Advertising – Dutch Uncles https://dutchuncles.in Market Intelligence & Mentoring Resources for Startups and Small businesses | Dutch Uncles Wed, 11 Aug 2021 09:53:01 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://dutchuncles.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/favicon.png Advertising – Dutch Uncles https://dutchuncles.in 32 32 Looks, Olympian And A Soldier; Brand Neeraj Chopra https://dutchuncles.in/featured/looks-olympian-and-a-soldier-brand-neeraj-chopra/ https://dutchuncles.in/featured/looks-olympian-and-a-soldier-brand-neeraj-chopra/#respond Wed, 11 Aug 2021 08:35:08 +0000 https://dutchuncles.in/?p=35567&preview=true&preview_id=35567 The Olympic fever is still very high. Brands and businesses are in a mad rush to feature the brightest faces for their social media campaigns and hashtags. Since the trend of India’s Olympic win is still very raw, this is a golden opportunity for companies to capitalise on the exposure and the coverage by showcasing […]

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The Olympic fever is still very high. Brands and businesses are in a mad rush to feature the brightest faces for their social media campaigns and hashtags. Since the trend of India’s Olympic win is still very raw, this is a golden opportunity for companies to capitalise on the exposure and the coverage by showcasing inspirational faces like Neeraj Chopra and Mirabai Chanu.

Who is Neeraj Chopra?

Neeraj Chopra, is India’s newest Olympic Medallist who created history by bringing Gold for India after 121 long years. His spectacular win in the Men’s Javelin Throw event in Athletics is India’s first win in a Track and Field Event since a very long time. His Olympic debut brought immense glory to India when he scored the winning throw of 87.58 m on a second attempt. A junior commissioned officer in the Indian Army, he also goes by the title ‘Subedar Neeraj Chopra’.

Neeraj Chopra’s past brand connections

Country Delight Natural

A fresh cow and buffalo milk brand, Neeraj Chopra associated with the brand through an ad campaign before his Olympic win. He rendered his face and athletic training journey for the campaign and spoke about how farm-to doorstep delivery of fresh Cow milk helps athletes incorporate a healthy diet in their training regimen.

Gillette India

Neeraj has endorsed Gillette India’s ‘Barber Parivar Suraksha Program’ that covers Indian barbers and their families with Covid-19 insurance of INR 1 lakh. This programme is aimed at raising awareness about the struggles faced by barbers during the pandemic and supports their return to work while ensuring safety.

Mobil India

Mobil Lubricants India launched their ‘Farak Laakar Dekhiye’ campaign which was a Covid safety protocol awareness campaign. It featured the faces of Olympic bound athletes at the Tokyo Olympics 2020 and Neeraj Chopra was also a part of it.

Other brand endorsements

Neeraj has endorsed multiple brands like Amstrad, Muscle Blaze, Gatorade, IQOO, JSW Sports, etc. through one-time campaigns or on a full-fledged endorsement basis. Post Tokyo, he is witnessing a surge in his brand value which will no doubt bring more names to the list.

The new golden boy for branding

Neeraj Chopra is the new face of advertisers as a sports superstar. He has a brand worthy face, is equipped with the skills and specialisation, and has two stellar titles to his name; those of being an Olympian and a Soldier. His win at the Olympics propelled him into the elite club of Indian sport brand personalities which include the likes of Virat Kohli, KL Rahul and Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

Sports Branding scenario in India

Who charges how much?

Virat Kohli, ace cricketer is one of the highest paid sport personalities when it comes to brand endorsements. He charges a whopping INR 1 Cr-5 Cr per brand. KL Rahul is also a very popular face among brands, and he gets INR 50 Lakh-1 Cr per brand for ads and endorsements. Hardik Pandya also charges INR 1 Cr for brand endorsement fees. PV Sindhu’s bronze at the Tokyo Olympics has upped her brand value. Her brand endorsement fees are now in the range of INR 1.2-4.5 Cr.

The biggies in sport branding

The biggies in sport branding have mostly been the top performers like Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Sania Mirza, Saina Nehwal and Mary Kom. But now brands are fighting to feature young and fresh faces for their campaigns either via high paid Instagram ads or quick television commercials. Mirabai Chanu was already leveraged by Dominos, and now Neeraj Chopra is slowly becoming a brand favourite.

Neeraj Chopra as the face of business

How much will he charge?

Up until he won the gold medal at Tokyo, Neeraj Chopra’s brand endorsement fees were an estimated INR 20-30 Lakh per year. However, after bringing home the gold, Neeraj may charge a tentative INR 2.5 Cr or higher.

Decoding his brand value

Neeraj Chopra has seen a 1000 per cent increase in his portfolio valuation after his Olympic victory. Brands across a variety of categories are approaching him at top speed and his portfolio is much more open. JSW Sports who manages his portfolio is expecting brand ambassador endorsement deals as well as digital-led deals in the coming future.

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Neeraj Chopra’s brand endorsement fees were an estimated INR 20-30 Lakh per year.

What’s in it for me?

Sports sponsorships have been topping the list of brands and start-ups in India. Whether it’s the IPL, social media collaborations, or traditional TV adverts, sport personalities are a go-to favourite. Brand categories like men’s grooming products, clothing, gadgets, and footwear commonly feature popular faces in sports. Since start-ups have more funds to afford on such expensive marketing campaigns, they understand that the investment will come back manifold owing to the exposure and coverage their business will receive by making famous sportspersons the face of their brand.

Even small collaborations like sponsored Instagram posts fetch millions for sports personalities but significantly up the brand value for any business. It all depends on your fund allocation and marketing budget. As a start-up or small business, if you cannot afford the biggest names in the sporting world, there are many other budding sport personalities whom you can approach for collaboration. Due to the increasing number of sports academies in India like the Inspire Institute of Sports in Bellary, and Soccer Schools by Bengaluru FC (football club), more Olympic bound sports men and women are graduating. Identify popular faces and determine who has a strong social media or media presence, and approach them to advertise your brand.

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]]> https://dutchuncles.in/featured/looks-olympian-and-a-soldier-brand-neeraj-chopra/feed/ 0 Relevance Of Sustainability And Purpose In Helping Build Brand Value For New Age Entrepreneurs https://dutchuncles.in/build/relevance-of-sustainability-purpose-in-helping-build-brand-value-for-new-age-entrepreneurs/ https://dutchuncles.in/build/relevance-of-sustainability-purpose-in-helping-build-brand-value-for-new-age-entrepreneurs/#respond Sat, 07 Aug 2021 04:35:08 +0000 https://dutchuncles.in/?p=35307&preview=true&preview_id=35307 It’s often believed that Purpose-led brands are recession proof, grow three times faster than others and command a far higher share of the wallet then their competitors. But is that really true, even for the cost or value conscious Indian? Purpose-driven brands connect with their audience on causes that both believe in. The brand’s messaging […]

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It’s often believed that Purpose-led brands are recession proof, grow three times faster than others and command a far higher share of the wallet then their competitors. But is that really true, even for the cost or value conscious Indian?

Purpose-driven brands connect with their audience on causes that both believe in. The brand’s messaging aligns to the customers’ beliefs and that in turn builds loyalty. The purpose could be driven through a need to help their customer or to make the world a better place. It can be personal or lofty, but eventually what matters is the authenticity of the same.

A set of start-ups in India have embraced a set of strong beliefs and appear to be seeing strong early success in the market. Let’s study the story of Mamaearth, Bombay Shaving Company and WOW Skin Science to study how they have wowed the Indian consumer.

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The magic of building a credible purpose-led brand is that its core value offers an opportunity for extension into a range of product categories which have a similar need.

Mama Earth

Mamaearth is perhaps one of the finest examples of purpose-led brand building in the Indian market today and it’s intriguing how they went about it.

Their story started in 2014, when Ghazal and Varun Alagh were blessed with a baby boy. Paranoid as most young parents are, they scanned the Indian market for toxin-free baby products and found that there were none! They actually started ordering products from the US and UK, which were expensive with heavy shipping charges and uncovered an interesting gap in the Indian market.

Next, they realized that this need strongly resonated with a new generation of affluent Indian millennial audience that today has a robust and growing consumer cohort. This led them to founding Honasa Consumer Pvt Ltd in 2016 to provide toxin-free baby care products. By the year’s end, the company launched its brand as Mamaearth.

Unleashing the Gold Mine of Consumer Value

They also built credibility for their brand by seeking a certification from MadeSafe – a US based non-profit organization that provides a comprehensive health-focused certification for making non-toxic products.

The magic of building a credible purpose-led brand is that its core value offers an opportunity for extension into a range of product categories which have a similar need. Hence, Ghazal and Varun Alagh soon realized that they were sitting on a proverbial gold mine of consumer value that they unleashed through an entry into the broader cosmetics category. In just 4 years, they went from 6 products in the baby care range to 80+ SKUs across skin and hair care for men and women and a turnover of 100 Cr across 500 cities across the country primarily served through D2C platforms.

However, with purpose at its core, the rapid growth of the brand has been fuelled through robust marketing thought & consumer facing investments.

Decoding Mamaearth’s communication journey

Mamaearth started their communication journey through a traditional purpose-led film ‘Goodness is in the little choices we make every day’. Here, they elevate their rather functional attributes of “No Toxins”, “Plastic Positive” and “Cruelty Free” to the emotional payoff of a better world as a reminder that it’s the little choices we make that make a big difference.

They, next, gave teeth to their claim of building a better world through the rather significant initiative of ‘An act of goodness in every order’. Here, Mamaearth promises to plant a tree for every order that has been placed from them. They lend credibility to their claim by helping you view the tree plan on their website and have claimed to have planted 1, 11,853 as on 31st July 21.

My favorite piece of their communication journey is of course Mama-Earth Day: Grading the Goodness Report Card. Here, they made an endearing edit with a child rating Mamaearth on – Goodness towards planet: Here they talked about 1 Lac+ trees planted and oxygen for 2 Lac people.

  • Goodness towards people: Products without 1193 toxins.
  • Goodness towards the environment: 1135 tons of plastic recycled equal to the weight of 200 elephants.
  • Goodness towards animals: Cruelty free as certified by PETA. No animal testing now & forever.
  • Goodness in other activities: 50k hand sanitizers, 20k cloth masks distributed to Covid heroes.

So these initiatives surely build the base for a purpose-led brand and what does it give them? The right to charge a significant premium on their products versus main line players and an expectation of a turnover of 500 Cr in 2021.

But do they have an Achilles heel? If one watches all the brutal reviews of their products on YouTube, it can only be the functionality of their products. They use the right ingredients and sell at a significant premium to other players in the market. But can their products really deliver to the functional delivery of synthetic based cosmetics, I guess only time will tell! For the moment, the going is very good!

Let’s now compare and contrast the Mamaearth journey with other similar brands in this space!

WOW Skin Science

WOW Skin Science is another incredible journey in the same space of premium better-for-you cosmetics. But what I find exciting, is that WOW starts where Mamaearth leaves off, that is the promise of functional delivery.

Ashwin Sokke, one of the founders of WOW Skin Science, had been working in the space of online marketing for some time and as a part of an affiliate programme in the USA, worked on an assignment to market some products in the health and beauty space.

He, then, realized as the e-commerce space started taking off in India in 2013 that there is potent space for a high end D2C brand in India and he kicked off his journey with his partners Arvine Sokkie, Manish Chowdhary and Karan Chowdhary. The founding company was Fit & Glow and the WOW brand was launched in 2014.

Rejecting the conventional brand building

The founders started with their passion for the best formulations rather than conventional brand building and hence honesty and transparency are critical differentiators for the company.

The magic of online listening

Further, given the rigorous digital acumen of the founders, they believe very heavily in data and online listening. Their hero product, the Apple Cider Range started as a drinkable product, but data analytics showed that customers were using it for their hair and on their skin. Thus in 2015 the apple cider range was born. Legend goes that Manish flew to the US nine times to meet formulators and scientists for creating WOW’s popular sulphate and parabens- free apple cider vinegar shampoo. They have since launched several offerings out of it including the drink, shampoo, face wash and moisturizer.

The Right Pricing

The next thing that the founders focused on was the right and transparent pricing for their high end, toxin free brands. At the time of their launch, competition was selling a 200 ml bottle of apple cider vinegar shampoo for Rs 1299, the start-up launched theirs at Rs 399.

Being ‘Customer First’

The third factor in their success is that the founders are extremely passionate about being ‘customer first’. They aggressively deploy social media not just to participate in consumer conversation, glean insights for new products but also to use YouTube and Instagram to promote the brand’s nature-based, science-backed range of products. They spread awareness through product videos and influencers to retarget existing buyers and those that viewed their products.

This strategy paid off and made WOW one of the bestselling brands on Amazon. The next step for the brand was to extend itself to brick and mortar stores and they started their journey only after 4-5 years through Health & Glow in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi.

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The brand's promise is to deliver innovative, luxurious products at affordable pricing.

Discovering the brand core

Now, while the brand achieved business success through a range of enviable products fairly early in their journey, they started talking about and embracing the power of purpose only post attaining some scale.

In a query in 2019, when one of the founders was quizzed on how they have used their success to bring goodness into the world, the response was quite honest but revealing. The founder mentioned that we believe in giving opportunities to employees from diverse educational backgrounds with passion and hunger rather than educational accreditations.

It took some time for the brand to discover its core as a brand that would be known for delivering advanced, research-backed, nature-infused products to wellness-conscious people. Moreover, their strengths as an organization with an emphasis on bringing to market nature-crafted products formulated with a high concentration of natural ingredients that help nourish skin, hair and body and deliver visible results. The brand’s promise is to deliver innovative, luxurious products at affordable pricing.

Once the founders released this brand core, they were then able to move away from simple product videos talking about their variants and product features to more meaningful communication. To take on this task, they tied up with two well-known Bollywood actresses Disha Patani and Bhumi Pednekar.

The communication with Disha Patani was again more functional and science driven in line with the core of the brand. In this communication, while ad recall would go up because of a popular celebrity face, yet the message is surprisingly cliché and forgettable.

Waking up to Millennial Audience

With Bhumi Pednekar, we see the brand starting to talk about its nature-infused credentials. Trust in WOW, trust in nature. Here, we see the subtle evolution of the brand language and tonality towards a firmer message of natural goodness.

Only in recent years, we see the brand waking up to its millennial audience which has catapulted the brand to a business of 340 Cr in 2020 and setting it a target of 800 Cr in 2021 with new messages of sustainability.

Now, while the communication with Bhumi does not talk about nature or sustainability the choice of the ambassador reflects this realization. A PR release in 2020 talks about the fact that Bhumi is a perfect choice as she is a persistent advocate for climate change. The PR release talks about the fact that consumers are demanding ‘Clean & Green’ beauty and WOW! is making it accessible to all.

As we enter 2021, the founders are increasingly becoming vocal about how environmental friendliness is at the core of their business values.

Some of the initiatives the founders have embraced in recent times are:

  • Curating their packages with 30% post-consumer recycled packaging.
  • Moving towards 100% PCR packaging made from ocean waste for reduced carbon footprint.
  • Also, extending their range of refill packs which are already available in Face washes to other products.
  • During Covid, the brand also started manufacturing hand washes and sanitizers, as a part of its CSR activity. They distributed over 15 lakh sanitizers and hand washes in hospitals, police stations, NGOs, municipalities etc.
  • In recent times, one initiative that WOW! promoted was #TrashYourSpam to fight digital pollution which encouraged millennials to empty their spam folders to fight climate change on the premise that every message in your spam folder contributes to 0.3 grams of Carbon dioxide per message.

While the brand is currently taking baby steps towards sustainability, yet it’s interesting to view their evolving strategy.

Brand building lessons for new age entrepreneurs

There are several lessons that new age entrepreneurs can learn from these two brands who found an un-serviced niche in Indian market and then used purpose-led brand building to drive a disruptive scale up of their business.

  • Indian millennial audience is rich, vibrant and rapidly seeking out premium, healthy new age offerings that would have been considered fit only for the western market.
  • The pandemic has made D2C mainstream and if you have an idea that offers great value, you will find consumers all across the population strata well beyond just the Tier 1 & 2 cities.
  • It’s critical to identify your brand core and build your portfolio around it. There are more than one way to catch the fancy of your consumers, be it the emotional ‘MadeSafe’ route that Mamaearth took or the more functional Nature and Science route of WOW!
  • As one starts finding traction, it is useful to garner a deep understanding of your consumers, be it through social listening, customer reviews or just spending time with them to understand their passion point. That’s often where the passion points of sustainability and purpose emerge.
  • As you arrive at the emotional core of the brand that you are building, finding the right brand partners, be it influencers or celebrities can yield a mega scale up of awareness and hence business.
  • Finally, there is no replacement for a well-researched and winning product. The entire temple of your brand starts with a strong need and a fulfilling product. Everything else helps your scale-up the same.

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]]> https://dutchuncles.in/build/relevance-of-sustainability-purpose-in-helping-build-brand-value-for-new-age-entrepreneurs/feed/ 0 Domino’s Apt Move Is 2021’s Best Moment Marketing https://dutchuncles.in/build/dominos-apt-move-is-2021s-best-moment-marketing/ https://dutchuncles.in/build/dominos-apt-move-is-2021s-best-moment-marketing/#respond Sat, 31 Jul 2021 05:35:11 +0000 https://dutchuncles.in/?p=34699&preview=true&preview_id=34699 Imagine how much traction your brand could obtain if you received as much media and coverage as a sports personality who recently brought glory to the country at a grand event or stage. Even though your business was not directly sponsoring such an event, your brand is still in the spotlight and receiving positive perception […]

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Imagine how much traction your brand could obtain if you received as much media and coverage as a sports personality who recently brought glory to the country at a grand event or stage. Even though your business was not directly sponsoring such an event, your brand is still in the spotlight and receiving positive perception from consumers. This is what moment marketing is about, taking the opportunity to contribute or partake in a trending event and striking gold in terms of marketing and brand outreach.

What is Moment Marketing?

Moment marketing is a branding and marketing strategy which is a spur-of-the moment creation of a marketing resource, collateral, or an initiative to obtain instant outreach, presence and coverage. It benefits brands immensely in terms of short bursts of sales, quick collaborations with other brands, and publicity which usually lasts as long as the sheen of the event lasts.

Case study: Domino’s Pizza offers free lifetime pizza to Mirabani Chanu, Indian Silver Medallist at the Tokyo Olympics 2021

All it took was a single statement by India’s star performer at this year’s Tokyo Olympics. Mirabani Chanu made a simple comment about wanting to eat some Pizza after her spectacular win at weightlifting live in front of a global audience. Domino’s immediately took the opportunity to come to the forefront and offer an international winner a lifetime’s worth of free Pizza through a Digital Activation Pact with the brand. This move triggered a chain of events where Domino’s is now receiving brand mentions every time the Olympic champion is mentioned in the media. This has boosted Domino’s brand outreach tremendously making it a talking point throughout the Olympic season in India.

Benefits of Moment Marketing 

As gleaned from the case study above, moment marketing benefits brands in three key ways

Celebrity collaboration achieved

Without spending a dime or going through tedious collaboration procedures, brands can capture the celebrity’s face for endorsements.

Branding done

By strategically placing their brand in a crucial event with global relevance, Domino’s branding activities are sorted for the entire year effortlessly.

Trending forever

The brand will trend throughout the event or until its relevance is valid. Sporting events like the Olympics hold significance for a long time to come which means that brands like Dominos will stay forever associated with it in a way.

5 best moment marketing instances in recent times

The Rahul Bose Movement

When popular Bollywood actor Rahul Bose spoke about being overcharged for 2 bananas at the JW Mariott, a lot of brands like Manforce Condoms and Godrej Nature’s Basket took the opportunity to do moment marketing.

moment marketing
Domino’s Apt Move Is 2021’s Best Moment Marketing

Oreos’s Super Bowl Campaign

Oreo released a popular campaign during the 2013 Super Bowl game’s brief power outage through its ‘You can still dunk in the dark’ campaign.

moment marketing
Domino’s Apt Move Is 2021’s Best Moment Marketing

Flipkart’s World Emoji Day campaign

Flipkart released a moment marketing campaign on World Emoji Day in 2018 with a creative ad campaign.

moment marketing
Domino’s Apt Move Is 2021’s Best Moment Marketing

Paytm’s tweet during the demonetisation drive

Paytm expertly used the demonetisation drive in India as an opportunity to promote their platform through a single tweet which was a brilliant marketing strategy.

moment marketing
Domino’s Apt Move Is 2021’s Best Moment Marketing

The Durex campaign during the discovery of the Black Hole

When the image of the first ever captured black hole was released, Durex utilised the opportunity to run a moment marketing campaign.

moment marketing
Domino’s Apt Move Is 2021’s Best Moment Marketing
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Mirabani Chanu made a simple comment about wanting to eat some Pizza after her spectacular win at weightlifting live in front of a global audience. Domino’s Pizza immediately took the opportunity to come to the forefront and offer an international winner a lifetime’s worth of free Pizza through a Digital Activation Pact with the brand.

What’s in it for me?

Moment marketing is a classic example of brand communication when the consumer is all ears and is willing to listen. Since consumers are more receptive during specific moments, these marketing strategies get more traction. It’s a simple but brilliant way for start-ups to be instantly seen and heard with minimal effort or resources. It’s all about timing in moment marketing. By utilising this strategy at the most opportune moment, start-ups and small businesses get the opportunity to instantly become a part of conversations that are relevant and beneficial for your business.

 

To adopt a moment marketing strategy, you need to create a marketing funnel of upcoming micro moments that are significant from a business standpoint. Based on this funnel, you need to run an ad campaign or perform other brand outreach strategies to be seen and heard by your target audience at the right time. Marketing is a very important and powerful tool for start-ups and small businesses. By adopting new age, trending marketing strategies, you can scale up rapidly and be perceived as a modern brand and business.

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]]> https://dutchuncles.in/build/dominos-apt-move-is-2021s-best-moment-marketing/feed/ 0 Start-ups Now Account for 10% in India’s Advertising Expenses https://dutchuncles.in/featured/start-ups-now-account-for-10-in-indias-advertising-expenses/ https://dutchuncles.in/featured/start-ups-now-account-for-10-in-indias-advertising-expenses/#respond Tue, 04 May 2021 11:35:04 +0000 https://dutchuncles.in/?p=26319&preview=true&preview_id=26319 From Shah Rukh Khan becoming a teacher in Byju’s new ad highlighting after-school learning to Pankaj Tripathi showing Kirana store owners ease of doing business on Udaan app, Indian start-ups have been all in with their advertising spend. Be it Indian Premier League (IPL) on a TV Channel, an episode of your favourite show on […]

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From Shah Rukh Khan becoming a teacher in Byju’s new ad highlighting after-school learning to Pankaj Tripathi showing Kirana store owners ease of doing business on Udaan app, Indian start-ups have been all in with their advertising spend.

Be it Indian Premier League (IPL) on a TV Channel, an episode of your favourite show on an over-the-top (OTT) platform, a fitness video on Youtube or casual Instagram scrolling, you cannot ignore the growing number of ads by start-ups that are ruling the break time.

Nothing New, Yet Unusual: What Changed?

It is not new for start-ups to go aggressive with advertisements in attracting and retaining customers in their growth stage. Back in 2015, we saw a huge surge in ad spends by e-commerce start-ups like Myntra, Flipkart and Snapdeal as the industry boomed. This trend picked up pace over the years with start-ups riding a particular industry boom (e-commerce, e-retail, edtech) each year, putting in big cheques in advertisement.

This number was expected to rise in future. However, something has been unusual in the past one or two years, especially post pandemic. According to media buyers’ estimates, start-ups now account for 10% in India’s advertising expenses. The overall ad spend may hit Rs 80,000 crore in 2021. This means 8,000-8,500 crore (10%) has come from new-age companies. No doubt, the surge was expected, but not to the level of 10%.

Besides developing a big advertising appetite, the start-ups have gone a step further and overshadowed big brands across many platforms. What happened in the past one year? Let’s find out.

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Byju’s spent Rs 400-500 crore in advertising in 2020 while gaming firm Dream11 spent Rs 350-400 crore and My11Circle spent Rs 150-250 crore.

A Strong Backing: Funding Galore

The lockdown threw a curve ball at a lot of industries. Start-up industry was one of them with fewer deals and comparative less funding. Having said that, investors poured in $9.3 Billion into the Indian start-ups in year 2020 alone with some of the largest venture capital firms doubling on Seed and Series A deals. Big funding deals were seen for start-ups such as Byju’s, Unacademy, Zomato, CRED, Delhivery, Razorpay, Vedantu and Cars24 along with ballooning valuations.

This momentum refuses to slow down. Barely four months into the current calendar year and the sector has already birthed 10 unicorns (11 in 2020) with $4.4 billion funding in the January-March quarter of 2021.

This spells one major change. The curve ball thrown across sectors by pandemic was caught well by the new-age tech/digital start-ups, who are today in demand more than ever. This is their opportunity to grow.

Strike While the Iron is Hot!

Now what happens when you have large investment, fast- growing revenue potential and an addressable base? You look to invest in brand equity and go all in to capture the user base and create a brand recall, especially when the space becomes extremely competitive and digital (Lockdown).

This is in complete tune with flush of funds from venture capitalists. Following the pandemic, outdoor/below-the-line advertisement has become extremely limited, leaving the choice limited to digital mediums. Now, since the choice is limited with everyone flocking to the same medium to capture the screen time, companies are looking to associate with high-profile (expensive) properties for aggressive marketing and advertising.

Who will step up? The one who needs to (growing stage, competition, user base) and very well could (deep-pocketed investors) during these times i.e. start-ups.

Sports Leagues + Festive Season: Cherry on the Cake

Apart from usual ad mediums like television, OTT platforms, social media and websites, start-ups splashed cash like never before on sports league-IPL, Indian Super league (ISL) and Pro Kabaddi League (PKL)- which come as a one time opportunity in a year for companies to create a recall. This is especially significant during Covid times. The IPL also coincided with festive times.

Looking at the advertising budget of some of the top start-up- Byju’s spent Rs 400-500 crore in advertising in 2020 while gaming firm Dream11 spent Rs 350-400 crore and My11Circle spent Rs 150-250 crore, as per a Pitch Madison Advertising report. Other new breed of sponsors include PhonePe, CRED, Paytm, Dailyhunt and Khatabook, Acko, WhiteHat Jr, Policybazaar, Netmeds and Upstox.

Given the thriving revenue, funding and valuation numbers of start-ups (digital, edtech platforms, payment gateways, gaming platforms, OTT players) amidst the current state of affairs, the 10% ad spend figure will continue to jump further.

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]]> https://dutchuncles.in/featured/start-ups-now-account-for-10-in-indias-advertising-expenses/feed/ 0 What is Traditional Marketing? https://dutchuncles.in/build/what-is-traditional-marketing/ https://dutchuncles.in/build/what-is-traditional-marketing/#respond Fri, 16 Apr 2021 02:35:03 +0000 https://dutchuncles.in/?p=24211&preview=true&preview_id=24211 Long before when the digital wave and smartphones had hit the marketing ecosystem, the most preferred format of marketing means for the renowned brands used to be the television, newspaper, brochures, billboard and radio. The brands used powerful jingles, punchlines, and rhyming to showcase their brand’s purpose in the media. Any medium of marketing that […]

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Long before when the digital wave and smartphones had hit the marketing ecosystem, the most preferred format of marketing means for the renowned brands used to be the television, newspaper, brochures, billboard and radio. The brands used powerful jingles, punchlines, and rhyming to showcase their brand’s purpose in the media. Any medium of marketing that involves mediums such as print, broadcast, phone, billboards, radio, flyers, and pamphlets excluding online medium is termed as traditional marketing. Traditional businesses identify their audience based on their density in a particular region where they can see, hear or interact with it online.   Although in the digital era brands are implementing technologies for target-based marketing traditional marketing plays an important role in reaching local communities. Advertisements in the traditional medium have a higher recall value since they can be accessed without an internet connection. Traditional marketing is easier to comprehend as companies do not have to change their messaging to various age groups and targets a broader section. 

Traditional Marketing Mediums Relevant in the Digital Age 

Though we are engulfed by the digital revolution, small and medium-sized businesses still find traditional marketing to be an effective and affordable medium to get the messages out. Below are some of the traditional marketing mediums that are yet relevant in the digital era.

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Any medium of marketing that involves mediums such as print, broadcast, phone, billboards, radio, flyers, and pamphlets excluding online medium is termed as traditional marketing.

Signages 

Signages are no more stationary prints on walls. With time, signage has undergone a transformation that now comprises digital photos with background lighting that can be placed on mobile taxis, buildings, shopfronts, etc. thus reaching increasing visibility. 

Billboards 

Billboards can never go obsolete owing to their wider reach across social classes and geographies. Be it hand-painted or printed they are still prevalent.  Any information written in bold on the billboards makes it visible from highways, residential areas, streets, etc. which acts as a great medium for raising brand awareness. 

Face to Face interaction

Face-to-face interaction can never go obsolete in industry verticals like real estate and automobile, where we need human interactions to close sales. In such verticals, we need humans to answer all queries to a customer. Since purchasing real estate and automobiles involves high involvement.   

Newspaper Print ads 

Newspaper prints ads till date stand as the most credible source of information that has reached every household. 

Pamphlets and flyers

Bakery shops or new retail shops that have just opened in your neighbourhood yet depend on pamphlets to let their customers know of attractive discounts and offers. With a phone number printed on the pamphlets, consumers will look for the local or convenience stores for impulse buying. 

Developing a traditional Marketing plan 

The first step in developing a traditional marketing plan to decide the means such as print, broadcasting, billboard, or telemarketing. The choice of the medium entirely depends on budget and the marketing message which the business owners wish to be conveyed. To choose print and broadcasting mediums, business owners first should arrange to purchase the advertising space. The time to purchase the ad space depends on the lead time i.e., booking the ad space in advance. 

What is in for the startups? 

Traditional marketing is easier to decode for the customers since its businesses do not require much effort to talk about the benefits of the product or service. If the business is targeting a local audience, it still prefers traditional marketing. Professionals like lawyers and dentists still depend on traditional marketing strategies because their clients base their search on their location or when they need their services.

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]]> https://dutchuncles.in/build/what-is-traditional-marketing/feed/ 0 What Will be the Advertisement Rates this IPL Season? https://dutchuncles.in/discover/what-will-be-the-advertisement-rates-this-ipl-season/ https://dutchuncles.in/discover/what-will-be-the-advertisement-rates-this-ipl-season/#respond Wed, 24 Mar 2021 12:35:05 +0000 https://dutchuncles.in/?p=20244&preview=true&preview_id=20244 The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a professional Twenty20 cricket league in India usually contested by eight teams representing eight different cities or states in India. The league was founded by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in 2007 and is the most-attended cricket league in the world, ranked sixth by average […]

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The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a professional Twenty20 cricket league in India usually contested by eight teams representing eight different cities or states in India. The league was founded by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in 2007 and is the most-attended cricket league in the world, ranked sixth by average attendance among all sports leagues in 2014. 

In 2010 IPL also became the first sporting event in the world to be broadcast live on YouTube. Given the huge viewership in terms of audience and streaming platform viewers, the IPL is the golden opportunity for several companies and brands to advertise their products in order to expand reach and sales. 

Star Sports and Disney Hotstar

Star India acquired the global media rights to the IPL in 2017 under a five-year contract beginning in 2018. The most expensive broadcast rights deal in the history of cricket, it was valued at ₹163.475 billion and included packages for domestic television, domestic digital, and international rights. The IPL is a very powerful property and can help advertisers and media channels to expand their reach far and wide and their reach only grows more and more.

Star broadcasts IPL matches live online in India via its over-the-top video streaming platform Disney+ Hotstar. In 2019, international streaming viewership on Disney+ Hotstar saw records, exceeding 10 million concurrent viewers multiple times. The 2019 final broke these records, peaking at 18.6 million concurrent streaming viewers.

Advertisement Rates IPL 2020

During the pandemic, with people being stuck at home, IPL 2020 turned out to be a huge success. People were looking for escapes from their mundane lives at home and since they could not attend the matches live, streaming platforms became the next big thing. As per BARC India, it surpassed the 2019 edition in terms of viewership.

Cumulative reach grew by 11% while viewing minutes have increased by 28% y-o-y.  This was optimised by several companies who bidded huge amounts to get a few seconds on the broadcast to advertise their products. 

Star Sports has hiked advertising rates for the last four matches of the tournament by about 15-20%. The individual ad rates for the IPL had been set at Rs 12-13 lakh for each 10 seconds. The broadcasters knew there would be higher viewership than normal so that did not reduce ad rates in 2020.

According to media buyers, about 85-90% of the inventory was sold at the start of IPL and 10-15% has been set aside for last minute sales. Star also hiked ad rates for Disney+ Hotstar from Rs 120 CPM per 10 seconds in 2019 to Rs 180-200 CPM/10 seconds.

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In 2010 IPL became the first sporting event in the world to be broadcast live on YouTube. Given the huge viewership, it is the golden opportunity for companies to advertise their products.

Ad Rates in 2021 and what is in it for companies looking to advertise?

The 14th edition of the Indian Premier League starts April 9,2021 and Star Sports has raised ad rates for the IPL by 15-20 per cent this year, compared to last year. The buzz around the league has already started and the viewership and live streams are expected to only increase. IPL 2020 was a massive success, and the official broadcaster, Disney+ Hotstar, is thinking to soar that up. As per the reports, Disney Star India Network is already prepared to increase ad-rates by almost 25% for the IPL 2021.

The Ad-Rates for the upcoming IPL 2021 are expected to soar up to 14 to 15 Lakhs for just 10 Seconds. IPL 2020 witnessed an impressive viewership growth of 24 percent among women and 20 percent among children respectively and ad volumes soared by 4%. Thus, IPL is upping the stakes for advertisers to book their slots for advertisements.

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]]> https://dutchuncles.in/discover/what-will-be-the-advertisement-rates-this-ipl-season/feed/ 0 How to Build Traction for Your Business? https://dutchuncles.in/build/how-to-build-traction-for-your-business/ https://dutchuncles.in/build/how-to-build-traction-for-your-business/#respond Tue, 23 Mar 2021 11:40:46 +0000 https://dutchuncles.in/?p=20152&preview=true&preview_id=20152 Starting a business in India is easy but building up clientele is a tedious well-planned task. Execution is key post planning how to draw traction. Startup traction is described as having as many numbers as possible of end users or potential customers who would use your product and are willing to pay a certain amount […]

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Starting a business in India is easy but building up clientele is a tedious well-planned task. Execution is key post planning how to draw traction. Startup traction is described as having as many numbers as possible of end users or potential customers who would use your product and are willing to pay a certain amount for the product or services. Getting traction for your small business or startup is important if you want to scale up to achieve product market fit.

So, now coming down to getting customers after you’ve launched your product, is getting to the pre-launch strategy, this phase is often the hardest in the life of a startup. Once the launch phase strategy is executed, it is time to build something that has a strong market demand. Getting traction could be easy and difficult both depending on the demand for the product.

One of the most challenging aspects is that no matter how innovative your product is, you won’t have any customers if they are not aware of your startup. Even more challenging is figuring out how to attract your first customers when your budget and resources are limited. But the best way to start gaining traction is by building an awesome product. Other elements like packaging, customer service support systems will also help determine the success or failure of your startup. But half your hard work put in developing the product is done when your product is so incredible that it sells by itself. Growing customer base may seem challenging and many questions may arise:

    • How to identify your target audience?
    • Where to find them?
    • How do you get them to sign up to learn more about your product or service?
    • How to get them to pay for it, on top of that, could be another challenge.
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If you are a serial entrepreneur and want your business to be bought by a giant at a great value, then create awesome product that is worth more than the money you spend in marketing & advertising.

What is The Right Content for Traction?

Educating customers through written, visual or audio content could be one of the strategies to get traction quickly. Lots of businesses are generating content for their business but have failed to see results from implementing this strategy. The reason for this is not producing the right content through the right channel and what the audience is seeking. In order to generate and create content for startups that drives growth, startups need to create content that supports the business, content that educates the end users, content that establishes the business as a competition to watch out for in their respective industries.

A potential customer will need to find your website for all the relevant information about your product or service. The website is an interface of the company. Therefore, creating an attractive user-friendly website with all the relevant content upfront would be beneficial initially to gain traction for your business. This is the first stage.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the second step and an important traction method. It helps in improving the visibility of your website on Google, Yahoo, etc.

This has become the norm for startups as it creates a level playing field for the brands with their competitors. But creating an attractive website and gaining traction through SEO is only the beginning, there’s a long way to go. This is one reason why most startups lose their battle of traction; it is not because of a bad product but bad distribution.

Define the goals to build traction

What you need to win the battle of traction?

You will not experience success from the word go. you will have to use techniques that may vary depending on your product or services to gain initial traction. Following are some ways to gain traction and get to a sustainable point as fast as we can:

Create an incredible product

Build a product that is something to reckon with, wherein you can disrupt the competitors. Whatsapp became a disruptor for Facebook and Google chats. Instagram disrupted Facebook to the extent that the latter bought Instagram at much higher valuation, for $ 1 billion way back in 2012, at that time for a company with 13 employees. Instagram today has over one billion users and contributes over $20 billion to Facebook’s annual revenue.

If you are a serial entrepreneur and want your business to be bought by a giant at a great value, then create an awesome product that is worth more than the money you spend in marketing and advertising. Because the fact is that the better your product, the more you will be able to align all your business functions to drive growth- be it sales, marketing, product design and long-term goals.

But if your product is average then you end up overplaying marketing and advertising to cover up for your not-so-great product. It will augur well and gain traction for a short term but in the long run, you will end up losing customers. 

Define and quantify your goals 

Having a clearly defined goals by breaking things down to smaller goals will make things achievable for you. For example, quantify your goals as to:

– How many customers per week do you need?

– How many emails need to be sent per day.

– How many meetings need to be conducted.

– What features need to be added to generate more customers?

– How many potential clients can we draw if we partner with a certain person or company?

– How do we get more users to pay yearly/monthly?

– How do we retain existing customers

Don’t scale up yet

In the initial days, you should have a sharp focus on getting those first customers using your product, or those first customers paying you money. Things don’t take off easily or by themselves, so you need to do things that don’t scale to give your product the best chance of long-term success.

At this point, you can consider becoming a unicorn or a forever company. This is hard work where you are starting up with no presence. If you’ve put in effort into your pre-launch then this first step should be easy, but if you haven’t, then you will need to do things that don’t scale up instantly:

– Reaching out to the press

– Start cold emailing or calling potential customers

– Give people free access to your product in exchange for promotion to their list

– Have numerous meetings- Meet investors or potential partners

– Hire the best professionals

– Organize parties

– Do user testing with real people

– Get customer feedback

– Learn every detail that sets you apart from the competitor

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When you make marketing a priority since the beginning, you are accelerating acquisition by proactively building awareness and interest in the product you’re creating.

Track your customers

There are various data tracking tools like Google Analytics or Kiss metrics to collect data around customer behavior with your product or service. By tracking the data, you will be able to make better informed decisions and understand where you need to focus to fix issues or where to put in extra effort.

Marketing efforts

Marketing channels and initiatives created to build an audience makes it easier for entrepreneurs to find ideas worth pursuing. Startups that launch with an established audience can generate revenue quickly and build better products by engaging their subscribers.

Events

Organizing events is one form of marketing channel. Events have become imperative because all stakeholders gather in one place and this gives an opportunity to build relationships, and introduce and sell the products. Events help create a network by leveraging audience and followers of your attendees, experts and partners. An event can grow quickly just by seeking the promotion of influencers.

Paid Advertising

Building a community through paid advertisements. The challenge is turning visitors into followers, fans, and converting them into end users.

E-Newsletters and more

Building a community to continuously drive traffic and referrals- in the form of email newsletter, private groups on social media or social events.

A simple marketing effort shows how potential buyers go through several stages before making a purchase. Starting by becoming aware of the product followed by building interest in it, wanting to try it, and finally, converting into paying customers. When you make marketing a priority since the beginning, you are accelerating acquisition by proactively building awareness and interest in the product you’re creating. By the time the app is ready to go to market, people will be lined up to use it.

Win the Battle of Traction

Brand your product

Branding is an important aspect that can be leveraged for growth. Branding not only means logos, voice and tone, website design, and social media presence, it should go deeper than that- with all the Above and Below the line activities in tow. Getting a massive social media presence is the key, getting that top of the mind recall by the customer is difficult with so many competitive players making a beeline to get customer attention. Branding your product sets it apart from another player.

Partnership

To gain initial traction by teaming up with other brands- a simple rule that gets your startup get existing customers of another brand. Integration: this is when your product plays with another product to highlight the features of both companies. Syndication is where companies team up with and combine their products together to showcase each other’s products to their audiences. Referral- this can be either an affiliate, reseller or organization that uses your product. Collaborate on marketing and minimize or eliminate your own marketing expenses. Cut a limited time exclusive deal if someone can connect you to a whole store of customers. Exchange content to benefit from that online traffic or consider licensing or affiliate arrangement where you only pay out for leads that are closed. Finally, finding powerful organic distribution channels is the best way to grow your company and give an unfair advantage to those competitors that are relying on advertising.

Test the waters

For startups, entrepreneurs need to pay close attention to content analytics that reveal who your visitors are, how long they stay on your site and what they’re doing on your site are essential. Advertising analytics that track your conversions from marketing channels like Google Ads. Email analytics that will measure opens and conversions. Qualitative analytics dive deeper into the wants and needs of customers.

Go offbeat

Take your products to the customers instead of waiting for them to come to you. Attending events to showcase your products, demo at any popular event was not only a good idea, it also attracted thousands of potential new customers without having to spend an exorbitant amount of money in marketing. But these are traditional methods of getting traction. But you need to be offbeat sometimes to gain publicity. Publicity stunts and unique marketing campaigns are one of the best ways to introduce your startup to potential customers and attract media attention.

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]]> https://dutchuncles.in/build/how-to-build-traction-for-your-business/feed/ 0 How to create a growth marketing framework to grow your business https://dutchuncles.in/discover/how-to-create-a-growth-marketing-framework-to-grow-your-business/ https://dutchuncles.in/discover/how-to-create-a-growth-marketing-framework-to-grow-your-business/#respond Tue, 02 Mar 2021 10:35:04 +0000 https://dutchuncles.in/?p=16655&preview=true&preview_id=16655 If you’re in the scale-up stage of your business, you might have heard the buzzword ‘growth marketing’ a lot many times. But what exactly is growth marketing? Do you need to adopt growth marketing to grow your business? How is it different from traditional marketing? These are some of the most common questions that any […]

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If you’re in the scale-up stage of your business, you might have heard the buzzword ‘growth marketing’ a lot many times. But what exactly is growth marketing? Do you need to adopt growth marketing to grow your business? How is it different from traditional marketing? These are some of the most common questions that any early-stage founders and entrepreneurs wonder about.

Over the last few years, growth marketing has become immensely popular among marketers and business owners. Not just the term, but the adoption rate of growth marketing among marketers has been significant too. In a nutshell, growth marketing is a data-driven process that focuses on every marketing funnel stage, unlike traditional marketing that focuses only on the top funnel of customer acquisition.

Why growth marketing is important in 2021

Growth marketing is challenging. It requires a complete re-evaluation of your marketing strategy and approach to convert and retain clients. However, if it is done right, it is worth the investment.

Whether you like it or not, the competition businesses face now is tremendous. With innovations and technology, startups are disrupting the traditional way of doing business. Hence, the onus lies with the marketers to help companies start and earn more revenues than ever. The top four reasons why growth marketing is worth a shot is because:

Linear path to purchase is a passe

Earlier the journey of a customer from awareness to purchase was predictable. But with the disruption created by technology and the internet, the nonlinear buying journey is a common trend among users.

If you want your company to scale up, you need to focus on every stage a user goes through to make a purchase, and that’s what growth marketing is all about.

Making client retention a priority

Although it is a no-brainer that it costs at least ten times more to acquire a new client, many companies fail to retain their clients. High client attrition means your revenue gets impacted negatively, minimizes your company reputation, and, more importantly, slow growth rate. Additionally, with a high client attrition rate, it becomes further challenging to acquire new customers.

Growth marketing helps you fix this issue. Leveraging growth marketing, you start focusing on your existing customers to build brand loyalty, keep them happy, and engaged. This helps to improve client retention and enables you to attract new clients through word of mouth and positive reviews.

Integrating merchandising and marketing

Many companies now integrate their merchandising and marketing efforts. If you are stuck to traditional marketing, you are just focusing on the top stage of the marketing funnel, thus missing out on customers in other funnel stages. But with growth marketing, your sales team is better positioned to gauge in which stage a customer is in and provide valuable information accordingly that helps boost sales.

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Growth marketing is a data-driven process that focuses on every marketing funnel stage, unlike traditional marketing that focuses only on the top funnel of customer acquisition.

Growth marketing vs. marketing

If your company is just like any other companies you might be using traditional marketing like using advertisements on television, print, radio to promote your product or service. While there is nothing wrong with conventional marketing, it often under-delivers. That’s because most of the time, the consumers research online or rely more on word of mouth to make their purchasing decision.

On the other hand, growth marketing is a relatively new form of marketing where the marketers take a data-driven marketing strategy for rapid growth, increasing revenue, and client satisfaction. Growth marketers are a pro at taking risks at every stage of the marketing funnel.

Important components of the growth marketing strategy

An effective growth marketing strategy can be built around important customer acquisition rates, customer lifetime value, customer retention rate, etc. Here are some of the most popular and effective tactics that growth marketers use. Although these are widely used in the e-commerce space, brick and mortar businesses can leverage them too.

Cross-channel marketing

The whole purpose of cross-channel marketing is to engage with your customers wherever they are. So, it can be push notifications, email marketing, SMS marketing, in-app message, etc. Remember, it is important to integrate different marketing channels in your growth marketing strategy to maximize your ROI.

A/B testing

A/B testing or, as we know, multivariate testing can be used in landing pages, email marketing, social media ads, and many more. In this test, you put test A or test B or a series of multiple tests to understand which content type works best for your business. Based on the results, you can tweak your marketing campaigns to get the best results. Remember to customize your test for a specific segment of customers to maximize growth.

Customer lifecycle

The customer lifecycle is the different stages a customer goes through, from generating awareness to conversion and repeat. However, growth marketers focus more on three critical lifecycle stages. These are activation, nurture, and reactivation.

Activation

In this stage, growth marketers target prospective customers to make them aware of the product. For example, offering free trials is an excellent way to make the customer familiar with the product.

Nurture

During the next stage, companies engage with the customers and nurture them. Most of the cross-channel marketing happens through different marketing channels like email marketing, push notifications, newsletters, etc.

Reactivation

The final stage is the reactivation stage, when growth marketers focus on re-engagement. This stage is essential for customer retention and building brand loyalty.

There is no reason to believe that one stage is more important than the other two stages. Customers progress naturally through each of these stages at their own pace. Hence growth marketers need to be proactive and tap each of the steps for better engagement and conversion.

The 5-step growth marketing framework

Although the concept of growth marketing is new, its principles have been there for a long time. Today marketers are powered with an array of tools and data that help them to make decisions in unprecedented ways. While evaluating a business for stimulating its growth, marketers rely on a 5-stem growth marketing framework. This includes the following:

North Star Metric

Although the term growth is used loosely by businesses and marketers, what growth means can differ from company to company. It is essential to understand what change means to your business before you decide on the growth strategy. This single point of reference is known as the North Star Metric and is critical to determining your growth measurement. For example, your North Star metric could be sales, leads, subscribers, etc.

Product or Market Fit

As defined by Marc Andreessen, product or market fit means “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”

If you’re an early-stage business, it won’t be worth investing your time and efforts to scale up until you achieve product/market fit. This means, unless you are addressing an issue to a sizable market, you’re not ready for growth. Not yet.

Data and analytics

The most significant benefit of growth marketing is you are armed with a plethora of data and data analytics tools to make an informed decision. With so many tools available at your disposal, you cannot ignore to leverage them. Any marketing efforts that are not backed by data is like shooting in the dark. Make efforts to choose the right tools that can help you get a deep insight into your business.

Analyze the funnel

Market funnels are unique to businesses that help you gauge the user journey. A funnel has several stages like awareness, interest, evaluation, and action. Marketers map the data received from different analytics tools to these user journey stages to identify the bottlenecks and user drop-offs and take necessary measures to remove those bottlenecks.

Analyzing your traffic

Once you know your user journey, it is time to identify the traffic source. Knowing where your users come from can help you determine the right channel mix. While traffic source and channel mix are unique for business, understanding the sources can better leverage the sources. Broadly categorizing, your traffic source can be divided into paid traffic and organic traffic. If you’re just starting, your focus should be more on organic traffic. But if you’re scaling up, focus on paid traffic too. Having your brand showing up on the paid search will ensure that your competitors are not stealing away traffic when potential customers are looking for your business. If you’re receiving traffic from one channel, that doesn’t stop you from trying alternative channels. Try out small and experiment to see which channel mix works best for your business.

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If you are looking to scale up or already seeing substantial growth and looking for ways to tweak your marketing capabilities to maximize your ROI, it is the right time to leverage growth marketing.

Other elements of the growth marketing framework

Know your customers

If you are in business for a good amount of time and looking to scale up, you would already have this data handy. You know exactly who you are selling to. But if you are just starting, you need to have customers, any customer, to determine the buyer persona. Once you have the hard cold data, analyze it as minutely as possible because you need to know everything about this person you are selling. Once you have the buyer persona ready, tweak your marketing efforts to give your customers a sublime onboarding experience.

Align your story

Once you have your buyer persona ready, it is time to align your ‘story’ with your buyer persona. In other words, your buyer persona should be able to resonate with your ‘why.’ Remember, when you align your story, do not fake. Your why should be connected to the buyer’s purpose, be innovative in presenting your solution, and finally, it should be dynamic to keep up with the market changes.

Find the right team

The success of your growth marketing relies heavily on the kind of people you hire in your team. Know that although there is no clear-cut rule on how a growth marketing team should look like, each business has its bandwagon. An ideal growth marketing team should create a smooth and frictionless experience throughout the entire marketing funnel. For example, a tech company, especially a SaaS company, may have its growth team heavily skewed towards engineering. In contrast, a service business may have a writer or a developer with design skills.

The Takeaway

Growth marketing can be as simple as tweaking a button here or there or as complex as redoing the entire marketing strategy. The growth marketing method is not for everyone, and not every business can see growth and increased ROI by embracing growth marketing. If you’re just starting, focus more on solving a genuine problem for a sizable market. Unless you have a solid foundation, you’re not ready yet to embark upon a growth marketing journey. On the other hand, if you are looking to scale up or already seeing substantial growth and looking for ways to tweak your marketing capabilities to maximize your ROI, it is the right time to leverage growth marketing. Consider the growth marketing framework as your starting point to devise your growth marketing strategy.

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]]> https://dutchuncles.in/discover/how-to-create-a-growth-marketing-framework-to-grow-your-business/feed/ 0 Video Marketing Done Right: The Window to The Audience’s Soul https://dutchuncles.in/aspire/video-marketing-done-right-the-window-to-the-audiences-soul/ https://dutchuncles.in/aspire/video-marketing-done-right-the-window-to-the-audiences-soul/#respond Sat, 16 Jan 2021 10:08:37 +0000 https://dutchuncles.in/demo/?p=4067 Who doesn’t love a good movie, or like to watch a short funny clip as you are scrolling through Facebook or Instagram on your lunch break at work? Humans are visual creatures; we rely so heavily on our eyes and for good reason. Vision is one of our primary senses and videos are the best […]

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Who doesn’t love a good movie, or like to watch a short funny clip as you are scrolling through Facebook or Instagram on your lunch break at work? Humans are visual creatures; we rely so heavily on our eyes and for good reason. Vision is one of our primary senses and videos are the best way to engage this particular sensory organ. Let us have a look at how this can be used to push your marketing campaign through the roof.

What Is Video Marketing?

The use of videos in marketing is something you will see even the biggest of players doing and for good reason. Videos are essentially a visual form of storytelling. The great thing about them is that you are able to fit large amounts of dense information into a streamlined and engaging format. Add on to this the fact that it can be utilised across many digital and social platforms and you have yourself a real winner.

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With the rise of the digital era comes the rise of more and more visual content. Video marketing is the convergence point where versatility meets marketing strategy.

Developing Your Video Marketing Strategy

There is no hard-and-fast rule about what is the perfect method for video marketing. It all depends on the needs of the business and the type of promotion that you are attempting. Having said that, here are a few key guidelines you will want to keep across the board:

Allocating resources

Before starting the shooting process, you need to establish the rough scale of the production. Is it a huge set? Is it for a global or local audience? These questions will help you narrow down the scope. From there you need to look at the quality of equipment you need to hire for the shoot, the crew to handle the set, a good editing software, and a marketing team to push the video once it is done.

Be a storyteller

You need to communicate a meaningful message, not just an advertisement. The video is a versatile format and can do much, but it too has its limits. A video is only as good as the narrative it holds within its frame.

Keep it crisp

The beauty of video is that you can fit a lot into a short amount of time. Though there is no rule saying you have to stick to a particular amount of time, the rule of thumb is that you should keep it as short as possible. The shorter the better. Audiences in general do not spend much time on a video unless it is super interesting. 

Spread it and monitor

When it comes to publishing the video, make sure you hit every platform, social media account and the websites you have access too. You have a lot of tools and platforms at your disposal so use every single one. After that, all that is left to do is to track and analyse the numbers. See who is seeing it, for how long and why.

Why Do Video Marketing?

Connect with your audience

You can talk about trust and your good intentions for the audience all you want but nothing beats getting to see it for yourself. It is true what they say about ‘seeing is believing’. You could try something like a blooper reel, a live Q and A with the audience or a behind-the-scenes shoot to show the audience the human side, they will appreciate the transparency and connect with the brand more.

Better SEO engagement

Posting videos on sites like YouTube, which is owned by Google, will greatly help increase your SEO engagement if you use the right key phrases and tags.

More retention

There is a shift in audiences’ preferences these days. They seem to prefer video formats more and more. The more visually engaging, the better. This preference actually corresponds with a higher retention level. Visuals engage our senses more and so the recall is better.

The point at the end of the day is to make things easier for the audience. The less effort they have to put in purchasing a product or understanding a business, the better for you. The modern audience wants to be catered to as much as possible and a business that takes care of that is a successful one.

Types of Videos

Types Of Videos

Demo videos

If you want to showcase your new product or service and explain to the audience how it works, then this is the perfect format to adopt.

Brand videos

This type of video is a small part of the overall marketing campaign to raise brand awareness. It showcases the business’s mission, vision, products, services and so one.

Event videos

These videos are essentially short reels that make the audience aware of any events you are hosting or are going to a part of like fundraisers, panel discussions and competitions. It is like a behind–the-scenes kind of video.

Expert interviews

Getting bytes and short clips of industry leaders who are experts in the field can lend itself to establishing your business’s authority and authenticity with the audience. Influencers are also a great option. Check out our article on influencer marketing to learn more about that.

Live videos

The live format is a great way to make your audience feel like they are a part of the action. It also presents an opportunity to interact with them instantly. This back-and-forth communication will show them that your platform is on their level. Your business will establish rapport with them.

VR and AR videos

These are relatively new and developing formats but good options nonetheless. VR or virtual reality is when an audience is transported to a digitally created space. AR or augmented reality is when that digital space is layered over what the audience is currently seeing, like a hologram in the middle of a living room. The point is they are excellent venues to give your audience an immersive viewing experience and show them that you are ahead of the curve.

The Technical Execution Of The Video

Regardless of the type of video you choose to execute, you need to follow certain steps in order to ensure a smooth and thorough process.

The plan

Before any of the actual shooting or editing can take place, you need to have a direction. Figure out the angle of the video. What is the exact message that the audience needs to hear? The more you can narrow it down the faster the shooting process will go when the time comes. When you are planning, try to think of the timeline of when you would ideally need to get it out, the budget needed and who the target audience is to name a few parameters.

The script

Though off-the-cuff shoots can be dramatic and authentic, that usually does not work for advertisements or marketing videos. A script is a crucial part of any shoot and it can save you tons of time down the line. A detailed script means a more fluid production. A good rule of thumb when it comes to scripts is that one page of a script is generally representative of one minute of screen time. So, keeping in mind that you need to keep it short, you will get an idea of how many pages to write.

The shoot

The next step is to actually shoot the video. Set up the studio, make sure you have all the equipment and the talent is ready as well. High-quality equipment and good actors ensure a better end product. Nowadays you can get away with shooting on iPhones though. Phones have increasingly higher camera resolutions. It majorly depends on your creativity.

But no matter how good the equipment it will be a waste if you do not hire a crew that knows what they are doing. This means handling shoot schedules, visual compositions, getting the right background music, making sure to use the right lighting and so on.

Editing

People often mistake this stage as the point where you ‘fix’ the footage. No, editing is simply the stage where you put the footage together in a manner that is pleasing and logical. Sometimes mistakes might slip through and can be managed in the edit bay but there should be minimal mistakes over-all. Your script, planning and hiring of the right crew should have ensured that there were no mistakes. Do not rely on editing to fix the mistakes. This ensures a habit of maintaining a higher quality of work during production.

Technical execution of videos
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Not everyone can become an influencer from the get-go. The market is saturated with video content. It needs a strong marketing strategy to back it up in order to be successful.

Challenges To Keep An Eye On

Video marketing may seem simple but as you might have noticed, there are a lot of steps and nuances that make a quality output. To achieve that quality, you need to put in time and effort with a healthy mix of good talent. This should yield the perfect recipe for your video marketing strategy.

It also helps to keep in mind that video marketing is simply a small part of the overall marketing and brand awareness campaign. Check out our article on ‘marketing’ to get an idea of the bigger picture.

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]]> https://dutchuncles.in/aspire/video-marketing-done-right-the-window-to-the-audiences-soul/feed/ 0 Advertisement, The Art of Standing Out from the Crowd https://dutchuncles.in/aspire/advertisement-the-art-of-standing-out-from-the-crowd/ https://dutchuncles.in/aspire/advertisement-the-art-of-standing-out-from-the-crowd/#respond Fri, 01 Jan 2021 22:23:16 +0000 https://dutchuncles.in/demo/?p=5365 We currently live in a world where any product/service you are selling, several other companies are doing the same thing. Most of the companies have the same offers, similar prices, and quality as well. So how can you stand out from your competitors? Here come advertisements as it can do wonders for you. Advertisement is […]

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We currently live in a world where any product/service you are selling, several other companies are doing the same thing. Most of the companies have the same offers, similar prices, and quality as well. So how can you stand out from your competitors? Here come advertisements as it can do wonders for you. Advertisement is addressing people in general with the help of visual and/or oral messages. It has always managed to connect brands with their target market. Advertising your product/service will help to inform consumers about your product and also, potentially increase sales.

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A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.

- David Ogilvy

Features of Advertisement

Every bottle of water in most parts of India is still referred to as Bisleri. This is nothing but an excellent example of how advertisement can be a complete game-changer. When it had launched its first print Ad back in the 1980s, it got popular with a punchline: “Bisleri is veri veri extraordinari.” The spellings here were designed in a way to capture consumer’s attention. Also, Bisleri Ads have been popular ever since, the Bisleri Camel Ad taking the cake. Be it print or electronic, advertisements are observed to have a set of features mentioned below:

Paid communication

Advertisement is an attempt to attract consumers by spending money to communicate information. If there is no expenditure incurred while giving information relating to your product/service, it will not be considered as an advertisement. For example, a newspaper publishes a review of your product on its own. It will convey the necessary information and promote your product but it will not be considered as an advertisement. This is because no expenditure was incurred from your pockets.

Creatively stimulating

Advertisement is all about creativity. A good advertisement is always creatively stimulating. It makes your advertisement stand out from the rest of the competitors with ease. Advertisements with a great creative edge tend to stay in people’s mind even after years. The popular Nirma jingle used in its advertisement is proof of how creativity can change your product’s destiny.

Focused on large masses (non-personal)

Advertisement is not meant to target a few people but masses. If you are promoting your product on television, everyone who sees it has the potential to be your consumer. It is focused for large groups of people and hence, usually, mass communication mediums are used in an advertisement.

Gives information

An advertisement informs a potential audience about your product/service. It also highlights the benefits it has to offer, compelling you to buy the product. It increases consumer’s awareness regarding what your product does, its potential benefits and why it is worth their money.

Target-oriented

Advertisements are developed keeping in mind the target audience and market. The behaviour of the target audience is analysed while creating an advertisement. Based on who the advertisement is for, themes, props, slogans and storylines are created. The way Kinder Joy advertises a toy along with chocolate, attracting its target audience, the kids, to buy their product.

Peruse and attract customers

The reason why advertising is such a huge industry is that it peruses and attracts customers. Companies don’t mind pumping in millions of dollars on their advertisement campaigns because they are aware of their potential and significance. The advertisement provides information and benefits of your product/service to the customers, luring them to make a purchase.

Speed and large-scale communication

Since the advertisement is usually targeted towards the masses, it is speedy and helps to communicate with the audience on a large scale. It helps in reaching your product/services to millions of people at the same time. It increases the public awareness of the brand by promoting it on a large-scale. 

How advertising benefits a business?

Advertisements should be aligned with the overall goal of your business. The brand image you want to create in front of the masses will be the bases of your advertisement campaigns. The benefits of advertising your product/service include:

Boost sales

Advertisements have a direct impact on boosting sales as well as increasing the return on investment (ROI). They target both your current as well as your potential customers. Using social media is one of the cost-effective methods to boost your sales. Boosting sales and increasing the return on investment helps in expanding your business and venture in new territories. These days, digital advertising solutions are all the rage.

Helps to spread the word

Whether you are launching a range of new products or offering a sale on your existing stock, you want to inform it to as many customers and potential customers as you can. This is where advertisement comes in the picture. Advertising is a way of communicating to a huge crowd and reaching the masses. It is a great medium of spreading the word regarding your products, offers or any news about your business.  

Increases awareness of the brand

Advertisement over the decades has proven to be a game-changer in increasing brand and product awareness. Whether you are launching a new product or want to promote your business, they are several mediums to go about it. Also, having an enhanced brand/product image will increase your competitive advantage.

Attracts new buyers

Advertisement does help in spreading information about your product and raise awareness regarding it. Additionally, it can play a crucial role in converting a seller’s awareness of attraction towards the product. This will help you to get the sellers one step deeper in the sales funnel. Have buyers and potential buyers not only know about your products but also get attracted to it. Advertisement is a great way to move further into the sales funnel and encourage the purchase of buyers.  

Aids in helping you stand out from your competition

There are several competitors every day in any and every business. Each trying to stand out from the rest. This demands marketing and advertising be conducted innovatively and creatively. Impactful advertisements will help in making your product stand out from the competition. Use your advertisements to highlight the USP of your product whether that is its quality, price, added value or quantity.

Helps to educate customers

Educating your customers will help to convince them about how your product/service will benefit them and satisfy their needs. Advertisement is a great way to share with the masses how a product/service will help fulfilling their needs. Educating your customers about the benefits of your product/service will help in building a sense of trust amongst them.

Enhances the goodwill of your business

Successful branding is when the very image of your brand is enhanced by conducting effective advertising campaigns. Creating a positive image of your brand overall will help in increasing its goodwill. Use advertisements to your advantage for improving the positioning of your brand and enhancing its current perception. These types of advertisements are usually aligned with the core values of a company.

The advertisement space has proven time and again how it can change the course of a company. It is not about pumping thousands of dollars in your advertising campaigns. Instead, it is about investing selectively and efficiently in campaigns that make an impact on your target audience. Conduct deep research about the behaviour of your consumer to know what compels them to buy a certain product/service. Also, read our article on ‘advertising’ to have a much deeper understanding of it.

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