Marketing+Content=A marriage made in heaven: Abhinav Upadhyay

Marketing’s role is evolving and content can help marketers play a larger role in driving awareness, consideration, lead generation & business growth. As a child, a memory got imprinted in my head – A poster in my maternal grandfather’s house that so succinctly defined philosophy for me.

4 questions cover all philosophy:

Whence?

Whither?

Why?

How?

When it comes to the fundamentals of marketing, they are no different. It is always about when(ce) we launch what we do? Where (whither) do we do it? Why should we do it? And how should we go about it.

WHENCE?

Adverb: from what source, origin, or cause?

Where did this “Content Marketing” come from that everyone keeps talking about?

In today’s multi-screen scenario, what’s imperative for all of us in our respective businesses is to evaluate whether the timing is right for us to look at Content Marketing as a key pillar of our strategy. All I can say is that we marketers have always been suckers for content as a medium to reach out to our audiences. The form might have evolved but content as a pillar has always been a part of our strategy.

Today, we see an evolved avatar of marketing as “Integrated Marketing Communication”. Print, Television, Radio, Out of Home, PR, Events and activation all speaking the same language and we continue to reach out to the audiences for greater mindshare. The activations were full of amazing content (engagement) that audiences loved and spoke about and the mainline advertising was carefully crafted with beautiful content (Audio, Visual, Copy) to ensure they could capture the imagination of the audience.

So, if you are evaluating whether Content Marketing is a fad or an imperative to look at now from a timing perspective – marketers have been seeing and doing this forever. Today’s content is nothing but an evolution process which is a necessity in marketing.

WHITHER?

 Adverb: 1. to what place? where?

2. to what end, point, action, or the like? to what?

 Where should I be leveraging content and where do I find content?

 Well, content is all around you. It is in the people who are clicking pictures and uploading selfies while goofing around in office (Employer Branding). It is in the new office premises you moved to. It is in the consumer testimonials which come via emails, forms or which you can generate via video. Look at your own website and third party portals. Look at your advertising and how testimonials could bring the authenticity to your brand promise.

 The potential to create, co-create, crowd source and amplify is huge. All you need to do is to map out your touch-points with your target audience and customer base and the vision of implementation will come to you as if the God of Marketing Knowledge himself came in your dream and briefed you on it.

WHY?

Why should I even bother looking at Content Marketing as a pillar of my marketing strategy?

 The age of Content Marketing is a natural extension to the way you’ve marketed and the way that Marketing is evolving in today’s digital age.

 Let us look at some numbers as they stack up as of January 2016

• 4 billion people in the world today have access to the Internet: 46 per cent of Global Population
• 3 billion people in the world are Active Social Media Users: 31 per cent of Global Population
• 462 million Indians have access to Internet Today

The numbers explain the situation itself. Today is not about Digital Marketing at all, it is about marketing in the digital age. And it’s time to grab the bull by its horns and make a positive impact on your brand, your business and to your industry is now.

Advertising on digital medium ends up being too intrusive. What is imperative in such a scenario is to provide great content that blends itself with the context of the communication and the place that the audience is at. Do not look at content from the prism of the brand alone, but largely from the perspective of what does the customer want when to access a certain medium and their chosen content publisher. If the content is relevant, it will have a place and it will create impact that will be felt in the shares, reads and comments.

HOW?

 How do I go about Content Marketing? How do I build content and How do I leverage the content?

 It is a simple process that one can start with:

 - Map out all the touchpoints that you have/ could have with your audience, employees as well as customers. If you are in a business which is involved channel partners etc then you need to map those out too because they too are a key pillar in this game.

 - Figure out the gaps and opportunities:

• As an example you can figure out if you have employees who can blog about things. Figure out if there are touchpoints where you can capture customer reactions and testimonials.
• Figure out where you can leverage this content that you create
• Put together a roadmap that blends content with context and makes it relevant and who can provide the content internally, via channel partners, via customers and other audiences.

 - Create a calendar of actions based on broad themes

 - Execute your calendar of activities, measure it, analyse it, take learnings and move forward.

 There are a few things, which you need to bear in mind when evaluating the content that you create.

The golden checklist:

• Brand Relationship: The content you create must have a subtle relationship with the brand and create a connection that goes deep enough for it to resonate from a contextual perspective.
• Useful is good: The content must be useful for the audience that gets access to the content. The use could vary based on objective and audience but it must be useful.
• Credibility: The content must be credible and create a sense of authenticity for the brand/business. That goes a long way in building credibility for the brand and the business too.
• No Pfaff: Transparency in communication is what will drive your brand promise in today’s day and age in the right spirit. So stay honest and transparent.
• Plan your dissemination and amplification: Plan your distribution and do not just hope for it to go viral.

 Go ahead and commit yourself to content and its amplification and reward yourself with success that you never thought was possible.

 (Abhinav Upadhyay is Head of Marketing and Innovation at Zee Learn. He is an experienced hand at the nuances of Marketing and Product Innovations.)