One of the most attractive things in a business is an effective, scalable marketing channel. Truthfully, it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds.
Exploring whether or not a channel can work for you takes work – a lot of it. Sometimes it takes months to really explore a marketing channel and decide whether or not it is delivering results.
When I advise clients on channels that I believe will be effective for their business, I always start by considering the case studies. What are other businesses doing that is working, and is it something that we can mimic?
Therefore, I’ve organized a list of over 60 case studies, organized by channel, where actual results were delivered.
If you’re in the middle of one of these channels right now, I suggest honing in on the case studies and deciding whether or not you should implement it yourself.
Table of Contents
Content Marketing
Email Marketing
Influencer Marketing
SEO
Social Media
Viral Marketing
Word Of Mouth
Content Marketing
Content is king – as they say. That said, content marketing is a relatively new strategy that is taking the internet by storm as content is being seen as the way for businesses to rank in Google. In fact, a recent survey by Marketing Land found that 89% of businesses doing content marketing say it works. It is extremely cheap and has virtually no barriers to entry.
- Content Strategy Case Study: 36,282 Readers & 1,000 Subscribers
- Case Study ? How an effective content marketing strategy drives online success ? Belfast ? The Tomorrow Lab
- A Case Study: Content Marketing Increases Web Referrals by 50%
- 15 B2B Case Studies Show How Content Marketing Drives ROI
- Content Marketing Case Study: How To Increase Traffic 272% In 30 Days (Without Spending A Penny)
- Case Study: How MSI Data Drives Business with Content Marketing | Search Engine People
- Content Marketing Case Study :: 600 visitors a day from a single blog post | MODassic Marketing
Email Marketing
Content may be king but the money is in the list. Collecting someone’s email address is often seen as the holy grail of marketing, because people are so much more receptive to emails as compared to other channels. Still, it’s important to know what to do with those email addresses after you collect them, which are what these case studies reveal.
- How to launch an online course and make $220,750 in 10 days
- Case Study: Email Marketing with Markree Castle Hotel and GroupMail
- Email Marketing Case Study: How I Generated $40,000 In Sales Without Annoying My Subscribers
- Email Marketing: Microsoft Store uses relevance to increase sends by 300% and email revenue by 600% | MarketingSherpa
- Email Marketing: Simplifying email content increases open rates 48% for B2B company | MarketingSherpa
- 10 Case Studies To Help You Get More Clicks – Email Marketing Tips
- Using Email Marketing to Connect with the Local Community
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is one of the most talked about marketing channels in recent times. It involves identifying potential brand advocates and partnering with them to promote your business. What makes influencer marketing ideal is that you get to tap into the large audience that influencers have amassed. Again, this is a very cost effective channel for reaching thousands of people.
- Luxury Social Media Marketing Case Study Example: diptyque Paris | Affinitive
- What Happens When Guy Kawasaki Tweets Your Post to His Followers? | DrumUp Blog
- Case Study: 30% Conv. Rate with Influencer Marketing
- Company Spotlight – How LeadPages Uses Influencer Marketing To Grow To 25k Customers
- Influencer Marketing Success on YouTube – NordicTrack
- How we grew our website traffic by +400% with influencer marketing ? onalytica
- Award Winning B2B Influencer Content Marketing Case Study & 18 Resources
- Influencer Marketing Case Study: Kmart Holiday Hoopla Contest | WendyPiersall.com
SEO
Google has over 1 trillion searches a year, and tapping into that is what Search Engine Optimization is all about. What’s unique about SEO is that it tends to be ongoing. If you are ranking for a set of keywords you can continue to receive traffic long after the “campaign” is over with (as opposed to make other types of marketing channels). See in these case studies how businesses have improved their rankings and increased their organic traffic.
- Negative SEO Case Study: How to Uncover an Attack Using a Backlink Audit | SEW
- Inflow SEO Case Study: 108% YoY Organic Traffic Increase
- How VeriFirst Used Content to Increase Organic Traffic, Leads, and Grow Business
- How Social Media Can Help Organic SEO : 2 Case Studies – Jeffbullas’s Blog
- How We Increased Organic Blog Traffic by 203.5% in Less Than 3 Months – And You Can Too – @ProBlogger
- How To Increase Website Traffic to Over 100,000 Visitors Per Month
- Project POUQ: Increase Organic SEO Traffic by 10,000 Unique Visitors a Month
- White Hat SEO Case Study???How I Increased Traffic to Over 100,000 Visitors per Month ? Medium
- Case Study: One Site’s Recovery from an Ugly SEO Mess – Moz icon-book icon-close icon-conversation icon-envelope icon-external icon-house icon-menu icon-pencil icon-products icon-search moz-logo Tools
- Increasing Organic SEO Traffic by 400,000 Unique Visitors a Month! – YouMoz – Moz icon-book icon-close icon-conversation icon-envelope icon-external icon-house icon-menu icon-pencil icon-products icon-search moz-logo Tools
Social Media
It seems that just about every business has at least one social media profile nowadays, which would make it significantly more popular than content marketing. That said, having a profile is not the same as having a strategy – far from it in fact. What’s unique about social media are all of the different platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, to name just a few. Each has a different audience and requires a different strategy. For example, while Facebook is normally heralded as a great B2C platform, LinkedIn is typically reserved for B2B. While Facebook and Twitter seem to have an equal number of men and women, Pinterest is heavily geared towards females. These case studies will guide you on how to tackle each channel.
- 5 Best Social Media Campaigns of 2014 – Beta21
- How L’Oreal Use Social Media for Recruitment [Case Study]
- ShipServ and one of the most interesting B2B social media case studies – Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}
- B2B Social Media Case Study: How I made $47 million from my B2B blog – Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}
- Social Media Launch Saves Cisco $100,000+ Social Media Examiner
- How Red Bull uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ | Econsultancy
- How Cadbury uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ | Econsultancy
- The Key Features Behind A Successful Marketing Campaign | Simply Zesty
Video Marketing
Video is a popular media used in marketing campaigns and it’s becoming more and more popular each year as the barriers to entry for video creation lessen. To put things in perspective, every minute 300 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube.
- How Cuisinart Grew Brand Engagement With Interactive Video On Facebook
- Viral Video Case Study of Dollar Shave Club : What We Can Learn ? iMediaConnection Blog
- Succeed with Video Content Marketing: 5 Tips and a Case Study
- [Case Study] How 1 Instagram Marketing Video Increased New Patients at a Bahrain Medical Clinic – Gulf Broadcast [Case Study] How 1 Instagram Marketing Video Increased New Patients at a Bahrain Medical Clinic – Gulf Broadcast
- What It Really Takes For Video Content To Go Viral [Case Study]
- A case study of using video marketing to enhance your brand and help CRO – Smart Insights Digital Marketing Advice
- 5 Examples of Awesome B2B Video Marketing | Vidyard
Viral Marketing
Viral – it’s what everyone wants to go. While there is no way to guarantee virality, there are conditions that increase its likelihood. As you read these case studies notice some of the following attributes. Firstly, many viral campaigns involve video. This is because video is easy to share and easy to digest. A one minute video can convey a whole host of emotions. Additionally, they integrate sharing into the campaign, asking you to tag multiple other people. This prolongs the life of the campaign. Lastly, there is usually something “catchy”. Combine all of these elements and you may just have a viral campaign.
- Viral Marketing Case Study: 17,584 Visitors In One Day
- The ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’: A case study in viral marketing gold – Digiday
- Case Study: Going Viral With Stride Gum | jmarbach.com
- The Old Spice Social Media Campaign by the Numbers
- The Dark Knight: A Case Study of Viral Marketing | PhilTreagus.com | An Entrepreneurs Life?
- Case Study: AcneFree Sampling Goes Viral! ? likeable media
- No make-up selfie cancer campaign raises ?8m in 6 days – Telegraph
- Case Study: How Gangnam Style went viral with a strategic marketing campaign from YG Entertainment | The Drum
- 9,000 Uniques in One Day: A Viral Marketing Case Study – Moz icon-book icon-close icon-conversation icon-envelope icon-external icon-house icon-menu icon-pencil icon-products icon-search moz-logo Tools
Word Of Mouth
Word of mouth is considered the holy grail of marketing. It’s generally one of the least expensive channels – but how do you get people to talk about you? Often, it has to do with getting the big things right; a great product, great customer service, and a reason for people to share. These case studies go in depth on various referral campaigns that capitalize on word of mouth sharing.
- How Intuit Measures the Impact of Social Media Activity on Sales for Small Business Owners, presented by Kira Wampler | WordofMouth.org
- How Word-Of-Mouth On Facebook Can Boost Sales 433% | SocialTimes
- Digital marketing case study – Dettol boosts spray sales 86% in China via mums’ word of mouth – Digital Training Academy
- AAP collects INR 18M using InviteReferrals Referral marketing software
- Word-of-Mouth – Case Study: How One Company More Than Doubled Customer Referrals : MarketingProfs Article
- Social Media Marketing: How a small e-commerce site attracted 293,000 Facebook fans | MarketingSherpa
- Word of Mouth Marketing Case Study: Epson & Sparkplugging | WendyPiersall.com
- Referral Program: 18,000 customer participants create more than 60,000 shares, $100,000 in sales | MarketingSherpa