If you’re marketing blogger, your content needs to be example-heavy.
As noted in my breakdown of beatable B2B blog content, thin posts often fail to show their work.
And on the flip side, top-performing posts are brimming with digital marketing examples to illustrate their talking points.
The problem? Many bloggers unfortunately pick from the same pool of examples over and over.
Maybe it’s laziness. Perhaps it’s the all-too-common phenomenon of marketing bloggers “borrowing” from each other (hint: plagiarism).
By having go-to sources for fresh marketing examples, you can make your posts more valuable without parroting what other bloggers have said before.
3 places to find up-to-date digital marketing examples
Below are three of my go-to resources for finding examples for my marketing blog posts.
I’m not shy about sharing them because, well, they’re not secrets.
With that, let’s dive in!
1. Facebook’s Ad Library: for real-time social media campaigns
Social media ads are among the best digital marketing examples for bloggers to reference.
Facebook or Instagram campaigns can clue you in on which creatives, calls-to-action and promotions a brand is pushing right now. In short, they’re timely.
Oh, and the fact that many social ads are visually striking is also a nice added bonus if you’re trying to make your blog posts pop.
The problem? Trying to get served ads manually kind of sucks.
The good news is that Facebook’s Ad Library library allows you to search through active Facebook, Instagram and Messenger ad campaigns for any given brand.
The Ad Library also lets you see variations of ads, including different formats (think: Stories versus Carousel), calls-to-action and creatives (think: videos versus photos).
It might seem like a no-brainer, but you need to disable your ad blocker to access the Facebook Ad Library fully (duh).
Admittetly, the search function can be finicky. For example, you need to select “Search all” prior to looking up an ad campaign (the Library defaults to “Issues, Elections or Politics”). Double-check that you’ve selected the appropriate region or country for any given brand, too.
2. Twitter search: for customer service interactions
Note that “examples” include more than just ad campaigns.
Case in point, Twitter search is my favorite place to find real-world customer service examples for my digital marketing blog posts.
So many brands rely on Twitter for handling customer concerns and spotting them in the wild is a cinch if you know what to search for.
I often look up phrases like “best customer service” or “awesome customer service” to find stories of satisfied customers.
You can also look at a company’s “Tweets & replies” to see their most recent interactions with customers.
See how that works?
Keep in mind that you should screenshot customer service Tweets for your blog posts rather than embed them directly.
Doing so allows you to keep the example in case the original Twitter thread gets deleted. Also, this gives you a chance to blur out the names of the customers referenced.
Even if someone shouting-out a brand likely wouldn’t mind being featured in a blog post, it’s perhaps best to err on the side of caution.
But you absolutely should blur out names (for people and brands) if you’re citing examples of negative customer service interactions. Use your best judgment when embedding tweets and try not to needless drag anyone.
3. Email aggregators: for email marketing examples
Email is perhaps the best place to find digital advertising examples that cover a marketing funnel from top to bottom.
And like social ads, email campaigns are a treasure trove if you need eye-popping images for your blog posts.
For starters, I’d recommend keeping up a dummy email account that’s relevant to your industry. If you’re a SaaS writer, you’ll want to sign for product demos or lead magnets. Ecommerce bloggers should sign up for newsletters and offers and so on.
You can then search for terms like “ending soon” or “x% off” to zero in on specific promotional examples.
However, there are also a few third-party email aggregators that do the heavy lifting for you.
ReallyGoodEmails is easily the most popular, sourcing real-life email campaigns and breaking them down by category (“retention,” “welcome,” etc).
Keep in mind that RGE’s popularity means that many bloggers are pulling from it already. Even so, it’s an awesome resource.
I’d also recommend MailCharts as an alternative or supplement to RGE.
Finally, there’s Milled. This aggregator is specific to ecommerce email examples. Finding examples via Milled can require a bit of digging because it’s updated so consistently.
That said, the fact that it’s pretty much an endless stream of emails means there’s less of a chance that you’re going to pick out an example that another blogger has already cited.
Where do you find your digital marketing examples?
Listen: real-world ads and campaigns make your blog posts more actionable to your readers.
Just make sure you’re not recycling the same digital marketing examples as everyone else. Doing so is arguably one of the most avoidable blogging mistakes given how many ads and campaigns are out there to reference.
If you’re always hunting for examples for your marketing blog posts, these resources can help! Bookmark ’em now if you haven’t already.
Any rad resources that I missed? Feel free to tell me about them on Twitter, comment below or shoot me an email.
This post was last updated on 12/13/2020.
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