BuzzInContent Conversations on Content Mapping: Why aren't we doing enough of it?

BuzzInContent.com organised its first Live session of 2021 on Friday, March 5, on the topic ‘Content Mapping and why aren’t we doing enough of it?’, which saw participation from content marketing experts Prabhakar Tiwari, Chief Growth Officer, Angel Broking; Snehil Gautam, Head of Marketing and Growth at Housing.com, Makaan.com and Proptiger.com and Dheeraj Kummar, National Creative Director, Brand and Consumer Experience, Motivator (GroupM), sharing their thoughts on the subject. 

To begin the session, Gautam talked about the importance of content mapping. He said, “If you don’t do content mapping, then there is a risk of losing your customer to the competition. If the user gets the right content that adds value to his purchase journey, then the user sticks to you and your product. Mapping content will help in both acquiring the consumers and at the same time increasing the lifetime value of the customer. If the mapping of content is done well, one can see the brand’s topline and average revenue per user growing.”

Even though content mapping is such an integral part of any good content marketing strategy, not many brands are doing it well in India. In fact, some don’t even understand what content mapping is.

When asked about it, Tiwari of Angel Broking explained that one question that must be raised is how many marketers really understand their customers’ journey? He said, “These days the customer journey is changing rapidly. Many of the things that were available through posters, word of mouth, dealers, banners and handouts have now moved to digital. When the understanding of the customer journey is poor, content mapping is a different task altogether.”

Tiwari said brands must start doing it right away because gone are the days when marketers could say 50% of their marketing budget is wasted and they don’t know which 50%. “Today if you talk that kind of language in a board room, you’ll be soon looking for another job. All thanks to the digital tools available that can measure everything. In fact, one can keep on shifting the kind of content the brand is creating depending on how well it is performing in the customer journey.”

Moving ahead in the session, Kummar of Motivator pointed out the good and bad approaches to content mapping. Explaining the good approach, he said, “I am a great advocate of brands acting as publishers. Once you have that attitude of a publisher to create the right kind of content for the consumer and all your KPIs are not landing on sales or conversions, then you are defining your role as a content creator who has an important role to play in your consumer’s life. Brands now have the opportunity to know what their consumers like and the basis that they can deliver the content like a publisher.”

Commenting on the bad approach, Kummar said content mapping goes wrong when one doesn’t define what they want to achieve from their content and a set budget is not assigned to it. “Many times we keep on hearing marketers and agencies discuss to trade off content with something else if it’s not working. But one needs to consistently create content.”

It is mostly seen that only digital brands do content mapping well, but offline brands or those that are not heavily dependent on digital, are not game for content mapping. Kummar answered, “Digital brands have the advantage to map the consumer journey when they are coming to the website. But I don’t think that the offline brands do it poorly. It’s the question of intent. One can work with third-party companies to map the content on social media. A brand can also create content in other formats other than digital.”

One very important aspect Kummar touched upon is that the brands must have a dedicated resource, who is a good enabler between the creator and the brand.

Gautam of Housing.com elaborated on the kind of content a brand must create in different stages of a consumer’s purchase journey. He said that depending on the objective of the brand, one needs to first segment the user journey into different buckets and then create content for each of these buckets.

Giving an example from his own brand Housing.com, he said, “We have bifurcated the buying journey into four phases. The first one is the pre-discovery and the financial planning phase. The second is the discovery and the shortlisting phase. The third phase is the site visit and the final decision stage. The final stage is the negotiation and the purchase phase. Whatever content we create, we ensure that the content falls into one of these buckets. It is helping users to move from one bucket to the other.”

In the first bucket, a consumer will find a lot of content on Housing news and social media around real estate. In the discovery phase, Housing.com creates content around the locality listings, locality videos and brokers’ ratings and reviews. In the third phase, the brand has peer-to-peer discussions; direct engagement at one-on-one level happens. In the final stage, Housing.com showcases the user a 360-degree view of that project once he has finalised it.

A lot of brands create single content pieces such as music videos, long-films, web series and chat shows, which involves a lot of investment, time and effort. Such content tends to fall in the awareness level. Because it is so expensive, can this kind of content be refurbished and allocated across all the levels of the purchase journey rather than just limiting it to awareness level?

Tiwari of Angel Broking answered, “Nowadays, the content formats and how you label them are quite misleading. One can fulfil different objectives through such expensive properties. It’s not necessary such content pieces only fall in the awareness level. Such content can fit anywhere in the customer journey if one is clear about the objective of those content formats. In all of that, the user intent is very important. Content can be customised depending on what the user wants.”

Talking about Angel Broking’s content strategy, Tiwari said the brand has differentiated between brand-marketing content, differentiated between content quality and strategy. The brand has another department called the content factory.

Ending the session, the panellists gave one advice each on content mapping.

Tiwari said knowing the user’s intent is of utmost importance. He said, “With technology and different touchpoints, it’s possible for us to start labelling the user intent and on the basis of that, one can map the content.”

Kummar said one must not look at content marketing as a cost centre. “When a brand acts as a publisher, the content mapping will happen on its own. Acting as a publisher will only motivate you to build qualitative content, which is relevant for your consumer.”

Gautam concluded, “I will urge brands to keep interacting with their consumers. Experimenting with content is key. There will be many content pieces that will fail. But there is no way where you can say content marketing is not working.”

Watch the full session on content mapping here: