Social Media is not just fun. It’s business.

Social media as you all know has become crucial to all marketers. So for some time, forget how you’ll monitor, base the metrics, judge the ROI. Just go ahead and plan it out. The value it’ll add will be well worth it! No other medium lets you interact with your customers and future customers to this extent.

What are the best practices? New practices? Must adopt practices? Here are the core things you need to do for a SMB / growing business:

Tweet and FB everyday:

First of all, just because you want to push our marketing content, don’t expect your customers to be willing to take that. They’re going to turn to social media to talk things about you; good, bad and ugly. So be open to criticism and no matter what, do respond.

Twitter is a medium which is abuzz with varied topics at varied times of the day. So be sure to interact with your followers at least 3-4 times a day.  Sharing news, asking people to visit your blog, appreciating a follower, thanking someone for an RT, all count. You can use Hootsuite to manage your twitter streams and also track your competitors / industry buzz words.

Facebook has millions of people on it. And most likely, all your customers too. This is a great platform to get together and discuss your product / brand / announce contests. Be a fun-loving brand, but never lose track of what you really stand for.

Blog:

Writing content can be a challenge through your busy day. It does need undivided attention, to produce something worth reading. But do set aside some time to think about what you want to communicate, pen down your thoughts and then reserve an hour or two to draft the blog.

Make sure you’re churning out relevant topics. Keep yourself abreast with the latest happenings in your Industry / city and write about those. You can take the help of hot-trend search on google.  If the whole of India is talking about e-commerce, and you’re an ecommerce firm, go blog about it!

Linkedin:

Do you have a product to sell? Put it up on Linkedin product pages. People, who are really serious about doing business with you, will follow you there and interact with your brand with the intention of conducting business with you.

Put up all the correct information about your company, its founding members, its team strength, website, youtube channel, etc. Also, make sure everyone in your company has a formal picture as a part of their profile and have linked themselves to your company page.

To be noticed, be a part of relevant groups and discussions. Help people. Share knowledge. It’ll pay back.

Video Blogs / Youtube:

Reading is a trend which is reducing day by day. Today, brands are engaging with customers through short videos / vlogs (video blogs). You can explain an aspect about your company / business in a short and sexy format. Anything that you could blog about, could be made into a video. Example – This lady wanted to probably write about her Asia trip, but she made a short vlog which not just told her friends what all she did in Asia, but they could actually see it for their own eyes.

Also put up videos that talk about your company on youtube. Help your customers learn more about your brand / product using these new mediums.

You can also promote the youtube videos / vlogs through your twitter / fb / linkedin / blog stream.

Marketing in a small budget

Do you think you can market your products efficiently in a tight budget? I think you can!

Firstly, when we talk about ROI (Return on Investment) on our marketing spends; we should realize that Marketing is an Investment and not an Expense.

So just like you make the detailed choices while investing your money in the stock market or property deals, you need to make the right choice about investing in marketing for your company. When you’re buying a house, what do you think first?

• What is my objective of buying property?

Are you buying the house to stay in or to re-sell for a gain? Similarly, are you marketing to build your brand or promote an offer and make quick sales? Once your objectives are in place, you can sure deal with the dilemma of how much time and money to invest better. 

• Am I buying this house for myself or my parents or my children?

The expectations from the house will be different if it is for you vs your parents vs your children. You should know who you’re buying the house for. In the same manner, you should know who your target market is and what they need. Only then can you target your marketing campaign directly at them, without much spill over to the non-interested buyers.

After responding to these basic questions, which could take you months to answer, you’re set to actually kick start the marketing process. If you keep your marketing activities in line with your sales activities, there is a greater chance of you getting higher returns.

However, let’s focus on Marketing your Brand. After having identified your TG, look at the means of targeting them.

• Reach your customers via a co-op advertising:

Select a few partners / build a few partnerships which lead to a win-win marketing campaign for both you and your partner. These are called Strategic Partners in the common world. Your partner has some value to give to you and you in return have something in store for them. Both parties can cross promote each other’s products and in return, expand your market pie.

E.g.: Every ad you see of a laptop/computer has the logo of Intel. Intel gains mind-share in the public eye and in return helps their partners advertise and market. And the laptop/computer company gains value by being partnered with Intel and thus increase their sales & Intel processor usage.

• Get closer to your customers through Events:

Be a part of trade-shows or co-host an event related to your industry to get closer to the market. The closer you are to them, the better you’ll be able to market to them.

• Social Media:

Social media is a marketing tool which is absolutely free. All you’ll need to do is to invest time into it.

1. You can create your own company Facebook Page and engage your target audience with your brand by taking polls, hosting contests, giving news about your industry space. By the way, research shows if a customer likes your brand on Facebook, they are 80% more likely to buy from you than your competitor. 
2.  Your Company Twitter Handle can help you engage with a much evolved target audience from India. People on twitter are there to seek knowledge, share their opinions and recommend brands to their followers. Twitter is very challenging because you’ve to say it all in 140 characters. There are trending topics which you can be a part of or start a conversation using a hashtag (#)
3.  Youtube your product launches and events. This will help your customers understand you better. Indians love videos. Make sure what you’re putting up is engaging, entertaining and adding value to your customers. 
4.  Blog! You need to start talking to people and expressing your views through your blog post. If your posts add value to the community and customers, you’ll be seen as a ‘thought leader’ in your space. If you don’t have the money to pump into Public Relations to get your thought out, this is the most effective way. You can do a lot with your blog:

a.       Respond to industry events, comment on the new policies and regulations

b.      Put up your customer’s testimonials and their stories, with pictures

c.       Put up your company’s growth trends

d.      Post stuff about the ups and downs you face in your industry and how you deal with them

e.      Be human – show your views and personality here  

      5.   LinkedIn is a professional networking website which can not only uplift your professional image but also help you recruit the right people needed for your business and even find corporate partners. You can be a part of a lot of professional groups within your industry circle, converse with others and find solutions to your professional bottle-necks. 

Do not rush into kick-starting all the above at once. Plan your manpower and accordingly deploy people into handling the above. For instance blogging requires you to push out fresh content at least once a month. Make sure you have enough time and topics to talk about before starting out. Similarly, twitter and facebook require daily monitoring and posting.

And above all, make sure your sales processes are in line with your marketing plan to make sure you’re tapping the market without losing out to your competitors.

Social Media Conference @SoCon2011 & the learning

Today I was tuned in to a social media conference - SoCon 2011, which was happening at London. There were a lot of intelligent speakers who were talking about what Social Media and what it can do for brands and more importantly what should marketers do to make their Social Marketing effective. By the way, I heard about this awesome conference through the Social Media :)
One of the speakers Mathew Hawn who is the VP at Last.fm summed up social media beautifully:

1.     Embrace the diversity and chaos on the independent web

There are going to be people who talk about a lot of stuff, in different styles. You cannot talk to just one set of people. You need to embrace everyone on the web and talk what your brand wants to portray and listen to all that they have to say.

2.     Be on the social networks, but don't build your house there

It was a very valid point I believe. The idea of social media is not to replace your website for conversation or for enquiries. It is just to listen to the people and react to issues and proactively push out the messaging your brand wants to. A valid example cited by Mathew was about the gaming app company Zynga. Zynga has launched some of the most popular games on FaceBook called Farmville. And now they are trying to move away from FaceBook and call users to play on their independent platform.
Keep your customers close to yourself :)

3.     It’s not always about you. Sometimes it’s about the community

Is it not more interesting when people talk about your brand rather than you yourself talking about it? It sure is. But not every company has that mass appeal. So what can a brand do? Listen to the customers. Help them out where you can. And to do this, you don’t need to stray away from your brand communication guidelines either.
I’ll narrate an example of what I did at the company I work for during the petrol price hike in India. The petrol price had hiked by Rs. 3.14 in India. This created a lot of unrest amongst the people and everyone started criticizing the politicians, etc! We simply tweeted:
Make the most of the petrol hike! Use coupon code petrol314 and get a 3.14% discount on our products. Don't you wish the hike was higher?
The result? People loved us for that quick and witty tweet. They retweeted, followed us, favorite our tweet and more importantly, they like us as a brand because we understood their pain points.
So just be a part of the community and the community will give you back the appreciation you deserve.

4.      Be a Swiss Bank with the data you collect from your customers

This point talks about not selling off your database to any vendor or even google. Make sure your data sharing happens in an encrypted environment and don’t ever let your customers feel their privacy is being invaded.
Anyways your customer database is the more valuable thing your company has. Why would you want to share or sell it off anyway?

5.     Translate your online strategies into offline events

This is another interesting point that Mathew brought up. If you want to become successful, you’ll have to reach out to your customers through all possible mediums that they’re on. Including offline advertising -a poster, hoarding, road show, TV ad spot, events, all of these help your customers feel your brand. You need to show them your non-digital side to get approval on your digital front too.
The other speaker who I was able to pay attention to during my work day and absolutely loved was Tejal Patel, who is leading social commerce at Nokia.

She made a wonderful comment: "It's no longer about pushing people to your e-commerce site; it's about creating a social shopping experience"

That is very true! You spend $40 in converting a customer online, and their experience with you was really bad. You get your conversion, but the customer doesn’t like you. What are you going to say? Its okay, he’s paid anyways?

I would be very worried if that was the case. I would be worried about the things he’s going to say to other probable customers. So yes, through digital marketing or any other kind of marketing, don’t try to push people to your site. Give them an experience they remember you for.Social media is not about get your products to Facebook. It’s about creating a holistic user experience.

Another very interesting thing she mentioned was: “Social media is like a pub. You go there to have a good time, catch up with friends. But the pub owner also wants you to buy a drink and not just sit there”

As a social media marketer, this statement makes so much sense. There is a human who is working throughout the day, listening to you, making you enjoy your tweets, keeping you abreast with the latest news, etc. But at the end of the day the human also wants you to purchase something. And at another level, FaceBook wants you to click on those ads and buy something.

There was much more that I’ve heard at the conference today… I’ll try to put up some more stuff as and when I can.

Planning the Media for your Campaign:

Today, there are a lot more media options available than what was available ten years back. And this statement will remain evergreen, in my opinion :)

Just like I mentioned in my last post, you need to first figure out your Target Audience and then understand what their media consumption is.

But before you set your foot to do this, you need to clarify a few things in your head:

What are the marketing and communication objectives?

·         Are you advertising to build a brand?

·         Is it a sales oriented campaign?

·         Is there a specific call to action? Call / visit to a website?

What are your competitor’s media spends?

·         Are your competitors advertising on mainstream?

·         How do they tackle advertising?

·         Is there anything you can learn from them?

Now that your objectives are clear in your head, you need to figure out the strategy to accomplish the same.

First of all you need to define your Target Audience:
This step was covered in my previous post as well. The only way to figure this out is to listen to your current and prospective customers and post that categorize them into standard Target Audience definitions.

In India, there is a knowledgebase known as TAM. According to TAM, you can define your target audience basis

• Socio-economics - SEC A/B/C/D/E/F
• Demographics – Age, gender, locality, etc

TAM is just like google for TV! They know what you like and dislike, what you watch, what you do in your free-time…

So let’s say you have a product such as ‘toothpaste’. Now you’ll think how one can categorize toothpaste basis socio-economics and demographics as everyone uses it! True, everyone uses it, but through our campaign, we might want to attack the person who is actually buying the toothpaste!

Now you need to study who is the person who purchases toothpastes in most households and once you’ve figured that out, you need to categorize them as per TAM TG Definitions.

Once you’ve categorized your TG and mapped it on TAM, you can study the TV viewing habits, radio habits, etc. Basis that, you can find out which medium to choose and within that medium which all channels to choose.

Decision-Making components for TV:

• TVR - The % of audience exposed to a particular programme
• GRP - A summation of all the TVRs for a particular media schedule
• Reach - The net unduplicated number of people that the plan covers at least once in the defined period
• AOTS / average opportunity to see - The number of times, on average, the audience reached sees the commercial during a given period
• Channel Share - Out of the total TV viewing universe in the specified time period what proportion of the audience has viewed the channel
• Affinity – The likeability of a channel/genre of a specific target set as opposed to the universe

Decision-Making Components for Print:

• Circulation - The number of copies each edition sells
• Average Readership -  The total number of adult readers for each title
• Sole readers - A percentage / portion of the audience who reads only a particular vehicle and nothing else
• Also consider:
  1.       Type of publications used
  2.       Periodicity (Dailies v/s Magazines)
  3.       Color v/s B&W
  4.       Specific ad placement positions like back cover, etc

You should do a similar study for each of the media vehicles in your target audience. Then go ahead with the mix that gives you maximum reach and frequency and visibility amongst the clutter.

Your Target Audience is Your Bible

 When launching an ad campaign or any sort of messaging in the media, one should always rely on their customers / prospective customers for the marketing intelligence. It is imperative to know your target audience before you even begin budgeting and planning a campaign!

Ask yourself these questions: Who are ‘they’? What are their needs? What is their media consumption pattern? Who all are competing with you for the customer’s mind-share? Are those competitors doing any sort of marketing? Maybe you can learn from their failure and success stories!

And if you have to start from the scratch, just start listening to your customers. Your father, mother, wife, husband, kids, everyone around you could be categorized as a customer or a prospective customer.

First steps first, research on who would use your product.

• Where do they live?
• Where do they work?
• What do they do in their free time?
• What is their lifestyle?
• What types of conversation are they having?
• Are they talking to your competition?
• How much money do they make?
• What is their lingo? Tone? Casual? Professional?
  

Next is why would they need your product? Just answer these questions:

• Why do they need your product?
• Why do they experience the pain that requires them to need your product?
• What is the financial, emotional and life impact of the pain? How bad is it?
•  What happens if they don’t have your product or service? What alternative products and services are there?
• Will they mitigate or reduce the pain themselves if you don’t help them

 What is your product going to do to your customers?

• Does it give them hope?
• Does it help them have a better day?
• Does it make their family more at peace?
• Does it help them keep their job?
• Does it help them live a longer life?
• Does it improve their career opportunities?

Is your competition a real threat?

• What are the replacement products or services to yours? This includes competition, alternative products and do-it-yourself.
• Where does your product or service sit in comparison to competition? Is it better? Worse? Why?
• What value does your audience place on your product?
• Why do they place value on your offering?
• What are the complimentary products to yours? Who do they buy them and why? Who do they buy them from?

What is your competition up to?

• How is your audience engaging with your competition?
• What is your competition doing that you aren’t?
• Why are they doing such things different? Do they have a competitive edge over you?
• What type of response are they receiving online and offline from your target audiences? Is it different than how your audience is engaging with you?
• Does your competition have a consistent tone, message and brand? If not, how can you enhance your messaging?

The above questions will help you decode your Target Audience’s behavior, needs, wants & desires. So please do spend a lot of time figuring that out. After you think you’ve got the answer, test your product on them. Are they even buying it? Better still, are they even inclined to buy?

After you have a clear answer to this, try to hit the TA with the message which will appeal to them. This is again a very tricky phase. What you think would fly with the audience will probably fall flat. So to avoid this, you’ve got to go back to your audience and ask for their feedback.

This really could be a game changing process. Ultimately, whichever media you choose, you want to make sure the people who you’re talking to, understand you.

After your messaging is done, you need to think about the media bit. I’ll pen this down in my next post.

IV injection – My first

Today I got this weird sneezing attack at 4 am… eyes started watering… weird rashes appeared…
So cutting short the medical part of it… I sneaked out of my house and went to Hinduja Hospital. There they diagnosed it as some serious allergic reaction. It was pretty bad I believe… I was given 4 different injections, through one Intra Venous injection.
Now that was a first in my life!
But seriously, it did not hurt too much… it was just that I knew that this metallic needle is in my vein and that made me all cry baby sorts. I know I know… shame on me…
Hoping that it was my first and last IV :|

Speak up! Spoke up!

This blog post is on the miserable state of auto-rickshaw drivers in Mumbai. I thought that this post would be more relevant to Delhi drivers, but today I realized that it was not so.
The unfortunate incident happened at around 7 PM when my friend Sonali and I got into a rickshaw at Linking Road in Bandra. The fare meter was up, and so the driver could not have refused to take us to our destination (Bandra Station). As soon as we sat in the rickshaw, he started swearing disgusting ‘hindi galiis’ and said that he would not go to the station as his rickshaw was not working fine. Bull shit! Then we simply told him to take us to the train station / police station. He refused and instead picked up a fight and then he had the audacity to turn into an unknown lane… which was quiet and out of the way… When asked to stop, he said ‘if you don’t want to get off, I will take you both wherever I wish to.’ This freaked us out and we called the police.
Until the police arrived, there were many people who asked what was wrong and that sort of kept the driver engaged. And his explanation to any questions (in a very polite manner) was that we were wrong and that we beat him up. HIDEOUS!
After a few spectators went, he started to drive the rickshaw again, which put me into my drama mode… and I yelled at the top of my voice and a few people on the road stopped the rickshaw and accompanied us till the cops arrived. After that he was dragged to the station and was beaten up…
Did not really want that to happen… but anything could have happened… probably something weird. It feels good to speak up. I would have totally not been able to do it without my friend Sonali.

In love with my 450D!

This event in my life definitely needs to be documented! So I was planning to buy a car… a small second hand car or a low-budget new one. Instead what my parents marketed was a “DSLR which you have been yearning for a year!” I don’t know at what time of the conversation I got convinced… But I did. I think I thought to myself a bird in hand (DSLR) is better than 2 birds in the dream (DSLR and Car.)
So this Saturday my mom and I went to pick up my DSLR. It was all planned in the head… I went to the shop and I said one Canon 450D. I said it as if I wanted one cheese burger…
I got the camera.. did all the paper work… paid… and walked out of the shop. I did not feel anything… nothing at all… I thought I would be jumping with joy and would do all that jazz… but nope… nothing of that sort happened. Then we hailed a cab and I took out my cam to click a few pics. As soon as I clicked the first picture I knew what I had… and why I yearned for it for over a year.
I started seeing everything in frames and shades once again!
I clicked random stuff… crows, rats, leaves, hats, shoes… Thank god the randomness in life is back!
Thanks mom n dad for the awesome pre-diwali gift!

someday...

Someday I will be gone…
And you would definitely long…
For a minute-long conversation.
In your life, some distraction.

Someday, when I am gone…
I will think of our bond…
Which was never there.
For me or you to tear.

Someday, when you are there…
And this thought crosses your mind somewhere…
You won’t remember the color of my eye.
And a tear drop which went dry.

Someday when you are there…
And you try to find me near…
Hahahahah! Mission accomplished!
I would be gone my dear!

Why I like trains more that planes

Yesterday night I boarded a flight from Mumbai to Delhi. My colleagues had come to help me catch a rickshaw to the airport. I was just saying goodbye to everyone… And even as I boarded the flight, the thoughts of the afternoon, of leaving my work for 10 days, of being away from the ‘scene’ were all popping up in my head. There was not enough time to even sort my thoughts…
And before I knew it, I was in Delhi.
Again, there was so much to absorb. The city where I grew up as a child… Crossed India Gate, my school road, the bus-stop where I got off by mistake and had to walk for 30 minutes, the exhibition hall where I last spent some quality time with my best friend…. All roads had memories, and I will always remember them as that.
And just like that, I was home. The place I call home :)Met my dog… spoke to my sister till we both dozed off… It was like a walk down the memory lane.. :)

But had I taken a train, the transition from my ‘office life’ to ‘being back home life would have been smoother. I would have got good 16 hours to leave behind some thoughts, some conversations, some people…
I love trains for the simple reason that they give me good enough time to unwind - to read some book, to listen to some music… to watch an episode of HIMYM…