How tech brands are cutting the clutter through content marketing

In the complex business of technology, be it B2B or B2C, leading companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Adobe and Google are using content marketing to drive brand relevance, advocacy and empowering customers with information. BuzzInContent.com finds out how content is helping tech brands to reach out to relevant audiences and what solutions do publishers have in store

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Akansha Srivastava
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Technology companies are currently said to be contributing more than 20% of the total branded content and native advertising spend in the country.

In the last two years, content has become the mainstay for tech brands on digital with companies such as HPE, Siemens, Adobe, Accenture, Intel, Microsoft and Google leading the content marketing initiatives.

Roshni Das

Talking about the reason why tech brands now prefer content marketing on digital, Roshni Das, Marketing Head-Intel India, said, “Content marketing plays a key role in driving brand relevance, advocacy and empowering customers with information before they make their purchasing decision.”

“The challenge that content solves is that it allows you to stand out in a cluttered environment with multiple brands and short attention spans and drive engagement whilst being true to the brand,” she said.

Nidhi Hola

Adding to that, Nidhi Hola, Director-Partner Marketing at Microsoft, said, “It is a noisy world, full of conversations. One must identify their audience, understand where they are in their journey and integrate their brand seamlessly into their journey and narrative. Content, backed by the right context and technology, helps drive meaningful conversations and build relationships with customers. It is a step forward in defining the customer-engagement strategy.”

Even consumer interfacing platforms such as Google, which dominate the digital landscape, are using content marketing to take the information about their products to relevant audiences.

Charu Joshi

“Users need to be told more than what the USP of the product is and they need to be told in an informative and educative manner. And that's why this content building is happening,” said Charu Joshi, Business Development and Partnership Lead at Google.

Joshi said that earlier mostly the FMCG category was undertaking content initiatives but now even players such as Google are doing it for their assistant and Google home products. “Advertising through storytelling will continue to grow,” Joshi added.  

Most of the activities around content are being done by tech brands in association with publishers such as Hindustan Times digital, LiveMint, ET Online, BloombergQuint among others.

Other than doing native articles, tech companies are doing facebook live, informative videos, thought leadership sessions, call to action campaigns, infographics, digital-first events and microsites.

Content solutions that work best for brands

Roudra Bhattacharya

Talking about the array of content solutions that are available for tech brands, Roudra Bhattacharya, Head, HT Brand Studio, said, “Technology brands can be largely divided into B2B and B2C players. For B2B brands, content solutions are often a long-term engagement, which is a combination of thought leadership exercises as a combination of curated industry dialogues/events that are hosted as videos in custom built microsites.”

HT Brand Studio, which operates under the Hindustan Times group, is currently the country’s top branded content and native advertising agency and has done campaigns for leading tech brands such as SAP, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, LogMeIn, Tata Communications, Accenture, Siemens and Microsoft.

Highlighting how content initiatives for tech brands are different from other categories, Bhattacharya said, “Tech brands have their task cut out because not only is the targeting very specific, but the content is often complex.”

“At the HT Brand Studio, we work to achieve a balance by simplifying the communication of these complex topics, and enable a wider reach. As compared to other categories, thought leadership exercises play a key role for tech brands to move to the consideration set by getting an increased share of mind with their own clients. The key part is sustained and direct communication.”

Archana Subramone

Archana Subramoney, Group Head, Digital Marketing at Adobe said that content marketing was currently attracting a lot of investment from brands. “The medium is a mix of brain, heart and technology,” she said.

Talking about the concepts that can drive maximum leverage for tech clients, Bhattacharya said, “Formats such as panel discussions work well because it not only offers them an opportunity to shine as a pioneer among peers, but also allows them to have a captive audience of potentials customers to present their own products. These panel discussions can be completely digital, or event-based.”

 Das said that Intel has tasted success with concepts such as long-form video (for TV) and short-form for digital viewing; in-depth case studies and webinars, articles supported by listicles, infographics, and on-ground narratives supported by live webcast.  “We do believe in podcasts, TED Talks being a key medium to explore in the future and are now beginning to explore the same,” she said.

Delivering ROI through content

Bhattacharya said the main difference versus other categories is that tech brands mostly look at business leads from content initiatives.

Adobe’s Subramoney said that figuring out ROI on content marketing could be a little trickier, especially for brands that are also using other solutions, unless there are leads involved.

“Measurement of ROI is something that we all struggle around - to figure out whether it is happening only because of content marketing. Claiming that this much success or ROI is happening because of content marketing is a little trickier if brands are also using other solutions,” she said.

Speaking about the ROI that Intel focuses on in its content initiatives, Das said, “Our content marketing initiatives usually carry a link to download relevant and useful material for the consumer that allow us to collect email ids, which we then pass on to our remarketing funnel. We also have forms on digital landing pages where we collect leads which are then passed on to our internal team that funnels the leads into a pipeline and connects with them.”

Das said that while doing content marketing, one must not look for immediate gains as the medium delivers really well in the long term.

Key ROI from content marketing for us would first be engagement KPIs including likes, comments, shares, time-spent, views and completed views and then lead-generation. We understand content marketing is a consideration-driver and may not have an immediate impact of sales- we have to be in it for the long-run,” told Das.

Content marketing tech brands