How has the brands' demand for quick business conversions changed the content marketing game

A CEO of one of India’s biggest new-age content platforms told BuzzInContent.com that marketers now ask him to create branded content that provides the brand with immediate leads. This wasn’t the case a few years ago. Earlier, branded content’s focus was never on giving brands immediate leads, but on telling compelling stories consistently surrounding brand ethos that resulted in building brand love and awareness, eventually resulting in business conversion over a period of time. 

Well, this shift in brands’ demand didn’t really make the aforementioned CEO happy because according to him not everything can be performance-linked. He said, “Content created to tell interesting stories will definitely create enough brand love that the consumer will end up buying the product one day. But if one creates content keeping how to sell the brand then it will defeat the whole purpose of doing content, which is telling compelling, informative and entertaining stories. Why not then just create ads if the brand wants immediate leads? Why even take the content route?”   

Clearly, the needle has shifted from compelling storytelling to hardworking smart content that generates direct leads or converts business when it comes to content marketing and branded content. Not just the CEO mentioned above, but content creators and platforms across India are witnessing an increased demand for such content from brands. 

Why are brands demanding more smart content that gives immediate business leads?

This trend was in the waiting for quite some time and was looking for the right moment to explode and the Covid-19 pandemic became the perfect trigger point. 

Rahul Jain

Rahul Jain, Co-Founder and COO of Flickstree, believes that with limited budgets, it is impossible for brands to attempt everything – both branding and performance led content. Brands need to make a choice and it comes as a no-brainer that the performance model wins.

He commented, “It directly impacts their top-line and drastically changes their outlook on how they see marketing spends. Suddenly from being a cost centre, you are now looking at something driving the revenue and hence top line. Performance-driven content becomes the revenue driver instead of getting clubbed as an expense item. That’s a big mindset shift and more and more brands are realising this.” 

Akshay Bhatnagar

Akshay Bhatnagar, Co-Founder, HYPD, seconded Jain’s thoughts that with IDFA (Identifier for advertisers) being implemented by Apple and cookie blockers being introduced by Google, marketers across the globe are seeing an exponential rise in ROAS (return on ad spends) numbers.

He explained, “Reaching specific audience demographics is becoming increasingly expensive and in turn, there is visibly less return on each rupee spent on core performance activities. To navigate around these rising costs, marketers are switching back to the fundamental principle of connecting with the desired audiences through organic, relatable and actionable content. As there is no direct metric associated with raising awareness and brand building that impacts the top line of brands, there is an exponential increase in generating performance-driven content and exploring organic channels of distributing this content.”

Shrutika Nagpal

Shrutika Nagpal, Director, Strategy and Creative, Scatter, pointed out another reason for brands wanting more performance-driven content now is that a lot of content marketing programs are beginning to mature. “Most mainstream brands today already have their content endeavours underway, be it a blog or a newsletter program, so it’s fair for them to now expect to see results on their investments of time and effort, she said.

Shradha Agarwal

According to Shradha Agarwal, Founder and CEO, Grapes, performance-driven content is the result of the transforming digital landscape. The market is exceedingly competitive, and performance-driven content comes with a strong measurability quotient. “It can target the right person at the right time with the right content. There is a lot of scope for improvement and effective planning based on the ongoing evaluation of the user. As a result, customer-centric content is developed with the help of data acquired from metrics and user inputs which improves the ROI of the brand,” she said. 

Ashwarya Garg

Ashwarya Garg, Co-Founder, HYPD, told BuzzInContent.com that while the rising cost of targeting and limited brand budgets have made the content game tougher, another reason that has led to the rise of performance-led content is the onset of the financial winter. Post-pandemic economic implications have set an irreversible domino effect which is casting a dark cloud on brands raising venture capital, making brands opt for more intelligent content marketing that will give them actionable results like sales or lead generation rather than just spending on building awareness hence the increase in demand for performance-driven content. 

Garg said, “Brands are being advised to prepare for 12 to 18 months of financial winter where raising funds is not going to be easy. So naturally, every company is re-strategising their short and long-term growth goals to adhere to the changing climate. The direct impact of which is seen in branding and marketing activities.” 

Neel Gogia

Giving an overview of how this trend is shaping up in the influencer marketing landscape, Neel Gogia, Co-Founder, IPLIX Media, said that while there is definitely an uptick in the number of brands that want to experiment with performance-driven content and drive conversions, it cannot be considered an alternative to influencer marketing for brand awareness and recall. “I truly believe that both will co-exist as the objectives are completely different,” he said. 

Varun Shah

Varun Shah, Executive Vice-President and Head of Prodigious and Content Factory, believes that brands need all kinds of content. He said that while the need for precision in marketing has grown, it’s important to ensure that the brand is not unnecessarily pushed into the content. “It’s the leap of faith that the brand and content creator have to take to create that synergy. As of now, everyone is in the process of discovery. Nobody is exactly able to figure out what is working and what is not.”

He added, “The indigenous brands have risen a lot and are fighting in the space of mainline brands and taking market share away. Precision marketing works when the brand is growing. In my opinion, it won’t work if the brand is a fully-fledged grown brand. Performance-led content marketing differs from brand to brand and product to product, where they are in the growth story.”

He also said that with brands demanding more performance-led content, creativity will only be challenged to improve. “Brands will definitely demand content that helps them stay on top of the game, which is good in a way because then content creators will be challenged to think differently”. 

Anirudh Singla

According to Anirudh Singla, Founder and CEO of Pepper Content, business with purpose is changing the conversation. He commented, “In today’s day and age, brands aspire to develop an authentic connection with their audience through content. When consumers align themselves with a purpose-driven brand, it is because they feel a deeper connection based on shared beliefs and values. Seeing the shift in this trend, brands are also witnessing higher market share gains via performance-driven marketing. Brands like Dove, Apple etc. have been working towards changing the narrative from ‘product focus’ to purpose focus’ that aligns absolutely well with the consumer experience and has been the driving force of their sales and leads over the years.” 

However, he too believes that there is room for both performance-led and brand-building content. He said, “There is a growing understanding among brands that content marketing is a long-term play. How we see it is in two ways - conversion or performance-driven content that gives you results instantly, typically this is bottom of the funnel content. SEO or long-term content helps increase awareness and is a long-term play. Especially, if businesses are looking to build a brand, they can't ignore the latter. More performance-driven content encourages businesses to invest in content marketing as they see faster results. Hence, the focus.”

Has this made the content creation game tougher?

Bhatnagar of HYPD emphasised that the business has certainly become tough for players who aren’t evolving with time and as per the needs of the market.

Gogia believes that content surely gets affected in some way if you opt for performance-based marketing. “After all, we need to sell the brand within those 60 secs, it means creating an urgency to go to the link and make a transaction. So, definitely, the storytelling and creativity get somewhat compromised.” 

Brands demanding performance-led content marketing has made planners a lot more accountable for how well the campaigns are received and responded to. Nagpal said, “Which means that creative teams have to do different kinds of research to land on a big-ticket idea – not just brainstorming, but really observing what audience are enjoying and what matters to them.”

Although Nagpal emphasised that one thing brands and agencies alike must keep in mind is that performance marketing isn’t something a brand strategist or a content strategist can learn how to do just by attending one or two workshops or taking a few courses. “It’s a discipline in itself, and it’s one that’s becoming more strategic as technology offers more transparency into how customers transact. So rather than glomming on additional responsibilities to existing resources, it’s advisable to build a team of performance marketers or at least tie-up with a specialised agency who can take full accountability for driving this effort,” said Nagpal.

According to Jain, with this trend in place, the business has become easy for them. “Brands have nothing to lose, and they readily agree to work with us as we have removed all the friction and layers. The proposition is simple – you pay us when we drive sales for you. We don’t charge our partner brands for video content. And it’s an offer they find it hard to refuse. We use our patented deep learning and AI engine to create videos with minimal human input which helps us reduce our cost of production and makes the business model really viable for us,” he said. 

Agarwal of Grapes thinks that performance-driven content has simplified the process of marketing content. Stating the reasons, she said, “The advantage to measuring content efficacy has helped brands come up with more close-looped strategies. A more specific communication can be formed for a particular set of audiences by recognising where it should go. Further, the collected data gives insights for content creation, and content solutions based on the assessment of future stats. Therefore, it gives the advantage of content optimisation based on evaluative performance, which filters the unnecessary elaborate process of producing mass appealing content.”

In this process of creating content that directly gives leads, so many times, we will have to let go of compelling storytelling and focus on smart content that converts business. Compelling storytelling or content for brand building might not convert consumers immediately.  How should one go about it then?

Singla answered that when a brand starts posting from scratch, they need to first build a narrative which has to be in alignment with the conversations going on in the industry. They cannot simply start talking about their products. Branded content needs first to run a lifecycle of its own which has to include attractive stories which carry a human connection while subtly placing its products in the storyline. This cycle needs to maintain a balance between storytelling and purpose-driven content. 

He added that sometimes they also recommend that the brand’s management team show up on the page with an interactive video that talks about the purpose of the brand while integrating the product for a higher chance of a conversion. “It is worth mentioning that you never know what might go well on social media,” he said.

How are content creators, agencies and platforms preparing to cater to this growing demand of brands?

In the digital age consumers are becoming highly observant. The fierce competition, where multiple brands are targeting the same audience group makes it necessary to devise the right strategy. 

Agarwal of Grapes said that incorporating insights and data into the creative process makes the content compelling. “By taking this approach, we penetrate deeper into the digital channels by curating centralised messaging with a critical value proposition that caters to the increasing consumer demand.”

Flickstree runs a content-to-commerce platform, called PlusYou Club where one can drive the performance of brands with the help of the platform's editorial-led video content. Some examples like - Top 5 tips to click great photos on your smartphone, powered by Samsung Galaxy phones or the Most Gorgeous Cities You Must Visit in Europe, Powered by Trip.com. 

Jain of Flickstree explained how it works. “We make sure these videos get viewed on our platform, with help of rewards and contests, that brands run on PlusYou Club. Users play quizzes, crosswords, participate in polls and trivia to get product samples, brand merchandise, exclusive promo codes, etc. and agree to share their information with brands, for marketing and promotional purposes. There is a buy link on the video. Brands pay us, when there is a sale or a qualified lead generated for them, and when we successfully build a brand-relevant opt-in customer database, which we call The Zero Party Data.”

Garg of HYPD said that his platform is built on exactly this idea. He said, “In a world where 90% of consumers' decisions are driven by the content they are consuming or from creators they are following, we built an infrastructure that enables this entire journey while handsomely rewarding the people who create the influence through actionable content and in turn provides brands with relevant data beyond a set of vanity metrics like impressions, views, comments and shares. Imagine content marketing 2.0 where brands have the visibility of data as well as content serves both the purposes of awareness and performance!”

Iplix has laid out SOPs to deliver performance-driven campaigns. It’s a circular process that begins by identifying the goals and TG and choosing the right platform. Post that, creators are filtered out, and messaging is personalised as per each creator. “The process ends and then again begins with the most crucial step- tracking the performance to understand what worked and what didn’t. On the basis of this, the next steps are designed,” said Gogia. 

Singla of Pepper Content said that when his company starts working with brands, it asks for clear briefs around the objective of the piece of content to be created. Secondly, Pepper Content has a 65000+ network of creators and subject matter experts. 

He concluded, “There is no hack to going viral or pitch strong enough that can guarantee conversion on social media. Hence, the best advice here would be to experiment around with different formats. Effective storytelling, authenticity and relevant content delivered at the right time to the right audience will never go out of style.”