How Indian Brands Are Using BTS and Making of Content to Build Deeper Audience Trust in 2025

The instinct most marketers have is to define BTS content as "unpolished" or "casual," which is actually a misreading that costs brands real engagement. BTS content — behind the scenes content — is any material that shows the process, people, or decisions behind a finished product, campaign, or creative work; it can range from raw footage of a photoshoot to a structured making of documentary that walks audiences through an entire production. The distinction matters because the two formats serve different purposes in your content marketing funnel, and conflating them leads to a content strategy that is neither here nor there.

Making of content, specifically, tends to be more intentional and produced — think of how Netflix India or Prime Video India release making of videos for their original series, which are essentially mini-documentaries designed to extend audience engagement well beyond the release date. Indian OTT platforms have understood this for years; the making of content for a show like a big-budget Hindi series can generate millions of views independently, functioning as both a promotional asset and a standalone piece of storytelling. What brands are now realising is that this same logic applies to product launches, campaign films, and even day-to-day operations.

At SmartAds, we always tell our clients that the content production process itself is a story worth telling — and that the brands which figure this out early tend to build audiences that are genuinely loyal, not just transactional. The FICCI-EY Media and Entertainment Report has consistently flagged authenticity as a primary driver of digital content consumption in India, which aligns with what we see on the ground: audiences in Tier 2 cities especially respond to content that feels real, because so much of what they see in advertising feels manufactured and distant.

There is a particular kind of trust that only behind the scenes content can build, which is the trust that comes from seeing that a brand has nothing to hide. Foxtale, the D2C skincare brand, has used founder-led BTS content extensively on Instagram Reels — showing the actual testing process, the ingredient sourcing decisions, even the packaging failures — and the engagement those posts generate is consistently higher than their polished creative content. Juicy Chemistry has done something similar with their cold-process soap making videos, which have become a signature content pillar for the brand; audiences watch not just to learn but to feel connected to the craft. Vahdam Teas has used making of content around their tea estate operations to communicate premium positioning in a way that no amount of celebrity endorsement could replicate.

What these brands have in common is a willingness to show the creative process without over-scripting it. The moment a BTS video feels like it was designed to look spontaneous, the trust evaporates — and we have seen this backfire when brands hire production crews to shoot "candid moments" that end up looking like corporate videos with a handheld camera. The audience, particularly the Gen Z audience in India, is remarkably good at detecting this kind of inauthenticity; they have grown up watching Bollywood BTS content on YouTube and behind the scenes reels from their favourite creators, so their calibration for what genuine looks like is quite fine-tuned.

Our experience at SmartAds shows that the most effective behind the scenes content strategy for Indian brands combines three elements: a real person on camera (founder, team member, or craftsperson), a genuine process being shown rather than performed, and a narrative thread that connects the process to the brand's values. When all three are present, the content tends to generate organic reach that paid campaigns struggle to match — and in a market where digital advertising costs are rising steadily, that organic reach India provides is not something any brand manager should be leaving on the table.

The range of BTS video formats available to Indian brands is wider than most content calendars account for, which is why so many brands end up creating the same three types of content on repeat until their audience stops paying attention. Day in the life content — following a founder, a chef, a craftsperson, or a factory worker through their actual working day — is one of the highest-performing formats in terms of watch time and saves on Instagram Reels; it works because it is inherently structured around a narrative arc that audiences find satisfying. A food brand we worked with in Mumbai used day in the life content featuring their head chef, shot over three consecutive days during a new menu development process, which generated more profile visits in a week than their paid campaign had in a month.

Making of documentary content sits at the other end of the production spectrum — these are more structured, often five to fifteen minutes long, and work particularly well on YouTube where watch time is rewarded algorithmically. Indian film making of content has established a strong viewer appetite for this format; audiences who watch a making of documentary about a Bollywood production are primed to engage deeply, and brands can tap into that same appetite by creating making of content around their own campaigns, products, or milestones. A product launch making of video, for instance, can cover the brief, the design iterations, the manufacturing challenges, and the final reveal — which gives you a natural story structure without needing to invent one.

Then there is the middle ground: short-form BTS content designed specifically for Instagram Stories BTS and YouTube Shorts BTS, which is where most D2C brands India should be spending the majority of their content creation effort. These are typically fifteen to sixty seconds, shot vertically, and built around a single surprising or satisfying moment — the first pour of a new candle fragrance, the moment a garment comes off the loom, the team reaction when a campaign goes live. Unscripted content of this kind, when it captures a genuine moment, tends to generate the kind of shares and saves that push it beyond your existing follower base into new audiences; and in markets like Delhi and Bangalore where competition for digital attention is fierce, that algorithmic amplification is worth more than most brands realise.

The word "script" makes a lot of people nervous when it comes to BTS content, because the assumption is that scripting kills authenticity — which is only true if you are scripting the wrong things. What we recommend to our clients is scripting the structure, not the dialogue; decide in advance what moments you want to capture, what the opening hook will be, and what the emotional payoff at the end should be, but leave the actual conversation and action unscripted. This approach gives you the narrative coherence of a produced piece with the genuine feel of raw footage, which is the combination that tends to perform best across both Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

Shooting authentic making of content requires a different mindset from shooting a campaign film, which is something production teams trained in advertising often struggle with initially. The camera should feel invisible — or at least unimportant — to the people being filmed; this means using smaller cameras or phones for at least part of the shoot, keeping the crew minimal, and spending time with your subjects before you start rolling so that their body language relaxes. On-set footage that is captured this way has a quality that no amount of post-production can replicate, and audiences can feel the difference. Filming tips that we consistently share with our clients include: shoot more than you think you need (because the best moments are often between takes), capture ambient sound without music so you have flexibility in editing, and always film the reactions as well as the actions.

At SmartAds, we have found that batch filming is one of the most practical approaches for Indian brands with limited production budgets — rather than scheduling separate shoots for each piece of content, you plan a single production day around a natural event (a product launch, a campaign shoot, a team offsite) and capture enough raw footage to fuel four to six weeks of BTS content. This approach reduces the per-piece production cost significantly, which matters enormously for D2C brands India that are working with monthly content budgets in the range of a few lakh rupees rather than the crores that large advertisers spend. The content production process becomes more efficient, and the content itself tends to be more authentic because the team is focused on the primary event rather than performing for the camera.

Instagram Reels is, without question, the primary platform for behind the scenes content in India right now — the combination of algorithmic reach, vertical video format, and the platform's existing culture of creator transparency makes it the natural home for BTS content for the vast majority of Indian brands. The engagement rates on behind the scenes reels consistently outperform polished brand content across the categories we track; a Sprout Social analysis of content performance patterns suggests that authentic, process-driven content generates roughly two to three times the saves and shares of traditional promotional content, which is the metric that matters most for organic reach. Instagram Stories BTS, used in conjunction with Reels, creates a content ecosystem where Stories provide the raw, in-the-moment content and Reels provide the more curated short-form video — and the two formats reinforce each other in terms of audience engagement.

YouTube Shorts BTS deserves more attention than most Indian brands give it, particularly for brands targeting audiences in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities where YouTube has significantly deeper penetration than Instagram. The making of documentary format also works well on long-form YouTube, where a ten-minute making of video can generate substantial watch time and serve as a permanent SEO asset — unlike Instagram content, which has a shelf life measured in days, a well-optimised YouTube making of video can continue to drive views and brand discovery months after it is published. We have seen this work particularly well for brands in categories like food manufacturing, handloom textiles, and artisanal products, where the production process itself is genuinely interesting to watch.

Moj and Josh — the Indian short-video platforms that grew significantly in the post-TikTok landscape — are worth considering for brands targeting Hindi-speaking and regional language audiences, particularly in markets where Hinglish content and regional language content India perform strongly. The audiences on these platforms skew younger and more Tier 2/3, which makes them valuable for brands trying to build reach in markets that Instagram does not fully penetrate; and the competition for attention on these platforms is lower than on Instagram, which means BTS content can achieve meaningful organic reach without the paid amplification that Instagram increasingly requires. WhatsApp Business is another underutilised channel for BTS content — particularly for brands with established customer communities, where sharing making of content through broadcast lists can drive remarkably high open rates and direct conversations.

The most expensive mistake brands make with BTS content is treating each piece as a standalone asset rather than as raw material for a content stack — and we have seen this mistake made by brands with sophisticated marketing teams who simply have not thought through the repurposing framework. A single BTS shoot of, say, a product launch day can realistically yield somewhere between fifteen and twenty distinct content assets if it is planned correctly from the start; the key is to capture footage with repurposing in mind, which means shooting both horizontal and vertical, capturing both long-form narrative footage and short punchy moments, and recording audio that can be used independently as a podcast clip or WhatsApp voice note.

Content repurposing from a single BTS shoot might look like this in practice: the full making of documentary goes on YouTube; a three-minute highlights cut goes on Instagram as a Reel; fifteen to twenty fifteen-second clips become Instagram Stories BTS content spread across two weeks; a sizzle reel version goes on LinkedIn for B2B audiences; the best still frames from the shoot become carousel posts; the founder's commentary from the video is transcribed and becomes a making of blog post; and the audio from the most interesting conversation becomes a short podcast episode or YouTube Shorts BTS clip with captions. Each of these assets reaches a slightly different audience and serves a different point in the content marketing funnel — TOFU content for discovery, MOFU content for consideration, BOFU content for conversion — which means a single production investment is doing work across the entire funnel simultaneously.

At SmartAds, our experience with content repurposing frameworks shows that brands which plan their BTS shoots with this multi-format output in mind typically achieve a cost-per-content-asset that is dramatically lower than brands which commission separate pieces for each platform. For a mid-sized D2C brand in India working with a monthly content budget of, say, three to five lakh rupees, this approach can effectively double or triple the volume of content produced without increasing the budget — which is the kind of efficiency that makes a real difference in competitive categories where content velocity matters for algorithm performance.

Frankly speaking, the question of posting frequency is one where we see a lot of brands either overthink or completely ignore the data, and both approaches lead to underperformance. The thing is, BTS content has a different optimal cadence from polished brand content — because it is inherently lower production cost and higher authenticity, audiences tolerate and actually welcome higher frequency; but posting too much without variety in format or subject matter leads to fatigue just as quickly as posting too little leads to irrelevance. Our experience suggests that two to three pieces of behind the scenes content per week is the sweet spot for most Indian brands on Instagram, with one slightly more produced making of piece per fortnight and daily Stories BTS content to maintain the feeling of real-time access.

The cadence should be anchored to your content calendar rather than driven by arbitrary consistency targets, which is a distinction that matters more than most social media guides acknowledge. If your brand is launching a product in October, the BTS content frequency should increase in the three to four weeks before launch — building anticipation through the creative process, the packaging decisions, the team conversations — and then taper off after launch as you shift to user-generated content and testimonials. This rhythm mirrors what Indian OTT platforms do with their making of content releases, which are timed to build momentum before a premiere and sustain engagement in the weeks after; it is a proven structure that works because it aligns with how audiences naturally consume narrative content.

Regional language content India introduces an additional layer of complexity to posting frequency decisions, because different language communities on Instagram and YouTube have different peak engagement windows and different content consumption patterns. Hindi content tends to peak in engagement during evening hours across most markets, while regional language audiences in Tamil Nadu or West Bengal may have different patterns entirely — and a content calendar that ignores these nuances is leaving engagement on the table. We recommend that brands creating BTS content in multiple languages treat each language community as a distinct audience with its own posting schedule, rather than simply dubbing or captioning the same content and posting it simultaneously.

The integration of BTS content into a content calendar is where strategy meets execution, and it is also where most brands discover that they have been treating BTS content as an afterthought rather than a planned content pillar. Content pillars are the thematic categories that give a content calendar its structure, and behind the scenes content should be one of those pillars from the start — not something you create when you happen to be shooting something else and someone remembers to pull out a phone. Planning BTS content as a pillar means identifying in advance which moments in your brand calendar will generate interesting behind the scenes material: product development milestones, campaign shoots, team events, factory visits, founder travel, collaborations with Indian content creators or micro-influencers India.

The Indian festival calendar creates natural BTS content opportunities that brands consistently underutilise — the preparation for a Diwali campaign, the sourcing of materials for a Holi product line, the team celebrating Eid or Pongal — all of these are moments that generate authentic content which resonates deeply with Indian audiences because they reflect shared cultural experiences. A homewares brand we worked with built an entire BTS content series around their Diwali collection development, starting with the design brief in August and running through to the packaging reveal in October; the series generated consistent week-on-week follower growth across that period, which the brand's marketing head attributed directly to the sense of anticipation the BTS content created.

AI content creation tools are increasingly being used by Indian marketers to streamline the post-production side of BTS content — auto-captioning, transcript generation, thumbnail creation, and even rough-cut editing can now be handled by AI tools which reduce the turnaround time from shoot to publish significantly. This matters for BTS content specifically because timeliness is part of what makes it feel authentic; a behind the scenes reel from a shoot that happened three weeks ago loses some of its immediacy. Integrating AI tools into the content production process allows smaller teams to maintain the posting frequency that BTS content requires without burning out, which is a practical consideration that most content strategy guides aimed at Indian SMBs simply do not address.

The single most common mistake we see — and it is remarkably consistent across categories and brand sizes — is over-producing the BTS content to the point where it loses the quality that makes BTS content valuable in the first place. There is a particular kind of corporate polish that kills authenticity; when a behind the scenes video has colour grading that matches the brand's campaign film, a voiceover that sounds like an ad, and transitions that were clearly designed by a motion graphics team, it stops being behind the scenes content and becomes a second campaign film with a different brief. The audience notices, even if they cannot articulate exactly what feels off, and the engagement reflects it.

The second mistake is treating BTS content as purely a social media exercise rather than as brand storytelling with a longer strategic purpose. Making of content that is created without a clear narrative intention — without a sense of what the audience should feel or understand by the end — tends to be forgettable even when it is technically well-produced. Bollywood BTS content that performs well, whether for a film or for an Indian OTT platform production, almost always has a clear emotional arc: you see the challenge, you see the effort, you see the result, and you feel something. Brand content that follows this structure consistently outperforms content that is simply a collection of candid moments strung together with music.

The third mistake — and this one is particularly costly for D2C brands India — is failing to include a call to action or a connection back to the brand's product or values. BTS content should not feel like an advertisement, but it should not exist in a vacuum either; the best making of content naturally weaves in the brand's story, values, and product in a way that feels organic rather than forced. A founder talking about why they chose a particular ingredient, or a craftsperson explaining why a certain technique takes twice as long but produces a better result — these are moments that do brand storytelling and product education simultaneously, which makes them valuable at multiple points in the content marketing funnel.

Most brands measure BTS content performance using the same metrics they use for polished brand content — reach and impressions — which is a framework that systematically undervalues what behind the scenes content actually does. The metrics that matter most for BTS content are saves, shares, and profile visits; saves indicate that the audience found the content genuinely useful or emotionally resonant enough to want to return to it, shares indicate that they trusted it enough to put their own name behind it, and profile visits indicate that the content created enough curiosity about the brand to drive deeper exploration. These are the metrics that correlate with long-term audience growth and brand loyalty, which is the actual goal of a BTS content strategy.

Content ROI for behind the scenes content should also be measured across a longer time horizon than most campaign reporting allows for. A making of documentary published on YouTube in January may continue to drive organic traffic and brand searches through June and beyond; a well-optimised making of blog post built around the same content can rank for relevant search terms and generate discovery from audiences who were not previously aware of the brand. TAM AdEx data and BARC viewership analysis consistently show that content which drives search behaviour — meaning content that makes audiences want to know more — has a compounding value that one-time reach figures do not capture.

At SmartAds, we recommend that clients track what we call the "trust conversion" metric alongside standard engagement data — which is essentially the rate at which BTS content viewers take a brand-deepening action, whether that is following the account, visiting the website, or making a purchase. One automotive accessories brand we worked with found that customers who had engaged with their BTS content before purchase had a return rate that was roughly forty percent higher than customers who had not — a finding that transformed how the brand thought about its content marketing budget allocation. That kind of data makes the ROI case for BTS content in a language that CFOs and management teams understand, which is ultimately what every brand manager needs when justifying a content investment.

Q: What is BTS and making of content in digital marketing?

BTS content — behind the scenes content — refers to any material that shows the process, people, or decisions behind a brand's products, campaigns, or creative work, rather than the finished output itself. In digital marketing, it functions as a trust-building tool that gives audiences access to the human side of a brand, which is increasingly important as consumers become more sceptical of polished advertising. Making of content is a specific subset of BTS content which is more intentionally produced — structured around a narrative of how something was created — and tends to be longer-form and more documentary in style. The two formats are often used together as part of a broader content strategy, with making of content anchoring longer platforms like YouTube and BTS content fuelling the daily cadence of Instagram Reels and Stories.

Q: Why is behind the scenes content important for Indian brands?

Indian consumers, particularly in the eighteen to thirty-five age group, have developed a strong preference for brand authenticity that is directly connected to the rise of creator culture and the influence of platforms like Instagram and YouTube on how they consume content. Behind the scenes content matters for Indian brands because it bridges the trust gap that exists between advertising and genuine recommendation — when a brand shows its process honestly, it earns a kind of credibility that no amount of paid media can manufacture. The FICCI-EY Media and Entertainment Report has noted the growing importance of authentic content in driving digital engagement in India, which reflects what we observe in campaign performance data: brands that invest in BTS content consistently see stronger audience retention and higher repeat purchase rates than brands that rely exclusively on polished creative.

Q: How do I create BTS content with a small budget in India?

The honest answer is that a small budget is actually an advantage for BTS content, because the format rewards authenticity over production value. A smartphone with a decent camera, a basic ring light (available for somewhere between one thousand and three thousand rupees on most Indian e-commerce platforms), and a quiet space with good natural light is genuinely sufficient for BTS content that performs well on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. The investment that matters most is time — time to plan what moments you want to capture, time to make your subjects comfortable on camera, and time to edit with intention rather than simply uploading raw footage. Batch filming is the most cost-effective approach: plan one or two shooting days per month around natural brand events, capture as much footage as possible, and use that material to fuel your entire BTS content calendar for the following weeks.

Q: What is the difference between BTS content and making of content?

The distinction is primarily one of structure and intent. BTS content is broader — it encompasses any glimpse behind the curtain, from a casual Instagram Story showing the office on a Monday morning to a Reel of the team packing orders. Making of content is more specific: it follows the creation of a particular thing — a product, a campaign, a film, a collection — from brief or concept through to finished result, and it has a narrative arc that BTS content does not necessarily require. In practice, making of content tends to be more planned and produced, while BTS content can be more spontaneous and reactive; both serve important functions in a content strategy, but they serve them differently. Making of content is particularly powerful for product launches and campaign reveals, while BTS content is better suited to maintaining ongoing audience engagement between major brand moments.

Q: How often should Indian brands post BTS content on Instagram?

Two to three times per week on the Reels feed, combined with daily Instagram Stories BTS content, is the cadence that tends to produce the best results for most Indian brands based on our experience. The Stories format is particularly forgiving of frequency because it disappears after twenty-four hours and feels inherently ephemeral; audiences do not experience Story overload the way they experience feed overload. For Reels, the quality of each piece matters more than the quantity, so it is better to post two genuinely interesting behind the scenes reels per week than to post five mediocre ones. The frequency should also increase around key brand moments — product launches, campaign shoots, festival seasons — when there is naturally more interesting material to share and when audience attention is already elevated.

Q: Which platforms are best for behind the scenes content in India?

Instagram is the primary platform for BTS content for most Indian brands, given its combination of algorithmic reach, the Reels format, and the existing culture of creator transparency that audiences on the platform are accustomed to. YouTube is the best platform for longer making of content and making of documentaries, and it has the additional advantage of being a permanent, searchable asset rather than ephemeral content. YouTube Shorts BTS is growing as a format and benefits from YouTube's stronger penetration in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. Moj and Josh are worth considering for brands targeting Hindi-speaking and regional language audiences, particularly in markets where these platforms have significant user bases. WhatsApp Business is underutilised but effective for brands with established customer communities, where BTS content shared through broadcast lists can drive direct engagement and conversation.

Q: How do I repurpose a single BTS shoot into multiple content pieces?

The key is to plan for repurposing before you shoot, not after. Capture footage in both horizontal and vertical orientations; record clean audio separately; shoot both long continuous takes and short punchy moments; capture reaction shots and ambient detail as well as the main action. From a single well-planned BTS shoot, you can typically produce a long-form making of documentary for YouTube, a three to four minute highlights Reel for Instagram, ten to fifteen short clips for Instagram Stories and YouTube Shorts, a sizzle reel for LinkedIn or pitch presentations, a making of blog post using the transcript or a written summary, carousel posts using still frames, and audio clips for podcast or WhatsApp content. This content stack approach means that one production day generates content assets that can be distributed over four to six weeks, which dramatically reduces your cost per content piece.

Q: What types of BTS videos work best for Indian D2C brands?

Founder content performs exceptionally well for Indian D2C brands — the founder explaining why they started the brand, showing their workspace, talking through a product decision — because it creates a personal connection that differentiates the brand from larger, more anonymous competitors. Product making of content, showing how the product is actually manufactured or formulated, works particularly well in categories where the production process is a point of differentiation: skincare, food, handloom, jewellery. Day in the life content featuring team members or craftspeople is another strong format, particularly when it shows the care and effort that goes into the brand's operations. Unboxing and quality check BTS content — showing the internal process of ensuring product quality before it ships — is a format that directly addresses purchase anxiety and tends to generate high saves and shares.

Q: How do I integrate BTS content into my content marketing calendar?

Treat BTS content as one of your core content pillars rather than as supplementary material, and map it to your brand calendar at the start of each quarter. Identify the moments in the coming weeks that will naturally generate interesting behind the scenes material — product development milestones, campaign shoots, team events, festival preparations, collaborations — and schedule BTS content shoots around those moments. Build a rhythm that alternates between planned making of content (which requires scheduling and preparation) and spontaneous BTS content (which requires a team culture where people think to capture moments as they happen). Integrate the Indian festival calendar as a BTS content opportunity, not just a campaign opportunity; the preparation for a festival collection or a seasonal menu change is often more interesting to audiences than the finished product.

Q: Does BTS content in Hindi or regional languages perform better in India?

Our experience strongly suggests that BTS content in the audience's primary language — whether that is Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Kannada, or Marathi — consistently outperforms the same content in English for audiences in those language communities. The authenticity that makes BTS content effective is amplified when the language itself feels natural and familiar; a founder speaking in Hinglish or in their regional language comes across as more genuine than the same founder speaking carefully in formal English. For brands targeting national audiences, Hinglish content tends to be the most broadly accessible format; for brands with strong regional identities or targeting specific state markets, regional language content India is worth the additional production effort. The engagement rates on regional language BTS content are typically higher than on English content in the same category, and the competition for algorithmic attention is lower.

Q: What equipment do I need to shoot making of content as a beginner?

A modern smartphone — anything from the past two to three years with a decent camera — is genuinely sufficient for most BTS content formats. Beyond the phone, a small tripod or gorilla pod (available for a few hundred rupees) eliminates the shakiness that makes amateur footage hard to watch; a basic clip-on lavalier microphone (in the ballpark of one to two thousand rupees) dramatically improves audio quality, which matters more than video quality for audience retention; and a portable LED light panel (roughly two to four thousand rupees) gives you control over lighting in indoor settings. For making of documentary content that will live on YouTube, a slightly more capable camera — a mirrorless camera or a DSLR — produces better results, but it is not necessary for Instagram Reels or Stories where the vertical, phone-native format is actually preferred by audiences.

Q: How do I measure the ROI of behind the scenes content for my brand?

Standard reach and impressions metrics undervalue BTS content; the metrics that matter most are saves, shares, profile visits, and follower growth rate, because these indicate that the content is building genuine audience relationships rather than just generating passive views. Beyond engagement metrics, track whether BTS content viewers show different downstream behaviour — do they visit the website more, spend longer on product pages, have higher conversion rates, or show higher repeat purchase rates? This kind of attribution requires connecting your social analytics to your website analytics and your CRM data, which is more work but produces the kind of insight that justifies continued investment. Content ROI should also account for the earned media value of organic shares and the SEO value of making of blog content and YouTube videos, both of which generate compounding returns over time that paid media cannot replicate.

Q: What are the most common mistakes brands make with BTS content?

Over-production is the most common mistake — when BTS content is polished to the point where it looks like a second campaign film, it loses the authenticity that is its primary value. The second most common mistake is creating BTS content without a narrative intention, resulting in content that is technically behind the scenes but emotionally forgettable. Third is treating BTS content as a separate activity from the brand's main content strategy rather than integrating it as a core content pillar with its own planning, budget, and performance targets. Fourth is failing to repurpose BTS footage into a content stack, which means that the production investment generates far fewer assets than it could. And fifth — particularly relevant for brands targeting diverse Indian audiences — is creating all BTS content in English when a significant portion of the target audience would engage more deeply with Hindi or regional language content.

Q: Can BTS content help with SEO and organic discoverability in India?

Yes, and this is one of the most underappreciated aspects of a BTS content strategy. Making of blog posts built around BTS video content can rank for long-tail search queries related to your product category, your production process, or your brand story — searches that your polished campaign content would never appear for. YouTube making of content is indexed by Google and can appear in search results for relevant queries, which means a well-titled and well-described making of documentary can drive brand discovery from audiences who were searching for information rather than entertainment. Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts BTS content also contribute to brand search volume over time; as more people discover your brand through BTS content, more people search for your brand by name, which is a positive signal that Google uses in ranking your website and other digital properties.

To be honest, the gap between how much Indian brands invest in polished campaign content and how much they invest in behind the scenes content is still surprisingly wide — and it is a gap that is becoming more expensive to maintain as audiences grow more sophisticated and more sceptical of traditional advertising formats. The brands that are winning on Instagram, on YouTube, and in the direct-to-consumer space in India right now are almost uniformly the ones that have made BTS content a genuine strategic priority, not an afterthought. Foxtale, Juicy Chemistry, Vahdam Teas, Amul's social media presence, Swiggy's content team — these are all brands that understand, at an operational level, that the process is as important as the product when it comes to building the kind of audience trust that drives long-term business performance.

What a lot of brands miss is that BTS content is not a social media tactic — it is a brand-building philosophy. The decision to show your process honestly, to put real people on camera, to let audiences see the effort and the imperfection and the genuine care that goes into what you make — that decision has implications for every part of your marketing, from how you brief your creative agency to how you train your customer service team. The brands that figure this out tend to build communities rather than audiences, which is a distinction that shows up in retention rates, in word-of-mouth, and in the kind of organic reach that no paid media budget can reliably manufacture.

At SmartAds, we work with brands across categories and city markets to develop BTS content strategies that are grounded in real audience insight, practical production planning, and a clear understanding of what each platform rewards. If you are looking to build a behind the scenes content strategy that is genuinely integrated with your broader media plan — one that connects your BTS content to your television, outdoor, and digital campaigns in a way that amplifies everything — we would be glad to sit down and map that out with you. Visit SmartAds.in to explore how our media planning team