User-Generated Content (UGC) is any form of content—text, videos, images, reviews, etc.—created in support of a brand by individuals rather than brand themselves. This content is shared publicly, often on social media platforms or dedicated sections of a website. UGC is pivotal for brands, as it serves as a raw, authentic testament of customer experiences and perceptions. It's the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth, which has been a cornerstone of trust-building in marketing for ages.
The significance of UGC lies in its authenticity and ability to resonate with other consumers. When people see real users engaging with a product or service, it fosters a sense of trust and reliability. This authentic portrayal often influences purchasing decisions more effectively than traditional advertising, as consumers tend to trust fellow consumers over corporate messaging.
Moreover, UGC provides invaluable insights into customer preferences and behaviors, aiding brands in tailoring their offerings and communication strategies.
There are many benefits to deploying a UGC strategy for your brand—here are just a few:
Visual content, such as photos and videos, is among the most engaging forms of UGC. It's visually appealing and can convey a message more effectively than text alone. Brands can leverage user-generated photos and videos in numerous ways, such as showcasing real-life applications of their products, highlighting customer satisfaction, or simply adding a human touch to their marketing materials. This type of UGC is particularly impactful in B2C on visual platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.
Testimonials and reviews are powerful forms of UGC that offer firsthand accounts of customers’ experiences with a brand's products or services. They play a crucial role in the decision-making process of potential customers. Positive testimonials and reviews build trust and credibility, while negative ones, though seemingly undesirable, provide brands with honest feedback that can be used to improve products or services.
Testimonials and reviews are also beneficial for SEO, as they often contain relevant keywords and phrases used by consumers. This can help improve a brand’s search rankings and visibility online.
Social media posts and shares are another vital type of UGC. When customers share their experiences, opinions, or content related to a brand on social media, it amplifies the brand's reach and can attract new audiences. These posts can be in the form of status updates, tweets, stories, or even live videos.
This type of UGC is particularly effective because it's organic and appears in a consumer's natural social media environment, making it feel more genuine and less intrusive than traditional advertising. Moreover, when these posts are shared or liked by others, they gain an additional layer of endorsement.
The key to acquiring high-quality UGC is to actively engage and motivate your audience. It may sound simple, but asking for UGC is the best way to get it. Encourage them to share their experiences and thoughts about your brand. To increase the likelihood of success, it's crucial to create a community atmosphere where users feel valued and heard. Responding to UGC, highlighting exceptional contributions, and maintaining an active and responsive social media presence are effective ways to foster this community spirit.
Offering rewards or incentives is a highly effective method to encourage UGC. These rewards could range from discounts, featured spots on your website or social media, to entries in contests with attractive prizes. The key is to provide value that resonates with your audience.
This approach not only motivates your current customers to participate but also attracts potential customers who see the benefits of engaging with your brand.
Creating experiences and events that are inherently shareable can naturally prompt UGC. This could be anything from an exclusive product launch event to an online challenge or hashtag campaign. These experiences should be unique, engaging, and aligned with your brand identity to encourage maximum participation and sharing. Remember, the goal is to create moments that your audience wants to be a part of and, more importantly, share with their own networks.
Each of these strategies plays a crucial role in acquiring UGC. They not only encourage content creation but also deepen your engagement with your audience, creating a loyal community around your brand.
Determine what you aim to achieve with UGC—whether it's increasing brand awareness, driving sales, or improving customer engagement. Once your objectives are clear, plan how UGC will be integrated into your overall marketing strategy. This includes deciding on the platforms where UGC will be showcased, the type of content you wish to encourage, and how it aligns with your other marketing initiatives.
Different social media platforms and marketing channels have distinct audiences and formats, and UGC should be tailored accordingly. For instance, Instagram is visually driven, making it ideal for photo and video content, while LinkedIn might be more suited for professional testimonials and thought leadership. Consider the strengths and user behavior on each platform to maximize the impact of UGC.
It's crucial to obtain explicit permission from users before repurposing their content for marketing purposes. This not only shows respect for their intellectual property but also builds trust within your community. Always credit the original creator, which not only adheres to ethical standards but also encourages others to contribute, knowing they’ll be acknowledged.
While positive UGC is invaluable for promoting your brand, negative UGC should not be ignored. Use it as a learning tool to understand customer pain points and improve your offerings. Address negative feedback promptly and constructively to demonstrate your brand's commitment to customer satisfaction.
Implementing these best practices ensures that your use of UGC is respectful, effective, and aligns with your marketing goals, ultimately leading to a more engaged and loyal customer base.
Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" campaign is a stellar example of UGC done right. The campaign featured bottles with popular names and encouraged people to share a Coke with someone they knew with that name. This simple yet personalized approach led to a surge in customer engagement, with people sharing pictures and stories on social media of themselves and their friends enjoying a Coke. The campaign successfully created a sense of community and personal connection, driving both online engagement and sales.
Burberry’s “Art of the Trench” campaign revolutionized the use of UGC in luxury fashion marketing. The campaign invited customers to upload photos of themselves wearing Burberry trench coats. These images were then showcased on a dedicated website and social media. This approach not only celebrated the brand’s heritage but also allowed customers to become part of Burberry's story, creating an emotional bond with the brand.
Lululemon’s #thesweatlife campaign encouraged customers to share their fitness journeys and how Lululemon products were a part of that journey. By focusing on real-life experiences and stories, the campaign resonated deeply with the brand’s target audience, creating a community of fitness and wellness enthusiasts bonded by their love for the brand.
T-Mobile’s unique campaign invited users to share their “break-up letters” with their previous mobile carriers. This humorous and relatable approach allowed customers to vent their frustrations in a creative way, while also promoting T-Mobile’s services as a better alternative. The campaign was highly successful in driving engagement and highlighting customer satisfaction with T-Mobile's services.
Each of these campaigns demonstrates the power of UGC in creating authentic, engaging, and customer-centric marketing strategies.
Building a strong community of users is essential for generating consistent and quality UGC. Encourage the formation of user groups, online forums, or social media communities where customers can share experiences and engage with each other. These communities can become hotbeds for UGC, providing a platform for your most loyal customers to become brand advocates. Engaging with these communities, highlighting their content, and showing appreciation can further motivate users to generate UGC.
Social media campaigns are perfect for encouraging UGC. Create campaigns that are easy for users to participate in and share. These could include challenges, hashtags, or contests that prompt users to create content related to your brand. Make sure these campaigns are fun, engaging, and aligned with your brand's values. Showcasing the best submissions on your social media channels can also encourage more users to participate.
Contests and challenges are highly effective in encouraging UGC. They can create excitement and a sense of competition, prompting more users to participate. Ensure that the rules are simple and the rewards are attractive. Contests can range from photo or video challenges to writing testimonials or creating art. The key is to make it relevant to your brand and accessible to your target audience.
Incorporating UGC into your product design or packaging can be a powerful strategy. This could mean featuring customer photos or quotes on your packaging or creating products based on customer suggestions and feedback. This not only generates UGC but also makes customers feel like an integral part of the brand’s journey.
While UGC can be highly beneficial, it's essential to ensure that the content aligns with your brand's standards and values. Implement a moderation process to review UGC before it's featured on your platforms. This process should assess the quality, relevance, and appropriateness of the content. It's crucial to maintain a balance between encouraging creativity and expression while ensuring that the UGC upholds your brand's image and ethos.
When using UGC, it’s important to navigate legal and ethical considerations. Always obtain explicit permission from the original creators before using their content, especially for commercial purposes. Be transparent about how the content will be used. Additionally, respect privacy and intellectual property rights. This not only avoids legal complications but also builds trust and respect with your audience.
Developing and implementing best practices for UGC moderation is key to maintaining a positive and safe environment for your community. This includes establishing clear guidelines for what constitutes acceptable content, training your team on these guidelines, and using tools to help manage and moderate content efficiently. Regularly review and update your moderation practices to adapt to changing trends and community feedback.
Integrating UGC directly onto your website and product pages can significantly enhance the user experience. Featuring customer photos, videos, or reviews next to your products can provide a more authentic and relatable perspective, aiding potential customers in their decision-making process. This not only enriches the content on your site but also improves SEO by updating your site with fresh, relevant content.
Transform UGC into a shoppable experience by linking user-generated images or videos directly to products. This approach bridges the gap between inspiration and purchase, allowing customers to easily buy products featured in UGC. It’s a powerful way to leverage social proof while simplifying the customer journey from discovery to purchase.
Utilize UGC in live or virtual events and on digital signage to create a dynamic and engaging atmosphere. Showcasing real customer stories and experiences can add a personal touch to your events, making them more relatable and memorable. This also encourages attendees to create and share their own content during the event, further amplifying your reach.
Reposting UGC on your social media channels can significantly boost your content strategy. It shows appreciation for your customers and provides diverse and authentic content for your followers. Always credit the original creator and ensure the content aligns with your overall social media strategy and brand voice.
Incorporating UGC into email campaigns can make your communications more engaging and personalized. Featuring customer stories, reviews, or images in your emails can add a level of authenticity that resonates with recipients, potentially increasing open rates and engagement.
By strategically incorporating UGC across various channels, you can create a cohesive and engaging brand narrative that leverages the power of your community’s voice.
The power of User-Generated Content (UGC)lies in its authenticity and the genuine connection it fosters between brands and their audiences. By embracing UGC, brands not only enhance their marketing strategies with content that resonates deeply with consumers, but they also build a community rooted in trust and mutual respect.
UGC will undoubtedly continue to play a crucial role in shaping brand narratives and driving consumer engagement. It's not just about showcasing products or services anymore; it's about weaving the customer's voice into the very fabric of a brand's identity. UGC, therefore, is not just a tool in the marketer's arsenal—it's the cornerstone of a brand's relationship with its customers.
UGC refers to any content created and shared by consumers or end-users about a brand or product. It's important because it serves to increase authentic social proof, enhance brand credibility and trust, and can significantly influence consumer behavior and decision-making.
UGC can improve SEO by generating fresh, relevant content for your website. This includes customer reviews, comments, and social media posts, which can increase your site's visibility in search results and drive organic traffic.
The most effective types of UGC include customer reviews and testimonials, social media posts, user-generated photos and videos, and blog posts. The effectiveness can vary based on your industry and target audience.
You can encourage UGC by creating engaging campaigns, offering incentives, hosting contests, and actively interacting with your audience on social media. Providing excellent products and customer service also naturally prompts users to share their positive experiences.
Best practices include setting clear guidelines for acceptable content, regularly monitoring submissions, respecting users’ privacy and copyright, and obtaining permission before using UGC for commercial purposes.
Measure UGC impact by tracking metrics such as impressions, engagement rates, conversion rates, website traffic from UGC sources, and the sentiment of the UGC. Also, monitor changes in brand perception and customer loyalty.
While UGC can complement traditional marketing, it shouldn't completely replace it. A balanced approach that includes both UGC and professionally created content is often the most effective strategy.
Verify the authenticity of UGC by checking the source, engaging with the user, and using tools to detect fraudulent or manipulated content. Authenticity is key to maintaining trust in your brand.
Be aware of copyright and intellectual property laws, and always get explicit consent from content creators before using their UGC. Also, be mindful of privacy concerns and data protection regulations.
Integrate UGC by featuring it on your website, social media channels, email campaigns, and advertising. Align UGC with your brand goals, and use it to complement other marketing efforts for a cohesive strategy.
The customer should be at the center of every marketer's strategy, but most marketers rely exclusively on quantitative data from the many tools at their disposal. Customer interviews expert, Ryan Paul Gibson, breaks down we need customer interview programs, how to build them, and how to share learnings across our organizations.
If you saw photos of a bunch of marketers partying in early October, you got half the story.
97th Floor's Mastermind is an annual marketing leadership conference located in Park City, Utah. This year, from October 3-5, marketing leaders spent two days at The St. Regis Deer Valley participating in expert-led discussions on marketing strategy, listening to keynote speaker Ryan Holiday, and collaborating with peers.
There may or may not have also been a cooking challenge, some painting and hiking, and delicious food all against the stunning background of Park City’s colorful fall mountains.
We’ve pulled together 8 lessons from the bright minds of our attendees. Note that because each discussion leader took a different approach to their topic, each write-up will read a little differently. Here's what you're in for:
Brand-marketing-adverse leadership are armed with one argument: You can’t prove ROI. Sean Michael Colee-Addington and Tatiana Fabregas from NBCU dissolved this argument in their discussion on balancing brand and performance marketing.
But what about tracking? Tatiana is confident that the “data is getting there to give you the ROI" for brand marketing. Brand marketing can be measured; it’s just measured differently through awareness, education, values, introduction, and sustaining a competitive edge. Get creative and think about what other tangible metrics could be driven by brand marketing. You may not see any movement in revenue for the immediate next quarter, but you can see lift and trust that budget spent on brand marketing will pay out with increase in the future.
Asking someone to trust that a spend will pay out — without immediate proof — is exactly what every pitch comes down to. Whether it's a marketing budget conversation or a funding moment, the structure of the ask is the same: conviction, clarity, and a credible case for patience.
Daniel Nisan, startup founder with direct experience on both sides of the investor table, shares what he's learned about making that case when real money is on the line. This short video captures the mindset and mechanics behind a high-stakes pitch that actually lands.
Do This: Reevaluate what percentage of your marketing efforts are branded—if high-funnel, branded campaigns aren't receiving any budget, allocate a small portion of budget to test your ideas and establish a system for measuring value.
97th Floor’s unique team structure isn’t the only thing that makes us the best choice for our clients - it’s also the leadership values and style we practice in the company.
97th Floor CEO Paxton Gray led a discussion about how marketing leaders can develop a productive team. We’ve pulled key takeaways from those who participated.
- Carve out ownership for everyone on your team.
- Don’t take away an opportunity to learn or grow by just doing something yourself.
- When hiring, it's not about finding a culture fit, it's about finding a culture add.
- Embrace a diversity of approaches for the diversity in your team.
- When working with your team, be involved and mirror the passion of what excites them about the work.
Do this: Evaluate your team's feedback loops—how does each team member see and understand the impact they have on the company's bottom line? Build a system for more frequent and thorough feedback.
Sam Oh, Ahrefs' VP of Marketing, led a discussion about developing standard operating procedures that will:
Here's his team's internal process...for creating processes:
Keep in mind that there’s no such thing as a “perfect” system. Train your team to proactively notice blockers in your systems and propose optimizations.
A strong foundational systems that should free up individual contributors' time and attention to be more creative. Scaleable creativity comes from defined systems that get modified and improved on in documented, measurable ways.
Do this: Using Sam's flow and as a marketing team, take 15 minutes to create a documented system for one task your team performs regularly. Set a date for when you'll reevaluate and optimize that process.
Christina Garnett is Hubspot’s Principal Community Manager for Offline Community and Advocacy. Her discussion group benefited from learning Christina's 3 ingredients for turning customers into brand advocates.
Do this: Think about core memories you have with brands. What do these memories inspire you to do for your customers? Hold a brainstorm with your marketing team on how your brand can create core memories.
John Huntinghouse, VP of Marketing at TAB Bank, pulled from proprietary 2020 research to show the importance of thought leadership for decision-makers.
Here's some of the juice:
Put your content through these filters to determine if it will be valuable thought leadership for your space:
Do this: Use John's questions to evaluate your upcoming content calendar—it's not too late to pivot (or even scrap) content that doesn't meet standards.
97th Floor’s not-so-secret sauce for every campaign is an undying commitment to understand our client’s customers before we do anything else. Danny Allen, 97th Floor’s VP of Marketing, discussed how to use personas to create content. Consider this:
Do you think you have a good eye for design and user experience? Do you know what will move customers to act?
Prove it.
So…how did you do? We’re thinking not too great, and that’s okay.
We talked to Deborah O’Malley about all this. She is the founder of GuessTheTest, an A/B test case study resource focused on helping digital marketers increase conversions and get new ideas and insights from testing. She says, "In CRO testing, your chances of guessing the right test are about equal to guessing the correct side of a coin toss. Don’t make assumptions.”
Feel better? We all love our biases and assumptions, but we’re with Deborah. You need to rethink yours.
Most Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is done to increase the conversion rate of a SaaS sign-up form or an e-commerce product page. It involves taking a critical page or conversion point, creating 3-5 variants of that same page (each with one single tweak), using a tool like Google Optimize or Optimizely to run live traffic to each of those variants, and then discovering the "winner."
CRO - done right - enables marketers to step out of their biases and actually begin to understand their customers. Still, we’ve found that CRO is largely neglected. Econsultancy reports that 50% of companies value CRO as a crucial part of their marketing strategy, but that only 1% are very satisfied with their conversion rates.
Guess the Test shares, “The average conversion rate hovered around 3% in 2020. That means of 100 visitors coming to your website, only 3 out 100 are taking the desired action you hope they’ll perform, like purchasing your product.”
Ouch. Econsultancy also found that businesses that successfully boost conversion rates perform 50% more tests. This statistic speaks for itself. More tests, of the right tests, is better.
But still, companies spend just $1 on CRO for every $92 spent on customer acquisition. Samantha Brown, the VP of Enterprise Client Services at 97th Floor, explained, "There is a huge gap between what we’re willing to pay for traffic and what we’re willing to pay to turn that traffic into customers.
Seems off. CRO should be a higher priority, so we set out to discover the major roadblocks here and how to overcome them.
We’ve got some pointers.
CRO is a methodology, but we’ve probably all got it labeled as a tactic. Big misunderstanding.
As a manager, you focus on systems for acquisition, monetization, and retention. To improve all of these systems, you need to think of CRO as a method for innovation and not just a tactic. It’s not a phase - it’s a lifestyle, because the moment you stop testing, you’re saying “my customers aren’t living, breathing, changing humans,” or “I don’t care to keep learning from them.” Does that feel extreme? Yeah. So does not testing.
So, keep testing. Shiva Manjunath, Senior Strategist at Speero, is passionate about testing to learn. Whether or not your test is a “win” for conversion, the results are invaluable for understanding your customers. What you learn in each test should inform the next test you run. Shiva says, "The ripple effects and learnings of web testing are more impactful measurements of success than the individual metrics you move."
The CRO Shiva is talking about is more than changing the CTA button color or placing the CTA in a new location. He’s concerned about understanding his audience through the tests he runs. He’s more focused on experimentation —a mindset shift we all need to make.
Shiva Manjunath continues, “We need to unlearn CRO and relearn experimentation. We are running experiments on the website to optimize for the business KPIs and sometimes that’s conversion rate optimization. But sometimes we see CRO and think all it is is optimizing front end conversions when in reality you can run experiments on whatever you want.”
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Be careful to not let the title “Conversion Rate Optimization” limit your efforts. If the term “CRO” focuses marketers on optimizing for conversions as opposed to experimenting for better audience understanding, that’s a problem. Expand that definition. You’re a marketer, but you should also be a scientist. Ask questions. Create a hypothesis. Relearn experimentation, and realize that CRO is just one important facet of that.
CRO can’t be a checkbox hire. It can’t be a checkbox procedure, either. Building a culture of experimentation will pull in those amazing benefits of CRO we all hope for but don’t know how to get.
Do This: Incorporate experimentation into every aspect and role of your business. Make it clear to every team member that the questions they have about their audience can be answered.
CRO can feel scientific, but it is also an art. Ben Labay, Managing Director at Speero, explains: “There’s an art to the systems approach to CRO. If you get a big win on a landing page test for e-commerce and you get a 10% lift in transactions, that’s cool. What would happen if the sales team or the customer success team knew customer behavioral, psychological principles that went into that change in behavior? Then you could start standing on the shoulders of learnings and gain an unfair advantage.”
One definition of creativity is simply being aware of all the tools at your disposal and then knowing which tools to use and how to use them to solve your problem. One step further, it's taking all of the information and insights you gain across an organization and finding connections between them.
If CRO is limited to X% increase on Y page, no learnings are gathered and no connections are made. If CRO learnings stop after one single test or are held within one single department, connections can't be made across the organization.
Shiva agrees on this one: “There has to be a level of creativity when it comes to experimentation because you’re doing creative problem solving. You have a hypothesis that you need to test. The hypothesis can be tested in an infinite number of ways, the execution can be done in an infinite number of ways. So you have to guard rail it into specific pages and specific audiences. You have to understand how you are going to analyze a specific test. Then you have to work within the limitations of the site's ability to be modified.”
The art is also in what you do with the data. Are you finding the story in your test results? Are you really thinking with the intent to understand your customers? Is this story shared beyond you and your team? Take your learnings and share them widely. Democratize CRO and every test thereafter will compound.
Do This: Compound learnings, share insights, and get creative. Sometimes it’s the third test that gets you to the earnings. Sometimes, it’s the learnings from Sales and Customer Service experimentation that will reveal the best next step.
Here’s Shiva again: “You can’t get anywhere if you don’t have leaders who believe in experimentation.”
So, what do you do without leader buy-in? How can you create this culture within your company?
First, stay focused on data. It’s probably a lot easier to argue data-backed decisions than CRO-backed decisions. We know they’re the same, but maybe your team hasn’t caught the picture yet. So, focus on data and show how CRO is an extension of data—a research tool—actually, the best research tool.
Ben Labay explains that there are two types of data. The first type comes from existing analytics, machine learning data and other forms of big data. This data is old when you pick it up and start to make decisions based on it. Ben warns that when using this data, “you are ripe to trip on your own cognitive biases or on your own confirmation biases.” The second type of data comes from CRO and it will confront your biases.
Ben says, “CRO and experimentation is more about intervention. It’s about coming into a situation, changing something and measuring the effect of those changes. This is “just in time” data. It is a step higher in the causal ladder to understand the mechanism behind what caused the change that you see in the data. Objectively, it’s a better type of data. It gets closer to the mechanism of why something is the way it is. You learn more precisely and more accurately and at a faster rate.”
This second kind of data is so valuable because it is intentional, living and “just in time” for you to step into your customer’s journey and really think about how the change you are testing caused the data you end up with. You’re intervening in an ongoing process, always adapting in real-time based on multiple levels of creative testing. You’re engaged with data and your audience in a whole new way. Ben wraps it all up nice when he clarifies, "Analytics is data that you see. CRO is data that you do."
Pretty compelling stuff, so we recommend you just start. Not in a rebellious way. We do not want an office coup over CRO. But what’s your role? And where can you test? Start experimenting. Use your insights to create the next test. Then be vocal about how experimentation is changing the game for you, and other teams will hop on.
Finally—and especially in a leadership role—educate.
Shiva shares, "People see experimentation as something that slows down decision making. The reality is you need experimentation to make better decisions so you don’t crash."
Shiva continues, “You need to teach people. There’s a lack of education. There are some people that just don’t want to run tests because they don’t want to be proved wrong. But honestly it just needs to be reframed as a partnership. We’re not here to prove people wrong, we’re here to make you look better.”
The right education and persistence can tip leadership towards CRO, and once they’re there you’ve got them. Jeremy Epperson, Chief Growth Officer at ConversionAdvocates, says, “You don’t know how much ROI you will get on a brand new channel or campaign. Why would you hold CRO to a higher standard? There is no guarantee of results in life. You just need to make the case to get started with CRO.”
Do This: Make your case. You have a small window to prove the value of experimentation. Use low-hanging fruit opportunities to educate and prove the value of CRO quickly to get buy-in and high fives all around.
Listen, you’ve got this. Experimenting is exciting! And once you get started, the fire will catch and your organization can increase conversion and sales and everything else with this new “just in time” data.
And for your first experiment? Try dropping this article in your company’s slack channel. Start the conversation. Just see what happens.
In 2022, artificial intelligence can drive cars, map the spread of infectious diseases, and recommend your next binge-worthy show. Some AI is even composing music and painting.
By some estimates, we could achieve “singularity”—or the point at which computers are proactively and exponentially improving themselves as the dominant intelligence on earth—by 2045.
Others don’t think this will ever happen. We think there’s no point worrying about it yet.
We’re wondering how it could impact marketing. Could certain marketing roles or responsibilities eventually be replaced by AI? Specifically, how will it impact content creation? With so much of a marketer’s work already living on digital platforms powered by AI (Google, social media platforms, marketing automation software, etc.), could AI-generated content ever replace human-generated content?
We wanted to know. Fortunately, our client Hiya wanted to know, too.
Hiya is a SaaS voice performance platform that reduces spam calls and provides extremely impactful caller ID services to enterprises. We fed various AI machines content prompts for Hiya and gave the exact same prompts to the content team at 97th Floor. Take the quiz to see if you can pick out the human-created content.
We took these results back to Hiya to see what they thought about the AI content. Jonah-Kai Hancock, Hiya's Vice President of Demand Generation, noted that "Any time you are asking someone to read a blog or engage in an email or watch a webinar you are asking for their time and I don’t think that the AI does a really good job explaining what I would get out of that time.”
Rachel Bascom, Head of Content Marketing at 97th Floor, was surprised by what the AI could do. She shared, “The blog article from AI may rank fairly well. We could use it for SEO and it might please an algorithm, but I don’t think it would sell anything anytime soon. A content marketer is thinking beyond an algorithm in a way that AI can’t do. Yes, the AI piece might rank well, but what happens when someone opens that link? Human writers can think about the content journey and create something engaging, educational and conversational.”
Rachel is also feeling assured that she, a living breathing content marketer, will get to keep her job after this experiment.
No surprise here—we all felt that the AI content lacked personality. Especially in Hiya’s industry where personal touch is central to their product, this AI content could never fly.
But honestly, that’s what we expected. Here’s the process most marketers face when trying AI out for the first time:
Maybe you’ve had similar experiences. AI is, most often, not where it needs to be for marketers, and many marketers feel that their existing, non-AI process for content creation is effective. To many, adding AI seems like an unnecessary disruption of that process.
Hancock shares, “It would be a lot more work for me to figure out how to make AI work. Unless my content team came to me and said ‘hey we really want this and here’s why,’ I don’t see this happening right now.”
Content-generating AI is still unproven, and marketers are justified in hesitating to invest.
But that hesitation has a compounding cost — and the gap between early movers and late adopters widens faster than most realize. Certainty is always one more data point away, and waiting for it is how capable people end up starting last. Daniel Nisan, startup founder and investor, makes the case that waiting for proof isn't caution — it's the most common reason people never begin. This short video breaks down the mental shift that separates those who start from those who wait indefinitely.
But is it possible we’re not giving AI a fair shot? It’s possible the marketing industry needs to invest more time and money into AI before it can help us to improve our content.
Realizing great AI-assisted content requires investing time into the tool.
Kate Bradley Chernis knows all about that. Chernis is the founder and CEO at Lately, an AI-based content generation platform creating dozens of pretested social posts to promote your brand’s longform content. Kate shared this with us: “If artificial intelligence was a human, it would be about three months old. It can’t sit up on its own, can’t feed itself, can’t do a lot of things. It requires human intervention to even exist. Without humans, it's just automation—we have to guide the AI along in the process.”
Laura Smous is the VP of Product Marketing at Verblio, a content creation marketplace and platform powered by human writers. We asked Laura about how writers should be using AI and she assures us that “There are a ton of places where AI can provide a really great assist, but it’s not replacing humans in the way that people fear.”
So, will AI take content marketers’ and copywriters’ jobs? Never. AI has major limitations. That said, there is no doubt it is quickly finding its way into the content production process. Marketers who don’t start experimenting and discovering the value AI can bring to their content could be disadvantaged.
Paul Roetzer, founder of the Artificial Intelligence Marketing Institute, forecasts that “A lot of marketers are going to sit back and in three years think ‘wow, this software is way better than it was.’ Then there’s going to be a segment of marketers who understand the potential of more intelligent software and they’re going to find those tools today and get a multi-year headstart on their peers who are still afraid of the topic.”
So where do marketers begin? How do marketing teams invite AI into their processes? We propose 3 key opportunities:
Market research is time-consuming and expensive—it’s also the least predictable aspect of content creation. It could take 2 hours or it could take 15 minutes. But it’s obviously crucial in providing content that resonates with your audience.
Laura Smous believes, “Content research can be assisted by AI, ensuring that some of the foundational ideas in content are not only backed by data but that they actually come from data as opposed to instinct. We can actually get some validation from AI research before anyone starts writing or looking at a brief.”
When Tomorrow Sleep appeared as a new startup in their market, their own high-quality content was pulling about 4,000 visitors per month. Anxious to scale up their content and connect with their audience, Tomorrow Sleep tapped into multiple AI-backed and non-AI-backed data content research tools. After discovering the topics their audience responded to and what their competitors were doing with these topics, Tomorrow Sleep was ready to launch new content that would rank and resonate with customers. The new AI-informed content resulted in 40,000 monthly site visitors - a 10,000% increase in less than a year.
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The AI didn’t write any of Tomorrow Sleep’s new content, but it propelled the marketing team in the right direction. Because of the new insights from AI, they could be completely confident in their content strategy, and their remarkable results further justified their research and content.
AI and even some of the newest data-backed tools can identify trends and keywords to focus on, generate topics, uncover what competitors are saying and identify high-value content for your audiences. It can analyze tremendous amounts of data - even open-ended data - with speed and efficiency, delivering key insights to decision makers before a decision is made.
Palomar is 97th Floor’s patent pending software for analyzing contextual, semantic data in real-time. Palomar’s SERP Intelligence crawls through all of the content on the web that competes with your content and after thorough analysis, it will not only tell you what to speak on and how to speak about it.
Another essential tool for marketers is SparkToro (founded by Rand Fishkin, original founder of Moz). SparkToro aggregates the most comprehensive overview of audience data on the internet revealing demographics, behavioral traits, topics discussed publicly online, and other key data points so that we can pick up on how our audience thinks, what they consume and ultimately how to help them purchase intelligently.
97th Floor recently took on a client facing unfounded public criticism and negative press, desperately in need of reputation management. We learned from Semantic Analysis in Palomar that a specific thought leader’s writing was negatively impacting public sentiment. We learned from SparkToro where specifically our audience was consuming this content. Our content teams knew that in order to rank on this issue and correct the misinformation, we had to debunk what was coming from these sources. Over the course of ten months, this research-backed content helped pull our client towards a positive public sentiment. Without this intelligence, our content could not have correctly identified and addressed the issues threatening our client.
AI or not, marketers are severely under-leveraging the tools and data available to them.
Do This: Let data-backed tools analyze data and deliver insights to you. Don’t shy away from this bias-free, super-efficient way to discover the seeds in your data that lead to golden content. Spend your time strategizing around reliable data, not finding it.
Tools to Try:
• SparkToro
• Palomar
• BuzzSumo
“Humans are bad at getting started. They’re bad at doing that first step towards that task.” That’s Laura Smous again and we’re all feeling quite seen by her comment. And maybe a little relieved that other humans are also like this.
Getting down an outline, a first draft, a content brief - going from nothing to something - can be daunting. But if an AI cranks out that first piece of writing for you, you can start acting as editor and creative, launching off of that writing into something more exciting without losing hours watching your cursor blink on an empty page.
The Associated Press was one of the first news organizations to use AI in reporting by integrating AI for news gathering, production and distribution beginning in 2014. By allowing AI to help draft content and amp up volume, AP reporters had more time to “experiment with new projects and establish thought leadership.”
Rachel Bascom shares, “In the past 9 years at 97th Floor, I’ve written a lot of content on a lot of different topics. Ten minutes can very quickly turn into thirty minutes or an hour when you’re just struggling to get started. Using AI-generated content as something to start with would make a huge difference.”
Where would you spend that 10 minutes? What about 30 minutes? An hour? What new projects would you start?
Do This: Add an AI draft to your workflow. Let a cold machine write something bad. Then turn that into something great.
Tools to Try:
• Frase
• Jasper
• StoryLab.ai
Yes, AI can speed up our processes—but we want more from it than efficiency. We want AI to help us create better content. There’s so much discussion about improving AI content, but could AI also teach us a few things? We posed this idea to Kate Bradley Chernis, and she shared two cases where Lately’s AI did just that.
One Lately client fed his blog into Lately’s AI and was horrified by the social posts he got back. Rather than condemning the machine for producing bad content, the client went to the Lately word cloud associated with his writing, examining which words resonate with his audiences across every timeframe, channel and campaign. He realized that his blog post was just bad. With new intel from Lately’s AI, this client rewrote a more focused blog post. The Lately social posts that came from this new content were spot on.
Gary Vaynerchuk, now one of Lately’s advisors, tested Lately by having his team create an entire Twitter channel (@garyveetv) with hours and hours of content they pumped into it. Initially, Lately’s content boosted the channel's engagement by 12,000%.
Vaynerchuk’s team also reported an 80% agreement between the quotes Lately pulled and what they would have pulled themselves. His team went back and forth with the AI, feeding Lately tons of content to learn from and then comparing their own content with whatever Lately produced for wildly successful results.
Both Lately clients consulted the AI to make sure their content was on track with their marketing goals, using each interaction as a data point to guide the content forward.
Some AI services like Grammarly can edit copy, checking for grammar, spelling and weak writing. Marketers should also consider AI that analyzes for consistency in style, tone, terminology and content goals.
Laura Smous admits that “Humans are very bad at consistency. Humans think if they have a script or a pitch that they use that they deliver it the same way every time, or that their follow-up is at the same intervals and we’re actually pretty bad at understanding if we’ve done that.”
AI can help solve this problem in your content, building coherence across all of your content so that your audience recognizes and trusts each piece you create.
Do This: Collaborate with AI. Consider the relationship symbiotic. Check back in while editing and before publishing to make sure your content is consistent, accurate and focused.
Tools to Try:
• Lately
• Acrolinx
• CrawlQ
AI models have not yet proven themselves to be a sure-fire investment of marketers’ time and money. Content AI isn’t quite where we want it to be now, but maybe that future dream of AI-assisted content collaboration is only realized by marketers who will put in a little more time and a little more money and a little more feedback. It is called machine learning, right?
Either way, marketers are not leveraging existing tools (AI and non-AI) nearly as much as they should be and the only way AI will ruin jobs is if marketers don’t begin learning how to collaborate with it.
4 Lessons from The Internet's Giants
SEO’s never been a very simple game—there’s a reason most small-to-medium sized companies outsource the bulk of it. But what about the largest sites in the world? The ones with millions of pages and hundreds of developers. Simply put, these sites only get more complex with their size.
We’ve interviewed the SEO experts managing these behemoths to uncover the strategies specific to them. This is not your tips-n-tricks, “how to growth-hack your site” kind of article—let’s dive in.
Questions we’re answering:
"There are more people and constant change at a large organization, so we’re always educating and building our credibility. Just as you find things running well with one team, they’ll reorganize. Figuring out how to best work with other teams will always be part of the business."
- John Crockett, Director of SEO at Ancestry
Credibility with other departments will be the foundation for all future efforts—when working on large-scale websites, an SEO leader will often act more as a salesperson pitching SEO strategies internally, than a roll-up-your-sleeves practitioner. It’s no surprise that a large organization has frequent turnover, but don’t let that constant change deter you from building and rebuilding relationships with other teams.
As you have these conversations, consider the following:
Pro Tip: Always be on the lookout for contacts in other departments that champion your work. These are your evangelizers and will help immensely when you’re trying to get your projects prioritized.
Questions we’re answering:
A deep understanding of top leadership’s goals is critical. For many leaders, SEO by nature is not on their agenda, so it is your responsibility to connect how SEO supports the goals they already do have. Crockett says, “At the end of the day, we need to translate those metrics into what’s of greatest concern to those teams.”
Pro Tip: Take the goals of the executive team and articulate how you’ve aligned your SEO KPIs with those in language that’s meaningful to THEM. Educate them so SEO can become a common priority.
Kaleb Gilliland is the Director of Development at Pro Athlete. Pro Athlete manages 4 sporting goods websites that together have over 6.5 million pages to manage. Gilliland shares, “Sometimes SEO isn’t deemed valuable from a business standpoint because you can’t see tangible results immediately.” John Crockett adds that “SEO is measured bets on what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. We’re only one part of that. We have to worry about how Google’s going to interpret new initiatives. We also have to worry about what our industry competitors are doing. We have to worry about what our search competitors are doing. So sometimes it makes it harder to make the case that SEO should be prioritized from a resource standpoint.”
How can you prove the payoff? Crockett shares “Sometimes, you have to iterate your way into things. Don’t jump right into the huge thing that’s going to cost millions of dollars and take half our development resources for the year. You know that’s not going to be feasible. So it's finding ways to step into this until it proves itself, then you can open the floodgates because you’ve proven the value in smaller ways.”
Start with low-risk opportunities and work your way into bigger projects. Document successes and failures along the way. Use whatever analytics you’ve got because, with a website of massive scale, just a 5% increase in organic traffic can easily translate to massive revenue increases. These numbers will show that the ROI for SEO is worth the patience it takes to get to those results.
Pro Tip: Crockett shares, “Anybody can understand the value of getting free traffic, (free meaning there’s not a per-impression expense) and that this traffic has longevity. Show how traffic is leading to revenue.”
A tool like Ahrefs allows you to pull the traffic value for your website. That essentially takes what you are organically ranking for and compares it to how much you would have to spend via ads to show up in those same SERPs. Airbnb saved an estimated $4.8 million this last month. People.com saved an estimated $12.2 million this last month. These numbers are a powerful illustration of how SEO can translate into saving money and making money.
Questions we’re answering:
“SEO should create a partnership with development…It’s not just a business handoff of requirements. It’s not two separate teams. It’s one team doing different things to accomplish the same goal.”
-John Crockett, Director of SEO at Ancestry
If your SEO-development relationship feels strained, you’re not alone. Frequently SEOs will find themselves in these scenarios:
From the perspective of the development team, they may have had new SEO leaders every few years, each with a laundry list of “urgent” changes they need to be fixed. Alternatively, they could have the same SEO leaders consistently for years but due to algorithm/industry changes, the strategy changes frequently. It can be exhausting for them.
Building a partnership with development will require education. Developers may not know why duplicate content is a problem or how impactful mobile speed can be on a site’s ability to rank. Trent Howard, Head of SEO at 97th Floor, suggests, “Consider making a list of all the different areas development touches SEO, then educate your dev team on why they are important. This will help alleviate the pain point of development feeling like SEO comes to them with a new priority every week. This doesn’t replace the importance of ongoing education, but it does demonstrate how vast SEO’s responsibilities are.”
But SEOs need to get educated, too. Crockett advises, “Understand a developer’s world enough to talk to them intelligently.” Research possibilities and find examples to share. Crockett continues, “I don’t get too much into the solution with them, but I do know enough coding and engineering to be prepared in those meetings with an idea of how we’d accomplish it. Doing the research has taken projects from being labeled as impossible to being done.” Be respectful of the developer’s expertise. Don’t over solve it, but come speaking their language to collaborate about new ways to approach the problem.
Pro Athlete Inc has found major success in getting SEO projects prioritized because of its unique team structure. Kristina Kuska, Head of Organic Search at Pro Athlete, shares, “One of our major successes at Pro Athlete is having development on the marketing team. Having developers who understand SEO changes, agree with them, and implement quickly has been invaluable.” Pro Athlete’s structure is heavily influenced by one of their founders who was a big advocate for SEO. Now SEO is baked into everything they do. Gilliard shares, “Development prioritizes projects that are going to keep SEO at the forefront of what we do. If people can’t find us, we’re going to have a hard time no matter what we’re selling or doing.”
Pro Tip: Find creative ways to link the development team closely with the SEO team. Maybe you can’t restructure your org, but try for a monthly collaboration meeting with all the decision-makers present. Set goals that encourage partnership and that lead to mutual benefits.
Whether development is on your team or not, a true partnership can be made if you can learn to speak their language and invest time educating on the benefits of prioritizing SEO.
Questions we’re answering:
39% of people will stop engaging with a website if images won’t load or take too long to load (Hubspot), so don’t underestimate the power of chipping away at the mountain of SEO fixes you may find yourself with. Develop a system to be consistent with your SEO optimizations. John Crockett shares that he stays on top of SEO by considering three things:
Make sure SEO is considered for all future content creation. If SEO can be considered during creation, less of your time is eaten up going back and making fixes. Gilliland shares a counter point, “Don’t ignore the technical aspects of SEO with the sole focus on content. You can produce the greatest content in the world, but if someone can’t load it, what good is it?”
Pro Tip: For many large sites, pages are scaled programmatically, so in that process of automatically building pages, can SEO optimization be built in? Kuska shares that with their webpage generation “everything is structured to best SEO practices, but then we can also go in and optimize pages individually.” Pro Athlete was able to set up this structure to help them remove the chaos of needing bulk changes done to web pages.
When you have millions of pages on your website, it’s going to be impossible to rank for every page. Gilliland says, “You don’t have to have every page on your site ranking and Google crawling it all the time. You’ve got to define the things you want to rank for and make it clear what you want Google to choose for those keywords.” Rely on data to direct your decisions for what to prioritize. Then when you get the question of, “why aren’t we ranking for…[insert keyword]” you can confidently explain the strategy of targeting what’s most important.
Pro Tip: Remember that SEO is an ever-changing industry. Crockett shares, “What was best-practice in SEO 15, 10, even five years ago needs to be revamped, cleaned up, fixed, removed or redirected.” Don’t be afraid to go back and redo things, and to have the conversations explaining to other departments why it has to be fixed again.
You know what’s at stake—the potential for massive revenue, massive brand exposure, improved user experience…the list goes on. But it’s highly unlikely that your organization understands, and unfortunately, we see many enterprise-level SEOs bounce from company to company seeking that perfect landing spot. Take these lessons and proactively build a culture of SEO priority within your org—align your goals to theirs, build up your interpersonal relationships, explore the full impact of SEO on their workload, and ease into a cycle of organic success.
Sell 60,000 tickets and you fill a stadium for an afternoon. Create 60,000 memories and you'll fill a stadium forever.
Experiences become memories, memories become traditions and experiential marketing is the way to create an emotional bond with customers that pulls them back to your brand over the competition again and again.
Pro sports teams live and die not by their teams’ records, but by their ability to create experiences that begin long before kickoff and continue way after the stadium has emptied. They create fans, not customers.
We’re here to say that experiential marketing is for every industry. While your marketing will be specific to your brand, we’ve pulled three principles from pro sports marketing to help you convert customers into loyal brand fans.
In this guide, we’ll break down experiential marketing in sports examples drawn from real teams and brands, then show how those same strategies can be applied across industries.
At its core, experiential marketing works because it creates emotion, not just awareness. And no industry understands that better than pro sports.
Sports teams don’t market products; they market moments. Every touchpoint in sports marketing is designed to make fans feel something and feel it together. The shared emotion is what turns a single experience into a lasting memory, and a memory into long-term loyalty.
The strongest experiential marketing examples in sports are immersive and interactive. They invite fans to get up out of their seats and participate. They reward attention, amplify momentum, and extend the experience far beyond the physical event through digital channels and social conversation.
This is why experiential marketing in sports examples translate so well to other industries. When brands focus on how people feel before, during, and after an interaction, they learn more about their audience to improve their experience the next time they interact. This is the advantage sports marketers have been playing for years.
What translates isn't the tactic — it's the principle underneath it. The medium you choose — the event, the touchpoint, the format — communicates something before your audience reads a single word. Udi Ledergor, former CMO at Gong, invokes Marshall McLuhan's idea with a sharp marketing application: most brands are obsessing over what to say while ignoring the signal their channel selection is already sending. This short video breaks down why the medium isn't a delivery vehicle — it's the message itself.
Here are seven experiential marketing examples in sports that show how experiences turn audiences into lifelong fans.
Before changing a single seat or concession stand, the Utah Jazz spent a year listening to what fans actually wanted. By grounding the experience in real fan insight, the team transformed the arena into a space designed for making lasting, brand-loyal memories.
After the Utah Jazz’s $125M arena renovation, Bart Sharp, CMO at the Utah Jazz, shared that his team spent an entire year researching what Jazz fans wanted beyond the court before making any renovation plans. Their research showed a strong desire among their fans for more premium options, ice cream (yes, Utahns love their ice cream), and Instagrammable photo opps. With these findings, the Jazz transformed their arena to provide fans unforgettable experiences.
Built Bar shows that experiential marketing can happen far beyond the venue. By placing customer service directly under marketing, the brand turns real-time feedback into responsive experiences that make customers feel heard and valued.
BuiltBar has a unique way of ensuring their customers are heard and that feedback gets injected directly into their marketing campaigns. “We’ve actually put the customer service team under marketing leadership. That way we can pivot and change quickly without going through multiple channels,” said Colleen Ferrier, VP of Marketing at Built Bar. “So we’re hearing as leaders directly what the customers love, what they don’t love, what they’re liking, what they’re not liking. And we as a team can shift and change quickly for them.”
By directly listening, learning, and responding to customers, Built Bar’s marketing team has the ammunition they need to generate more value for their customers.
As marketers, we must prioritize listening before campaign creation. We should never assume we know why someone came to our websites or their purposes for joining in the experience. Every time we make assumptions, we limit ourselves and miss opportunities for our customers, putting time and energy in the wrong places.
Do This: Customer feedback/research surveys always endear customers to you—show you care and learn from your most important audience. Also, consider moving Customer Service under Marketing to close the customer feedback loop.
When momentum strikes, great experiential marketing captures it instantly. The Suns turned a split-second, game-winning play into a physical product almost overnight, allowing fans to own a piece of the moment while the emotion was still fresh.
With only .9 on the clock, Deandre Ayton scored a game-winning alley-oop against the Clippers during the Suns’ 2020-2021 season. Being hyper-engaged on social media, the Suns’ social media team quickly recognized an opportunity to capitalize on the excitement surrounding the play. New “Valley-Oop” shirts were announced on their social channels that night and available for purchase the very next day. No one could have predicted the alley-oop, let alone prepare t-shirt designs. But the Suns were ready—they took an awesome on-court experience and memorialized it for the fans.
Marketing teams have to find ways to monitor momentum. Bart Sharp shares how this is a key principle they follow within their marketing strategy. “I’ve learned in this industry you’ve got to be very nimble because things can change very fast. In an instant, we have to shift our focus and find ways to capture that momentum.” Sometimes the team is playing really well and there’s a story there. Sometimes there’s not. In pro sports (and really in just about any industry) you can’t predict how the seasons will go. You can have an idea based on data you’ve gathered (players on the team, how we compare to competition, injury reports, etc.) and that informs direction. But if things get going and you notice momentum is building somewhere else, you’ve got to make that pivot.
Marketers may be the best planners in the world, but following the momentum inherently means that marketers must be ready to abandon their plans—which is frankly really hard to do! What if the Suns chose to just stick to their content calendar? They would’ve missed out on a huge opportunity for the brand to bond with fans.
Not all experiential marketing examples happen inside a stadium. Oreo’s now-famous “dunk in the dark” response during the Super Bowl blackout shows how brands can insert themselves into shared cultural experiences by acting quickly and understanding the moment.
We all remember the classic example of Oreo capitalizing on the power outage in the 2013 Superbowl with a tweet about “dunking in the dark.” The brand acted quickly around a current event, which was only possible because they were aware of what their audience was doing and how to appeal to them in that moment.
It doesn’t take a huge team or expensive software to interact with your audience. Plan all you want, but be ready to strike when the opportunities arrive.
Do This: Marketers can’t capitalize on momentum if they aren’t looking for it, if they don’t have a supportive infrastructure, or if they don’t have the green light from leadership.
Experiential marketing doesn’t always require large-scale activations. Real Salt Lake demonstrates how thoughtful, personal interactions on social media can become powerful micro-experiences that deepen fan loyalty.
Tyler Gibbons, VP of Marketing at Real Salt Lake (RSL), shares how seriously they take online interactions with their fans. “When someone shares wearing a team jersey and you respond back to them on social, you probably made that person's day. You're going to have a fan for life.” In their case, RSL is extremely careful about who on their team has the permission to dialogue with fans—they don’t underestimate the power of these micro-experiences.
Creating an experience doesn’t mean that you need a full event or production. Experiences can be small and individualized for your specific audience. Hubspot emphasizes that even when you give your audience a tangible experience, there must still be an online dialogue happening. Dialogue is especially crucial to industries where the experiences are largely digital. It’s those conversations that become a major part of audience-brand bonding.
Not every fan can sit courtside. Geography, cost, and capacity make that impossible. The Warriors decided to redesign that reality.
By experimenting with virtual reality, the Warriors created a way for fans to experience games from a courtside perspective without ever stepping foot in the arena. Using VR technology, fans could feel closer to the action, immersed in the sights and sounds of game day, even if they were watching from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
This is a strong example of experiential marketing because it expands access instead of limiting it. The experience isn’t just about watching basketball, but about giving fans a story to tell. Now, fans can feel like they were courtside, even if they technically weren’t.
The takeaway here isn’t that every brand needs VR. It’s that the best experiential marketing examples use technology to remove barriers and deepen emotional connection.
AT&T Stadium is massive. Iconic. And, it’s intentionally designed to be experienced even when no game is being played.
The Cowboys have turned their stadium into a year-round experiential marketing engine through immersive tours that give fans behind-the-scenes access. Visitors can walk the field, explore locker rooms, learn the architectural story of the venue, and see how one of the most recognizable franchises in sports operates from the inside.
This is a masterclass of storytelling at scale. The Dallas Cowboys’ stadium has become a physical brand expression, reinforcing the Cowboys’ identity as larger-than-life, premium, and deeply rooted in sports culture.
What makes this one of the strongest experiential marketing examples is its longevity. The experience doesn’t rely on a single event or even a game; it creates value every day, for fans who may not even attend a game, but still leave feeling closer to the brand.
Look at the interactions happening with your target audience. Is there a way to build an online element into a tangible experience? Are you keeping a dialogue going on and offline?
A major sign of marketing maturity in an organization is the level of experience they place in customer-facing roles (such as social media managers, customer experience, etc.). Unfortunately, many brands put their “greenest” people in these roles—preventing organizations from fully capturing their audience’s feedback and preventing audiences from an elevated experience.
There’s a reason why pro sports teams pull in top talent for game-day coverage. Inside the NBA, for example, features the beloved Charles Barkley and Shaq. College GameDay utilizes former athletes, coaches, and other experts to talk about the football games. Both shows have subject matter experts in charge of the dialogue, giving this dialogue the best people to engage audiences.
So don’t put your least experienced employees in charge of all the digital dialogue for your brand. Make sure that whoever is helping to create that dialogue knows and understands your company’s offering, your values, and how to interact with your audience in a way that is meaningful to them.
Do This: Don’t hire entry-level for audience-facing positions.
Pro sports marketers have an obvious edge in creating customer experiences—their product is literally an experience—but their playbook is written for every brand in every industry. A stronger focus on experiential marketing truly can turn your brand observers into lifetime, loyal fans.
If you’re ready to take inspiration from these experiential marketing in sports examples and apply them to your own brand, we’re here to help.
At 97th Floor, we partner with teams who want to create experiences people remember. If you’re ready to build experiential marketing that connects, converts, and lasts, let’s build together.
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In this no-fluff Prezi video, Paxton Gray, CEO of 97th Floor walks you through his step-by-step process to creating consistent and quality content marketing that works for virtually any budget. If you’ve felt that content marketing hasn’t been producing the results you’ve wanted, this video is for you.
Paxton explains one of the reasons why Buzzfeed content marketing can draw you in — even when you know it’s just clickbait — is because it taps into the “human algorithm.” It's the power of appealing to a person’s curiosity, especially in a content marketing context. Curiosity alone is not enough, though. Paxton explains how to also use data to create content that’s more personal, targeted, and relevant. After all, content marketing made for everybody means it doesn’t really appeal to anybody.
Revolutionary branding can change how customers perceive an entire industry, but few companies are willing to take that step in the dark. Uncharted territory comes with a lack of data and research to back your efforts—it takes guts.
Moz said it best. “Playing it too safe is...a great way to remain somewhere in the middle. Almost everyone likes the middle. Nobody loses their job in the middle. Customers come and go at a steady rate in the middle. Nobody boycotts the middle.”
This article explores creative marketing tactics that can help you move beyond the middle. From purpose-driven messaging to playful brand voices, these tactics show how bold ideas inspire attention, spark loyalty, and fuel growth. Whether you’re a small challenger or a large enterprise, you’ll find practical tips you can apply to give your brand the refresh it needs.
Creative marketing tactics are unconventional strategies that brands use to capture attention, spark emotion, and differentiate themselves in crowded markets. Unlike traditional campaigns that rely on predictable playbooks, these approaches focus on being memorable and connecting with audiences on a deeper level.
Think of them as creative marketing ideas that shift perception. They can be bold visuals, unexpected partnerships, purpose-driven messages, or even playful responses to criticism. At their core, creative marketing tactics prove that playing it safe is rarely the way to stand out.
We’ve curated five tips to show you how to put these ideas into practice, along with real-world examples. #1 Be Unapologetically Interesting
“If you always just try to sell, then you’re predictable. You’re every other brand and company out there.” —Michael Lee, Oatly Creative Director. Oatly stands out—we all saw the controversial SuperBowl commercial. The alternative dairy brand embraces unapologetic fun while still communicating its core values.
Part of what makes Oatly so appealing is its contrast with other milk brands. Picture any other dairy brand—the homepage likely has a perfectly composed stock photo complete with a heartwarming description of the product. Swap the milk out with any other household item, like Windex or Clorox, and you don’t have to change a thing.
Oatly stands way, way out with a cartoony, playful, almost handmade aesthetic website. When photos are included, they’re messy and candid — almost like a friend took them. The copy has an unpolished, almost rambling feeling that is nothing like its competitors' carefully crafted, “clean” taglines.
Oatly doesn’t use industry competitors as models for what they should become. While other brands fill their website with recipes to sell more product, Oatly's recipes are only a fraction of the available content. The bulk of Oatly’s content is dedicated to being interesting. The brand even has a section dedicated entirely to "Things we do" that has unique content to make audiences smile.
Lee revealed the core of Oatly’s branding strategy: “Don’t try to sell anything — just be interesting. If you’re interesting, people will pay attention to you and they’ll be interested in what you do next.”
How do they do it though? Oatly takes an unstructured approach. The creative team chats about content that would be fun to create and then they make it a reality. Lee explains, “We produce our own work, and we prove our own work. There’s no filter, no checkpoint meetings with the sales guys, no half way meetings with marketing managers.” This method allows content to land with it’s full creative potential preventing leadership from watering it down. Creating without gatekeepers is a terrifying prospect for many companies, but Oatly doesn’t let this hold them back.
Do This: Trust in creative teams and whatever you do, don’t be content in the middle ground.
Is the strategy of simply being interesting paying off? Oatly is claimed to be the world’s largest oat milk company and 2020 saw a 106.5% increase in reported revenue. Oatly is Starbucks’ oat milk of choice, and there was even a time when people were selling their supply of Oatly for over $200 on Amazon.
Yep, being unapologetically interesting works.
SaaS companies are infamous for ambiguous copy and visuals that all look the same. When every solution looks the same, customers quickly lose interest and have a difficult time keeping track of the unique value each solution offers. Gong, a revenue intelligence software is...different.
The pressure to stand out just got more urgent. Former Slack CMO Bill Macaitis breaks down why lean AI-native startups are now achieving the same ARR with a fraction of the headcount — and what traditional SaaS companies need to do to stay competitive. This short video captures why the window to adapt is closing fast.
Let’s take a look at the websites of some other sales platforms. This industry is ruled by clean designs, cool colors, futuristic gradients, and flat illustrations.
Then there’s Gong with fun stock photos, bright colors, and a playful pooch as its chatbot representative. The smooth UX and attention to quality (albeit stock photo quality) allow the brand to take risks in an otherwise streamlined market.
While some may not enjoy the cheesy nature of its aesthetic, Gong doesn’t really care. CMO Udi Ledergor acknowledged, “If you’re pleasing everybody, you’re not exciting anybody.”
Ledger defines Gong’s brand as “whimsical and authoritative” — two adjectives you wouldn’t normally think go together. They’ve combined seemingly unrelated, opposing elements to craft a brand voice that fits perfectly.
Do this: Carve out your own identity and carry your voice throughout every piece of content.
Ledger continues “When you read our content, when you hear one of our amazing speakers at a conference, when you look at our website, when you go to our LinkedIn content, you see that whimsy coming through everything we do."
This commitment to a consistent voice allows Gong’s audience to instantly recognize every piece of content they create. More importantly, audiences can differentiate Gong from the sea of other software companies who are pushing the same message.
As of June 2021, Gong raised $250 million in funding and ranked top-50 in outstanding growth within SaaS companies—not bad for high-fives and fist pumps.
Billie was the first to push the boundaries in the women's razors market by using body hair in images and fighting against the pink tax. In an interview, Billie Cofounder Georgina Gooley shared the inspiration behind the brand’s identity. “We knew we couldn’t just sell a better product at a better price — we wanted to reinvent the category’s relationship with women.”
For decades, razor brands have depicted the ideal version of a woman. Women were told that their body hair was something to be ashamed of, something needing to be removed. “We've always wanted to put our audience ahead of our product, so emphasizing the importance of choice has always been core to what we believe.”
Billie’s competitors have quickly followed suit. As Gooley points out,“The fact that a new, challenger brand like Billie could change the way women are represented in a century-old category shows that even the newest players have the power to create change.”
Although Billie’s competitors have slightly adapted their imagery, their core branding has stuck closely to the refined, spa feeling we’re used to seeing from razor companies. Billie takes a bold approach to branding with bright colors, body-inclusive models, and 90s throwback styling.
Beyond bold visuals, sticking closely to strong values is what sets Billie apart from other brands.
While overthrowing the pink tax by charging less and offering rebates means smaller margins for Billie, audiences see the dedication to a cause and become lifelong fans. While other companies say they’re committed to women, Billie actually backs up their statements.
Do this: Permeate purpose-driven values at every level of the organization. Put your brand’s purpose before your product to attract customers and open up doors to other creative marketing tactics.
You’ve never met a more hardcore water brand than Liquid Death. The company’s energy-drink-inspired branding is a complete 180 from the peaceful, flowing springs used to market other water brands. The tagline “MURDER YOUR THIRST” seems a little contradictory when selling the most essential-to-life product on earth, but that contradiction is exactly what makes it unforgettable.
CEO and founder Mike Cessario explained that the core idea for the brand was inspired by the hilarious, random marketing in the junk food market. “Liquid Death was a way of taking the healthiest food you can drink and brand it and market it in a way where you can compete with all the crazy marketing of junk food.” Liquid Death is unique because it’s not really competing with other water brands.
And Liquid Death thrives on this bold persona. When social media trolls flood their comments with hate, the brand doesn’t hide or delete. Instead, they double down by turning those insults into music albums (punk tracks with screamed lyrics pulled straight from negative online comments).
Founder Mike Cessario summed it up best: “Hard work is a waste of time if your idea sucks. Figure out how you have a great idea first before you then start putting all the blood, sweat and tears into it.” Liquid Death has that great idea, and they’re not afraid to make it louder by amplifying even their harshest critics.
Do This: Don’t run from criticism. Use it. Turning negativity into content not only disarms haters but also strengthens loyalty among your core fans.
Of course, the irreverence goes beyond the jokes. Liquid Death pairs its over-the-top branding with real values, pledging “death to plastic” by offering a sustainable alternative to bottled water. That combination of humor and purpose has built them a cult following and fueled 126% growth last year.
Liquid Death proves that the boldest creative marketing tactic isn’t just to be different, it’s to take what others fear and flip it into your loudest megaphone.
3M isn’t just trying to stand out in its industry, it’s trying to stand out from itself. A quick look back at the 3M website reveals that its messaging has transformed from a focus on innovative technology to applied science and connecting with the people who use 3M products. Over the years, technology imagery has given way to people-centric visuals.
3M has countless products in various industries, but you probably know them best for their tape. Despite consumer business being the least profitable sector at 3M, this is an area that the brand focuses a lot of marketing effort on.
By focusing on individual consumers, 3M is able to focus on messaging that resonates with people. Because at the end of the day, B2B and B2G customers are just people.
Do this: See your audience as humans—market to them as humans.
Making science fun and accessible to all is at the heart of 3M’s marketing strategy. CMO Remi Kent explained, “We really wanted to show that creativity of how you might use our products in a nontraditional way, but in a way that could provide your family with an outlet for fun.”
Bold marketing doesn’t always require a complete rebrand or a viral stunt. These creative marketing tactics can be tested quickly and scaled when they work.
Pairing up with a brand outside your category can stop audiences in their tracks. Think Taco Bell and Doritos, or Lego and IKEA. Unexpected pairings spark curiosity and open the door to new markets. The key is to choose a partner that shares your values, even if your products are worlds apart.
Guerrilla marketing is all about disrupting the ordinary. It could be sidewalk chalk art, a flash performance, or a surprising outdoor installation. When executed well, these activations feel more like cultural moments than ads. They generate buzz precisely because they break away from traditional formats.
Your audience often creates content that feels more authentic than polished brand campaigns. Starbucks’ #RedCupContest and Calvin Klein’s #MyCalvins are great examples of customers becoming co-creators. UGC lowers production costs and builds trust because real people represent the brand.
Nostalgia taps into emotions that go deeper than product features. Brands like Pokémon and Nintendo have built entire second lives by reimagining their classics for a new generation. A 90s throwback or retro design element instantly sparks connection because it reminds people of when they first loved your category.
Events, whether virtual or in-person, allow customers to experience your brand in a new way. Red Bull’s Flugtag competitions and Adobe’s creative conferences show how experiences can become brand-defining. Even smaller brands can use pop-ups, live streams, or interactive workshops to create memorable touchpoints.
When brands participate in cultural conversations, they show audiences they’re paying attention. Oreo’s “You Can Still Dunk in the Dark” tweet during the Super Bowl blackout is one of the most famous examples. These tie-ins succeed when they feel natural and timely, so monitor trends and move quickly when opportunities arise.
Supporting a meaningful cause is more than philanthropy; it’s strategy. Patagonia’s environmental stance and Billie’s fight against the pink tax show how brands can build lasting loyalty by aligning with movements their customers care about. The important step is following through with real action, not empty statements.
Sometimes creativity comes from changing how a product is packaged or presented. Heinz’s upside-down ketchup bottle and Reese’s seasonal shapes prove that even small tweaks can make a big impact when they surprise customers. These changes keep products fresh in categories that rarely evolve.
Digital marketing can go far beyond static ads. Interactive quizzes, AR filters, or gamified experiences turn audiences into participants. Spotify Wrapped is a perfect example: it celebrates users while transforming them into promoters who share their results with the world.
Many brands stand out because of how they speak. Wendy’s Twitter roasting competitors on Instagram or Duolingo’s cheeky TikTok presence are proof that tone can capture attention as much as visuals or products. An unexpected voice gives audiences a reason to pay attention in an endless feed of sameness.
Creative marketing ideas are exciting, but they only matter if you put them into motion. Start by defining clear goals for your campaign (ex., awareness, engagement, or loyalty). Choose one or two tactics that align with your brand values, and launch them on a small scale to see how your audience responds. Measure the results, refine your approach, and expand the campaigns that prove effective. The path to standing out begins with a bold step.
Barbara Walters said it best: Taylor Swift is the music industry. However, in celebrating the greatness of her artistry, we often forget to give her praise for her marketing intelligence, business acumen, and pure hard work. Work that placed her on Forbes’ 2021 list of America’s self-made women with an estimated net worth of $550 million.
What goes into it? She’s a business giant, there’s no doubt, but when you compare her to many of her peers, she doesn’t have many of the side hustles that you come to expect from the modern pop star. Take a glance at Forbes’ list of highest-paid musicians and you’ll find that most of them make the majority of their money through non-musical means — clothing lines, shoe deals, perfumes, movie and television show production credits, even streaming services and headphones. By comparison — and it might seem weird to say it — Taylor’s business ventures are relatively humble. And most of it comes back to, you guessed it, content marketing.
Taylor Swift is a powerful brand, and she is incredibly careful with how and where she uses her name. Corporate endorsements include Keds, Diet Coke, CoverGirl, Capital One, and Apple. But this brand didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Ask someone in 2005 who Taylor Swift was and they would likely give you some answer about semi-trucks. How she built this brand is a case study in content marketing itself.
Any customer-focused marketing strategy today is bound to include social media in some shape or form. But in 2005 it was all but unheard of. An early adopter of social media, Taylor Swift started a MySpace blog that would run for years, where she provided content for her growing fanbase that they couldn’t get anywhere else.
Taylor Swift (2006)
7x Platinum
5,750,000 copies sold
157 weeks in the Billboard 200 — longest of any album in the 2000s decade
This early approach to personalized marketing would set the tone for the rest of her career. The growing star would not only post intimate blogs that gave unique insider insights to her followers, but she would also engage with them and encouraged the growth of a community both inside and outside of the platform. In her acceptance speech for a CMT music award for Breakthrough Artist of the Year in 2008, Taylor dedicated it to her special club: “This is for my Myspace people and everybody who voted.” At this point, she had accumulated more than 650,000 “friends” on the platform, but each one of them could have felt she was talking directly to them.
Meeting fans where they are is something that Taylor herself has talked about. In an interview with BBC Radio 1, she mentioned the persistence required at the beginning of her career when it came to convincing her label and management that she needed to engage and use the internet — a strategy that paid off in the form of millions of streams of her music. She also talked of the importance of adapting to changing times. And time and again she’s done exactly that.
She meets fans where they are, and speaks their language
“You just never know what’s gonna happen...every new album release is different because there’s always a new platform, there’s always a new...way to have people experience your music. I just find it interesting, I’m not gonna sit here and ever be the person that’s like ‘it was only good the way it was when I started’...I like the fact that people can experience music in whatever way fits their life.”
Taylor Swift is on TikTok. A seemingly insignificant fact on the surface, but a single glance at Ahrefs’ content explorer shows just how big of a deal it was.
Witness the volume of shared and linked-to content featuring the words “Taylor Swift TikTok” on August 23rd, the day Taylor posted her first TikTok video (a search that yielded over 400 results), and consider that the dress that she was wearing sold out in minutes.
While it is not surprising for a public figure to join a social platform that boasts hundreds of millions of active users, it is yet more proof of Swift’s smart marketing acumen. Her fans are on TikTok, and so Taylor Swift is on TikTok.
The same logic applies to B2B marketing — but most companies still haven't made the shift. Former Slack and Zendesk CMO Bill Macaitis calls out why white papers and analyst relations aren't enough anymore, and where your buyers are actually waiting for you. This short video captures exactly why B2B marketers need to modernize their channel strategy now.
And for Taylor Swift, meeting fans where they are involves more than just being on a platform. Rather than falling into the trap of hiring a team to cross-post the same content on every platform, Taylor...well, tailors her content specifically to the audience on each one — and continues to add a level of authenticity carried over from her MySpace days.
This isn’t the first time she has done this, either — moving from MySpace to the likes of Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and now TikTok — Taylor continues to meet her fans where they are, and speak their language.
However, to reduce Taylor Swift’s content marketing brilliance down to social media would be doing a disservice. In fact, look at how she has used Twitter in recent years — a platform where engagement thrives off of large amounts of content:
According to SocialBlade’s record of the top 10 most followed users on Twitter, Taylor maintains an A++ engagement grade, despite a mere fraction of the tweets and despite following no one. How does she accomplish it? Well, it would be easy to say that once you have more than 88 million followers, engagement is pretty much a given. But one glance at her followers tells you that they are continuing to grow daily.
The Taylor Swift brand is thriving, and doesn’t look like slowing any time soon. So much so, that her presence continues to grow even on platforms like Twitter where she is not spending much time. Given, she did spend years building up a Twitter following, and still has a team tweeting regularly through her more corporate account; but to maintain such a prominent place at the top of the Twitter hierarchy indicates a great deal of lasting power and influence. How has she accomplished it?
In case you haven’t figured it out by now: Taylor Swift is the world’s best content marketer. Why? Because she produces some dang good content.
Whether you are a fan of her music or not, the proof of her songwriting caliber is evident in both her critical and commercial acclaim. She is the most awarded artist in AMAs history and is tied with only four other performers for the most Album of the Year Grammy Awards with four. She has also part of an elite group that has sold over 200 million albums, and just recently became the only artist to log 7 albums simultaneously in the Rolling Stone 200 a total of 20 times.
When your content is good, it can have the ability to promote itself. But Taylor Swift — being the world’s greatest content marketer — doesn’t rest on her laurels. And her promotion of her music is second to none. Taylor Swift’s album promotion cycles have been well documented over the years, from lucrative partnerships to exclusive merch deals and even secret listening parties at her own homes.
Yet even when 2020 hit and Taylor released a surprise album in a time of social distancing and isolation, her promotion remained top notch. Taylor’s key collaborator Aaron Dessner has described how her record label was only notified of the album’s existence mere hours before it was released. A true last-minute drop, she could easily be forgiven for forgoing promotion altogether. What we experienced instead was a masterclass in quick strategy. As soon as the announcement was made, her store was equipped with digital and physical copies of the album, available for pre-order — including 8 different versions of the vinyl copy, encouraging fans to collect them all.
Knowing when and where to ramp up promotion is a key skill, and it’s one that Taylor has mastered over the years. We have already discussed her social media prowess, and it’s no coincidence that Taylor’s fan engagement and the frequency of her social posts both increase around the time of a big announcement or new album release. She got to work liking and engaging with her excited followers’ posts, and a number of branded hashtags were also ready to go on Twitter.
The online store was also stocked, with new items cycled in and out as new songs were released. Taylor Swift is a master of employing the marketing tactic of scarcity — bonus songs are available only on physical albums, Target exclusives provide the opportunity to get a unique copy of each album, and fans well know that merch will only be available for a limited time before being replaced with something new.
For some, these kinds of techniques could seem like cash grabs and have the opposite effect to the one intended. But for Taylor, it comes across as added value to her vast fanbase. In short, all of this works because of the place where we started: Taylor Swift knows her audience. Back in 2014, on the release of 1989, she stated:
“I think that what we need to start doing is catering our release plans to our own career, to our own fans, and really get in tune with them. I've been on the internet for hours every single night figuring out what these people want from me. And when it came time to put out an album, I knew exactly what to do.”
In that instance, adding unique polaroids to physical albums was a way to connect with fans, and we have seen this process echoed time and again to this day. At the time of writing, Taylor is busy releasing new recordings of her past albums. And once again, she is exceeding expectations by promoting each one as though it’s brand new. This includes:
The albums also include a number of fresh tracks “From the Vault” including ones that have deep roots in fandom lore. By the time each album is released, you could be forgiven for forgetting that half of it has technically been heard before. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) shot to number one in just about every chart, and smashed a number of records in the process.
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Vivint Solar is a brand that needs no introduction — mostly because they’ve been introducing themselves from our doorways for years. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that they are a multi-billion dollar, door knocking solar juggernaut, but it wasn’t always this way.
Their street presence had never been stronger, they came to 97th Floor with an online presence that was lackluster. Their success in the neighborhoods had left smaller shops eating their digital lunch. They’d seen the gap in their strategy and had a desire to translate their success from the streets to the internet — and in the process, open the door to the even wider audience to be found online.
At the start, we had hardly anything to go on. Vivint Solar hadn’t put a deep SEO plan in place before, and while they organically dominated branded searches, they hadn’t turned any attention to non-branded search terms. So, we began from square one. Not that we minded, we always love painting on a blank canvas.
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Vivint Solar needed a clear, intentional SEO strategy. And, because all SEO measures take time to bring in results, it also needed to be enacted soon so that they could establish themselves. With that in mind, we got right to work.
We began as we always do, with market research to reveal the strengths and weaknesses in the strategies of Vivint Solar’s competitors. This kind of research is essential because it identifies gaps that our client can fill — as well as places where they can step up their game in order to keep up.
In Vivint Solar’s case, we discovered that many of their competitors’ ranking pages had great domain authority, and they had already targeted many non-branded terms. With this information, we were armed to take the next step and conduct informed keyword research.
Our keyword research revealed crystal-clear opportunities for optimization and new content. As Vivint Solar was already a known brand — and already bringing in traffic from branded searches — we focused all attention to increase our share of voice via non-branded terms. Our keyword research quickly uncovered non-branded keyword opportunities that would aid consumers along their buyer’s journey. We launched a comprehensive blogging strategy with the intent of attracting inbound traffic through these non-branded terms and increasing on-page conversion through compelling CTAs and copy.
As we mentioned, time was of the essence. We needed to get Vivint Solar’s new blog pages ranking quickly, and link building was an essential part of that race against time. Links build the authority of a page in little time, allowing the page to rank much more quickly than it would on its own.
Our strategy didn’t end there. While our ultimate goal was to increase Vivint Solar’s presence online so they would not be totally reliant on door-knocking, what if there was a way to take advantage of those prolific efforts? Using localized SEO, we launched pages for every locale where Vivint Solar is active, over 100 (but we’ll get to that later). This provided pages tailored to the needs and offers of various states and cities, connecting door-knockers and potential customers quickly and effectively.
With these strategies in place, and a thorough technical audit completed, we put our plans into action — starting with content creation. Together with the Vivint Solar team, we researched, outlined, and produced over 200 articles targeting our various non-branded keywords.
Once article creation was underway, we turned our focus to link building. Our competitive research informed this strategy from the beginning, including the frequency of our backlinks and their quality. After the first month of outreach, we were able to gain over 30 backlinks each month to the Vivint Solar site, each one obtained naturally on quality websites. Not to mention, each link was optimized for a specific page and corresponding keyword. This aided our content in ranking quickly for our intended keywords.
Additionally, we helped Vivint Solar build out robust versions of their local pages, which at the time included 23 states with additional locales within each state. By the time we were done, we had over 100. We built out and optimized local pages and search terms in each of these respective markets.
While the above components are critical to any digital transformation, we knew it was important to look even deeper into Vivint Solar’s funnel than simply awareness-level content. We analyzed the conversion path for Vivint Solar, and identified potential weaknesses or misalignment of message. We then added resources to optimize the user’s experience once they’d entered the funnel, and throughout their journey. We fully audited and optimized email messaging, and created valuable content by breaking down complex industry topics and making them more digestible through quality UX design.
Here at 97th Floor, we love working with remarkable partners like Vivint Solar. Together we moved quickly to not only meet, but exceed the goals we set at the onset of the project.
Before 97th Floor began working with Vivint Solar, only 5% of their organic traffic was non-branded, and today 33% of all visitors are coming from non-branded keywords. Additionally, total organic traffic has increased by an incredible 45% year over year. This was accompanied by a comparable rise in revenue, and a 40% increase in new users. This increase in traffic and conversions has manifested in hundreds of thousands of dollars in recurring revenue brought in from digital channels.
Today Vivint Solar has a shining reputation in residential solar on the streets and on the web — a true physical to digital transformation. Their prospective customers used to have to wait to be found. Now they are able to find Vivint Solar on their own. Through our combined efforts the two methods work together, making Vivint Solar an unstoppable force with a good reputation on the streets and online.
Keyword research is a necessary step that you do to understand your market, and plan your SEO strategy. But what if you could use it to learn about user intent, restructure a whole site, and increase conversions as well as traffic? That’s exactly what we did with this client.
CBD American Shaman is a health company that sells CBD oils. While it’s a competitive market, their products have an edge on the competition because they’re water soluble. Despite this, they were struggling to capitalize on their great product with the kind of SEO traffic that it warrants.
Yet the potential was there: An audit revealed that the more specific SERPs previously targeted for the product had a pretty small search demand — but the right strategy could capture a large amount of traffic. Think “CBD oil” with 1 million searches versus “water soluble CBD oil” with only 1,300.
97th Floor was brought in with a clear business question to address: How do we capitalize on this great demand and become a breakout CBD shop?
Like much of SEO, the solution starts on the site-level. The CBD American Shaman site was hosted on a custom CMS (rather than WordPress, Shopify, or Hubspot, etc.), which always complicates technical SEO solutions. Their CMS was completely done by hand. The site organization was also done by hand, and more subject to human error.
They had a wide list of products, but their site wasn’t utilizing this wide variety to capture organic search. Their site’s architecture was flat, lacking the intuitive hierarchy that both Google and the user need to easily navigate and understand a site. In the beginning, there were only three categories on the CBD Shaman site: wellness, pets, and beauty. This organization made sense at the conception of the site, when the company offered few products. However, as their business scaled and expanded, that category structure no longer made sense, and in fact, felt difficult to navigate and drastically out of date.
It soon became clear that a total overhaul of the site’s organization was necessary. Any SEO tactics would yield mitigated returns unless the site was a complete, SEO-driven overhaul.
Just as a doctor treats a whole patient rather than a symptom, we chose to stop looking at each individual problem, and instead gather it all into one place and focus on the most essential and basic purpose of the site. In this process, keyword research and mapping were essential in understanding how to treat the site as a whole — curing all of its symptoms, rather than just hitting one at a time.
Keyword research is important, but like any data, it means nothing on its own. It’s what you do with the insights gleaned from research that matters. So — while sometimes all you need from your keyword research is a handful of new keywords to tackle — for CBD American Shaman, keyword research would go on to guide the entire reconstruction of their site.
We used our keyword mapping to guide the new site’s entire structure. By using keyword research as the foundation of the site, we captured more authority, and redistributed that authority back to the site’s most relevant and converting pages.
For example, the category page for /cbd-oils now houses all of the CBD oil products, allowing for more weight to target that high-volume keyword as well as an ease for the user in browsing the different oils available. In the previous version of the site, the following page was trying to rank for “CBD oil,” /vg-cloud-terpene-rich-cbd-oil-tincture. See the problem? Yes, it was a CBD oil product, but its strength was wasted in attempting to rank for “cbd oil” and it was poorly optimized for a user from coming form a Google SERP.
With the knowledge that these new category pages were much more likely to rank in Google SERPs, we followed our keyword research further. We used it to map and reorganize the entire site, categorically moving pages to align with relevant category pages rather than stand on their own. By connecting these further pages to those authoritative category pages, it allows us to pick up additional traffic from newly targeted keywords.
Evaluating the keyword landscape — which keywords ranked for which landing pages, and which keywords should be combined moving forward — was a BIG project. Pulling all of our ranking keywords, separating them by landing page, and creating new keyword groups took us a full month.
We had to determine what keywords should rank for a single landing page versus separate landing pages, which allowed us to find instances of keyword cannibalization. We also had to cross-reference each keyword within the designated SERP to identify whether a category page or an individual product page was needed to best fit the ranking criteria for that SERP. It was a lot of work, and a lot of detail, but it paid off.
Under the “shop” menu on the homepage, we added sixteen new categories, all based on newly selected high-potential keywords. It turned out that not only did search engine bots like this kind of layout, but users did too. Within weeks, CBD American Shaman saw a 13% increase in organic traffic, not only that, we saw an unexpected radical bump in conversion rates. Which makes sense when you consider how this also drastically improved navigation and the user experience.
CBD Shaman has an extensive product offering that is always being added to. With all of these choices, the shopping experience was previously overwhelming to users. Products were difficult to locate, and customers had no clear understanding of where to find certain products, or even what products were offered. Instead, the site was set up in such a way that they'd have to endlessly scroll through lists of product after product, without the ability to filter based on product type or use. It was hurting their sales, and alienating their customer base. So we knew it had to change.
They are constantly evolving their product catalog. With their previous strategy, a single product page may have built up a lot of authority over time, only to be taken down, and that authority would then be redirected to an unoptimized page or lost completely. With our new category-centric strategy, the business’s evolution is supported. No matter which products are added or taken away, the authority will remain in the category pages. These pages stay consistent in a constantly changing website, allowing users to always find their way.
The result is an SEO framework that not only worked on the onset, but it’s proven effective even a year later. This keyword mapping system has paved the way to double organic traffic for CBD American Shaman.
