Exclusive | Betting big on content marketing: Yorke Comm's Peter Yorke

In a short span of its existence, Yorke Communications has serviced more than 70 customers, and has varied offerings around content which include secondary research, digital marketing and creating of content not just in words but also in video. With the proliferation of online and social media channels, content marketing is no longer an option for companies. It is a must have and the sooner companies adopt it, the better returns they see for themselves. The opportunities are vast – from a 4 page whitepaper to a 140 character tweet, companies cannot ignore the fact that their customers and prospects are looking at content to make purchase decisions. So content has to be timely, relevant and prolific. And Yorke Communications has been successfully meeting this demand since 2008.

Speaking to Adgully on the germ of an idea that led to the setting up of Yorke Communications, Peter Yorke, CEO, Yorke Communications says, “I discovered the need for a content agency in my previous job at Oracle Financial Services (earlier i-flex solutions) where I was VP of Marketing and Communications. We had a plethora of agencies that provided services ranging from PR to Digital, but no one really helped us with content. So we had to rely on internal resources. So when I decided to set up my own enterprise in 2008, I decided to focus on Content Marketing because there were no real B2B content marketing agencies around, and secondly my wife is an accomplished corporate journalist so our skills complemented each other.”

Today the company has more than 20+ communicators based out of its office in Bangalore and have clients based across India – Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chennai and also in London and Palo Alto. “The beauty of this business is that you don’t have to necessarily be where the customer is. As long as you are virtually connected and responsive it’s good enough. The other unique thing is that we have created a consultant community which we manage on LinkedIn of more than 275 consultants who are located across the globe,” says Yorke. They have many of our customers asking for specialized services relating to a particular domain or discipline or relating to a writing style (native American writing for instance) and the company draws on talent from the consultant pool to service these requirements.

Yorke Communication faces competition comes from many areas – traditional agencies, individuals and emerging companies offering content. However Yorke adds, “I think there is enough for everyone in the market. We are happy to co-exist along with other players especially since we already have our roadmap ahead of us and have defined our business model, niche and price points. So we are not really deterred by the competition given our focus.”

Answering the next logical question on growth and expansion plans, Yorke says, “We are looking at growing from two perspectives – we have just about touched the international market and we want to consolidate our presence there. We are already talking to a couple of business partners to make inroads on that front. The second thing is to provide specialist services in niche verticals – today a large play is in the information technology industry but we want to also move into areas like healthcare and banking and finance.”

The company however faces challenges. They are basically on two fronts – one is to get the right people for the job and this skill is not too easy to find. The content has to be original, no cut/paste job. The second is to scale business and yet ensure consistent delivery especially for new customers. Ultimately it’s a human relations game and setting expectations is a key skill required with the staff. The company is however confident about its future due to its strengths.

On the same Yorke says, “The key strengths are really the ability to identify the pain points that customers have with regard to their content creation, helping the customer decide on the content suite, interviewing and asking the right questions so as to get the right pitch and then delivering this content for a variety of channels and measuring success.”