The hardest part about running a content marketing firm in Indonesia is weaning local businesses off the idea that low-quality writing is effective. This much is true according to Patrick Searle, co-founder of GetCRAFT, an Indonesian site that connects brands and agencies with local publishers, writers, and videographers.
Searle says GetCRAFT gives publishers and media outlets that are struggling to make money from digital banners, subscriptions, and events, access to new revenue streams that still have yet to fully develop in Indonesia. “These are the same revenue streams that Buzzfeed, Quartz, Vice, and Vox rely on to drive their business growth,” explains Searle.
Essentially, GetCRAFT’s business model capitalizes on brands that are willing to pay for outsourced, high-quality, and less-invasive marketing messages to feed to the media. The “craft” can come in many forms, including news articles, photos, infographics, videos, and more. GetCRAFT’s website serves as a marketplace and escrow service that makes these kinds of content exchanges possible.
Indonesia is not too crowded for content
Searle says GetCRAFT’s direct competitor in Indonesia is KapanLagi, as it sells its sites’ content for syndication at scale to brands looking to boost their search engine optimization. “The only problem with this content is that it’s generic and not customized to the brand’s needs, leading to spam,” says Searle. He believes that his indirect competitors are local freelancing sites like Kreavi, Freelancer.co.id, Elance-oDesk, and Sribu.
Searle claims the difference between his company and those mentioned is that GetCRAFT also acts as a liaison and quality assurer, positioning itself as the intermediary between creators, buyers, and the media at large. Other freelancing sites simply let people come together and deal with each other directly.
GetCRAFT’s network currently consists of more than 110 freelance writers, 120 publishers, and 30 videographers. The firm’s list of media partners include names like Forbes Indonesia, DailySocial, MalesBanget, National Geographic Indonesia, Cosmopolitan, as well as the localized versions of Reader’s Digest and Esquire magazine, among others.
Subtlety is sexier than spam
Searle’s company slogan is: “Stop spam. GetCRAFT.” He characterizes all work that flows through his firm as the highest-quality original content available on the Indonesian market. He says:
An advertising agency who has a client in the parenting category previously would ask their copywriter, who may or may not have had children[...] But with us, however, you can work with Parenting.co.id or Ayahbunda.co.id and their more than 50-person team of parenting experts to create this content for you.
Searle claims to be speaking conservatively when he estimates that by 2017 the Indonesian digital marketing industry will reach US$1.7 billion. “This number hasn’t accounted for the print industry collapsing,” he says. “The first cracks are appearing as we speak.”
GetCRAFT delivers in both Bahasa Indonesia and English, but Searle admits that the company is much stronger with its delivery of content in Bahasa Indonesia. Searle and his partner Reza Prasetya, both of whom are Social@Ogilvy alumni, claim their four-month-old company with only four full-time employees is already bringing in Rp 100 million (US$8,184) in revenue per month. Searle says GetCRAFT is fully bootstrapped, has an average of six active clients each month, and is on track to earn more than Rp 5.52 billion (US$451,756) after one year of operations. He did not comment on the commission percentage GetCRAFT collects from each transaction on the site.
Searle says he is actively avoiding the investor scene. “We honestly see the availability of cheap money as a bad thing for most early businesses, and unless we decide to expand into other countries, we’d like to try and retain our independence,” he says.
This post This startup is storming the gates of Indonesia’s big brands with content marketing appeared first on Tech in Asia.
This startup is storming the gates of Indonesia’s big brands with content marketing
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