Content marketing is a much-debated topic. Many marketers misconstrue incessant content publishing as central to a successful content marketing strategy. It isn’t. Posting without deliberate thought or aim merely to drive traffic and engagement can confuse your audience about brand messaging and, at times, scare them off.

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Campaign Strategy is Not Content Marketing

Even battle-scarred marketers start to believe that good content marketing revolves around campaigns. Ask any super-busy marketing team that generates content traffic, and you will know this is not a cliché but a hard and fast rule. “The more content we create, the more traffic we drive” is the rallying cry. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s to generate better leads or build a new product brand. Content marketing is a sought-after tool, but what after?  Just like any other tool, it is only useful till it has its use, so how do you change this mindset?

• You cannot build a brand overnight.
• You cannot develop a meaningful engagement with your customers overnight.
• You cannot build brand advocates overnight.

Here is where strategy comes into play. A focused content strategy:

• Needs to align with the business goals of your organization
• Breaks down silos and brings the entire organization to the same path where messaging is consistent and aligned across all functional units
• Clearly defines the content goal and aim for the short and long term
• Identifies the key personas that have to be targeted according to each function’s needs
• Identifies the platforms this content needs to be published on and the format of the content

Clearly, instead of leaning on the hit-or-miss of a short-term content strategy, companies gain more by working toward a long-term content strategy. Key areas that get impacted when you have a well-defined content strategy include building brand value, audience engagement, synchronization of product and service deliveries with customer demand, and a higher mind recall with your target audience.

Publishing content consistently acts as a reminder to the readers about the company’s presence and growth.

Normalizing branded content

Check some of the famous marketing campaigns in 2019, and you will find a surge in branded content in India. The ‘Coke Studio’ concept by the Coca-Cola Company is a stellar example of branded content. Similarly, the web series ‘Yeh Meri Family’ driven by the Association of Mutual Funds in India drove the #MutualFundsSahiHai campaign with greater success than anticipated.

In both these cases, branded content was tied to the brand’s business and aligned with company goals. They were not a marketing campaign alone. Digital campaigns created with more than the intent to drive traffic need proper, well-written content to drive home the desired message. Relying solely on campaign-led tactics goes awry as customers skip advertisements or browse to other pages if they lose interest within the first five seconds. There has been an increase in the consumption of content-driven pages and advertisements on social media platforms. All the same, marketers need to be wary about monotonous or tedious content. Remember, today’s audience attention span is less than 7 seconds, a little better than a goldfish.

So be strategic in creating content and not short-sighted.

Contributors to this blog post – Preeti Mishra, Arundhati Dey, Swapnil Adsul

To know more about how you can be strategic in your content marketing efforts, write to us at [email protected].