brand and target. That way, you can simply create the content you’re planning to produce anyway; then all you have to do is mention and link to the advertiser where appropriate.
2. Create visually beautiful content that’s highly shareable on social channels and by bloggers. In order to get the greatest reach, prioritize visuals as well as copy. For Evite, this means shooting our own pictures rather than relying on stock photos or advertiser images..
3. Make the brand messaging organic. Instead of hitting users over the head with content that feels too much like an ad, keep users interested by keeping it subtle.

Want to reach an audience that wants to hear from you to build engagement, brand loyalty and sales? Done well, content marketing does it all.  

Victor Cho

CEO Evite