Vidhi Batra
With the COVID-19 pandemic pushing most operations to a digital paradigm, the ever-growing wave of digitization has been accelerated as information is readily becoming available in surplus, at the tip of our palms. As consumers, we have an access to several devices and a multitude of channels to consume information. Today, marketers all across the globe are banking on this opportunity to market their products in a way that creates value for both the brand as well as for the customers. Content creation remains to be the most important ingredient for online marketing strategies, even today and is continually growing in importance across different industries.
Content marketing, besides being centred around selling the name or product of a particular brand, also focuses on building a sense of trust and long-term relationship between the brand and its prospective as well as existing customers. For this reason, several marketing strategies aim to engage directly with their consumer base to give them a sense of belonging to the brand. Social media has emerged as the leading domain to actualize this approach in 2021, as the success of a media marketing campaign is measured in the number of likes, comments, shares and saves on a particular post. The question remains, how do different brands create accessible and lucrative content to attract and increase their consumer base?
Video Marketing
Video marketing has become a crowd favourite and a growing trend in this space, with live interactions by celebrities endorsing brands becoming a huge market to attract people and engage their interest in the product. Be it reels on Instagram or live posts on Facebook or educational videos on YouTube, videos are a great mechanism to hold the attention of a prospective buyer and maximize the brand?s reach across several others. In fact, in 2021, videos account for 82% of the consumer traffic on the internet with social media generating 1200% shares on videos as opposed to the traditional methods of texts and images combined.
Personalized content
While the old way concentrated on creating content and pushing it out to thousands and millions, the new method has focused on personalizing content for its users and ensuring long-term brand loyalty. Take an example of Spotify?s wrapped 2020 campaign, which provided a summary of the most listened or featured artists and songs of the year, for each respective user and even allowed them to share it on their personal social media handles; increasing their reach manifold and allowing customers to feel like a part of the brand family.
Storytelling as a form of content marketing
Before purchasing a product or accessing a service, most consumers remain skeptical about its background or idea, especially in the case of a new launch. Explaining the origin of the idea and its development in the form of a story not only serves as a laudable marketing strategy but also provides the consumers with a sense of security that initiates a successful purchase. Blogs and articles are key to making this happen. Not only are they crucial for SEO optimization, but they also help brands become an active part of the consumer?s decision-making process. Moreover, the idea of storytelling has also been used as a method of building strong relationships with consumers. A brand that narrates its story of origin, goals and interests allows others to identify their passion with the same, resulting in a thriving community of loyalists over time.
In a nutshell, if we think of marketing among brands to be a rat race, content creation can be thought of as the baton that ensures the win. In fact, expected developments in technology in 2021, ranging from artificial intelligence, voice search, augmented reality etc. are all set to enhance and multiply the reach of content marketing strategies. To conclude, content creation is expected to emerge as the leading marketing tool of top brands and companies, actively searching for reliable and creative think tanks like ?QRIUS Creative Labs? to produce content that is valuable, appealing and relevant to the audience at large.
