Demystifying content mapping to boost effectiveness of content marketing initiatives

Many a time, we have heard the need to create personalised, relatable and relevant content. But when it comes to putting it down to action— i.e. producing and distributing such content— it is not that easy. It takes a lot of understanding of the consumer's purchase journey to offer them targeted content. And this is what content mapping is all about.

In the first part of the story, we discussed the growing importance of content mapping and why brands across the categories should start practising it. In this part, India's best content practitioners discuss the art of content mapping.

Gaurav Mehta

Gaurav Mehta, Chief Marketing Officer of Girnarsoft (parent company of Cardekho, Gaadi.com, Zigwheels, Bikedekho and Powerdrift), believes that every stage has a different content need from the buyer. Accordingly, the brand creates content for various stages. "Delivery and distribution are equally critical. Sometimes people ignore the fact that while creating content is important, distribution is extremely critical. If this is not there, then you will never have a proper content strategy of delivering content phase-wise," he said.

One can segregate the consumer journey into several stages according to the nature of the brand category, but generally, it is divided into three. The first is awareness, second is consideration and third is the decision-making stage.

Kumar Deb Sinha

According to Kumar Deb Sinha, Revenue Head, Editorji, we all know that every customer/consumer is not at the same state in the purchase cycle. "While some may be at a passive stage, others might be actively searching for it, doing the research before purchase, purchasing the product or using and talking about the product post-purchase. At every stage of this journey, content plays a unique but important role. And the content journey must be mapped with the customer purchase journey for effectiveness," he said. 

Shrutika Nagpal

Shrutika Nagpal, Creative Director, Scatter, explained, "A high percentage of brands attempt to map content according to the buying funnel. There is always a thought given to what content is for audiences who know nothing about us, those who know about our category but not our brand; those who know about our brand but not specific products, and so on. TOFU, MOFU, BOFU is the most common framework for doing so."

TOFU stands for top of the funnel, MOFU is middle of the funnel, and BOFU is bottom of the funnel. TOFU content should be about educating the customer without tying sales. MOFU content should educate but also start positioning your brand as the solution to their needs. When it comes to BOFU content, one should begin to directly engage with the customer at a one-on-one level with the purpose of sales.

Scatter's Nagpal emphasised that it's essential for the entire marketing and brand teams to clarity the agenda of each piece of content we create for the consumers. Therefore, at Scatter, while brainstorming for content, they call in the rest of the customer-facing teams that usually don't get invited — sales, customer service, and product teams. "These teams have unique insights into why customers prefer one product over another, or who it's truly made for, or why some leads drop out of the funnel. And it's by helping brands cull these insights that we've helped create targeted content that converts," she said.

Giving an example of a tech brand's content mapping journey, Sinha of Editorji, said, "The content journey here starts well before the launch of the brand, by creating excitement around the launch, specifications, comparisons with earlier versions or other products in the market, etc. The more content you can generate at this stage, the more prospective customers you will move towards actively searching for the product. Content at this stage must be more emotional. At the active stage of search, content needs to be more functional such as reviews by subject matter experts and media as well as highlighting key features effectively. This is the conviction stage, and every piece of content should help a customer become more and more convinced about buying this product."

"Then comes the purchase stage, where the customer needs to be aware most effectively where can they buy the product, as well as pricing and discounts along with credit card benefits, etc. The objective of this stage is to ease the journey of purchase for a customer," Sinha said.

A very important point Sinha made, which is often neglected by content marketers, is creating content that helps the customer use the product most effectively. This will ensure positive experiences and reviews, which will help in the Stage 1 journey for many prospective customers. In my experience, he said, most brands drop the ball at this stage and leave it to third-party review sites or even paid reviews (which fail to make any impact). Any content marketer mapping content with this purchase cycle will reap maximum benefits of their content investment.

It's easier for tech brands to map a consumer’s purchase journey, but for offline brands, it's really tough with so many consumer footprints across the channels.

Prashanth Challapalli

Prashanth Challapalli, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Gravity Integrated, said, "If you have an e-comm website, it's easy to figure out which part of the funnel the consumer is in. If you don't have an e-comm site, it's a lot tougher because you don't have a single point destination to drive the consumer. Your website is the only digital asset that you truly own. For everything else on social, you are paying rent, and the platform owners can change that rent and the terms of the lease at any time."

But how can an offline brand up its game on the content mapping front?

Snehil Gautam

Snehil Gautam, Head of Marketing and Growth at Housing.com, Makaan.com and Proptiger.com, answered, "In this case, brand play is more. You should know where your core customers are going and then follow them through brand presence through some activity and brand content partnerships. There are a few who have started content platforms. For example, Wakefit's Qawwali video on its newly formed content platform Home Time on YouTube. While it is a B2C company and has an online presence, it has an offline product. The future of all online products is that they will embrace the online platforms, and slowly and gradually have to build content on their platform to address the users."

Mehta of Girnarsoft thinks measurement is an important aspect of content mapping, which many do not do it rightly. He said, "For many people, measurement of content is garnering reach, clicks, likes, etc. While this is important, it is just the starting point. One should definitely measure if the propensity of buying the product of the consumer is increasing or not given the amount of content consumed."

When brands create single content pieces such as like music videos, long-films and chat shows involving a huge investment, how can one map these in the consumer journey? Wouldn't these fall in the awareness level? What beyond that?

Gravity Integrated's Challapalli added, "That's a great question and one every marketer should ask themselves. What next? Why are we doing this? What is our success metric? How are we analysing performance and vanity metrics? What is the impact on brand and sales? I doubt many marketers ask this question."

Sapna Arora

Coming to the rescue of the marketers opting for such expensive content pieces to offer to the consumers is Sapna Arora, Chief Marketing Officer, OLX. She said, "Single content pieces such as music videos, long-films and chat shows are no longer a one-time activity created solely for awareness. With the rise of online video platforms and new-age video content consumption patterns, brands can extend the shelf life of their content through different ways (slicing up a lengthy content piece into bite-sized pieces, creating engaging content within the content through user interactive elements just like the way Netflix attempted to do so with one of its web series—Black Mirror Bandersnatch and many more). The road ahead for brands is to use new-age technologies and evolving content consumption preferences/platforms to tailor their single content pieces across consumer segments."

Gautam concluded, "If content mapping and distribution are done well, then from the business results perspective, one can see the topline growing, and simultaneously your ARPU (average revenue per user) will also grow.”