Compelling content is an effective way to break through today’s cluttered digital media landscape, and connect with any audience. The Media Online reports.
That was the message delivered at two workshops last month co-hosted by global internet company Yahoo and Cape Town based digital media and marketing company, Apurimac Media.
Yahoo’s head of e=resellers and expansion markets, EMEA, Anna Skrzypek, was on a week-long visit to the country at the invitation of its local regional reseller, Apurimac Media. She presented two workshops in Cape Town and in Johannesburg which were co-hosted with Apurimac. The workshops looked at solutions to create scalable, revenue-driving strategies that meet companies’ digital business and marketing goals.
During the two events, guests discussed programmatic media buying opportunities and how to better engage customers with native advertising and content marketing.
“Yahoo views Africa as a key growth market,” said Apurimac Media’s CEO Nazareen Jakoet. “Apurimac teamed up with Yahoo in 2008 and have since then been their official reseller for Sub-Sahara Africa. Every year new market trends emerge and we are delighted to share with the industry how Yahoo is positioned in 2014/15 for these trends.”
Marketers have to increasingly improve their marketing strategies if they want to reach their target markets. This fact, said Jakoet, was made abundantly clear again at the two workshops in Johannesburg and in Cape Town.
The decision making process for customers is become more sophisticated by the day, and marketers must keep up with them to quickly assess campaigns and amend them should they not meet their business objectives, she said.
The workshops heard that, with the emergence of content marketing or native marketing; technology, context and authenticity will be key in winning in this emerging marketing area.
A panel discussion on content marketing concurred that consumers have more options, channels and tools control than ever before. It was therefore of critical importance for brand managers to keep their brand message close to the user, if they wanted to make an impact. Brands have to find ways to tell their stories to the right people, in the right context and with the ability to earn additional distribution through shareable beautiful content that is presented in a seamless environment.
“Content marketing is something you can turn around quickly. If you make it shareable, it will get a life of its own. We have to start thinking like publishers,” said Bronwyn Johnson, head of marketing for ooba, one of the panellists. “Brands must find their voice, and then put it out there!”
“The ‘Holy Grail’ of advertising is when a campaign reaches a larger audience by way of ‘word of mouth’ via distributed digital media channels. Brand partnerships with Yahoo and the content platform Tumblr are key in achieving results to tell a brand’s authentic story at scale”, said Jakoet.
But on the world’s (and Africa’s) biggest digital media platforms, where Yahoo ranks within the top most visited site – it is evident that all brands need to ‘invest’ more resources to better understand what digital marketing strategies work cross platforms. This was evident in the Unified and Simple media offerings presented at the workshop.
