8 Clever Examples of Empathetic Content Marketing in Action

8 Clever Examples of Empathetic Content Marketing in Action

Successful content marketing is about creating a connection between your audience and your brand.

This doesn’t mean just throwing content at your audience. It means truly valued creating content -- content that serves needs and addresses the biggest pain points. And this type of content is much easier to create when it's informed and driven by empathy.

As Dr. Brené Brown notes, “Empathy is feeling with people.”

When you put yourself in your audience’s shoes, it becomes easier to acknowledge struggles and think critically about the best solutions. That's why empathetic content marketing is such a powerful strategy for businesses -- both B2B and B2C.

Click here to sharpen your skills with the help of our content marketing workbook.

Not sure what that looks like? Let's walk through nine brands that nail empathetic content marketing across various media.

8 Clever Examples of Empathetic Content Marketing in Action

1) LUSH

Content Type: Video

With the tagline, “Fresh, handmade cosmetics,” LUSH is a beauty brand that is all about natural products. As such, we see its radical transparency showcased in the "How It’s Made" video series, where LUSH goes behind-the-scenes of some of their most popular products.

Each episode features actual LUSH employees in the “kitchen,” narrating the step-by-step process of how the products are made. Lush visuals (pun intended) showcase just how natural the ingredients are. You see mounds of fresh lemons, tea infusions, and salt swirled together to become the product you know and love. It’s equal parts interesting and educational.

How it shows empathy:

LUSH customers want to buy beauty products that are truly natural. They care about using fresh, organic, and ethically sourced ingredients -- hence why the videos feature colorful, close-up shots of those organic lemons and sea salt to drive that point home. Taking customers inside the factory and showing them every part of the process -- with a human face -- assures them that they can consume these products with peace of mind.

2) LinkedIn

Content Type: Ebook

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions is all about mobilizing marketers to grow their audience, create more effective content, and, ultimately, achieve their goals. Naturally, LinkedIn wants its audience to leverage this service to achieve those goals. While it produces plenty of content related to the benefits of LinkedIn, the team has made a significant push into content that educates all levels of marketer on a variety of topics (as you can see on its blog).

This ebook, The Secret Sauce: Learn how LinkedIn uses LinkedIn for marketing, provides a ton of insider information about how LinkedIn itself uses the platform to achieve its marketing goals.

How it shows empathy:

One immensely effective empathy marketing tactic is education. LinkedIn wants to empower its audience to do work better (and use its product to do so), and this ebook is the single tool they need to understand and confidently use LinkedIn like the pros -- even the pros at LinkedIn headquarters.

Through offerings like this, customers learn that they can rely on LinkedIn as a trusted source to guide them in the right direction, and LinkedIn can continue to provide solutions through its product offerings. It’s a win-win all around.

3) The Home Depot

Content Type: Infographic

The Home Depot is a home and garden supply store that caters to all types of builders and DIY-ers -- whether you're a construction worker building a gazebo or a homemaker experimenting with gardening. In other words, their content must cater to various demographics.

As Home Depot is all about the DIY, its marketing focuses on what its supplies can help you do -- not just what the supplies are. This "Grow a Living Salad Bowl" infographic teaches consumers to grow their own salads, offering information on how to do it, which vegetables grow best, and what supplies they need -- all with minimal branding.

Source: The Home Depot

How it shows empathy:

The Home Depot's customers dream of being skilled DIY-ers, but need a bit of help working through the unknown, as well as some encouragement. This infographic delivers on these, and inspires customers to take action. 

4) Extra

Content Type: Interactive Site

We’ve seen just about every twist on gum marketing possible: sexy encounters, romantic trysts, and more. Extra is pushing past that narrative. The brand realizes that gum is an everyday part of life, a seemingly mundane product, but its omnipresence means it’s there for many of life’s little moments. Hence, the #givextragetextra campaign is all about celebrating those moments -- the awesome fishing trip, the road trip with friends, the engagement -- by turning them into art.

The interactive site and social campaign encourage you to submit photos of those everyday moments to be turned into sketches, some of which appear on the inside flap of Extra packaging. At the site, you can see the images, watch a video of the artist’s sketches, peruse the gallery, and search to see if your submission has been turned into art.

How it shows empathy:

In many ways, gum is a product meant to enhance intimacy, making your breath fresh for more closeness. In our techno-connected world, those everyday moments of intimacy are often overlooked. This campaign helps customers become more aware and celebratory of those moments. By encouraging them to capture and share those memories -- and honoring them through the gum-wrapper art -- Extra is helping customers live a more full and present life.

5) Microsoft

Content Type: Interactive Infographic

Microsoft’s security solutions are all about keeping consumers’ data safe. The brand's goal, then, is to educate and explain why its products are important. That said, data security is not the sexiest topic -- not to mention plenty has been said about it.

To give it a new twist, Microsoft created the Anatomy of a Data Breachinteractive site, which explains the issue of data security through a relevant lens: the data heist.

The site puts consumers in a hacker’s shoes, guiding them through the stages of a data breach and showing, in detail, exactly how the data is stolen. Coupled with statistics about data security, the messaging is clear.

How it shows empathy:

Consumers know data breaches are a problem, but they don’t know exactly how they happen (seriously, how do these keep on happening? Asking for a friend.) By making an engaging story and using real consumer survey data, Microsoft brings the problem to life in a genuine and accessible way. Through the interactive, customers truly see their vulnerabilities and better understand how to protect themselves.

6) Michael’s

Content Type: Blog

In a world where Pinterest dominates, Michael’s chain of craft stores is making a play to capture its own audience on its own properties. The brand has long provided the standard craft tutorials and product features on its site, but with The Glue String blog, Michael's is inserting itself into its readers’ lifestyles with a variety of content.

Posts like “Marker 101: How to Choose a Tip” may sound a little silly, but for avid crafters, these are the exact types of posts that are relevant to their lives. The beautiful layout and high-impact visuals only help to bring these stories to life.

How it shows empathy:

Crafting is an exciting hobby, but not without its own frustrations. Providing useful tips and hacks on how to do things better via a free publication helps readers do more of what they love with fewer headaches. Additionally, fans get to share their enthusiasm through social, helping Michael’s extend its reach while helping their audience show their interests off.

7) JetBlue

Content Type: Video

JetBlue is a brand known for superb customer service and humor. At this point, we know where it flies and we know its hook, so its marketing needs to extend beyond the services provided. As such, JetBlue's content is focusing more on the world of flying and the experiences we all have.

The Flight Etiquette videos are funny PSAs that spotlight some of the most pervasive problems we encounter while traveling: overzealous flight boarding, chatty seatmates, etc. By giving it the sarcastic “How NOT to” twist, JetBlue showcases its humor and brand voice.

How it shows empathy:

There are specific instances that make the flying experience suck for all of us. These videos attempt to remedy these troubles by commiserating with and educating the public.

8) J.Crew

Content Type: Visual How-Tos

J.Crew is a sophisticated clothing brand that has always marketed toward lifestyle, framing its clothes within that context. While it has a devoted following, it's always searching for ways to more deeply connect with its audience.

The company's blog is a fantastic outlet for that. Naturally, as design is a core part of its business, it is a major component of publishing. Its clean design superbly showcases J.Crew products, tips, and tricks. And, it consistently uses on-brand visuals to enhance the content. For example, "How to Get (and Dress For) the Job You Want" includes interviews, expert advice, and vibrant visuals to tie together the discussion with some ideas of exact outfits to buy.

How it shows empathy:

Many J.Crew customers go shopping to find a great interview outfit to make the perfect first impression. Giving customers more options to express themselves -- and be successful --- through clothing helps them achieve that.

What Is Content Marketing?

What Is Content Marketing?

What is content?

Content is anything an individual or brand creates for consumption. Blog posts, photographs, videos, infographics, tweets, and SlideShares are all examples of content. Content marketing is what makes all those consumable pieces of information work for you or your brand in a cohesive way.

We took a look through mountains of content from top marketers to find definitions that struck us as, well, definitive. Read on for our top 25 (in random order) content marketing definitions.

What is content marketing?

1. “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Joe Pulizzi, Founder, Content Marketing Institute

2. “Traditional marketing and advertising is telling the world you’re a rock star.  Content Marketing is showing the world that you are one.”
Robert Rose, Chief Strategy Officer, Content Marketing Institute

3. “Content marketing is the process of developing, publishing, and distributing useful information that engages prospective customers and propels them toward purchase.”
Anne Murphy, Director of Marketing Content, Kapost

4. “Content marketing is about delivering the content your audience is seeking in all the places they are searching for it. It is the effective combination of created, curated and syndicated content.”
Michael Brenner, CEO, Marketing Insider Group

5. “Content Marketing is creating or curating non-product content — be it informational, educational, entertaining, etc — and publishing it to contact points with customers to get their attention, to focus on the topic around your solution, and pull them closer to learning more about you.”
Sam Decker, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Clearhead

6. “Content marketing is the process of developing and sharing relevant, valuable, and engaging content to target audience with the goal of acquiring new customers or increasing business from existing customers.”
Amanda Maksymiw, Senior Content Marketing Manager, Lattice Engines

7. “Content marketing is anything an individual or an organization creates and/or shares to tell their story. What it isn’t: A warmed-over press release served as a blog post.”
Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

8. “Content marketing is all the marketing that’s left.”
Seth Godin, Best-selling Author, Entrepreneur, Marketer, and Public Speaker

9. “Content Marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.”
Brian Clark, Founder & CEO, Rainmaker Digital

10. “Content is the emotional and informational bridge between commerce and consumer. Building that bridge requires more than a budget, editorial calendar, and vision. It requires people who care, who love content, and what it can do for people. Not just what it can do for revenue, but rather how it helps people live their lives.”
Jay Baer, President & Social Media and Content Marketing Strategist, Convince & Convert

11. “Content marketing is advertising that delivers value to its recipient, not just an impression.”
 Chris Bolman, Director of Integrated Marketing, Percolate, Inc

12. “Content marketing can be defined as the creation and distribution of meaningful insights, perspectives, and best practices that are valuable to a specific audience. The aim is to retain existing clients including doing more business with them and to attract new high-quality clients.”
Bruce Rogers, Chief Insight Officer, Forbes

13. “It isn’t advertising. It isn’t push marketing, in which messages are sprayed out at groups of consumers. Rather, it’s a pull strategy—it’s the marketing of attraction. It’s being there when consumers need you and seek you out with relevant, educational, helpful, compelling, engaging, and sometimes entertaining information.”
Rebecca Lieb, Principal, Conglomotron LLC

14. “Content marketing is the alignment of customer needs with business goals through purposeful content.”
Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Marketing

15. “A plan to grow and engage your customer base that is built around discovering what you can do for someone else, developing and delivering related content, and then measuring the results.”
Robert McGuire, Owner, McGuire Editorial & Consulting

16. “Content marketing is just solving the same customer problems as your product but through media you create and distribute.”
Jay Acunzo, Vice President, NextView

17. “Content marketing means educating your consumers about your product and your industry in a comprehensive and compelling way.”
Elizabeth Pop Nikolov, Content Strategist, Venveo

18. “Content marketing is an inbound methodology. Rather than interrupting prospects with sales pitches they don't care about, you instead demonstrate value to qualified traffic with content tailor made to solve their problems.”
Zachary Chastain, Head of Community Engagement, Thought Labs

19. “Content Marketing provides consumers with useful information to aid purchase decisions, improve product usage and entertain them while achieving organizational goals without being overtly promotional.”
Heidi Cohen, Chief Content Officer, Actionable Marketing Guide

20. “Instead of one-way interruption, [content marketing] is about delivering useful content at just the precise moment that a buyer needs it.”
David Meerman Scott, Keynote Speaker & Bestselling Author, Freshspot Marketing

21. “Producing, curating and sharing content that is based upon customers’ needs and delivers visible value.”
Ryan Skinner, Senior Analyst on Brand Storytelling, Forrester Research

22. "Successful content marketing means communicating effectively, making connections, engaging your audience, inspiring customer action, and providing something of value to your fans or followers."
John Rampton, Founder & CEO, Due.com

23. “It is a strategy of producing and publishing information that builds trust and authority among your ideal customers.”
Neil Patel, Co-Founder, Crazy Egg & Hello Bar

24. "Content marketing is engaging with your community around an idea instead of a product. What it is is to try to serve the community first, and sharing information, ideas and experiences that benefit others without directly asking for anything in return. What it isn’t is just a veil in front of a sales pitch."
Dan Blank, Founder, WeGrowMedia

25. “Content marketing is what web searchers are looking for.”
Dan Blumenthal, Media & Branding Designer, The University of Arizona College of Medicine

online marketing overview

Someone rightly highlighted the importance of digital marketing with these words, “Brands which fail to establish an emotional connect with the millennials will be outshone sooner or later by the ones that do.”

And it is not the big brands that are making digital marketing count. It is the smarter creed of startups and small-scale enterprises that have successfully cracked the code of digital marketing.

What can you as a business learn from them? Well, here are some of the key metrics that I’ve figured out. Take a look at them, and how you can succeed at the game of digital marketing -

Build your marketing plan in steps so everyone can see how their work adds up. Switch to ProofHub.

Content marketing

In words of marketing prodigy Seth Godin - content marketing is the only marketing left.

Take a look at the trends for the past few years. You will get to see that brands that have invested in creating top quality content have managed to create powerful presence in the market.

One of the examples of effective content marketing comes in the form of Leadpages, a company that deals in designing customisable, landing page templates, and also provides testing services. Thanks to their powerful content marketing efforts, Leadpages were able to get their customer lifetime value to customer acquisition ratios quite high.

In words of the company’s CEO Clay Collins, “A content team of four people could outperform an 80+ person sales team at most companies.”

Here’s what they focused upon as part of their content marketing strategy -

• Popularising their blog by creating beautiful, useful and compelling content
• Spreading marketing resources such as e-books, case studies, infographics and courses
• Conducting weekly webinars to build a community for spreading their content

And the results? Leadpages has become a multi-million dollar company, and one of the fastest growing companies in the US.

Video marketing

If we talk about the trends, video marketing ranks right up there in the present scenario. YouTube and live video streams have become the next big thing in marketing.

As per statistics, companies that leveraged video marketing to good effect were able to grow 49 percent faster than the companies that did not.

Just like content, you can leverage different types of videos in marketing. Starting from engaging and funny videos to creating tutorials - there’s a lot that you can do as part of your video marketing endeavors. And, thanks to the rise of live video streaming, it has now become easy to keep your community engaged and hooked by sharing live story videos and what not.

Lowes Home Improvement is one of the most prominent names when it comes to pocket-friendly, and successful video marketing.

Social media marketing

‘We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.” - Erik Qualman

Social media keeps us connected to the world. Over the past few years, it has become a lot more than just something that people use as a pastime. In fact, studies show that social media plays a massive role in user’s buying choice, with customers being 71percent more likely to purchase a product based on social media referral.

As they say in the marketing world, ‘social today is not just a tick in the box, it’s bread and butter for a brand’s survival.’

The best example of cost-effective social media marketing campaign that worked really well - Know Your Lemons - Worldwide Breast Cancer! In this unique campaign, the organisation encouraged women to stay safe against breast cancer by checking their breasts regularly and looking for early physical warning signs. Using a standalone member’s page on Facebook, they were able to raise their fundraising target by 317 percent using just a smile ‘donate’ call to action.

As you can see, you don’t have to break your bank in order to succeed at social media marketing.

Search engine marketing

The good old SEO - you would have heard about it for sure. It is a mix of different practices that are used to get on top of results in search engines. How could a list of cost-effective marketing strategies be complete without SEO.

It is the oldest form of digital marketing, and still ranks right on top when you talk about getting results. With the right SEO tactics you can eventually gain limitless traffic to your website. And, it won’t cost you a dime. There are plenty of tutorials and online courses available that can help you master the art of SEO.

In fact, you can hire professional services for the same that will cost you much lesser as compared to any of the other services.

Remarketing

Lastly, we are going to focus on one area that’s fairly less discussed i.e. remarketing. Targeting users who have already visited your website, remarketing lets you tempt potential buyers who had left your website for some reason or the other.

It works based on cookies - the trail that users leave while visiting your website. With the help of these cookies, you can easily target social media accounts of users, or any other websites they visit, to display your ads and increase the chances of them getting converted.

Though it falls under paid marketing, the ROI is pretty good. Hence, you can expect to get a lot more than you are investing; making it an easy, quick way to boost your business sales with online marketing.