In October, the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs released their “2016 B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends” report for North America. In the report, data shows that 76% of corporations have a content marketing strategy and that B2C marketers are allocating 32% of their total marketing budget to content marketing.
Many of the world’s most influential brands—like Kraft, Allstate, and American Express—are focused on connecting with their customers through articles, videos, and photos that tell stories aligned with the brand’s mission and personality, but that may not implicitly sell the product. Coca-Cola, perhaps the world’s best-known brand, recently dove into the world of content marketing by re-launching its company home page as a content hub called Coca-Cola Journey.
​

The Coca-Cola Journey Website: So why is content marketing so important, and what sets it apart from more established marketing channels? Content marketing allows a company to align brand personality with customer personas—much more than can be done in a 30-second ad spot—and can help make the brand likable in the eyes of its target market.
For example, with its iconic imagery and design, Coca-Cola is known all over the world as a fun-loving brand. As such, Coca-Cola uses its website to tell stories about the company that flesh out and showcase its brand personality.
Coca-Cola also uses content marketing to support its expansion into new markets. As the soft drink industry takes a hit because of increased interest in healthy living, Coca-Cola is trying to diversify into other food and beverage products while still benefitting from the Coke brand. As you’ll see below, other goals of Coca-Cola’s content strategy include showcasing its charitable initiatives and connecting with its most loyal followers through exclusive content.
On the Journey site, there are pieces focused on:

• Charitable work: Coca-Cola’s progress in the area of water replenishment and a Coca-Cola scholar who was recently elected to Congress
• Healthy living: Coca-Cola diversifying into milk and organic juice products
• Innovation: New products like the Coke small pack
• Sustainability: The first bottle made entirely from plants
• Insider’s view: Lessons learned from the failed launch of Coke 2
• Uber fans: Images of the Coca-Cola motorhome

Coca-Cola delivers these pieces of content in many forms, including short and long-form articles, photos, and videos.
But content marketing isn’t just about providing a dynamic way for a company to build a brand’s personality; it’s also about giving fans a chance to show what they think of the brand. That’s why Coca-Cola’s site includes a space to upload photos of you and your friends drinking Coke.

The Power of Content Marketing in Higher Ed: For higher-ed institutions, we have similar needs as it relates to building our brands. There are numerous messages we need to convey, especially since each website visitor has a different area of the institution he or she is interested in. Fortunately, we can use content marketing to show the diversity of our offerings, to highlight specific areas of expertise, and to emphasize our mission, faculty research, athletics, and alumni. When done right, content can help paint higher-ed institutions as forward thinking, influential, innovative, global minded, and connected to the local community.
​
One school that does a particularly good job with content marketing is Michigan State University (MSU). With an in-depth, elegantly designed website called Spartans Will, MSU is able to tell its institution’s story through inspirational words and images.
​

Here are some areas of the school that are highlighted on the site:

• Influence: An article discusses work done in partnership with Ford and Dow Chemical.
• Diversity of interests: There are several pieces about MSU’s student and faculty research into better ways of identifying criminals, mapping the ocean, and working to debunk common stereotypes. All these pieces help illustrate the school’s wide array of academic expertise.
• Innovation: The page highlights MSU discoveries related to toxic waste cleanup,treatments for cerebral malaria, and preventing future cases of liver cancer.
• Global: An article showcases how MSU students are helping the island of Fiji deal with the effects of climate change.
• Local impact: Faculty work done in partnership with Wayne County and the Detroit police force is brought to light.

While this may seem overwhelming, because of the easy-to-navigate website, a visitor can quickly see all of the articles available without going to a specific departmental page. And everything on the page entices a visitor to click. MSU pairs beautiful images with powerful text like “Work Hard, Dream Big,” “Soar,” “Make Waves,” and “Be Unreasonable.”

Crowdsourcing Content for Your Website: As I mentioned above in the Coca-Cola example, content marketing is also about curating content from constituents themselves. King’s College London recently ran a content marketing campaign that did a great job of encouraging alumni to share their favorite memories of the school. Instead of just running a Twitter campaign, the college created a page called “Memories at King’s” featuring a scrolling timeline in front of an image of campus. The page’s top-notch design encouraged interaction because people want to be a part of something special and unique. If this had been a Twitter or Facebook campaign just asking for alumni to share memories on Twitter, it likely would not have been as successful. ​
​

With the release of the new Star Wars movie, there has been renewed interest in the legendary space saga and its creator, George Lucas. Not only has Star Warswithstood the test of time, but it has also inspired a rabid fan base and a sub-industry of new stories told through comic books, video games, novels, and cartoons.
There have been a number of articles written about what makes Star Wars such a cultural phenomenon—and many characteristics that led to the success of the films are also relevant to alumni relations and annual giving. Here are some general lessons for higher-ed fundraisers:
1. Focus on great storytelling.Before Lucas made Star Wars, most sci-fi movies relied heavily on whatever the most modern special effects happened to be. Yes, Star Wars has its fair share of special effects—but it doesn’t rely on the effects to wow the audience. Lucas made sure the movies each had an engaging story arc that kept viewers enrapt throughout. The stories follow the same general arc as many Greek myths and childhood fables.
At its core, fundraising is about storytelling. Most of our alumni and donors already believe in our mission, but we need to capture their hearts. For annual giving shops, we can often benefit from stepping back and looking at how we are telling our story. Is there an effective arc to our stories that we tell, especially those where we utilize video? Do we have any tension in our stories that helps emphasize why a gift is needed?
2. Follow the path of the hero’s journey.One aspect of Lucas’ storytelling that helped set Star Wars apart was its focus on the “hero’s journey.” The hero’s journey is a term used to describe what mythologist Joseph Campbell proposed in his book, Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell theorized that most traditional myths from around the world all follow a similar path, which Lucas based his stories off of.
When it comes to writing great copy for an email or creating a narrative for a scholarship/fellowship video, Campbell’s hero’s journey provides an excellent approach. Not every step is necessary, but many are very relevant to higher-ed fundraising. Nancy Duarte, in her book Resonate, mapped out the following steps of the hero’s journey as it relates to Star Wars:

Let’s think about this 12-step approach through the lens of creating a video about a scholarship recipient.


The Ordinary World: What was the student doing prior to coming to your school?


Call to Adventure: How did receiving a scholarship open up paths unbeknownst to the student beforehand?


Refusal of the Call: Did the student have any reservations? Were they intimidated to take the next step in their journey? Did they feel they were not worthy of the philanthropy?


Meeting with the Mentor: What professor influenced the student and helped the student grow?


Crossing the Threshold: What activity really allowed the student to begin to reach their potential?


Tests, Allies, and Enemies: What challenges did the student meet? Who helped them?


Approach the Inmost Cave: When was the road toughest for the student?


Ordeal: How did the student meet this larger challenge?


Reward (seizing the sword): What was the result of attempting to solve the larger challenge?


The Road Back: How did reaching this challenge affect the student’s vision of their future career path/vocation?


Resurrection: What is the student’s new path?


Return with the Elixir: This is the unknown part of the higher-ed story. We won’t know the ending for a student story, but the scholarship should hopefully give the student the means to reach the happy ending.
​

Brigham Young University’s School of Music has a great video, called Aubrey’s story, which illustrates how utilizing an effective story arc creates a powerful and compelling video demonstrating why scholarships are vital not just to a university, but also to an individual.

3. Leave something to the imagination.In the first three movies created by Lucas, there are many references to actions that are never seen in the movie (e.g., Princess Leia refers to the “Clone Wars,” Han Solo talks about the famed Kessel Run, Episodes IV and VI both refer to spy activities to gather data on the Death Star). It feels like you’re jumping right into the middle of an ongoing story; Lucas assumes that you’ll focus on the story at hand and don’t need to be informed of everything.
For annual giving, how much backstory are we providing? Do we need to provide information on famous landmarks, how expensive tuition is, or why scholarships are needed every time we send out a solicitation? If we focus less on this information, we’ll have more time to spend on telling compelling stories about current students and how their student experiences are benefitting greater mankind. Our donors are already knowledgeable about our institutions; they don’t always need the backstory.

4. Love your fan base.Not only have Star Wars and Lucasfilm created an immersive universe, but they have also embraced their fans by responding to fan mail and hosting fan fests. The company is active on social media to keep their fans excited even though there hasn’t been a new movie in 10 years. Who are your biggest fans? What do you do to keep them excited about their alma mater, even when there isn’t much happening?

5. Show what your reality is really like.Most sci-fi films from the 50s and 60s depicted the future as shiny and bright. But Star Warsflipped the script, showing a future that was dirty, “lived in,” and often far from perfect. In higher ed, even when asking for donations, we still depict our college or university as ideal. But do we need to be afraid to show the rough edges? If financial aid or a new departmental building is an urgent need, it’s best to get right out there and state it instead of dancing around the issue or being afraid to show areas of weakness within your institution.
​
There are often lessons to be learned from successful brands around the world, and Star Wars provides a great blueprint for how to correspond with our alumni and donors. Not that we all need to be thinking about fundraising while at the movie theater!