Tips from start-ups for creating disruptive content marketing strategies

While the legacy brands are way ahead in terms of the amount they can afford to spend on ad campaigns and content marketing, start-ups have the advantage of swiftness in terms of ideation, creation and execution, said Laalit Lobo, VP of Marketing, Bombay Shaving Company.

He also said that his company treats high engagement rate as the metric for the content they create, and the focus is always on creating conversations, rather than trying to calculate the ROI on every piece.

Lobo, Ashish Bajaj, Head of Marketing, Partnerships and PR, MediBuddy; Deep Bajaj, CEO & Co-Founder, Sirona; Shreyas Shevade, Head of Creative and Content, upGrad; and Sandeep Balan, Partner, Branded Content, Spring Marketing Capital were speaking on day three of BuzzInContent Conversations, which began on December 14, in a session held on the topic ‘Content marketing lessons from the start-ups’. The event was held in the run-up to the BuzzInContent Awards 2021, presented by MTV and powered by News Nation, which will be held online at 5 pm on Friday, December 17, 2021.

“The key points are speed of ideation, creation and execution. The advantage start-ups have is that the layers of approval are so less when compared to legacy brands,” Lobo said.

“While we want to reach scale and get massive awareness for products, our metric is that we want our content needs to have a very high engagement rate. Therefore, whatever ideas we create are very focused on the metric of conversation. While some legacy brands have started to do that, typically, a lot of legacy brands have been focusing on massive creative videos or ads with celebrities. I believe that is a key difference,” he added.

Meanwhile, Deep Bajaj, CEO and Co-Founder, Sirona, said that there would always be a difference in the approach of a start-up and a legacy brand because of their standing and the returns they seek from the content pieces.

“Most start-ups are solving the problems to which the legacy brands have found a solution already. The playbook for legacy brands cannot be used for start-ups,” he said.

While all types of content pieces are important for brands, but they should be created with a long-term perspective in mind, as per Ashish Bajaj, Head of Marketing, Partnerships and PR, MediBuddy. However, he also said that sometimes brands do take a different approach as they might have some other needs in mind.

“Content should always be made keeping the long-term perspective in mind. But sometimes the objective of the brands is to create an impulse or have visibility and so it depends on what they’re driving through,” Ashish Bajaj said. He also gave examples of large MNCs like Nokia, Microsoft, who put a limit on the number of content pieces that can be shared on their handles. This is done with the intention of ensuring that well-thought and executed campaigns which can sustain in the long run go out.

Sandeep Balan, Partner, Branded Content, Spring Marketing Capital, said that the idea should be to create good content and then integrate the brand or product into it naturally. The recipe for good content according to him is, “Being genuine and having your ears on the ground and creating things which you think will resonate with the people. If you stay true to the content, formats will take care of themselves. Timing also matters.”

Balan also cited examples to support his claim that those pieces which had originality and focused on good content, and later on ensured seamless brand integrations, usually appeal to the people more and become easily memorable.

Shreyas Shevade, Head of Creative and Content, upGrad said that their company is now going to focus on creating more content for their accounts and pages on their platforms. He said that in the fast-changing world it’s very difficult to measure ROI for content and things that worked a day ago might not give similar results the very next day.

There is a lot more which well-established and old brands can get to learn from start-ups when it comes to content marketing and branded content.

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