Well-known American writer and businessman Seth Godin has famously said: Content marketing (is) “the only marketing left” - it’s authentic, useful, and perfectly suited for the Internet generation.

Just for the record, the word “content” today covers a whole range of things - media, including text, audio, video, VR and AR; marketing collateral such as ads, emails, newsletters, webinars, podcasts; even data analytics reports, and so on.

Smartphones and other handheld computing devices have made content consumption easier. And better. And smarter. Untethered digital devices have given consumers the freedom to choose the time when to consume content. Along with the Internet and the World Wide Web, they have removed two barriers - of time and of geography.

Today, people have the freedom to consume content as per their own schedule, and from anywhere on the globe. Hence the term: on-demand content.

Whether you are a media company like an entertainment channel, or a B2B or a B2C enterprise, your traffic reads your content, listens to podcasts or attends recorded webinars when it can find the time. The “push-out” of content may not meet with an immediate response from the consumer; there’s now a gap between the two actions. The audience is no longer captive.

Think of it - just a few years ago, a sitcom with its accompanying ad breaks would be beamed into our homes at a scheduled hour, and you had to be in front of the TV to watch it. Miss it and all of it was gone. Today, with the advent of smart TVs and OTT, that’s no longer the case. You scour the content menu on your TV or phone, choose the one you feel like watching or listening to, then play, pause, rewind, stop, and even come back to it days, if not weeks, later.

That’s why every business needs an on-demand content strategy. Now.

With this kind of content consumption freedom, its become imperative for every business to draw up an on-demand content strategy very quickly. Of course, such a strategy would be different for a B2B company as compared to a B2C one, or even an entertainment channel. For businesses though, the over-arching thought behind such a strategy is to generate an interest in the products, solutions or services they offer.

There’s a lingering thought in the market that only “live” events = on-demand content. But that’s wrong. Live was the 1st micro-step in the evolution of the on-demand content ecosystem; today, live events are but a part of the overall on-demand scenario.

Let’s run with the live event corollary here. Say you have decided to beam an event on any of the social media channels at a designated hour. You let everyone know of the time, then come online. But the problem is that there is no time zone that fits all geographies. Remember, the Internet has removed the barriers of time and geography?

So, even as your live event is on, you can throw up many links to some of your previous works or events. Once over, you may start promoting your “no-longer-live-event” on many other channels like a website, a blog or a video channel to reach as wide an audience as possible. At the other end, an interested person will see the ad or post, click on the webinar or podcast link, download it, and perhaps consume it while he is driving to office, or some such.

That’s why a business needs to create a compelling on-demand content strategy.

Such a strategy will, among other things, have clearly spelled out ways to promote and re-promote new and archived content. It will have to lay down which channels are the best for the two, and a laid out timeline. Targeted content is another focus area.

In an earlier newsletter, I had talked of content syndication. You need to share your content with other sites or on social media networks, or by social bookmarking.

Let’s just say that with the world consuming content with a never before seen vigor, an on-demand content strategy is a critical component of your overall digital marketing one.

Image by Stefan Coders from Pixabay