Uncovering rare beauty─Freighters can also be used for content marketing

Usually, as long as it involves business-to-business (B2B) goods or services, it is a difficult challenge for content hackers.

Products and services of a B2B nature often require in-depth expertise. Whether it is servers or customs services, except for people in the industry, ordinary people usually do not come into frequent contact with these products and services. Now that’s it, what should we do with marketing?

I don’t know how much time it takes just to understand the lingo. Not to mention that it is really not easy to convert these terms that are confusing to ordinary people into Mandarin (which is equivalent to translation) or pictures that potential users can understand, and to be able to “feel” them.

However, the online world is so big, and there are some god-level content hackers who can simplify the complex and easily market B2B content to a B2C level, which amazes everyone. This is not made by IBM or HP Enterprise in the information industry. Instead, it comes from the planning of a very old industry - the freighter shipping industry Maersk Line (Maersk Line was founded in 1904 and is truly a century-old company).

If you are an ordinary marketer and encounter this century-old freighter industry (not the beautiful passenger ships used for tourism), you will probably think of traditional marketing techniques such as “just deal with import and export trading companies, make standard advertisements or leaflets, and let the business use discounts to compete for customers.”

Content Strategy: Seeing the World from a Freighter - Maersk Line takes you (and your products) around the world

Maersk Line’s marketing team did not give up on themselves like this. Instead, they thought, “B2B customers are also made up of people. There must be some way to impress people. How to do it?” After working hard on their ideas, they found an angle that would not put pressure on people and was not high in cost, but was too special - freighters travel all over the world, but what does the world look like from a freighter? Is it beautiful?

Maersk Line took a series of wonderful photos through its employees, allowing everyone to see everything from cargo ship bridge to [crane](https://twitter.com/Maersk/status/89990 5513814728704) and Dock. From the time-lapse video, you can even see the changes in the ocean climate on the freighter channel (not a great channel).

The meaning of this has made the characteristics of freight transport silently available to everyone:

*Climate change: Maersk Line employees braved strong winds and waves to deliver goods safely to their destinations.

• Large freighters (Panamax and post-Panamax): Maersk Line has ultra-large-capacity freighters, and cargo owners can send as many goods as they want.
• The view from the bridge and crane: Regardless of sunrise or sunset, Maersk Line serves cargo owners uninterruptedly and diligently.

Using different social networks, Maersk Line gradually spread these content messages and attracted a lot of attention. The Facebook fan group alone has more than 1 million likes and subscriptions. Maersk Line’s social communication content strategy was also specially invited by McKinsey to share.

Learning: Find a unique perspective, B2B can also “speak human language”

With the same photos and videos, Maersk Line has managed to find beautiful scenery that ordinary people cannot see. Through social sharing, ordinary consumers (and possibly potential customers) can see the beautiful scenery that only those in the freighter industry can see (cargo ships sailing in ports around the world), etc.

As a content hacker, when meeting B2B industry customers, I have to try to expand various perspectives and try to find out the unique angles of this industry and this company, so as to arouse the interest of consumers or potential customers.

If today it were Wanhai Line or Evergreen Marine that asked you to generate social content, would you copy Maersk Line’s approach? Or is there a different angle?

Thoughts: Group management to reduce “advertising”

However, after several years of community management, Maersk Line began to “unify” the post types and content of each community, and you can see the same photos and copy content on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Some of the photos on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/maerskline/) are the same as those on the previous community. The numbers of existing social platforms have also entered a plateau period and have not grown significantly.

In addition, Maersk Line also gave up updating the Google+ and Flickr communities. It is speculated that there are not many readers, so it gradually let go and concentrated on operating social platforms that can generate responses.

Image source: Maersk Line exclusive Twitter account, Facebook fan group and LinkedIn accounts

In fact, different social networks have different ethnic characteristics. Unifying all posts certainly makes it easier for marketers to operate, but it also makes people lose the opportunity to get different results (stories).

Another thing that makes people feel “stuck” is that Maersk Line began to carefully produce many videos to tell stories in the form of advertising films. The content is nothing more than stories about how hard it is for farmers, how Maersk Line helps fulfill their wishes, and how it is marketed around the world. It cannot be said that the film is not exquisitely shot, but it will immediately make people feel that “this is an advertisement”, but it does not make much sense.

A temporary success does not mean that the same method can be used all the time. Don’t stand still, keep moving forward. This is where the content hacker’s arduous mission lies.

★ Source of the first picture: Pixabay

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Further reading

• Talk about common things, build emotions──Content marketing close to female users
• Copywriting power is your “cashability”: before turning ChatGPT into a godly teammate, you must first make yourself stronger
• Four steps to play copywriting magic

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