In the past, Pepperfry had taken to various mediums ranging from social media to television to radio to reach customers and promote its products. Branded content was one such medium. The brand collaborated with TVF Girliyapa and Dice Media, which helped build its digital presence and awareness about its products.
But now, in a change of strategy, since consumers in the furniture category seem to be aware of the brand, it has decided to not go ahead with branded content and instead focus more on content marketing.
The brand has increased its investment in content marketing by 100% over the last year, Kashyap Vadapalli, CMO and Business Head, Pepperfry, told BuzzInContent. It is also investing more than ever in influencer marketing.
“During 2016-18, we did a lot of branded content. But we realised that there are many more consumers who are already online and who have a strong awareness of the category and the brand. So the focus for us has been in terms of driving additional interest for people who are already out there looking for these categories online, and specifically our website. We are innovating in terms of formats and the number of types of creatives. Branded content is not that relevant for us as it used to be two years ago. At that time, we were doing a lot more category building. Now there is already a strong consumer sentiment towards the brand and the category online,” he said.
The focus is now on capturing that interest and converting it. And this is why content marketing has become more important for the brand.
“Content marketing has been a key pillar in our category since we need to educate customers about home fashion, trends, colours, etc. And that's something that we continue to do. In fact, our social platforms are very focused on creating interesting looks, product and design themes. We are really talking about that across all of our key social channels,” he said.
And since it is not so much about selling a particular product but about educating them about designs and how they can do their home, it is more active on social media channels and its blog.
Link to its blog:
https://blog.pepperfry.com/
Many a time, people confuse between branded content and content marketing. Some believe branded content is a part of the content marketing ecosystem. But the truth is that there is just a thin line differentiating the two from each other.
When brands take the content route to draw in new audiences, build brand awareness and engagement with the brand, the strategy deployed is called branded content. Such content doesn’t push the brand into the face of consumers – the association is very light or subtle.
When brands take the content route specifically targeted and tailored at potential customers, and done to mainly solve the problems and challenges they face, it is called content marketing. Content marketing helps a brand to build trust and educate customers about the business and the solutions. Content marketing is more about lead generation and turning prospects into customers.
The company had made a big shift in terms of investments in content marketing during last year in the lockdown.
“For the whole year when you're not transacting because of the shutdown, how do you engage with the customer on an ongoing basis? You can only engage with the consumer and they will engage with you as a brand provided you add value in some format,” he said.
Soon after the pandemic hit the country, Pepperfry started improving the knowledge of consumers regarding the category, décor, trends and the brand.
Vadapalli said, “We made a clear shift towards investing more resources towards content marketing during the lockdown last year, and we've continued to do that. So we have continued to keep that shift alive and kicking for the last 14-15 months or so. The investments that we do on social media would be a good indicator of the investment that we do in content. And that's about a 100% jump over last year.”
It is active on all kinds of social media platforms ranging from Pinterest to even professional ones like LinkedIn. But the brand mainly uses Instagram for consumer engagement. Pepperfry recently onboarded Glitch and Social Panga as its agencies.
The brand re-launched its mattress brand Cloudio for which it worked with multiple micro and small influencers for its #GreatestMattressEver campaign. It also worked with some bigger influencers with a reach of over two million-plus to amplify the campaign.
#GreatestMattressEver campaign with Anita Hassanandani:
The campaign videos:
“We work with a lot of micro and small influencers on an ongoing basis. And we occasionally use slightly larger influencers whenever we have a new product launch or to get the word out on how that particular brand is playing a role in the influencers’ lives,” he said.
Going forward, the company will increase its investments on this front.
Vadapalli believes that in categories such as mattresses, modular kitchens or wardrobes, the products are not that simple. These are not just off-the-shelf products, these are experiential and so influencers become a very important information channel.
“Influencers can talk about their experience with the products. They can talk about how it has helped them. We will continue to use influencers going forward,” he said.
The brand measures its ROI on the basis of the reach and the engagements on content-driven posts.
“We don’t have particular metrics to measure the ROI on our content marketing. We measure based on how many people are engaging with our content, how many people are looking at our videos, how many people are reading our articles, etc. When it comes to content marketing, we don't really put a dollar figure to how we measure ROI on content marketing,” he said.
Ever since the company has made a shift towards content marketing, it has been working out very positively for it, Vadapalli said.
“A lot of people engage with our content and we can see the growth in our followers across all of our platforms, whether it is Pinterest or Instagram or Facebook or even LinkedIn for that matter. In the last one-and-a-half years, we have added more people than in the first seven years. So obviously, content marketing is paying off not just in terms of engagement with our content, but also in terms of our followers. It's a strategy that's working for us and we'll continue with it. Depending upon the season, campaigns or launches, we might dial it up a little bit or take it down. But on an ongoing basis, I think that is a focus that will only keep increasing gradually,” he said.
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