After taking a beating during to the 2008 global financial crisis, GE are back on top, and according to the corporation’s CMO it’s all thanks to content marketing.

“We’ve done some research on our content marketing,” GE’s CMO Beth Comstock, said at the ANA Masters of Marketing conference in the US last week. “And we get 30% extra value for every dollar spent.”

Social media has been another saving grace for the company, with Comstock telling Adweek GE’s business strategy has had more focus and social media has helped channel it. “I think social media has been a big part of it because it makes us relevant in a lot of new ways,” she says.

In August GE ran a Vine-based program dubbed #6SecondScience (view it at the bottom of this article) that combined content with social media. The company has also tested native ads on publishing platforms such as BuzzFeed and creating numerous videos.

“We’ve been on a five-year journey, and we are still trying to figure this out,” she says. Increasingly, Comstock suggested, data is leading her team’s content strategy. “Make big data small and have fun with it.”

Another brand that revealed interesting statistics at the conference was Walmart. Its CMO, Stephen Quinn, told Adweek that it is getting a return-on-investment from social up to ten times other advertising spends. “It’s very staggering,” Quinn said. “It is so intense on Black Friday. It’s almost like a mission control centre for Walmart at that point.”

“I’m always baffled when I hear people say, ‘It’s really hard to prove the ROI.'”

“We have ROI that’s really strong. And, it’s transforming our organisation. This level of engagement we now have with customers is changing a whole bunch of other aspects of our marketing.”

Watch GE’s #6SecondScience video:

http://youtu.be/iNdBHmZAOr4