5 Problems Every APAC Content Marketer Faces (even before the pandemic)

I recently had the chance to host a virtual meetup with dozens of B2B content marketers from our APAC Marketers Roundtable community.

We traded notes on our best content marketing campaigns, what they've learned from doing marketing in Asia, and what challenges they were facing.

Here are the top 5 problems that kept coming up -- with some of the suggestions from others on how they'd solved it before:

1. How Do I Run Content Marketing at Scale in Asia?

Problem: The fragmentation of Asia is what makes this such a unique, dynamic and interesting region. It also makes it tough as hell to do content marketing. Most B2B companies can't justify creating content that's totally bespoke to each market they serve.

Solution: Create a central "base" piece of content, then use local data or insights to make it relevant across different markets. ADA created a campaign on Ramadan Data Trends, then layered on country-specific data (h/t Stephanie Caunter). Fave created a Retail Trends report and used their internal data to scale it across different markets like Singapore and Malaysia. (h/t Audra Pakalnyte)

2. How Do I Get My Traffic to Convert?

Problem: If you've been doing marketing in APAC for a while, then you may be used to seeing impressive (from the outside) traffic and download stats. Asia is huuuuuge. But as we all know, the "buying power" of that traffic isn't isn't comparable to other regions. Those MoM% gains in Google analytics are satisfying to look at, until you realize that barely anyone is talking to sales / converting into paid users.

Solution: Target buyers, not readers. This is a common mistake, especially as you start out. You just want to get traffic - any traffic. It's addicting to get views. But eventually you'll hit a wall on business impact. Prioritizes audiences using a framework like the RICE model, and use a tool like Make My Persona to make sure everyone on your team has a clear picture of who you should be going after.

(photo: Thibaut Briere)

3. How Do I Reach More People With My Content?

Problem: Okay, maybe you have the opposite problem: you spend tons of time and resources producing a blog post / an infographic / an ebook -- but after you release your baby into the world, nobody cares!

Solution: You have to consider promotion BEFORE you create content. If you are only thinking about promotion after you hit “publish”, you’ve already lost.

Three ideas that came up during the meetup:

• Do keyword research to prioritize your content ideas. Otherwise you'll just experience the "spike of hope" phenomenon again and again.
• Promote through your Sales team. Set up a WhatsApp broadcast list with your reps, and share content with them so they can send it to the accounts they look after.
• Run ads using a "VC model." Spend $200 on Facebook (or LinkedIn) ads on every post you publish, with the view of further "funding" posts that show lots of engagement. Maybe only 1 in 10 posts do well, but that 1 will perform exceptionally well in broadening your reach, justifying the spend for the others. (h/t SQ Ong)

4. How Do I Get PR & Media Coverage For My Content?

Problem: The reach of industry publications in APAC is limited, and media really cares about stories with a local angle. Media pools are small, and so if there's a huge story like Covid, it tends to suck up all the coverage.

Solution: Your advantage as an in-region marketer is timeliness and relevance. Andrew Prasatya shared the example of iPrice getting coverage by sharing insights about Nintendo Switch and gaming console sales in Asia during Covid. Others also offered a caveat: while your Covid content may increase your chances of coverage, any "pandemic" content you create is unlikely to be evergreen, so balance your efforts wisely.

5. How Do I Set up the Right Strategy For Content? (or: my team is just doing random stuff, there's got to be a better way)

Problem: Does this sound familiar? You know that "content marketing" is important, but you just don't quite know where to start. Or you have some pieces generating results ... but you have no idea how to re-create previous successes.

Solution: If you're just starting -- don't overthink it. Just start. Avoid paralysis by analysis. Use the Spaghetti framework. Do a bunch of stuff and see what sticks. Action beats inaction, because action starts your feedback loop.

If you've already got a process, or if you've got tons of content but your results are in a plateau, then consider pursuing a Topic Cluster strategy to give your team some direction.

Want to see the original, raw notes from the meetup?

Click here for the Google doc

Want to join us for the next meetup?

Click here to join APAC Marketers Roundtable