Sachin Kapur, Co-Founder & CMO, Nearbuy (erstwhile Groupon India) tells us how India’s first hyper-local online platform that enables customers and local merchants to discover and engage with each other has used content marketing as a core part of its brand building strategy. While he agrees that content marketing cannot replace traditional advertising, he feels it should be an integral part of any company’s strategy for consumer engagement and retention.

Interviewed by Priyanka Bhattacharya

/ / How relevant is content marketing today, especially in a scenario where there is a content overdose for consumers?

Content marketing has never been more important. However, one has to remember that content has to be for real users and not for search engines. Use genuine and original content that people can use. It will help you reduce acquisition cost and get users to be more loyal. Never optimize content for everyone. Instead of being something to everyone, be everything to someone. So, if you are writing about fashion, be very specific about who your user is. Define the persona and write it for a very small group. That group should feel that this is exactly for them; even if this means alienating some other users. This is the only way to be more meaningful and generate virality

/ / How important or relevant is content marketing for nearbuy, visa-vis other marketing initiatives? What is the weightage that you give this form of advertising?

At near buy, we call ourselves a “Lifestyle Discovery Engine” and this is only possible when users get to know more about the world around them. Content marketing is relatively new to us. However, we now have a thorough roadmap that has helped us scale in the last six months. Content marketing currently generates about 10% of our traffic. However, for us the major role that content plays is that of engagement and not so much acquisition.

/ / What is it that your company is looking for when it uses content marketing as a branding tool as compared to direct advertising campaigns?

Content marketing for us does two things - Helps people discover things to do around them; and ups their social quotient and knowledge about areas of interest like food, healthcare and wellness.

/ / When you plan your marketing initiatives, how do you weave engaging content into them?

Content is a vital part of most campaigns that we do. Our recent association with the Hollywood movie Batman Vs Superman had given us an opportunity to generate a tremendous amount of original content that fans loved. This included movie trivia, facts about the characters and history of the franchise including an interesting contest. Content can never replace other forms of advertising. However, content marketing complements it beautifully to reduce bounce rates and increase engagement.

/ / How do you map the ROI on your content marketing spend? Do you think checking for ROI is very important when you push engaging content that may not have a direct connection with your products or services?

We have defined metrics that help us track the outcome of what we’ve put out there. While social content clearly is measured against metrics like engagement rate, traffic generated and sales, the most important number for us is to see how much time people are spending on our blog, how many articles they read and if they end up buying something from the site after that.

/ / Do you think it is better to have an in-house content marketing team or should a company outsource such a service, including ideation, content creation and then marketing?

Clearly depends on the brand strategy and how much content you need to put out to make it meaningful for your business. Ours is a local business with multiple verticals. Hence we need lots of content pieces based on the cities we are in. Thus for us it makes sense to have an in-house team. For brands that can work with lesser or more focused content, outsourcing is not a bad option. However, always ensure that your brand team or agency is in the loop. This ensures that the tone of voice and consistency of message is always delivered. Never stray away from what you truly stand for.

/ / In our market study, we have seen that many CMOs say it is not easy to measure the success of a content marketing initiative. So how do you measure the success of any content marketing initiative, and what kind of campaign would you term as successful?

When you set out to define a content marketing strategy, you need to define very clear objectives. For B2B companies it might mean more leads. For B2C companies it might be better user engagement. We’ve defined our objective around engagement. However, we also define what it is that we expect from engagement and what do we want from the engaged users. When content is being created for a campaign, our objectives are to reach out to more users on social media as content like Facebook Listicles have delivered at least 25% more reach to us compared to usual posts. When done for our blog, we’ve seen organic traffic increase over a period of time. Thus, on the blog we measure traffic and the page value that the traffic delivers. This gives us a clear indication of the user actions that are done after they read the content.

/ / Do share your ideas on the innovative ways brands today can use content as a successful marketing tool.

No one today wants to see an ad. Advertisements are pieces of content that the user or customers have no use for. Create something that has some intrinsic value for the customer. That value could very well be entertainment. However, a notch higher than that is something that the user can use or get some benefit from