How Tally Solutions is banking on new-age content to break its old-school perception

Who said B2B marketing is serious and boring? The times have changed and this could be seen in Tally’s (business software product company) recent affair with the new-age content platform The Viral Fever (TVF). 

After tasting initial success with the TVF Timeliners mini-series ‘Baap Beta Aur Office’, the B2B software company, Tally Solutions has extended its partnership with the platform through brand integrations in the much-awaited TVF Pitchers Season 2, which would be streamed on Zee5, starting December 23, 2022.  

Directed by Vaibhav Bandhu, the five episodic web series is about growing the company, the importance of digitisation and surviving in the cut-throat world of start-ups.

Launched seven years ago, the first season of TVF Pitchers, which was specially made for UB Group’s beer brand Kingfisher, got famous for its line ‘Tu beer hai’. Since then, it has been a case study for marketers on how a brand can be successfully integrated into content without spoiling the experience of consumers. After its success, several other brands jumped on the bandwagon of creating web series. 

With Pitchers Season 2, the 36-years old company which pioneered automation for the MSMEs, aims to engage with the younger audiences and break the perception around it being a fuddy-duddy. 

In an exclusive interview with BuzzInContent.com, Jayati Singh, Chief Marketing Officer, Tally Solutions, said, “We have realised that in the last few years, the way of engaging with the consumers and their purchase journey has undergone a big change. While we are a B2B company, our customers – owners or accountants operate as individuals in terms of the kind of content they consume and searches they do online. The digital behaviour of an individual is irrespective of whether they have a B2B or B2C business. It has become inevitable for us to reach out to customers at every given touchpoint.” 

She further said that creating engaging content is very important to bring to life the real relevance and functionality of the product. “Being 36 years old, there is a misconception that we are only preferred by the older generation. Our customer profiles include a lot of people across age-groups running start-ups and new businesses who do swear by Tally,” she said. 

Talking about why they specifically collaborated with TVF to solve the problem of being perceived as a brand for older people, Singh said, “In order to cater to and drive the relevance of our brand for the youth and younger population, we figured that TVF would be a really good platform because they are great content creators with good followership. They can make our category look very engaging and entertaining.”

The three-episode mini-series ‘Baap Beta Aur Office’ was also a huge hit. Singh believes that their first experiment in generic entertainment content space has been successful as the show collectively garnered more than 10 lakh views on the YouTube channel of TVF Timeliners.

The series explored the relationship between a son and his retired father in an office environment, highlighting the power struggle when a new generation takes over the decision-making cycle and the role technology plays in bridging the gap, both professionally and personally.

Sharing the story behind how their collaboration with TVF saw the light of the day, Singh said, “Every time when we launch a brand film, we collaborate with social content platforms to amplify the campaign. Similarly, we were scouting for partners when we launched our recent brand ad film. Interestingly, TVF happened to reach out to us at the same time.” 

After evaluating the success of the brand’s first content initiative with TVF in this genre, the brand would plan its future partnerships with content platforms. Singh said, “We have now embarked on a journey where we are trying different forms of content integrations and creation. This is definitely not just one-off. Now, it depends a lot on the response we get from Pitchers. After evaluating the pros and cons and the results we get from it, it will lead the way forward. Till the time there is engaging, relevant content and not force-fitted, it’s a good way to send your message across to the target group.”

While brands have been experimenting with integrations in web series and snackable content for a long-time now, isn’t Tally a bit late in this game? 

Singh answered, “It’s better late than never. Once you find the right partner and the right things to talk about, then any time is good. At the end of the day, one doesn’t get to see such content collaborations in our space. B2C companies have been doing it for years. But only a few B2B companies are doing these kinds of partnerships as there has been a bit of scepticism in doing content of this sort. I am hoping it will only pick up in the future. But there has to be a strong strategy around the objective one wants content to drive for the brand.”

It’s not that Tally wasn’t doing content at all before this, the brand had been putting out a lot of educational content through content creators and on its social media and YouTube channel.

Educational content YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzpW4xX3UIxNAZSbhYbnlQZo_1L6BZ380

Informative content on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjXrb7lq9ZG/

One of the content pieces from its LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tallysolutions_tallysolutions-caconnect-webinar-activity-7010523083555975168-tNd5?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

“We create different kinds of content for Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook with the help of our agency. The content on our social media caters to specific target groups. In total, we do a lot of print, published and video content,” said Singh.  

Throwing light on the important pillars of the brand’s content strategy, Singh said, “Basis the intent, the customer journey is longer and very linear when we map it. Therefore, when we devise our content strategy, we take into consideration at what level of the funnel the customer is in its buying cycle. Accordingly, we offer content to the consumer, basis his/her position in the funnel.”

She continued, "Short videos are becoming increasingly important in the early stages of the customer journey. In the same manner, we distribute content on social media. While the message remains almost the same, different formats of content are deployed basis the nature of the platform. The same message in a blog format might have serious tonality and funny tonality in a short video. On Facebook, content can be heart-warming and emotional. Content on YouTube is more educational in nature.”   

In the past, the brand has done bits and pieces of entertaining content with content creators. In the future, Tally is looking at expanding its focus on doing more content with individual content creators. 

In fact, last year, when the Union Budget came, the brand did a series decoding the different elements of Budget in an entertaining format with an expert and put those out on Instagram Reel.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CZep0f0ICXR/

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CZjgOXGJdTM/

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CZwRIf5pDMU/

Tally will be exploring partnering content creators beyond just finfluencers. “Although, it’s important to have relevance. I can’t just go to any social influencer who doesn’t have background and followership according to our requirements. We’ll be looking at collaborating with influencers who are start-up founders, evangelists, business people who talk about finance and also have good reach,” she said.

Earlier in June 2022, Tally did a 3-part series ‘Mera Business, Meri Pehchaan’, on the business news channel ET Now, decoding important questions around MSME business owners with the aim to empower SMBs with the know-how, best practices and techniques associated with key challenges that they face. As part of the series, ET and the brand hosted masterclasses by Business coach Rajiv Talreja. 

For Tally, both short-form and long-form content have different objectives to fulfil. The brand opts for short-form content for engaging with people on YouTube and social media. When it comes to long-form content, Singh told BuzzInContent.com that it is a necessity with regard to SEO. “Our long-form blog posts and articles have serious content delving into knowledge,” she said. 

Singh also pointed out that in addition to the content Tally creates, there are evangelists and experts who organically create a lot of educational content around the brand. 

The brand has a five-people content team which does most of the content in-house, there is also a separate six people team in product marketing that creates technical content for Tally Help.

“We don’t work with agencies on serious content in our domain as it will be a long learning curve for them, added Singh. 

Although, Tally also works with Social Panga, a digital marketing agency, to create content for social media. Tally works with DDB Mudra to help take care of other partnerships across media.

Singh added, “With the growing importance of content marketing, we increased our content team size and the efforts put into various forms of content generation. Our efforts have shown good results with regards to demand generation point of view along with building brand perception and engagement.”

According to Singh, while short videos and reels are gaining importance in India, print and written content is definitely going to stay. “The seriousness and the sheer longevity of written content that resonates with consumers will always have its place in the overall scheme of things,” she said.

The brand uses the print medium to do content through PR outreach programmes. When it comes to TV, Singh said that because Tally doesn’t have a problem with its brand awareness, it doesn’t make sense for them to use the medium actively.

When it comes to exploring the audio medium, the brand recently launched an audio series ‘Tally ke sath, business ki baat’, on music OTT apps, celebrating stories of winners and participants of its annual initiative ‘MSME Honour’. “We are yet to evaluate how the series performed on audio. Basis its performance, we’ll further plan our audio content strategy,” said Singh. 

Going forward, the brand will also be increasing its focus on vernacular content. But the road ahead in the vernacular content space is full of challenges. Singh said, “Along with finding quality content creators, vetting the content in vernacular content is another challenge we face. This makes creating content in regional languages a long and tedious process.”