7 Brands Who Have Their Internet Marketing Strategy Spot On

Internet marketing culture demands that brands continually re-evaluate their marketing strategy to stay fresh and current. It’s not about reinventing the wheel — it’s about brands staying ahead of the game with lively ideas that engage their audience.

It’s not easy; brands need to deliver an internet marketing strategy which connects with their customer, increases brand awareness, and at the same time grows revenue. Inspiration can be gained from those brands that are at the top of their game when it comes to making noise in the world of Internet marketing.

Below are 7 brands that are blowing the competition out of the water with some excellent internet marketing strategies.

Slack

Slack is a collaboration app enabling teams to efficiently communicate and share files. With an epic growth of 15,000 users at launch in 2014 to 2 million active daily users today, they’re easily an MVP in the SaaS world. So what did their marketing strategy consist of?

Slack’s success is due to their awesome customer relations. From the outset, Slack has been based on selling a solution, not just a tool. Their emphasis is on customer experience and solving customers’ pain points online, on time and every time.

Slack responds to (not simply receives) 8,000 help desk tickets and over 10,000 tweets per month. Their “Slack Wall of Love” showcases the latest tweets and retweets from Slack customers who adore this messaging tool.

Try to scale your own social media efforts and embrace automation tools like Buffer to help you create a coherent brand narrative on social media.

Airbnb

Airbnb has revolutionized the search for accommodation.  The site now heralds 150 million users, 4 million listings, and a total valuation of $31 billion in 2017. Not bad for a business founded by the owners who were looking for a cheap place to crash when on the road and out of pocket.

Their internet marketing strategy combines user-generated images, how-to videos and posts tailored towards owners, and popular city guides. Their Instagram campaign blends humour with images of exotic travel locations, doubling up as both a forum and travel service combined.

Airbnb is the shining stars of social media. In 2015, their company Instagram campaign received 13.3 million interactions —  growing their followers by a whopping 341%.

Yelp

Back in 2004, the notion of collating social networking and online reviews was a real eureka moment for the founders of Yelp. Now, Yelp has 170 million unique monthly users and over 148 million reviews — and it was social media that grew the social proof element.

By keeping it real and the authenticity of reviewers: real people with real names and photos, who are encouraged to develop a reputation themselves. Users even review the reviews of others!

Today, according to Michael Luca of the Harvard Business Review, an increase on a Yelp rating of one-star can create a 5-9% increase in business revenue.

Use Pixlee to collate and organize your own user-generated-content — massive for conversions and sales.

Mastercard

Mastercard is a big player in financial services with a knack for developing engaging experiences to entice and keep their customers. Their iconic 2016 campaign piggybacked off their sponsorship of the MLB (Major League Baseball) and took advantage of the Chicago Cubs making the World Series.

Mastercard wanted to create an effective ad campaign, connect with suffering Cubs fans whilst inserting themselves into the buzz of the World Series conversation.

Their search unearthed a great piece of content: a rival team player had accused Cubs fans of lacking passion for their team. It created the perfect sound bite to build an entire campaign on the ‘Sound of Priceless.’ To establish just how loud Cubs fans were, Mastercard built a sound meter and placed it around the Wrigley field. The noise captured helped develop video content for the campaign, to great effect.

Mastercard released the film online and on social media just as the Cubs won the final game of the World Series, with spectacular results.

Domino’s

Domino’s recent “Domino’s AnyWare” technology makes their pizza as easy to order as possible from their customers’ device of choice. It began by allowing customer orders via Twitter, and then expanding with the addition of Alexa, Slack, and a Facebook Messenger Chatbot.

By creating custom social apps through which customers could easily order pizza, Domino’s showed themselves as forward-thinking and on-trend (whilst also getting tons of free PR for their company at the same time).

Savvy internet marketing is more than just broadcasting a message — it’s about brand behaviour as well. By changing the way people ordered pizza, Domino’s improved their connection with customers.

American Express

There is a lot of buzz around Internet communities and online conversation. The key to success is to build an online community that offers a genuine community.

American Express leveraged true value offered by industry experts on its Open Forum website. American Express invites guest authors from a variety of sectors to share their business knowledge and wisdom on this collaborative website.

The outcome — without American Express needing to splash out lots of cash on content contributors — is a content-rich information hub that search engines love.

This is a technique employed by many DIY e-commerce dropshipping stores when they’re first starting out. To make themselves stand out against so many competitors selling similar products, they can’t lean on their products — so they create a community to lean on instead. A closely-knit audience is a hugely underestimated weapon in a brand’s arsenal, and Amex used it to great effect.

Heineken

To bring people together to bond over a pint, Heineken paired individuals with opposing viewpoints and they undertook a series of bonding challenges together. Their disagreements were then revealed, and they were invited to choose: either to leave or to sit down and discuss their differences over a beer.

The video was promoted on Facebook; gaining over 138,000 shares, 324,000 engagements, and over 17.7 million views. Heineken also captured their message in a hashtag, #OpenYourWorld, which soon gained 22,000 tweets (of which 87% were overwhelmingly positive).

Creating content that stirs inspirational emotions in customers can deliver a viral internet marketing campaign that triggers multitudes of shares, whilst at the same time being thought-provoking.

Brands have to invest time and effort to create a successful internet marketing strategy which connects with their customers. This comes from thinking outside the box, understanding their audience and delivering a campaign of exceptional quality. When they do, the outcome can pay dividends not just financially, but emotionally as well.