Content marketing is an editorial and not marketers practice, says Gaurav Mehta, CMO, GirnarSoft

GirnarSoft, the company that owns Cardekho, Gaadi.com, Zigwheels, Bikedekho and recently acquired Powerdrift is built on content. Gaurav Mehta, Chief Marketing Officer at GirnarSoft believes that content marketing is not every marketer’s cup of tea. He said that content marketing is more of an editorial practice than a marketing one.

Gaurav Mehta

“Marketers have to unlearn a lot. Mass marketers became digital marketers and digital marketers become editors. There is a severe amount of learning and unlearning one has to do. There is no formal framework to learn content marketing,” said Mehta.

Mehta also emphasised on the fact that content cannot be done on an ad-hoc basis and it is a long-term thing. One needs to understand its target audience and cater to their content needs in the long-run.

“The Hindu, Times Of India, Indian Express and vernaculars like Rajasthan Patrika and Dainik Bhaskar have a great connection with their consumers because they have identified their content niche and then kept at it. If the marketer wants to be a publisher, he will have to adopt the same practice. There are no shortcuts. One cannot get away by doing a single content piece and then expect people to come back to you,” said Mehta.

The company has taken content marketing very seriously and has made its revenue model around it. GirnarSoft has employed more than 70 people working in its editorial content team.

The company builds editorial and product content. Under editorial content, auto journalists review bikes and cars and write about them. Product content deals in prices, specifications and comparison between two automobiles.

Cardekho.com, Zigwheels, Powerdrift and all its discovery and content platforms are not just built on editorial content, but also product content, which Mehta believes is equally important as it is a huge decision enabler for the buyer.

Product content is highly valuable for the automobile brand because it can help influence the buyer’s decision which is expensive.

One can innovate and be creative around editorial content, but creating engaging, compelling and interesting product content is not an easy task and the company is working towards making it worthy of the consumers’ time.

“People havd the tendency to get too technical about product content. People tend to show a lot of grids and tables. Visuals play a big role. One can give visual clues and surface the most relevant content in a very elevated format,” said Mehta.