Content Marketing- The IKEA microsite case study

This article is fourth in the 21D Signature Series. The previous part of this series, can be read here.

Content marketing is uninterrupted marketing, with the hopeful objective of guiding, entertaining and hopefully (fingers crossed) nudging your customer into making a connect with you that keeps them coming back for more. Your job as a content marketing expert is to put together a mission, a strategy and the actual content that will compel your consumer to listen you. 

Content allows advertisers to cut through the noise by focusing on their audience rather than on themselves. That means being helpful rather than promotional and adapting the narrative for each step of a customer’s journey.

The key here is - “adapting the narrative”. 

Content is undergoing a continual evolution and with time will become more and more personalised leaning into the content engagement behaviours of consumers (do they read more, or watch more or listen more or read only on the weekends or watch only on the weekdays and so on). But the great thing is that social media has provided direct access to all niches of customers without the need for an intermediary. Only catch is when you showcase content on social media, you need to play by the rules of the platform- and that’s why, the website, the microsite or any dedicated print medium is the only option that any brand has true control over and is the only way to differentiate themselves. Social media gets a foot in the door, but how long they stay on the website/ magazine is all upto the content there. 

Ikea was launched in the USA in 1985. But by 2015, those with the purchasing power were Next Gen folks and Ikea was struggling in finding its footing in that volatile situation. They were struggling with “false familiarity”. Their vision statement is- ‘To create a better everyday life for the many people', They offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them. But this didn’t seem to work in the American context. People thought they knew the brand, but they didn’t and this wasn’t working well for Ikea. 

In 2016, The Economist’s research arm, The Economist Intelligence Unit, drove a survey of 2,000 Americans to gain fresh insights into the future of the American Dream. A unique microsite displayed the in-depth research findings as a modular set of concise and visual take-aways; these included infographics, quotes and custom GIFs, narrating these individualised American Dreams. Social media distribution included output on official IKEA Twitter accounts, sponsored and organic EIU social media amplification and a live Twitter chat event. 

What did this microsite- https://discoveringthenewamericandream.eiu.com/ do for Ikea? 

1. It shared elements of the brand itself in context of the American people. The microsite talks about the new American, who wants betterment of life but is largely driven by individual interpretation. It helped with connecting to the “value system” of the consumer. 
2. It led to better customer engagement as seen by- 

• Site dwell time of nearly triple the benchmark for average time spent on page. 
• Organic Facebook posts received more than 4 times. 
• Top sponsored Twitter posts received almost 5 times the benchmark engagement rate. 
• While the top sponsored Facebook post received almost 6 times the benchmark engagement

3. It helped Ikea experiment “creatively”. While the parent website had a particular standardised layout and feel to it, the microsite could be bigger than that in design and minutely customised to a certain target audience. It reflected the needs of the customer and that got them noticed. 

But wait for it- the microsite didn’t have one mention of Ikea. Not one.

All the research was sponsored by Ikea- it came out in print that Ikea was getting back in the game in the US with data driven findings and the new American Dream campaign. It was beautiful how it all came together for Ikea. 

The Economist enjoys content credibility- so anything up on their website- about any other brand creates a natural, almost organic trust in that brand too. This content on the microsite was custom created for the brand, and performed far better than repurposed content could have- in terms of engagement. This kind of content went beyond traditional analytics conversation- it played to the hearts and minds of the new American customer and that was where it came full circle. 

What can content marketing through a microsite do for you? - It can adapt the narrative to what’s most contextual right then, without fear of diluting the larger brand.