Because there is no one-size-fit-all approach to mar­ket­ing, you often can find the best exam­ples of mar­ket­ing strate­gies by brands dom­i­nat­ing in their respec­tive indus­try. Here’s how five top brands go about their mar­ket­ing efforts, and the key strengths of their approach­es.

1. GoPro

Sum­ma­ry: A con­tent strat­e­gy that forms a defin­ing part of the brand.

Some may argue that GoPro is for­tu­nate because their prod­uct nat­u­ral­ly results in high­ly vis­cer­al and immer­sive con­tent that appeals to the emo­tions and encour­ages shares and inter­ac­tions. After all, GoPro con­tent is authen­tic and share­able. Undoubtably, when it comes to mar­ket­ing, this gives the brand a clear advan­tage.

GoPro videos are a per­fect match for glob­al social media plat­forms such as YouTube, Twit­ter, or Vine, and at any moment a video uploaded by a user could go viral on any one of these plat­forms.

This incred­i­ble video has more than 27 mil­lion views as of this writ­ing.

How­ev­er, as pow­er­ful as this may be, it is just one ele­ment of the brand’s incred­i­ble suc­cess.

GoPro has vig­or­ous­ly engaged key com­mu­ni­ties, secur­ing incred­i­ble brand aware­ness and adop­tion in key ver­ti­cals; most notably in the extreme and adven­ture sports mar­ket. The brand also pos­sess­es a strong posi­tion in spe­cif­ic nich­es, such as road cycling and scu­ba div­ing.

For GoPro, it’s not so much the minia­ture cam­eras them­selves, but the pos­si­bil­i­ties that they afford which gen­er­ates lead­ing brand equi­ty. Nick Wood­man, CEO and inven­tor of the cam­era, spoke recent­ly of how the cam­era “has made noth­ing unfilmable” in an inter­view with the Tele­graph…

Have GoPro made noth­ing unfilmable?

But the crux of GoPro’s suc­cess, and one of the brand’s great­est strengths, is user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent.

GoPro is con­stant­ly improv­ing the tech­nol­o­gy users need to edit, upload, and share their videos (a GoPro app allow­ing users to do this on their mobile devices is expect­ed to launch this sum­mer). It makes for an incred­i­ble mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy with mul­ti-faceted ben­e­fits – the GoPro start and end frames for exam­ple, have become high­ly rec­og­niz­able among users, set­ting an expec­ta­tion in con­sumers’ minds for con­tent that excites and enter­tains.

“When that GoPro logo hits, you know you’re about to see some­thing inter­est­ing, and you pay atten­tion.” Wood­man said.“The major­i­ty of [our] video[s] come from our cus­tomers and it’s wild­ly authen­tic.”

Ulti­mate­ly, it’s the inge­nious way in which GoPro approach their con­tent that defines the brand’s con­tent strat­e­gy. For GoPro, con­tent is as much part of the brand as the prod­uct itself – an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful asset.

GoPro’s Marketing Strategy Key Strengths:

• Excep­tion­al platform/channel syn­er­gy, with high­ly vis­cer­al and emo­tion­al con­tent.
• Engage spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ties and key mar­kets.
• Encour­age authen­tic, share­able, user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent.
• Main­tain strong brand vis­i­bil­i­ty and logos across all con­tent, which already has a dis­tinct iden­ti­ty.
• Con­tent is irrev­o­ca­bly tied to the brand’s prod­uct, and part of the brand’s val­ue propo­si­tion.

2. Heineken

Sum­ma­ry: Cre­ative adver­tis­ing, and clever use of spon­sor­ship. Strong appeal for key demo­graph­ic.

If social media pop­u­lar­i­ty is an indi­ca­tor of brand pop­u­lar­i­ty, then with more than 19 mil­lion Face­book likes (as of this writ­ing), Heineken is per­haps the most pop­u­lar beer brand in the world.

Heineken has a rep­u­ta­tion for deliv­er­ing styl­ish, rec­og­niz­able ads that embody the brand’s “Open Your World” glob­al cam­paign. The tagline, which orig­i­nat­ed from a 2011 break­through ad (below), was cred­it­ed with reju­ve­nat­ing the mar­ket­ing endeav­ours of a brand that until then had “strug­gled to find a break­through mar­ket­ing mes­sage”.

The cam­paign appeals to the brand’s key mil­len­ni­al male audi­ence. The brand’s focus on this demo­graph­ic has led the brand to invest heav­i­ly in sports spon­sor­ship: Heineken has estab­lished them­selves as a pri­ma­ry spon­sor of the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League, and as a result have been a sta­ple of Wednes­day evening foot­ball nights.

Recent years have been reward­ing and well-acclaimed. Heineken recent­ly won the 2015 Cannes Lions Cre­ative Mar­keter of the Year award where Philip Thomas, CEO of Lions Fes­ti­vals, described Heineken as a brand that “lives and breathes cre­ativ­i­ty through­out its orga­ni­za­tion, and has a superb frame­work that allows its mar­ket­ing teams the free­dom to exper­i­ment while retain­ing the core essence of their many brands.”

Heineken bril­liant­ly com­bines that cre­ativ­i­ty with a laser-focus on their key demo­graph­ic, and con­stant­ly scales that across many ter­ri­to­ries. Heineken has built and exe­cut­ed a con­sis­tent and inte­grat­ed mul­ti­chan­nel mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.

As stat­ed in this analy­sis from Mash­able, “what makes the ‘Open Your World’ cam­paign so effec­tive is that Heineken posi­tioned it to be a plat­form, not a one-off com­mer­cial. With each edi­tion of the series, Heineken cre­at­ed local exe­cu­tions and dig­i­tal appendages that bol­ster the campaign’s mes­sag­ing and reach new con­sumers, both on-the-ground and on social media.”

Heineken’s Marketing Strategy Key Strengths:

• Exe­cute and scale a con­sis­tent, inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing mes­sage.
• Cre­ative and free inter­nal mar­ket­ing struc­tures.
• Focus on their key demo­graph­ic.
• Clever use of sports mar­ket­ing, and engage­ment of audi­ence via UEFA Cham­pi­ons League spon­sor­ship.

3. Twitch

Sum­ma­ry: Nur­ture and pro­vide val­ue for com­mu­ni­ties with­in a spe­cif­ic niche.

Twitch’s high pro­file acqui­si­tion by Amazon.com in Sep­tem­ber 2014 for $970 mil­lion affirmed the plat­for­m’s posi­tion as a force to be reck­oned with. The plat­for­m’s tremen­dous growth has been a result of a sim­ple, but extreme­ly valu­able val­ue propo­si­tion: pro­vid­ing users with a plat­form on which to live-stream pri­mar­i­ly video-gam­ing broad­casts. By Feb­ru­ary 2014, Twitch had become “the fourth largest source of inter­net traf­fic dur­ing peak times in the Unit­ed States, behind Net­flix, Google, and Apple.”

Twitch’s strength is root­ed in their com­mu­ni­ty, and fur­ther­more, in the spe­cif­ic way in which they pro­vide and nur­ture that com­mu­ni­ty. As voiced in the fol­low­ing video from HP Mat­ter, Twitch’s strat­e­gy “echoes a core prin­ci­ple of the inter­net itself: peo­ple want to learn and they want to con­nect with each oth­er”. The role of the brand has been to “build a com­mu­ni­ty around a niche and cre­ate clever ways of pro­vid­ing val­ue.”

Twitch’s Marketing Strategy Key Strengths:

• Encour­age and cap­i­tal­ize on fan engage­ment.
• Pro­vide a plat­form on which users can con­nect and learn.
• Strat­e­gy defined around pro­vid­ing real val­ue, and nur­tur­ing and pro­vid­ing for spe­cif­ic nich­es and com­mu­ni­ties.

4. Taco Bell

Sum­ma­ry: Astute under­stand­ing of audi­ence, and an explor­er men­tal­i­ty when look­ing to con­nect with peo­ple.

Taco Bell is well known in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try for their social media mar­ket­ing prowess. How­ev­er, that has­n’t always been the case. As recent­ly as 2011 Bri­an Nic­col, Pres­i­dent of Taco Bell, spoke of how he had “[let the brand] become too much of a punch­line.”

Taco Bell began a sig­nif­i­cant rebrand­ing effort in ear­ly 2012, and cru­cial­ly, a refo­cus­ing of the brand’s mark­ing efforts toward social media. Ad Age, which award­ed the brand with their 2013 mar­keter of the year award, explained how “to reach its tar­get­ed mil­len­ni­al audi­ence, Taco Bell exper­i­ment­ed with social media in ways oth­er com­pa­nies in its cat­e­go­ry have not.” As Nic­col put it: “You have to go to these oth­er screens, because in the end, kids in col­lege dorm rooms don’t even have TVs, they’re using lap­tops.”

Stay­ing on top of the user habits of their audi­ences has been a strength for the brand, but more valu­able than that has been their abil­i­ty to react to changes. Ten per­cent of their over­all mar­ket­ing bud­get is report­ed­ly spent on media explo­ration, new plat­forms, and test­ing.

Taco Bel­l’s inau­gur­al Snapchat film was cred­it­ed for dou­bling their fol­low­ers on the plat­form.

As out­lined in this momen­tol­ogy arti­cle, many fac­tors con­tribute to the restau­ran­t’s social media mar­ket­ing dom­i­nance, but ulti­mate­ly they are root­ed in a brand com­mit­ment to cus­tomer-cen­tric­i­ty which aims to best under­stand and access a key audi­ence. They aren’t afraid to take risks and they pro­vide cus­tomers with the right con­tent on the plat­forms they use.

Taco Bell’s Marketing Strategy Key Strengths:

• Com­mit­ment to social media, and main­tain­ing an authen­tic pres­ence that par­tic­i­pates in con­ver­sa­tion.
• License for, and bud­get allo­cat­ed to, explo­ration and inno­va­tion of new media and plat­forms.
• Fan­tas­tic under­stand­ing of audi­ence, and where they are con­sum­ing con­tent.

5. Nike

Sum­ma­ry: Mar­ket­ing which is both fueled by, and an exten­sion of, com­pa­ny cul­ture.

Nike is such a mar­ket­ing pow­er­house that many fac­tors con­tribute to their suc­cess. Sum­ma­riz­ing the strengths of their mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is no easy task.

Over the years, the brand has instilled an iden­ti­ty in con­sumers’ minds around spe­cif­ic val­ues. By nature intan­gi­ble, these val­ues per­haps aren’t easy to place, but they do nonethe­less deliv­er great brand val­ue and equi­ty.

The roots of their mar­ket­ing suc­cess are embed­ded in the cul­ture of the brand itself. Inno­va­tion, for exam­ple, is a qual­i­ty the brand read­i­ly embraces on all fronts. Vot­ed the “No. 1 Most Inno­v­a­tive Com­pa­ny Of 2013” by Fast Com­pa­ny, Nike has nur­tured “a cul­ture of true believ­ers” that with­in the orga­ni­za­tion, utter phras­es such as “if you have a body, you’re an ath­lete.”

Austin Carr of Fast Com­pa­ny describes how Nike’s cul­ture extends into the brands mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy: “that self-image is infused into every mar­ket­ing mes­sage and prod­uct release, and trans­ferred to a pub­lic eager to final­ly be let in on the secret.”

Nike’s adver­tis­ing, mar­ket­ing mes­sages, and efforts are numer­ous and vast. For a brand with a glob­al pro­file as promi­nent as theirs, these are fueled by a brand cul­ture that lives and breathes their core brand val­ues: ath­leti­cism, inno­va­tion, desire, and will. There may be more, but all of these will forge into one in the mind of a con­sumer, form­ing a col­lec­tion of val­ues that builds and adds to Nike’s brand.

Nike’s Marketing Strategy Key Strengths:

• High­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed brand cul­ture (matched only by the likes of the Apples and Dis­neys of the busi­ness world).
• Mar­ket­ing is an exten­sion of that cul­ture, and oper­ates with­in that cul­tur­al umbrel­la.
• Mar­ket­ing is unit­ed with the brand’s oth­er depart­ments: R&D, prod­uct devel­op­ment, all unite to form a dis­tinct brand iden­ti­ty.