Marketers need to start thinking like consumers

As the content market becomes increasingly saturated, how do businesses maintain consumer interest and remain relevant?

Creating effective and engaging content is posing a problem for creators and marketers.

With the industry’s oversaturation, it’s increasingly difficult to maintain users’ attention.

How, then, do companies strategize for the fiercely competitive market? Marketing experts share their insights on how to stay relevant in ‘a world of content infinity’.

TikTok SEO tips from a marketing expert

TikTok is the platform marketers should pay attention to. That’s according to NP Digital founder Neil Patel, who had this advice for marketers looking to make a mark on the dominant social media app: “Optimize for visibility. TikTok is a popular place for younger people to search.”

Because gen Z is increasingly gravitating towards TikTok when seeking out recommendations for somewhere to eat or somewhere to go on holiday, the platform now features ads in search results. As a result, marketers need to think like TikTokers when creating content.

“The way to optimize for TikTok is using the right keywords in your video. They’re able to detect what your video is about,” said Neil, explaining that only using keywords in your description or your tags won’t cut it anymore.

Additionally, TikTok’s algorithm scans how many comments your videos get, how users react to these comments, and what is being said. “If the comments create more of an engaging conversation, your video gets shown more. You want to create content that helps encourage comments,” said Neil.

“I did a TikTok video on how podcasting is saturated and blogging is not, and I broke down the stats on how there’s more than a billion blogs and less than 10 million podcasts.”

“People started leaving comments saying ‘No, there’s more podcasts than blogs’. Although that’s not true, it didn’t matter. Because it started creating a lot of engagement within the comments, it caused the video to spread.”

Marketing in a world of content infinity

Alex Collmer, founder and CEO of creative analytics platform VidMob, warned against an over-reliance on generative AI tools that can oversimplify the creative process, arguing that human involvement remains crucial in interpreting and applying data.

Alex suggested that we are moving from a world defined by content scarcity to a world of content abundance or ‘content infinity’. The central challenge, said Alex, will become one of effectiveness rather than scale.

“In this new world that starts essentially tomorrow, the central question is going to be, ‘how do I create content that effectively drives the response I’m trying to drive, and how
do I stand out in a world of content infinity?’.”

“If you’re at a campfire in that world of scarcity, any person with a guitar is going to sound like John Lennon.”

“If you’re at a campfire in that world of scarcity, any person with a guitar is going to sound like John Lennon. But if you’re showing up on Spotify, and you have to compete with 30 million bands, you better do more than just strum a guitar.”

What the CEO was getting at is that, soon, everyone will be using the same tools – tools such as ChatGPT and Midjourney. This means that everyone will be drawing on the same datasets as everyone else, which means all our content will likely start to look the same.

To create unique content in this world of content infinity, Alex argued for the importance of feeding AI with unique data, and advocated for building reinforcement learning models with human feedback loops.

OnlyFans sets sights on Latin American market

OnlyFans is one of the biggest recent names in content creation, and is now active in more than 100 countries worldwide.

While the company is primarily known as a platform for adult content creation, it has more to offer.

“We’re always going to be known for having adult content, which I’m proud of,” said OnlyFans CEO Amrapali Gan. “But what’s important is that it’s a platform that really is for content creators to express themselves safely and connect with their community.”

As OnlyFans continues to expand, there has been a recent uptick in the number of creators and subscribers in Brazil.

Amrapali Gan believes this is true across the wider Latin American market: “We’re looking at growth for the business, and Latin America is a huge part of that.”

This growth goes beyond what Amrapali refers to as “spicy content”. Citing Brazilian American mixed martial artist Cris Cyborg’s account as an example, Amrapali said that some recent growth areas within OnlyFans include combat sports, comedy and cooking.

OnlyFans has also moved into streaming with OFTV, a free on-demand video streaming platform and app on which creators including reality star Chloe Sims have launched their own series.

“I’ve been fortunate to be able to meet a lot of our content creators and get feedback directly from them about how they’re using the platform … That’s where we’ve launched OFTV, which has been another platform for creators to express themselves and ultimately grow their following,” added Amrapali.

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Main image of Neil Patel, founder of NP Digital, speaking on stage at Web Summit Rio 2023: Vaughn Ridley/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)