Industry discusses how content marketing has become a key tool

IAMAI and Times Internet recently concluded a 'Digital Night', which saw a panel discussion on how content marketing is important across industries

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | January 20, 2017

The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) in association with Times Internet recently hosted 'Digital Night,' wherein a group of industry members discussed how content creation will help win the battle of marketing.

In today's digital era, it is important for a marketer to understand 'what's the business value of content.' The business value of content is making the customer aware, consider and take desired action for the content that is communicated.

If we see, the traditional marketing funnel is a broken funnel. The model doesn't work anymore. One needs to navigate to the new reality. A panel discussion moderated by Gulshan Verma, Chief Revenue Officer, Times Internet, threw light on how content marketing will help marketers grow their businesses.

The panellists included Siddharth Bhatia, Head of Marketing and HR, The Wadhwa Group; Rohan Padhye, VP Marketing, Axis Mutual Fund; Rubeena Singh, CEO, iProspect India; Salil Vaidya, Director and CMO, DHFL Pramerica; and Amitabh Tapadar, Brand Group and Consumer Insights Head, Bajaj Electricals.

The panel went on to discuss about content marketing in their respective industries. Tapadar said, “Most of the clientele is shifting to ecommerce. The challenge is how to attract them to our content marketing. Social media marketing needs to be content driven and be appealing.”

Vaidya added, “Today content marketing has become more critical. For instance, in my previous job, content marketing was to make people understand insurance. Today in my current profile, mutual fund is in the same dilemma. The questions still remain -- is the content marketing adding any value to the consumer?”

Padhye said, “In the mutual fund space, content has been in educating the consumer. Having said that education need not be boring. At Axis Mutual Funds, we try to provoke, entertain (with relevance) and educate people about our offering.”

Coming from an agency, Singh had a different perspective. She said, “Content is the most effective medium. The generation of millennials is the largest generation. They are very open to content coming to them and consuming it. As an agency, we pride ourselves at driving business performances for our organisation.”

Creating content for one of the most difficult industries, real estate, Bhatia is thankful to content marketing. He said, “Decision making time was anywhere from 30 days to one year. Engagement, frequency and relevancy were something we kept banking on. The last three years we've seen a change in how the real estate market has changed. Content marketing has helped us create audio and visual content for the buyer.”

Tapadar is of the opinion that content marketing teaches a person that he or she doesn't know enough about a product. One either makes a client in the first three impressions or breaks it. Bhatia thinks irrelevant content is not accepted well and vice-versa.

Concluding, Verma asks Singh about her thoughts on content and (return on investment) ROI. Singh said, “Why does it have to be content versus ROI. Content and ROI can go together. There is a lot of opportunity for it to go hand in hand.” Singh took an example of how Thomas Cook did content marketing of honeymoon packages to achieve the right ROI for their brand.

The panel says content marketing will be different for different industries. Formats of content may not matter all the time. The challenge is to create compelling content to help win the battle of marketing.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com