How content is helping transform business capabilities

While the Covid-19 pandemic forced many organisations across sectors to transform themselves digitally, a lot of them also found opportunities to expand their business capabilities.

In the crisis, we saw hundreds of new applications being launched and multiple brands foraying into new categories altogether.

And content is playing a crucial role in helping brands transform themselves, while they build and come up with new offerings.

Ankur Pujari

“Relevant and engaging content has always been the holy grail of B2B marketing. It helps place the brand in the right context and ensure more retention and stickiness. So, content will surely have an upper hand when it comes to delivering business success only and if only it is unique, engaging and relevant to the brand,” said Ankur Pujari, Co-Founder and Growth Lead, Hyper Connect Asia.

Any business that has stepped onto this journey of transformation needs to keep its traders, partners and the consumers informed and up to date of the relevant informative content around the new products, services and the expanse.

Shashank Singh

Shashank Singh, CEO and Founder, FLYX, the streaming social networking app, said that just as content plays a big role in establishing the brand, a good content strategy will help in building the brand values and further expansion.

“A well thought out blog article not only helps the brand to establish the thought leadership but also helps increase trust and loyalty from current customers and prospective customers. Good content also acts as a proof of quality and it acts as a sample to the quality of product or service a prospective customer is about to purchase from the brand. A great content portfolio with the right balance of SEO can also get the brand tons of free organic traffic, thereby giving it more opportunity to convert visitors into become a customer,” he said.

Content marketing has always been an extremely powerful form of communication and human beings are far more receptive to stories than just messages.

In the current scenario, with more screen time available for consumers, the power of content is amplified as brands now have a little more time than just a fleeting attention span.

Atul Hegde

Atul Hegde, Co-founder of Rainmaker Ventures, and a Board Member at YAAP, said smart brands should leverage this opportunity to create great stories around their new products and make content marketing an intrinsic part of their marketing mix, while they transform their business capabilities. 

Ankit Chaudhari

Another point Ankit Chaudhari, Co-Founder and CEO, Aiisma, mentioned is that the extended duration of the pandemic turned this into a permanent behaviour change for a lot of consumers and so brands can come up with content capabilities they didn’t have before.

There is no doubt that the need for a consistent supply of quality content has also risen, the experts said.

Ritesh Singh

Ritesh Singh, Co-founder and MD at ARM Worldwide, said content is everywhere and is playing a huge role in achieving and transforming business capabilities.

“Insightful, engaging and relevant content is the core of any marketing strategy and it is close to impossible to not fulfil targets without top-quality content. With extra focus on communication (internal and external both), the role of content is larger than ever before. Be it a website or a social media channel, new content capabilities and features are springing up every day, which can help in achieving and transforming business capabilities,” he added.

But putting forth the right piece of content has never been a cake walk for every brand.

So what all a marketer needs to keep in mind while they explore this new envelope of content?

Points to remember:

The effort to put out great content by a brand forces the leaders to have clarity in their thoughts and refine their product and goals.

It forces the leaders and management to keep themselves updated with the market, their competitors and effectively impact the core capabilities of the business.

“And a great content strategy establishes one as a thought leader, thereby attracting the best talents in the markets, which ultimately will reflect in your product or services,” said Shashank.

The worldwide crisis has forced companies of all sizes to adapt and evolve. While many companies have responded with innovative pivots that push them into new markets, a few large companies are making big transformations to stay alive and stay relevant.

As organisations expedite the role of content in building their capabilities, it is during this time that they are realising how content is of not much use if it is not backed up by right technology.

Shashank said that technology can definitely help brands optimise and promote content while providing measurement to it.

As businesses transform their capabilities, the need for content will rise. But the challenge will remain in creating relevant and engaging content and deliver it at the moment of truth.

And this is where, Pujari said, tech has a huge role to play.

The non-intrusive message and content, when paired with right technology, is bound to get noticed and deliver results.

“Today with the use of tools, we are able to create content for what people are searching for. There are lots of tools that help you find relevant keywords, contexts and influencers of the topics brand need to engage with,” he said.

However, content and technology are not at loggerheads with each other, said Hegde, adding technology is just a facilitator, be it as medium or an enabler to bring alive the content.

But since every business is unique and has its own challenges, he said good content will definitely help one to stand out.

While content will help one to create a broader interaction and if done right, a higher trust in the brand, Chaudhari added that by giving an opportunity to brands and consumers to interact almost real time, it will definitely help one to improve the new business as well.