Is 2015 the Year of Content Marketing in Indonesia?

Byjmzachariascom

content marketing, GetCRAFT, indonesia, Jakarta content marketing meet up, native ad, native advertising

Is 2015 the Year of Content Marketing in Indonesia?

Is 2015 the Year of Content Marketing in Indonesia? This question refer to the Content Marketing existence along the past years and now this year 2015, that used also as the topic discussion of the Jakarta Content Marketing meetup session this month. Content Marketing in several years growing tremendous approach and  its contribution too (Content Marketing Innitiative for Online Shop, Indonesia market 2013). Does Content Marketing still reliable to cope the challenge in 2015? Let’s take a look  the discussion  through this compilation article below.

Content Marketing-Native Ad
Content Marketing itself means about to drive action as Patrick Searle (cofounder GetCRAFT) point out in early session. It’s about owning paradigm, investing on it and get the returns. The Native Ad also the hot issue to be addressed in term of its contribution to get read rate times and ROI target, comparing with digital marketing main stream like  display ads has been decreased significantly.  Native Ad plays promising role to give the good impact to its stakeholder and give adaptive approach and more friendly user experience (UX) to consumer, compare to not quite good experieces/pro-contra last year related with intrusive ad that pop-up without giving option to consumer get rid from bothering  their user experiences and raised dispute among digital publisher.
Brand professional Jasmina Dewi Nashya (E-Commerce Marketing Head at MAP) added that content marketing should has brand perspective adjusted to brand and company strategy and also has relevance with target viewer desire and in line with what consumer care about. From brand  people (client) perspective, she added it’s paramount to keep the brand presence in every Consumer Decision Journey (CDJ), that also must be applied on content marketing approach.

Sponsored Content and its position from publisher point of view.
The terminology of content marketing spreads from one industry to another industry. Publisher like online newspaper use Sponsored Content  to refer it. Beside the news as their commodity, empowering content article that get sponsor called Sponsored Content.  David Alexander ( Business Development at Kompas) from his point of view as publisher professional classify Sponsored Content as intersection area of Venn Diagram between Content Marketing and Native Ad. Sponsored Content applied by different approach, it could be beyond branding (not spoken about brand) but their initiative campaign, for example BP within move the next mile campaign. Or also something that provoking interest of subject, that giving awareness, guidance to empowering  for example cashless society (sponsored by one larger bank).
Those approaches aren’t hard selling focus content but still attached with sponsored brand/company logo. Also important for Sponsored Content stakeholder to keep content transparency and relevance (avoid pretending) so make no room consumer getting trap on the content that consumer really doesn’t want to, eventually could ruin their credibility and business.

Content Marketing, hard selling and measurement.
In line with hard selling content, some important lesson-learned shared by Jasmina that too many focus hard selling approach on content gave bad impact from consumer. So need to create content that can steal consumer heart which with minimum hard selling content.
On the other hand, from top management point of view that sometime push a lot hard selling approach because every program should giving the return with common indicator such as number of conversions and revenue. It’s quite complicated and also challenging to set up good content marketing that attract consumer’s attention but less hard selling. According to her best practice, by using KPI as currency to convince top management to  go through that approach. The KPI might covers unique visitors from where they access (geography), comply the trend (mobile readership trend) and engagement measurement (bounce rate/time spent, page view and sentiment & social engagement). KPI itself not be separated from measurement, Daniel Van Leeuwen (Research & Development Advisor at XM Gravity) also emphasized measuring activity as part of the main triangle to support implementation of content marketing. It’ s such cycle starting from Learning, Building and Measuring phase. Measurement also part of three main factor related with Content Marketing as Haswar Hafid (Client Partner at Facebook) mentioned beside medium and format.

Content Marketing Strategy.
Content marketing strategy should be user centric, Daniel explained that content format should be as interface between business goal and user goal/needs. Based his digital agency background, he gives example how NetFlix using the data to determine next program to offer. Another example of user centric case when Mortal Combat Director Kevin Tancharoen making a initial pitch film. Kevin put the Mortal Combat thriller online and got much good responses from consumer. Then led him to develop the feature film version and got distribution supporting from Warner Bros.
According to the inspiring story above, Daniel also broke down and emphasized   some phases that could be the secret sauce of that success story, the phase starts from do pilot, validation, build/refine and expand.

From branding (client) perspective, the brand  need fully support from the content to be part of conversation among consumer, and Jasmine added on other side the content stakeholder need to think the impact also beforehand.

Banner Blindness Fact and Ux matter.
Daniel also mentioned banner blindness and some facts related such low click through rate (CTR) that show less number who clicked the banner. Still related to Banner Blindness in US, Matthew Green (UX Consultant) highlighted from User Experience (UX) design perspective, with case the lack of Ux design such the editorial box looks like banner that consumer think it as banner that keep it quite far from the CTR target. To many and messy banner layout also cause banner blindness, consumer feels dizzy to go to the content he/she want. UX with good lay-out that ergonomic and provide good/easy navigation to follow is the paramount. Mattew also added in specific that important to keep in mind such visual consistency with design of the page, readable text, simple imagery, be relevant and engagement.

Is 2015 the Year of Content Marketing in Indonesia?
Sunil Kumar (Digital Director at Starcom) talking from Media Agency perspective, shared key takeways from 2014 that something called Native Ads get spoken and 2015 will be the year of Native Ads that continually need another year to market and mature. LTE launching make possibility the content marketing booming in term of media format and capacity (size) applied successfully at consumer mobile/gadget platform.

Jasmina pretty optimistic that content marketing well growing in 2015 also underlined video marketing is the next hot babe and whole strategy approach (online and offline) integrated to omni channel as one strategy she would apply.
Haswar also believed 2015 is a content marketing year. Since media crossover in the term of time spent started from radio era, tv, digital and now mobile era. Mobile is the most personal and engaging medium ever. Mobile at scale and content marketing get more room for expansion and customization. He resumed it in one brief sentence “Marry the right format with the right device.”

So back to important question. Is 2015 the Year of Content Marketing in Indonesia? Some might say yes and believe it! Some might wait and see. Some say depending on you, content marketing stakeholder include consumer.

*This article is compilation of panelist thought and audience discussion at Jakarta Content Marketing Meetup January 14th 2015 hosted by GetCRAFT (link). In this article JM Zacharias just took a role as ‘kitchen helper’ who just arranged ‘dish’ served on plate 🙂

*imagre credit: taken while discussion been held

 

About the author: JM Zacharias (@jmzacharias) currently works as a business strategist, professional career in the fields of product, sales and marketing more than a decade. His professional career experience in various industries including retail, consumer electronics, information and telecommunications technology both Business to Customer (B2C) and Business to Business (B2B). Having diverse experience in national, multinational companies, and startup; in the areas of technology, marketing and sales management, cross-culture climate among nations in his career portfolio in the Asia Pacific region and Southeast Asia helped him enrich and widen preperspective to continue to learn and share. Communicating ideas and business strategy are some of his activities beside writing article,delivering training and consultancy activities. Detailed information can be viewed on JMZacharias.Com Business Strategy & Technology www.jmzacharias.com. You can also contact him through this link