A few years back, Wendy Clark, head of Integrated Marketing Communications and Capabilities at Coca-Cola gave some insight into the brand’s new and, somewhat surprising, approach to cross-media marketing.

For more than 100 years, Coca-Cola has been one of the world’s leaders in what they call “one-way storytelling,” which is what you and I call an advertisement.  But brands can no longer buy their way into greatness anymore, and Coke knows that.  And while they may have one of the world’s biggest brands, with a billion dollar budget, Coca-Cola adopted a strategy that is quickly becoming the most important tool for smaller businesses – content marketing.

“Liquid and linked” is the phrase Coke’s marketing team is using to describe its cross-media content strategy.  First, let’s talk about the “liquid” aspect.  Liquid content may be described as memorable or significant content which people are highly motivated to share via social networks.  This could be an article, image or video – anything that is contagious enough to be shared outside your own circle of influence.

One benefit of viral sharing is the fact that it will include the ‘conversations’ that surround the liquid content, which enhances customer engagement and promotes interest as a diversity of ideas emerge as participation builds.

The “linked” part of this strategy refers to the fact that no matter which media is used, it remains close to the heart of the underlying business goals of a brand.  After all, there is no point watching content go viral if it offers little or no sales increase of your product.

I think it’s safe to say that none of us have the same resources or budget as Coca-Cola, and we may not be able to produce content that consistently goes viral, but SMBs can still learn quite a bit from the “liquid and linked” strategy.

There’s not too much difference between average content and good content; there’s not even that much difference between good content and great content.  But there’s a substantial difference between remarkable content and the rest.  Remarkable content is what will go viral, and viral content will bring you amazing results and drive conversions.  No one knows for sure which bit of content will go viral, and not every piece will.

You don’t need an endless budget to create something special and works alongside your company goals.  Think outside of the box and get creative.  You will be rewarded with social shares and links, which will boost your visibility in the search engines, and potentially, sales.

 If you’d like to talk about how to improve your content marketing strategy, talk to Marketing Director, Steve Ballantyne today.  steve@b2bpartners.nz

Or download our ebook, The Superheroes of Digital Marketing.