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3 Content Marketing Lessons Inspired by RAM, Stackla, and Zoom

This week, take a musical road trip with Ram Truck. Stop for a glimpse of real people’s preference for authentic content. Then wrap up the trip with an ending that’s anything but a throwaway.

Bands on the run with Ram

As bands get back on the road again, Ram Truck is taking its Ram BandVan Tour out on the road again. This year’s edition, called Back to Live, provides at least five emerging bands with the use of a ProMaster BandVan when they’re on the road.

First in the lineup is Radkey, a band opening for the Foo Fighters, who have an established relationship with Ram Truck.

Earlier this year, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl directed What Drives Us, a documentary featuring well-known bands reminiscing about the time they spent driving show to show in a van. (Foo Fighters drove a Ram van they called Big Red Delicious.) He also appeared in an ad campaign for the brand.

WHY IT MATTERS: A year ago, the Ram BandVan experience wasn’t going anywhere because bands weren’t going anywhere during the pandemic. Since Ram Truck started the BandVan tour in 2018, the tour website offered plenty of content to keep people interested – including alumni news and links to music from the more than 20 artists who participated in 2018 and 2019. Fans can keep up with the content by following #RamBandVan on Instagram and other social channels.

Ram Truck also took a celebrity endorsement to the next level through the layered content partnership with Dave Grohl that encompasses the documentary, the ads, and the stories around Radkey.

.@RamTrucks #ContentMarketing goes into overdrive with the return of the #RamBandVan tour and a documentary by (and ad series featuring) @FooFighters Dave Grohl via @CMIContent. #WeeklyWrap Click To Tweet

Turns out, real people prefer real people

Authenticity matters to most consumers, according to Post-Pandemic Shifts in Consumer Shopping Habits: Authenticity, Personalization, and the Power of UGC by Stackla.

How do you create that authenticity? The survey says look to your customers: 72% say real customer photos and videos are the content they most want to see on e-commerce sites when making purchasing decisions. And 80% say they would be more likely to purchase a product online if the website featured photos and videos from customers.

Interestingly, 79% say user-generated content highly impacts their purchasing decisions, while only 9% say influencer content does. And more than half (58%) say they have left an e-commerce site without buying because it didn’t have any customer reviews or photos.

Consumers also are willing to be those real people too, with more than 50% saying they would give a brand permission to use their image or video.

Results of a recent Stackl study showing 58% would give a brand permission to use their image or video of clothing or accessories and home goods, 54% for beauty/health/wellness products, 53% for sporting goods, and 52% for trips.
A recent study from Stackla found 58% of those surveyed would give a brand permission to use their image or video of clothing or accessories and home goods, 54% for beauty, health, or wellness products, 53% for sporting goods, and 52% for excursions. (Image source)

WHY IT MATTERS: This survey focused on online retailers, but the results should inform both B2C and B2B content marketing strategies. Audiences are more likely to act when they see others doing the same. You don’t have to offer formal reviews or star rating systems. You just need content featuring real people who have similar needs and interests to your audience. And you don’t have to invest a lot of money to create it – user-generated content can win audience attention and interest.

Before you hire an “influencer,” consider 79% of people in a @Stackla survey said user-generated content highly impacts purchasing decisions. Only 9% said influencer #content does. @CMIContent #WeeklyWrap Click To Tweet

Don’t waste a content opportunity

Given how Zoom has become a verb in the past 18 months, you might expect the brand to relax its marketing. Instead, the live meeting platform has sped ahead using an often overlooked on-ramp: the screen you see once your meeting has ended.

Zoom created a library of relevant and interesting calls to action to show once the meeting ends. It has over two dozen options in the rotation, including this one with a link to a third-party report (Gartner) about online meeting services:

Example of a Zoom end-of-meeting page featuring a content-driven CTA. This one links to the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant report for meetings solutions.

Image source

WHY IT MATTERS: Less sophisticated marketers might not recognize that the thank-you or meeting conclusion page is a content opportunity. But Zoom did. The company’s marketing team knows a lot of its users aren’t paying customers – they’ve joined someone else’s meeting, or they’re subscribed to the free service. But it sees the value in communicating to an audience that’s already interested in its product. Though we can’t all be Zoom, we can identify those “throwaway” pages and make them more valuable to our brands and our audiences.

.@Zoom marketing takes advantage of an often-overlooked audience on-ramp – the page people see when their meeting ends. Read all about it on @CMIContent. #WeeklyWrap Click To Tweet
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute