Are you a tiktoker? Most likely the answer is yes. You may have even published a few short videos or stories in the various platforms that are available today. So you can call yourself as a content creator. Do not doubt it, you are a content creator.
Everybody has become a content creator these days, with the platforms making it really easy to create content however you want. Take a video, add a music, add some filters and effects and you are ready to go. Content creation has never been easy. But still I have a question for you: What is the outcome from the contents that you create? The most likely answer is that it cannot be measured. What if I told you that you can actually measure the outcome of these activities? That would be mind boggling right? Let me describe the entire system that I use. I will also try to detail how the world of content marketing is changing as we cross the pandemic.
Content Marketing in 2022
The content marketing has changed completely in the last two years. With the pandemic setting in, the types of content consumed has changed completely. Most of the content has changed from long form, typed content to video content. This is entirely because it has become easier to create video content than type out content, edit them and post them.
This is infact because the consumer behavior has changed during the pandemic. Let's see how the consumer buying patterns have changed in the last two years. In pandemic, the demand for in-home puzzles to while away the time and baking products increased manifold.
Demand for jig-saw puzzles increased by 370%
Sales of yeast increased more than 400%
What does this mean? The customers' needs and demand are changing and so is the supply changing to solve the opportunities. So how does this translate to content creation? If the customers are consuming more of video content, there will be more platforms that will enable the content creators to do so.
There's another estimate that 82% of content created online, would be of video, next year. Just think about it. So how can you even compete in a world that is full of video content?
The answer is you don't. It all depends on your target audience. I agree that the video content are easier for the consumer to consume and it registers easily in their brains. But for your small business, do you actually post video content or long form articles/blog posts? The answer again is very simple: Long form content beats video or influencer content for small businesses.
Who is your Audience?
It all depends on the audience. You have to cater to an audience that helps you achieve your business goals.
For example, if your small business caters to a target audience of consumers in the age of 18-30, and your product or service lies in the fast moving consumables or luxury item categories, video content might give you an edge.
But if your small business is about businesses, video content doesn't have a major place in your marketing strategy albeit attracting employees for your business. I say this because, your leads will want to read more about your business than see videos of your business. They would want to understand more about how your business provides them value through whitepapers, testimonials and product fit than through seeing videos of irrelevant content. I am not saying video is a certain no, but long form content beats video content when it comes to getting your prospects like your company.
So it's in the best interest to choose the form of the content depending on your target audience.
Let's Deep-dive on your Market
There are only three different types of market. Your business might fit into any one of these:
- B2C
- B2B
- B2B2C
B2C
B2C markets are a clear winner for video content. Your business might fall into the category of selling products like clothing, luxury items, jewllery, food, health products etc. So this means that your customers are direct purchasers. You may have distributors and retailers but still when the customer looks at your brand name on instagram or facebook, they would expect you to have content that are relevant to them directly. And mostly this would entail a video content explaining how your product works or the environment it fits into. All this means that you should have a capability to product video content very quickly. These are my recommendations for the marketing team:
- Have an in-house team who are proficient with the products or services
- A small team of 3-5 members would be a good choice
- Team members should be able to record, edit and publish video content
The team can have a greater freedom in choosing how to build the content, thereby building the brand.
The frequency and ides of buiding the content could be something like:
- 3-4 contents everyday
- Giveaways every monthy
- Polls and quizzes about your product every 2 weeks
- Customer fo the month, of course every month
These are all ideas that you could take and fit into your own business. But also have a way to measure engagement.
B2B
B2B markets are a little different because you are looking at customers who are employees of other organizations. This means that the decision maker is taking on the responsibility of buying just not for him/her, but for the entire organization. So if something goes wrong, his/her head might roll. So it takes a lot of time and research to go to a buying decision. Our responsiblity as marketers is to help those leads to get to that decision not just quickly, but with trust. So taking them to closure quickly is not the goal, but rather with a lot of trust is important.
When a B2B deal is closed, these things are important:
- How quickly the deal was closed
- Is enough trust created with the decision makers
- Does the customer have enough support to make a success case out of the product
Like I said, it's our responsibility to create content that helps them to get to the end state. The end state being that the customer is convinced about your product and its value.
B2B2C
This market segment is little tricky that you may have to play both ends. An example for this company is an restaurant delivery service. You are basically selling your service to restaurants but your end customers are consumers. So there are multiple customers here wherein you have to sing a song to their tunes.
Content creation is not going anywhere. The medium might change but the content is going to be there. You have to evolve to keep changing the platform and the content type, but remember your customers are going to be the same no matter what.
