Power Of Cartoons In Content Marketing

Most marketers today know that they need to invest and increase their efforts in content marketing strategies. There is content overload but a definitive need to be different to stand out from the crowd.
51% of B2B marketers indicate they will increase their content marketing spending in the next 12 months - Content Marketing Institute

The main objectives of any content marketing strategy is to:

• Drive sales / Lead generation 
• Engage the relevant audience and Influencers
• Create brand re-call / awareness

Marketers share content in form of whitepapers, case-studies, infographics, blog posts, analysts reports, videos etc. I believe that an untapped form of content marketing is through 'Cartoons.' Ever thought about the power of content marketing with cartoons?

Effective content marketing today means capturing the essence of a great idea in a quick snackable way!

Cartoons can induce life into the content that can strike a chord with your audience. They have the power to capture the attention of your audience and tell a story in a unique way. 

Cartoons can help companies breakthrough the content clutter and are a great way of taking complex ideas and making them easy to understand.

Kronos, an industry leader in time management and talent management solutions, wanted to extend their brand, reach new prospects and engage with employees. They did this by launching a weekly cartoon series that was shared with more than 3,000 employees as well as with industry analysts, customers and the media. They further posted them on a website dedicated to the series.

The cartoons were embraced very well internally and Kronos took a step further to engage with people outside of the company by launching a contest to caption their cartoons, for which they received over 500 entries! One of the companies even wanted the permission to outfit their walls with Kronos' cartoons! Imagine someone seeking permission to print your content at their workplace! Isn't that a testimony of how relevant your content can be?

When you think about cartoons, don't take them in the literal sense always. They could be in form of doodles or illustrations as well.

Amul, one of India’s oldest and most well-known food brands, itself a product of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (and the largest milk producer in the world), uses images in a very effective way.

Be it a cause or social issue, Amul is quick to jump into the story, often introducing the Amul girl into the landscape. This has made the brand iconic. Check out a few examples here.

Topical: Outrage against terrorism



Topical: Legend leaves international arena

The next time you are thinking about ways to break through the content marketing clutter, consider cartoons as a powerful content marketing tool.

Thinking of how to get started?

• Figure out what is the one message you want to communicate 

"For me, it's the narrow focus. You can really communicate one & only one message in a single cartoon #SocialPowWow" - @ErinMFeldman

• Be clear about how much marketing budget you are willing to spend on such an activity: Cartoons have to align with strategy and budget

"Start with a small ask and work toward more budget as you see results #SocialPowWow" - @ErinMFeldman

• Be consistent in your messaging while using cartoons as a tool to share your story

"Cartoons are serial in nature #SocialPowWow" - @ErinMFeldman

• Make it interesting and engaging by adding humor 

"Intelligence, humor. It's about visually communicating ideas, even if using stick figures (like xkcd) #SocialPowWow" - @ErinMFeldman

If you have experimented with content marketing through cartoons, I'd like to know how it had a positive impact on your business!

Visual Content Marketing

Researchers say humans have lesser attention span than goldfish! The average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds to eight seconds and goldfish are believed to have an attention span of nine seconds!

Given the short attention span that humans have, lengthy explanations are indeed less effective. Hence, the need for crisp and engaging content which the audience can consume, retain and remember. Visuals play a big role in engaging the audience and use of effective visuals can boost engagement and spark up social media conversations.



"Visuals attract like a magnet. There's no better way to reach people than through images and emotion." - @KDHungerford

Such content can be effective in any format, whether it is an image, infographic or a video. We must know the context and our audience well enough to understand what they would like to see.



According to @KDHungerford, we must think like a community - the most effective content is the one that your community craves for!



Effective content is like good food. It brings people around the table



And sometimes, it's not just about creating effective content but taking an opportunity of the conversations already happening around us...

An interesting example of this is the recent Facebook Live video of a mom (Candace Payne) laughing joyously about a Chewbacca mask she purchased at Kohl’s which went viral and is one of the most viewed Facebook Live video of all times.

Kohl's addressed the video on its social media pages by posting a GIF of Payne’s video on Twitter and sharing it on the Kohl’s Facebook page. Further, Kohl’s posted a picture of Payne with Star Wars products it gave to her family after she posted the video. The picture was liked more than 200,000 times on Facebook and shared nearly 70,000 times! That's not it, to keep the conversation going, Kohl's even posted a video of Payne and her family receiving gift cards and reward points. The video has been liked nearly 700,000 times on Facebook and viewed more than 30 million times. On Twitter, the video has been retweeted more than 2,000 times and liked roughly 3,500 times. This is a perfect example of how a brand seized the opportunity of the content already out there!

"Put your community at heart of your content because that's the content that will win big." - @cmtyworks



If you are not yet focusing on visual content in your marketing strategy, it’s time to re-think your strategy.

I'd love to know how effective visual content marketing has been for your brand or business?

What Makes For A Powerful Marketing Strategy?

With integrated marketing communications, we are moving towards converged media: Paid + Owned + Earned. While having all the three elements in a marketing strategy is not necessary, a mix of all can together create a powerful marketing strategy. For a good brand experience, no channel/medium or either of these elements should be disconnected.

During our #SocialPowWow twitter chat, Josh St. Aubin explained the concept of earned, owned and paid media in a nutshell as:

Earned = Promotions (Free Eyeballs)

Owned = Branded Content

Paid = Ads (Money for Eyeballs)

Organic content reach on social networks is on a continuous decline and in fact, the most powerful pieces of earned media can't break through the clutter occasionally. That's where paid media becomes more effective than earned media. Paid media is needed the most when earned and owned media aren't sufficient.

"Owned & earned should always be the priority. Your goal should be to convert paid into earned." - Josh St. Aubin

That said, brands need to understand that paid media is not just to gain social love instantly and must be used wisely. While no brand can ignore paid media, using it without a strong content strategy will not help the brand in any way. Paid media can enhance the reach but engagement and retention is dependent on a brand's narrative.

It's a brand's responsibility to own and release content that the customers and fans would like to share and engage with. Interestingly, including a loyalty strategy in your content & social strategy engages the audience more. According to @colloquy, VIP & loyalty program customers are 70% more likely to spread word of mouth about your business. It's important to win the trust of your customers, fans/followers and convert them into loyal fans.

A brand should keep tweaking its content strategy to understand what the audience loves to engage with because what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow.

At the core of converged media – of all media – is content. A solid content strategy is essential and central to all media initiatives and without content, brands cannot achieve earned media at scale.

(Photo credit: Altimeter Group)

Marketing Trends & Predictions for 2016

In 2015, what marketers did right and where they missed the mark: 

In 2015, marketers understood the importance of mobile. We also observed increased use of videos and images too this year. 

It's said that by 2020, there will be over 5 billion internet users, with over half of them accessing the internet over handheld tablet devices and 80 billion connected devices worldwide! 

With increasing internet users & connected devices worldwide, marketers will push more content to their audience. While some marketers are already overdoing content, good quality content will triumph quantity.

"Storytelling" as a jargon has been used quite a bit  by marketers in 2015. However, not many have mastered the art of storytelling just as yet. Marketers must first understand their audience and what kind of stories they are likely to respond to. It's imperative to build the story in a brand's DNA, amongst its employees, content and finally in the marketing efforts.  

Time & budgets likely to be spent by marketers in 2016

According to Gartner. marketing budgets in 2016 are set to increase on an average to 11% of total company revenue. 

As we saw increased focus of marketers towards mobile and video, it's expected that marketers in 2016 will be $pending heavily on mobile and video. WithGoogle pushing video "micro moments", it will be interesting to see how brands will capitalize on videos. The purchase journey of a consumer has been fragmented into hundreds of micro-moments.

It's important for brands to be present in those moments with relevant, useful videos to establish brand equity and connect with their consumers. 

A study by Web Video Marketing Council says that 96% of B2B marketers are now using video marketing. 

Needless to say, content marketing is set to rise in 2016! As per the Content Marketing Institute (@CMIContent), 51% of B2B companies plan to increase spending in content marketing in the coming year. 

It's the age of data and it makes every spend accountable and measurable which implies analytics will be big in 2016. According to @brandanewco, expenditures on marketing analytics are set to rise by 60%. 

Smart Marketers will also reserve some $$ for organic/earned & engagement! 

Wearable technology & smart devices expected to gain more traction in 2016

As more people strap technology to their wrists, wearable devices are set to become powerful platforms for customer engagement. Wearable devices will give marketers an opportunity to analyse habits, attitudes & behaviour patterns to better serve consumers. 

Healthcare industry will be one of biggest beneficiary of wearables in my opinion. 

A report by @McKinseyDigital states that wearables are set to become $11 trillion market!  

Evolution of Paid v/s Organic 

Convergence of earned, paid and owned media will remain the sweet spot for marketers. Smart marketers will find the right balance between the three that will work for their customers. 

While it is said that paid is taking over organic growth, I believe in the long term organic growth helps build trust and loyalty with the customers and eventually lead to sales. A paid campaign can get you more eyeballs, but organic still has a long tail!  

So, what are your marketing trends and predictions for 2016? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

Note: This topic was discussed during the #SocialPowWow Twitter chat and the full transcript can be read here: https://goo.gl/ef1mhx 

#SocialPowWow: Share, NOT Save Knowledge

I have always believed in the power of community and over time have formed a community of like minded people who share similar interests.

“Power is gained by sharing knowledge, not hoarding it”

That said, I recently started a Twitter ch #SocialPowWow. The idea behind the chat was to build a community:

• For Indian Entrepreneurs, Marketing, PR, Advertising and Digital professionals
• To exchange ideas and start discussions around topics to explore endless possibilities that are transforming the world of business

Till now, five chats have been successfully hosted on Twitter and the response has been superb! Here’s a list of topics we have covered so far and in case you haven’t check out the chat as yet, please do give a read to the re-cap:

• Social Media for Public Relations & Strategic Communications

With our special guest Vikram Kharvi, Senior Group Head, lead B2B & Tech Practice @AdfactorsPR, the chat received a great response from the PR & digital marketing professionals in India and globally. The chat focused on the role social media plays in strategic communication, especially for those in PR, how social media can be beneficial in PR crisis management and best practices for PR teams in managing brand position on social media. Here’s the full transcript of the chat: https://goo.gl/E8x7WH  

• Content Marketing for Businesses

Olga Andrienko, Head of Social Media at @semrush spoke about content marketing. We all say content is the king and rightly so! How do you create scintillating content for the readers, align content marketing with your business objectives and tools you can use for content creation is what was discussed during this chat. Here’s a quick re-cap: https://goo.gl/Jeppsc

• Digital Marketing for Startups

The chat with Sorav Jain, Thinker in Chief @echovme was focused around digital marketing for startups, how much should one invest in digital marketing, tools which can be helpful for marketing for startups and much more! Catch the full transcript of the chat here: http://sfy.co/c0nCK  

• Social Media Analytics

Social media analytics with Shonali Burke, CEO, Shonali Burke Consulting, Inc. was a fun and engaging chat. The chat covered how social media analytics could benefit businesses and clients, how to develop strategies and measure KPIs, challenges faced to get buy-ins from the upper management and the tools that can help in social media measurement. Check out the chat transcript here: https://t.co/jHtasg6zjW

• Storytelling & Social Media

After an engaging chat with Shonali on social media analytics, we had another insightful chat with her on storytelling & social media. The topic covered the importance of storytelling in social media, focus of brands on storytelling in their campaigns, best practices in storytelling and how customers’ perception play into effective storytelling. To read the full chat transcript, click here: https://goo.gl/gTsZAn

I’m thrilled to have such wonderful and powerful #SocialPowWow community! Always around to exchange knowledge, share ideas, examples and enticing case-studies. Let’s strengthen the community and learn from each other’s experiences. Join us for #SocialPowWow, every Thursday 9PM IST; 11:30AM ET. Look forward to your participation.

6 Rules of Thumb for Successful Brand Publishing

The Internet has made brand publishing ubiquitous. Gone are the days when brands required an intermediary to reach their target audience. Now, they have the luxury of reaching out to their audiences directly… through content storytelling. 

But how do they do this effectively?

In order to be effective, brand content must be mapped to business objectives and be appealing. Content storytelling is all about creating attractive, valuable and interesting information your customers are passionate about, so they actually pay attention and engage with the brand.

In the words of Mark Ragan, CEO of Ragan Communications, “If we tell our stories the right way, we have the ability to become legitimate publishers in our own right.”

People respond to content that is:

• Sharable
• Visually appealing
• Engaging, and
• Of good quality

Building a visually appealing and engaging website, writing regular blogs, e-mail marketing, use of multi-media (videos/photos/ Info graphics) and using social networks to target the audience are various ways to share a brand story. We know this. And in today’s hyper connected world, everyone’s a publisher.

So what could possibly go wrong with brand publishing?

In my opinion, quite a few things. And if your brand wants to publish successfully, it needs to keep these in mind.

1. Know your audience: Who is your target audience? Are you regularly listening to your buyers and potential buyers? Identifying your target audience and listening to their needs and wants can help a brand tailor its content across various platforms to maximize its reach.

Check out Dell’s Idea Storm website. Through this website, the company doesn’t just listen to its audience to address complaints, but also gives them a chance to solve the problems the company faces. They also post StormSessions, where they pose questions and challenges to customers and partners who then offer ideas/solutions on the issue at hand. This is a company which listens, and is actively interested in improving and investing in what their customers want. As of this writing, Dell has implemented over 549 ideas provided by its fans!

2. Content smarts: Do not focus on volume, but on consistency and quality of content. It is imperative to have a content plan in place in order to have meaningful, personalized interactions across platforms.

Example: Zomato helps discover great places to eat around you, and currently serves 22 countries worldwide. It believes in quality over quantity. And thus, it uses multiple channels for content marketing efficiently and effectively by following this principle.

Instead of overloading your blogs/Facebook/Twitter, quality and consistent content makes for a more meaningful and personalized audience experience.

3. Searchable: Search engines reward sites that deliver good quality content. So as you’re working on your content, keep in mind that it should be fresh, and of high quality, for it to be searchable. Nothing beats WUL when it comes to SEO! Agree?

4. Use of multi-media platforms (videos/photos/ infographics): Often, images and videos are easier for consumers to absorb than just text. In fact videos/photos help engage a wider audience. According to Facebook, users view more than 4 billion videos a day!

Amul, one of India’s oldest and most well-known food brands, itself a product of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (and the largest milk producer in the world), uses images in a very effective way.

Be it a cause or social issue, Amul is quick to jump into the story, often introducing the Amul girl into the landscape. This has made the brand iconic. Check out a few examples here; I’ll include a screen grab of one of their latest “Amul Topical” posts from Twitter to get you started.

5. Build a community: An audience might read your blog, consume and share your information, easily recognize your brand from rest of the crowd. However, a community is a set of people who are passionate about the brand, actively seeking out the content, and willing to share the content further.

I believe Buffer does an excellent job of community building, and I’m glad to be a part of its community. As someone passionate about “all things digital,” I always look forward to its content whether it is via e-mail or a tweet, and I invariably share the content with my network.

6. Be human: The once-regarded best practices for telling a brand’s story are now relatively ineffective in generating consumer trust. Thanks to social networks, today the audience’s trust is built via continuous brand engagement and direct conversations.

It is important for brands to build an emotional connection with their community and audience over time.

Especially if you have any connection to South Asia or the sub-continent, you will remember this beautiful video by Google, which made a huge emotional connection with that audience. It’s a story about two friends who were separated during the partition of India, and how they are reunited after decades.

If you haven’t watched it yet, please do, and then come back here. I’ll wait.

Did the video leave you in tears, or at least with a lump in your throat? That is exactly what I mean by being human and building an emotional connection.

Follow these six principles and, over time, you might have an Amul girl of your own.

What do you think are the golden rules of successful brand publishing? I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments below.

Image: <DigitalRalph> via Flickr, CC 4.0

Keep Your Marketing Efforts Afloat With Demand Marketing

Today, everyone is a publisher in the sea of content and it is imperative that the marketeers move towards better strategies with modern day storytelling. This is where demand marketing comes to play.

Demand marketing is an integrated mix of traditional and digital marketing methods which includes content marketing, PR and influencer relations. (Content marketing + PR + Social media = Demand marketing).

Here's an interesting info graphic by Onboardly explaining the concept of Demand Marketing.