Australian content marketing is both more popular and more effective than in most other countries, which comes as no surprise to anyone who has closely followed the latest developments in the Oceanic market.
Compared to their Western peers, the latest studies and research indicate that Australian marketers both spend more of their budgets on content marketing and use a wider array of content marketing strategies, and produce more engaging content as a result.
As the Content Marketing Institute revealed in a recent study, 96 percent of Australian marketers use some form of content marketing, with web articles (88 percent usage), social media (83 percent), and email campaigns (82 percent) coming in as the clear favorites in the rankings. Additionally, Australian content marketers report that their initiatives are, on average, 5 to 10 percent more effective than their North American and U.K. counterparts.
There’s no debate, because the results are already in: Australian content marketing is some of the best in the world. Let’s take a look at some of the greatest Australian content marketing campaigns of the past few years, and see what lessons we can learn from their success.
Intrepid Travel’s YouTube travelogues
Intrepid Travel is a Melbourne-based travel agency that specializes in ‘small group’ getaway vacations to exotic international destinations. Whether you’re going as far afield as Peru or Mount Everest, or as close to home as Papua New Guinea, Intrepid Travel has been taking travelers to some of the wildest locales on earth since 1989.
The company already maintains an excellent travel blog featuring tourist guides, primers on safe and responsible traveling, exposés on hobbyist-oriented or themed vacation trips, and more. But in 2015, they kicked things up a notch with their ‘Top Destinations’ series on YouTube, which showcases travel highlights, landmarks, and other cool goings-on recorded during an Intrepid Travel vacation.
Embedded content: https://youtu.be/BhzVi5bzZc8
The unique perspective and high production values on these videos spurred some of them to go viral, with a handful even soaring past the 100,000-view mark. They’ve also published a range of other informative and slickly produced travel videos featuring topics of interest to their audience, like sustainable and eco-friendly tourism, traveling on a tight budget, and personal spotlights on the ‘local leaders’ in a destination country who serve as tour guides.
Intrepid’s efforts have clearly paid off, with their YouTube success sparking some strong knock-on growth for their other social channels: Nearly 500,000 likes and plenty of engagement on Facebook, and almost 90,000 Twitter followers.
Intrepid Travel’s success speaks for itself: High-quality video is a form of content marketing that can go a long way in building your audience, drawing attention to your business, and spurring growth and engagement.
ANZ Bluenotes and the journalist’s switcheroo
In 2014 the Melbourne-based banking company ANZ launched their own publishing firm, ANZ Bluenotes. Serving as a publishing space for “news, opinion, and insight” from ANZ, the move stunned marketers when it was announced that award-winning Australian journalist Andrew Cornell would be departing the Australian Financial Review weekly business newspaper to join the fledgeling outlet’s team.
With Cornell serving as the head of the ‘ANZ Newsroom,’ the outlet began to regularly publish high-quality reporting and thought leadership pieces, and ANZ Bluenotes quickly established itself as one of the leading voices in Australian marketing. While local publications were ready to disparage this move as yet another case of a journalist crossing over to the proverbial Dark Side, Cornell demonstrated the social and economic value businesses can create through in-house journalism.
As Cornell explained in a statement announcing the launch of ANZ Bluenotes, “The consumers of journalism today are not prepared to be broadcast to, they want to participate.”
By publishing thoughtful original reporting and analysis, ANZ Bluenotes is not only able to engage more directly with their customers and the broader market, they’re contributing a net positive to society and helping to facilitate meaningful conversations around their industry. And this content-first approach has paid off handsomely for ANZ, with traffic for the Bluenotes site peaking as high as 100,000 unique monthly impressions.
There’s a straightforward takeaway here for both aspiring and veteran content marketers: Investments in original content and thought leadership pay off.
HBF Health Insurance: ‘Direct Advice for Dads’
Health insurance companies don’t usually win awards for their content marketing initiatives, which goes to show just how unique and impressive HBF Health Insurance’s ‘Direct Advice for Dads’ campaign was.
HBF recognized that while there’s loads of marketing aimed at new mums, there’s comparatively little in the way of editorial or informative content that targets the other half of the child-rearing equation: Dads. With this in mind, HBF launched ‘Direct Advice for Dads’ (D.A.D.) a digital publication targeting new and expecting fathers with helpful advice on childcare for new fathers.
Perhaps most impressively, HBF resisted the urge to place their logos all over D.A.D., and instead let the content speak for itself — simple and helpful advice from dads, for dads. Rather than making branding their top priority, HBF focused on delivering value for their audience and prospective customers.
The D.A.D. initiative proved to be well worth the effort: HBF won three top-level awards at the 2017 Content Marketing Awards for how they targeted what they described as the “World’s Biggest Niche Audience.”
For content marketers, the lesson is clear: Investing in market research can reveal untapped audiences and niche interests, and serving them well-realized content can bring acclaim and notoriety to your business.
Melbourne University: The Pursuit of excellence
With so much original research coming out of their hallowed halls, it’s no surprise that universities have become one of the best places to find examples of effective content marketing.
One of the greatest example of successful content marketing coming from an institution of higher learning is Pursuit, a new publishing initiative by Melbourne University. While the publication is nominally affiliated with the school, Pursuit operates as a stand-alone publication that features reporting and commentary on the latest and greatest research coming out of Melbourne University:
Like HBR, Melbourne University poached a well-respected journalist to head up their initiative: Phillip Gardner, former editor-in-chief of Australia’s Herald Sun daily newspaper. Briefly perusing the Pursuit homepage reveals plenty of newsy and impactful content, much of which has already gone viral after being picked up by international news outlets (like this report on how student learning can benefit from including videogames in the curriculum).
Pursuit has brought in around 100,000 unique monthly visitors since launching and their traffic is continuing to grow, which confirms what most marketers instinctively know: Original and compelling content is king.
If you’re an Australian content marketer ready to give your work a boost through advanced call tracking and analytics, start now: Request your 14-day no-obligation trial of CallRail, or schedule a guided demo.
