Digital Marketing – Dutch Uncles

Digital Marketing Automation: The Step-by-Step Approach

Abhilash Bapanasha — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 10:33:43 +0000

Digital Marketing Automation promises great outcomes; more leads, conversions and sales, all with less labour. Automation-using companies have seen their leads and sales grow, delivering sales productivity of 14% and market overhead reductions of 12%. Redirect Focus, Reallocate Budget, Support Customer Interactions and Gather Meaningful Analytics are some of the strategies to integrate digital marketing automation effortlessly into your marketing strategy. In order to address these, Mr. Ram Jalan was our speaker for MentorED, a weekly live 45-minute workshop where industry veterans share their knowledge and experience and discuss topics that are apt and relevant to the start-up and small business fraternity.

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I have always experienced that marketing is always considered as a cost centre. I think it is high time we consider marketing as a revenue centre, because your reason to exist is itself a cost.

Mr. Ram Jalan has seventeen years of experience as an entrepreneur, marketer, researcher and internet evangelist. He is Co-founder of DINTW, a Marketing Automation and Consumer Neuroscience Lead Digital Company; Executive Director of a hyper local news outfit Ten News; Angel Investor in a B2B Footwear ERP platform. He has served several brands like Emami, Reliance Industries, IMImobile-UK, AskMe-Malaysia, Batelco (Bahrain) and has successfully implemented Digital Transformation Projects at Askme, Wave Group and Omaxe.

In brief, the session had insights on the following:

Reactive Marketing, Database Marketing, Targeting and Segmentation, Trigger Based Marketing, Email Marketing, Social Media and Content, Lead Management, Sales Enablement and Business Intelligence

It is all about Customer and Consequences

“Fundamentals of any marketing or any customer outreach revolves around consumer and the consequences.” As Mr. Ram Jalan opined, digital marketing automation has gained momentum in the last several years now and the pandemic has further accelerated the process. A high usage of the internet, rather demanded by adversities brought by the pandemic during the last eighteen months has made it climb slots on the ladder. “There are internet first brands who have generated more than 2000 crore revenue.” Also, there is a paradigm shift Internet pure business with zero fixed costs coupled with low ownership and more subscription approach.

With many changes taking place, it is also a time for a transformation at the organisational front. Thereafter, he listed five different forms of customers and it needs to be streamlined in which category one’s target customers are located.

Thereafter, the mentor elucidated a typical marketing model framework. “I have always experienced that marketing is always considered as a cost centre. I think it is high time we consider marketing as a revenue centre, because your reason to exist is itself a cost. From day one, you are incurring a fixed cost. Therefore, marketing should be considered as a revenue investment.” He further talked about the different stages of marketing from the awareness stage where a brand introduces oneself to the prospective customer mainly registering their presence and offering a solution.

Engagement follows awareness wherein the prospect’s information has to be collected. But that appears difficult without selling a unique or emergency product. But again, to convert the prospect into a subscriber, social media outreach is the way. An advantage that social media automation offers is brand listening which is nothing but a means to know what prospects and customers think about.

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I always feel that insource and outsource is a great marriage, you should have the right combination of resources inside who are great managers, who can manage people, who can manage partners and run the campaign.

An integrative and consistent approach – Need of the hour

“You will find a common thing across all your marketing outreach strategies that your customer journey should be mapped, then your marketing to sales to customer service should be dating with each other. They should not be working in silos, they should be interacting and then only your marketing to sales to customer service handoff will be smooth, you must have a pricing strategy. Forget those days when we used to say that one size fits all, it does not happen for any e-commerce brand.” Thus, digital marketing has to be an integrated approach with each of the channels generating revenue in unison and not in isolation.

Consistency is vital too. “If you keep switching off and switching on your car frequently, you burn more fuel. It is better to hold on to a constant campaign or a digital marketing outreach rather than switching it on and off.”

Audience Asks

For me, marketing or promotion leads to better reach, But the number of sales is very insignificant. What should I do?

That is a problem that exists. See, I do not know the category of your business, whether it is B2C or B2B. But one thing is for sure, in B2B business, the sales cycle is long. Rather than assessing immediately what is the sales conversion, I think it is very important to assess how my prospect is engaging with the brand. Are the prospects opening your emails regularly? Are the prospects engaging with you on social media, all-in-one marketing plans help you gather that information about whether the person is visiting your website. So, look at those matrices, look at those data points, before you start, try to convert the prospect and that would also see and define your buying journey, the next set of sales.

Can OTT platforms help in reaching marketing goals? Isn’t it too expensive?

OTT is a great platform. I mean, with forty-five to fifty percent of the internet users active today. Going on an OTT platform, whether it is free or paid content, you definitely have your share of eyeballs coming there. I think it is a very good alternative to get pricing, which is very expensive. For a ten second slot, what you pay on OTT, is one tenth of what you pay on television, forget about the Primetime events like IPL, etc. But it is a great platform to start. It is not expensive at all, if you look at the ROI of language.

The mentor is hopeful of the arena as an effective means of client communication that is emerging with an upward thrust. He suggested, “A low resource or trying to impose all marketing activities on one individual or two individuals does not give you optimum performance. I always feel that insource and outsource is a great marriage, you should have the right combination of resources inside who are great managers, who can manage people, who can manage partners and run the campaign.”

Watch the complete video on YouTube to get the complete idea of how to actualise it in your business.

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Rite KnowledgeLabs, The Corporate Read To Digital Content

Aakash Sharma — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 08:35:07 +0000

As challenging as the past one and a half year has been due to destruction by COVID-19 and financial hardships exacerbated by the global pandemic, it is undeniable that these unprecedented situations have brought about catalysing changes.

The world as it was undergoing an almost complete transition. Students had to get accustomed to online education, governments met virtually for policymaking, businesses even the Kirana stores – had to shift to easy-to-use online channels, and most importantly, remote work-from-home became a reality for entrepreneurs and employees worldwide.

The figures from last year show a worrying and sad reality as 26.6 percent of the female workforce moved out of the labour force, juxtaposed to the 13.4 percent of men. But women entrepreneurs have certainly used the technological shift to boost their business journey by overcoming the traditional barriers in remote working, operations management, hiring and networking.

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With accelerated adoption of digital platforms and an overall shift towards virtual interactions, one of the key benefits has been the creation of a level playing field for women in business and technology.

One such entrepreneur, who has grown into one of the most successful businesswomen in the digital marketing agency and online content space, is Ms. Zahara Kanchwalla.

Zahara Kanchwalla – Pioneering the idea of content-first

Zahara Kanchwalla is the Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Rite KnowledgeLabs, a content-first digital agency founded to address the need gap in specialised, thought leadership content. She is the company’s COO and is responsible for providing operational leadership and ensuring service delivery quality.

She works closely with clients across diverse digital stakeholder communications and thought-leadership programmes, anchoring relationships and ensuring the service delivery exceeds expectations right from the take-off to the finish.

Previous stints of Zahara Kanchwalla

Zahara Kanchwalla has over 17 years of industry experience. She has worked with several multinational and leading Indian organisations in business communications, content publishing, e-learning, IT and training.

Before co-founding Rite KnowledgeLabs, she held the Content and Publishing Head position at Ketchum Sampark and Riteverses. Previously, she worked at Tech Mahindra in marketing and communications and was responsible for overall content and knowledge management.

Zahara Kanchwalla success mantra – what can you learn?

There are many essential qualities, hard to learn practices and diligent abilities that go into making a successful entrepreneur. From Zahara Kanchwalla, aspiring entrepreneurs can learn numerous tenets to start and establish themselves in the industry.

According to her, boosting one’s professional network digitally is imperative in today’s world. Networking in pre-pandemic times meant physically attending events or staying back to socialising post the working hours. But today, with remote work setup, online teams and virtual businesses have become a norm, and give an excellent opportunity to benefit from virtual networking.

Kanchwallaalso puts much emphasis on setting boundaries between one’s professional and personal life. With professional and personal roles simultaneously happening out of the home, it can be overwhelmingly difficult to strike a balance between the two. However, with proper planning and boundaries, one can ensure that both aspects of their life run smoothly.

In a nutshell, the post-pandemic digital industry is ripe with opportunities; all you have to do is utilise your skills and resources with the best possible strategy and intelligent investments. Like Zahara Kanchwalla’ over five years old Rite KnowledgeLabs, with the right tools and skillset, you too can start on a path of growth and success in this rapidly digitising era.

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Being a Part of YouTube, This is How SimSim Can Achieve its Mission

DU Desk — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 08:35:07 +0000

As smartphones and data plans become more affordable, the gambit of online shopping will penetrate deeper into the tier-2 and tier-3 cities of India. The new internet shoppers from India are craving an interactive seller-led experience resembling the offline e-commerce experience. The buying decisions of online shoppers today are largely influenced by product video demonstrations which are engaging. People find online videos to be the primary source of information regarding a product or service review, its functioning, etc.

To align with the new shopping behaviour, the e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart have introduced their respective ad-supported video streaming services where users can watch video content on products and services, translating to increased sales since consumers will buy what they see.

According to FICCI-EY Media and Entertainment Report 2021, the number of video viewers has increased by 15% in 2020 to reach 468 million and this number is expected to grow to 650 million by 2023.

Social commerce platforms like SimSim -a Google-backed firm, that targets shoppers from India’s small cities and towns are not behind in video-based shopping as well. The platform leverages the power of video content and micro-influencers to attract customers and has been recently acquired by YouTube.

YouTube acquiring Social Commerce Startup SimSim

Since consumer social platforms like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube cannot meaningfully monetise through advertising finance models, this acquisition will benefit YouTube to build a new integrated shopping experience that will allow viewers to buy products they see in videos from trusted creators and will offer new revenue streams for micro-influencers that will increase retention on its platforms and expand the user base of YouTube.

SimSim in its short span of two years in 2020 has acquired $17 million in its Series B financing round.

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According to FICCI-EY Media and Entertainment Report 2021, the number of video viewers has increased by 15% in 2020 to reach 468 million and this number is expected to grow to 650 million by 2023.

How this Acquisition will benefit SimSim

Leveraging YouTube’s expansive reach of 450 million users in India, SimSim plans to help small sellers and brands by showcasing and selling their products using the power of content creators on YouTube’s platform will aid to increase the reach and customer base of SimSim in remote parts of India.

Video Marketing and Micro-influencers: The game-changers in e-commerce

Here are the reasons why social commerce platforms are widely using product videos and micro-influencers in their platforms:

Major Influencer in purchasing decision

Informative and demonstrative product videos will influence customers in making purchases due to the better representation of a product’s unique selling proposition.

Builds Customer trust and credibility

Appealing video content from micro-influencers builds trust and credibility among customers as the audience perceives them to be one of them and easily connects with their ideologies. This also increases a brand’s website conversion and traffic.

Niche Audience and Loyal Brand advocates

Micro-influencers, through their unique content creation style, target a narrower section of the audience, where the engagement rates are higher.

The best advertisement a brand can receive is from those individuals who are already using the products. Micro-influencers fall in these categories and this makes them loyal brand advocates. Sellers on social commerce platforms do not need to maximise efforts to develop the brand relationship from scratch.

What Lies Ahead for the Social Commerce Startups

According to a report from Bain & Company, the overall social commerce market is expected to grow to $16-20 billion by 2025 from a $2 billion market in 2020. The tailwinds to the growth of social commerce startups will be a deeper reach of the internet and increasing aspirations for a better life. Social commerce will leverage the emerging number of micro and vernacular influencers to showcase small sellers and business products on online platforms through interactive video content.

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Digital Marketing Automation – The Step-by-Step Approach

Sapna Bhardwaj — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 10:38:42 +0000

Agenda

Speakers

Takeaways

Discussion

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3×3 Content Strategy Landscape for B2B Marketers

DU Desk — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 12:06:04 +0000

The ongoing pandemic has thrown a curveball across businesses, making entrepreneurs, founders, businessmen contemplate their existing strategies and adjust the same as per the changing scenario.

Speaking in terms of content marketing for B2B businesses, there has been a complete overhaul, as the majority of the offline strategies is a thing of the past. This is coupled with breaking the digital barriers to reach the target audience. Sellers and marketers will have to think differently and adopt strategies that will help them deliver better.

In a bid to have a comprehensive view and understanding, we spoke with an independent content strategist and founder of Story Scientist, Nischala Agnihotri, who was a part of the live show on ‘3×3 Content Strategy Landscape for B2B Marketers’ hosted by Dutch Uncles. These weekly live shows are a part of the company’s ‘MentorED’ series.

The workshop, moderated by Associate Editor Chetna Gupta, elaborated on the new-age content strategies and relevant tools that businesses need to invest in.

Below are the few highlights of insights shared by Agnihotri:

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In order to understand the content strategy landscape, one needs to be able to find the right balance between quality and quantity, while also making sure that it is something the audience wants.

How would you define content strategy?

It should be the right content mix, content theme, and culture, rather than behavioural culture. Functionality and emotionality make up for quality content. Now the question arises — Why would we choose branding as our goal?

Branding is as essential to start-ups as it is to any other industry player in the market. It is important from a visual perspective but first, you need to figure out the position and statement that you wish to make. It is the expression of the culture within your company and is essentially an identity you want to portray to your customers. It is also very important to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Branding is there to help you stand apart from the crowd, especially in the foetal stages when your business is not as well-known as most other names out there. This is where branding, as a goal, comes into play.

On the other side of things, we also need to look at content production in terms of marketing and strategy. But you must understand first – why we do it.

- - Do you know who your audience are and where do they live?
  - In terms of channels, what formats do they prefer?
  - Would they consume your content and when would they consume it?

Once these questions are answered, that’s when you go and start distributing it. A content marketer gathers enough data and does enough research to be able to understand this flow.

When it comes to content production, that is where the actual execution starts, you start creating as much content as necessary. At the same time, you play with the right amount of quality at the right quantity. The third step in this process is that we need to discover options. You need to figure out your goal in order to do that.

How do you smartly budget and invest in content marketing?

Our speaker states that this aspect is typically side-lined. The answer to that is to be able to use the content strategy landscape that’s designed for B2B marketers and spread out the efforts amongst the team responsible for the content. It’s not just the marketer or the content writer or the content strategist, it is with tech companies.

Content actually also comes from the engineers, the teams who actually work directly for the client. So, this grid-based strategy takes all these factors into consideration.

It helps us figure out how to work with themes and prioritise which content will be produced, published and distributed based on the goals that we are targeting. The ultimate goal is to align the buyer journey with content and communication paths while strengthening organic search. If you are in the marketing space, then you strengthen your organic search and get your business found using SEO.

The floor was then thrown open to questions. Edited excerpts:

Audience Q&A

How do quality and quantity work? How do we balance the content?

Speaker: For quality, like I said, please stick to those three elements mentioned earlier – Make it essential, make it functional and make it emotional.

When I say essential, these are things like product features and pricing, which you can not miss. Without that, there is no communication to be had.

On the other hand, when you look at something like, ‘How do I make it functional?’, just imagine you are publishing a very long article on a platform like, let’s say Instagram, which needs images as well. So, they would love to see arousals that you have repurposed from an existing blog. People on Twitter would prefer just the gist. They don’t have time for anything more. Only if they love what you have written in those limited 200 characters, will they click on the link. So, it’s really about maintaining that quality. If you know your audience, you will be able to get an emotional response. For example, you know your mother well enough that you will be able to get her the gift of her choice and similarly with your spouse. You know what will be the right gift for them.

In the same way, you should be able to know your audience so that you are able to invoke the desired emotion.

Quantity does not have a lot to do with your budget and this is specific to start-ups, especially those in the growth stage who are not so bound by budgetary constraints. Yes, they do have a framework of budget, they have a set boundary, but they are not really tied by it. They can play around with quantities. You have to go back to your budget and see if that is going to work for you. So that is where you bring the combination of quantity and quantity.

How do I verify initial pieces of content?

Speaker: Use the 3×3 grid, because it helps you decide where you have to start. It is especially useful when you do not have data. You do not know what your audiences like, but you go by a simple formula that is given in the 3×3 grid. If you do have data, every cell in that grid has exceptions.

It will not, however, work for certain scenarios. In that case, you switch to something else.

How do you build the initial pieces of content? You need to be able to give me more information on who you want to build it for and then figure out where you have to invest. This is because, say, an HR professional or the leader of a company, would not be interested in social media posts all the time, or they may not notice you all the time? Rather, they would want to have elaborate case studies and would want to hear how the company has been able to make a difference. So, it is really about who your audience is. If you have done that right, you will definitely see results.

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Competition and the ability to identifying it plays a big role in content strategy. At the end of the day, you need to be able to differentiate your business from the rest of the players.

How important is content-linking within the website?

Speaker: When you have a page that has a high ranking and you have other pages that you want to rank, especially when you have your root keyword ranking page that gets a lot of traffic versus other blog pages that are made for long tail keywords, it is highly important that you link the two.

This is important especially if you have a related posts plugin or you have any other way of linking your main landing page to the blog pages, that is going to give you a lot of traction.

I think before you do your off-page work, some amount of on page internal linking should be done.

Is it important to use different types of content strategy?

Speaker: You are dealing with humans who are emotional and want variety. The thing is, sometimes a single type of format really works well with a certain audience, but only up to a certain point. When you are competent or get more creative, you will get into trouble. Reverting becomes highly difficult when you have to move from one content format to another.

Besides, your team has been accustomed to a particular content format for a very long time. Switching will lead to internal friction. So, it is best you go with a minimal mix of content formats and figure out the top three. You do not have to do 10 different ones to start with; figure out the top three that work for your audience, which they would love to consume and then just go ahead and publish that. This way, pivoting becomes very easy.

Is it possible to make the content evergreen so that it remains of the same value even after a year?

Speaker: It is possible to make your content evergreen, depending on the sector. Especially if it is educational content and you are targeting the top of the funnel. There are some all-time favorite companies for marketers, my personal favourite being HubSpot.

It is highly possible that those kinds of people retain the content as there is always a fresh audience coming into the space over and over again and they want to look at educational content all the time.

Nowadays, a lot of product companies, barring e-learning platforms, are choosing to post around six videos or a 10-video tutorial that can help the audience understand the product. A blind formula for creating evergreen content is to make it into a course format. That could be a 10-day email course which would include five to six videos that you publish on your website or it could be 10 different long-form articles elaborating step-by-step procedure on solving a particular problem. These things work well as evergreen content and good quality traffic to your domain.

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Is Digital Marketing Emerging as a Good Career Option Post Covid-19?

Anju Nambiar — Fri, 21 May 2021 06:05:04 +0000

How is Digital Marketing helping small businesses post covid-19?

The beauty about the Digital Marketing Industry is that you can learn about the latest trends and strategies in this sector through online courses. Due to Covid-19, offline businesses have gone online, and they need it to increase their outreach to consumers. As such, several career opportunities have opened up in this sector.

Digital Marketing also fits in well with the Work from Home (WFH) lifestyle. There are opportunities for job candidates and employees to skill up. The online world is driving business amidst movement restrictions as consumers can purchase products and services from the comfort of their home.

Its also levelling the field for smaller players to be on equal footing with the big fish. Brands (mainly small) and even big manufacturers are awarding duties like Social Media Management, Digital Strategy Planning, and Public Relations to agencies. This is being done to effuse the creative thought process of agencies with the brand’s ideology for results.

Media agencies are empowering small businesses through Digital Marketing. They are setting benchmarks for them through novel methods, unique approaches so that effective results can be achieved mainly by way of sales and revenue.

Trending career options in digital marketing

Digital marketing is a very big world which is mainly driven by online content. Online courses will help young and aspiring marketers to make a place for themselves in the industry. Undergraduates and graduates can upskill, make way for their career advancement and obtain business exposure.

Entrepreneurs are swearing by highly skilled digital marketers. Since the competition is tough in this space, they need to hire professionals at the top of their game to gain an edge over competitors online. Digital Marketing experts can enable start-ups and small businesses to grow through online platforms by creating the right image for them in front of millions of internet users.

Digital Marketing Management

This career path entails brand awareness strategies to market products and services using technology tools. Management professionals are responsible for improving traffic for your online presence, whether it’s a website, social profile, or business listing.

SEO Analysis

SEO Analysts drive traffic, analyse data, and consumer behaviour. This career path requires knowledge of keyword research, search engine algorithms, link building, and Search Engine Marketing.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing involves in-depth familiarity with a variety of social networking platforms, and the kind of engagement that works well on each of them. Social Media Marketing requires the creation of social campaigns, and performance reviews for these campaigns.

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Due to Covid-19, offline businesses have gone online, and they need Digital Marketing to increase their outreach to consumers.

What’s in it for me?

No matter what business you are in, you stand to gain immensely through digital marketing as a start-up. Even big financial institutions like Bank of Baroda have realised the need for a digital marketing strategy. They want to improve their online visibility through influencer tie-ups, content syndications, and new age media opportunities.

If you are a student, you can avail courses online by agencies to learn practise-oriented strategies. This will help aspirants to assist businesses (especially small) to thrive online and thus make a career in this field.

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5 Reasons Why SaaS Marketing Fails

Avijit Dutta — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 16:08:21 +0000

Benefits of adapting to SaaS are evident, then why is it so hard to market SaaS products to traditional Indian businessmen.

SaaS industry is promising a great deal of growth. By 2025 the SaaS opportunity, only within the SMB (Small and Medium Business) segment, is estimated to be US $5-10Bn. Moreover, as per NAASCOM, there is significant uptick in interest among the SMBs for SAAS products. Astonishingly, these opportunities are proving latent to potential customers in India. Sample this: India has 6 SAAS unicorns with Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) more than $1Bn. However, 60% of their revenue comes from the global market. 70% of the Indian SaaS companies (with ARR>$50Mn) have built products for both SMB as well as enterprises. The question arises- Why, in spite of interest, India’s overlooking the use of SaaS? A clear explanation lies in understanding the marketing fails of SaaS.

It seems that there is a slow adaption of SaaS products by Indian companies, especially the Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). If the apparent benefits of adapting to SaaS are evident, then why is it so hard to market SaaS products to traditional Indian businessmen? To explore the top five challenges in marketing SaaS products to SMBs in India, one needs to dissect the selling process.

How a SaaS product is sold?

The whole idea of marketing and sales of a SaaS product starts from a) identifying a suspect b) converting her into a prospect, and finally c) into a paying customer. It happens through the following phases of development:

Awareness

Education

Selection

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A great first experience is the mandate for a successful closure. The post-trial period is a good indicator of that.

Awareness

Many times an SMB owner might not be aware of the problem he/she is having. This is particularly true for traditional businesses because they have been doing the same work for generations manually and might have developed a blind spot to recognize the need for process improvement through automation or digitization. Therefore, having the awareness of a problem is the foremost requirement in the buyer’s journey. Awareness of a problem provides the motivation required for searching for a solution.

Education

In this phase, a buyer is exploring how others are solving a similar problem that he/she is facing. In this state of mind, the buyer is ready for learning about various possible solutions including SaaS products in the market. This is the right phase for prospecting these buyers.

Selection

Once the buyer has acquired information about competing products and existing solutions relevant to him or her, a purchase or rejection decision is made. In large companies, this decision making might take longer because of the involvement of multiple stakeholders. However, for SMBs, this is fairly quick because typically the owner of the business takes a call.

5 reasons behind marketing fails for SaaS

#1 Poor Discoverability:

Incorrect Prospecting

Any product is a solution to a problem. The person facing the problem has to know that the solution exists. Therefore, SaaS product companies have to be visible to their target customers. One way to do this is by going where your customers are. In the digital world, that means being present in the relevant social media forums and platforms. The challenge with many traditional SMB businessmen is that they are not very familiar to the online platforms. So, a pertinent question to ask is: Is the marketing communication reaching the right set of audience?

Poorly executed Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy

At the early stage of the venture, SaaS entrepreneurs may not have the resources and the know-how to reach to his/her target customers. Moreover, a typical SaaS Founder is more of a tech genius than a marketing person. Hence, instead of building a well-researched go-to-market strategy, they rely on run-of-the-mill digital marketing agencies and their standard marketing approaches for user acquisition. A poorly articulated, poorly executed and ill-measured marketing strategy invariably results into sub-par outcome.

Not measuring right marketing metrics

Marketing is an iterative process. We never know at the beginning what strategy and/or tactics will work. Therefore, the only way to get to a strategy that works is to start with one, measure the right metrics and refine approaches based on the insights gathered in the previous run.

Language of marketing communication

Lastly, focus on the language. As per Indian constitution, there are 22 regional languages in India. Though English is an official language in the country, not many SMB business owners are comfortable in that language, especially the ones from tier 2 or tier 3 cities and townships. Having the entire marketing communication in English obviates a large section of the SMB business owners out of the marketing funnel.

#2 Mindset of SMB:

Let us assume a buyer persona from the SMB segment- A male, in his fifties, operating from a tier-2 or tier-3 city running a traditional business relying on manual processes. It is likely that he has experienced digital technology only recently with an upgrade from his feature to a smart phone that too when his daughter insisted. He might have a couple of computers being used by his employees or his son who helps him in the business. This man has spent his youth watching only two channels on television (Doordarshan), a couple on radio (AIR), and perhaps only Ambassador/Alto as a fancy car on the road. It is his entrepreneurial spirit, grit and hard work that have got him to where he is today i.e., owning a decently sized business and even providing livelihood to others in his small town. There’s no wonder he counts every dime and never spends without ROI.

On the other hand, a SaaS start-up Founder is university educated, likely a technology graduate who started to code at the age of 15, has the most advanced and most expensive gadgets for work and entertainment. He follows Elon Mask as his unofficial mentor, knows all the venture capital partners by heart, believes in the potential of the India story and a dreamer who wants to become a millionaire before his next birthday.

The challenge is to build a bridge between these two, bring them on the same page to solve the same problem. The gap in the mindsets is huge. On one side we have fear of technology, resistance to change, convenience of business as usual, sometimes even a lack of vision. On the other side there is impatience to embrace the ‘logical’ next step of using technology and open the door to exuberance of productivity, and growth.

Roadblocks:

Fear of technology

Lack of vision: Unable to see value/benefit

Change resistance, preference to business as usual

Price sensitivity, e.g., Obsession with ‘free’

#3 Switching Cost & customer lock-in:

A switching cost is the cost or effort a user needs to put-in to change the service provider. For example, if you are using a service provider ‘A’ for your mobile connection and later you want to switch to another service provider ‘B’ for whatever reason, how easy or difficult it is for you to migrate, defines the switching cost in this context. If there is no number portability, changing your service provider would mean you have to give away your number which may not be a preference. In that context switching cost would be high and you might be locked-in to service provider ‘A’ until you are willing to let go your number. Making number portability mandatory (by regulation, e.g., TRAI) reduces this switching cost to a great extent.

Now the question is, should a SaaS product have a low or high switching cost.

Failing to build trust, loyalty

If the switching cost is high, you can expect to lock-in your customers ensuring stability in revenue. However, your customers may not be as happy because they would be bound to your service even if they have reasons to leave. Hence, they might not subscribe to your service in the first place.

Difficulties locking-in users

If the switching cost is low, customers can feel more empowered and might take your services because they know they can leave if they are not happy later, without many repercussions. It is important to note that your customers will definitely leave if they are not happy with services.

Crowding of market (buyer’s market)

When it comes to competition, there is a dichotomy: if there is no other player in your chosen market probably that market is a myth, if there are a lot of players in the market maybe you are late. Many a times marketing efforts fail because we are solving nobody’s problem, other times we might be solving a problem that has been solved a million times before. In both cases marketing fails to acquire paid users.

#4 Limited interoperability

Portability is the ability to transfer data from one cloud service provider to another without much hassle. Interoperability on the other hand is the capability of the system components (such as application software, storage, security, etc) to function seamlessly in a new cloud environment.

In most cases, data migration is not very cumbersome these days. However, if the SaaS platform being used is not interoperable, customers using the platform for some time may be locked-in even if they want to move to a new cloud service. As discussed in the previous section, customers don’t like losing control over their choice of SaaS service providers. Therefore, well-informed customers will shy away from your SaaS product if they find out that your system has limited interoperability and may not suit their requirements in the long run.

The architecture of the entire SaaS delivery model of the SaaS product is crucial in customer retention. Even if you may get success in getting the customer to trial, he is less likely to renew when he figures out such limitations.

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A typical SaaS Founder is more of a tech genius than a marketing person.

#5 Poor Integration support:

Information and data security are a pertinent concern when using a SaaS platform. Many clients might want to keep the most sensitive data in a private cloud. There may also be some existing applications (in-house or external) the customer might want to continue to use besides the new SaaS product. This invariably leads to a requirement for system integrations for the new SaaS product to be functional for the SMB customer.

Therefore, a great first experience is the mandate for a successful closure. The post-trial period is a good indicator of that. One must deliver a great first experience so that the user converts in to a paid customer after trial period.

Impact of Marketing Fails on SaaS product

When these challenges in marketing and sales are not addresses properly, the SaaS start-up gets a lower ROI on the marketing spend. Customer acquisition cost (CAC) goes up and may become unjustifiable because of lower customer lifetime value (CLTV). Because of lower traction on user acquisition and poor unit economics (money made on every sales) investors might lose confidence on the product, market, or the team. As a result, the start-up might fold prematurely.

For a marketer (CMO/an Agency), it means that they would lose the account because the result they produced did not justify the exuberant fees they charge. They also tend to lose their position of thought leadership and brand value in the market.

The SMB customer who tried his hands at using technology for the first time gets a wrong impression of the usefulness of technology and might slip back to his position of change resistance and comfort of business as usual. Instead of becoming a cheerleader and evangelist for embracing new technology and SaaS products he becomes a naysayer in his network because he had a sub-par experience dealing with it. It might spoil the market for a similar SaaS product and elongate the technology adaptation in a segment which is already sluggish in embracing change.

So, what’s next then?

Well, the India SMB opportunity is a humongous one and the formal economy is only a fraction of the informal and semi-formal SMB economy. Undoubtedly, the benefits of technology adaptation for the SMB are evident. SMBs who would not embrace the change will remain small forever (if not shrunk to non-existence). SaaS entrepreneurs building solutions for SMBs in India would thrive only if they take a holistic approach. After all, problem-solving requires an integrated effort by designers, technology experts, and marketers in order to reach the holy grail of innovation, a product-market-fit.

The industry is brimming with opportunities and businesses are emerging. Sooner or later, someone is going to solve these problems. Are you going to be the one?

Read more on our website on topics like Just out of College? You Are Not Too Young to Start: Studentpreneur.

The post 5 Reasons Why SaaS Marketing Fails appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): A Guide for Beginners

Aakash Sharma — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 14:27:19 +0000

SEO - In this digital age, marketing has transformed in ways like never before.

The new era of marketing, that is ‘digital marketing’, has caught up with marketers and businesses across the world. The internet is a strong medium for businesses, both small and large, to reach vast groups of potential consumers and expand their business rapidly. We are here to discuss Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It has been a key element of digital marketing since its beginning in the late 1990s. SEO is primarily used for increasing a website’s visibility in ‘organic’ search results, i.e., results which are not affected by advertisements.

Let us understand in detail what SEO is and why is it necessary.

SEO and Its Importance

SEO is defined as the process of enhancing the visibility of a website in the unpaid results of a search engine. It is used for increasing the quantity and quality of users and customers who visit a business’s website.

SEO is necessary for every business that is present online, or aspires to create an effective online presence, as it helps in finding your business website on the top result pages of major search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing.

If you run a business, SEO can actually help you in generating more relevant traffic for your business website, leads, sales, and ultimately revenue and profit. It is an extremely valuable tool for your brand’s marketing as well as building relationships with potential customers by making your brand visible to them consistently on top results.

To understand how SEO actually makes all the above-mentioned things possible, it is important to understand how search engines like Google and Yahoo work.

How Do Search Engines Work?

Search engines work as answering machines to all your queries. They discover, understand, and organize the content and information on the internet to give you the most relevant results for your questions.

Without understanding the working process of search engines, it is impossible to understand the significance and functioning of SEO. Basically, search engines are designed to perform three primary functions, that are-

Crawling: Searching for content and looking through the content for each link that the search engine finds on the Internet. It is a discovery process for content and is called crawling. Content, in whatever format it may be in a webpage, image, video, a PDF, etc. is always discovered through its link.

Indexing: Storing and organising the content collected during crawling. This is called page indexing. After a page indexed, i.e., its content is collected; the page is ready to be displayed as a result of related queries. Indexed pages are a huge database of all the content that search engines discover and deem suitable to show to searchers.

Page Ranking: Providing the relevant content that will best answer a searcher’s query, meaning that the search results are ordered by most relevant to least relevant. This is called page ranking. The higher a website is ranked, the more relevant it is perceived to be by the search engine for the related query.

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Search engines discover, understand, and organize the content and information on the internet to give you the most relevant results for your questions.

So, for your business website to show up in search results, it has to be visible to search engines. To understand how to make your website visible on search engines, let’s go through what needs to be done for optimizing a website.

To ‘optimise’ a website, that is, for it to show in top search results of a search engine, search engine optimization (SEO) is done. There are three key processes in SEO, which are:

Keyword Research

On-site (On-page) SEO

Off-site (Off-page) SEO

Keyword Research- Finding the key

The purpose behind finding keywords on search engines is that they tell you what people are searching for on the internet that is related to your business or field of interest. This targeted research helps you to tap into a wide pool of internet users that can be turned into potential customers for whatever your business is offering. Keyword research, hence, is a formative and significant part of SEO. It gives you a better understanding of the demand for certain keywords on the internet, and helps you strategise a way to compete for those keywords in search engine results.

How to search for keywords?

Follow this 8-step strategy to do keyword research for your business website’s SEO.

Analyse your topic of interest

Before getting to keywords for optimizing your website, begin by studying and researching the industry of your business and its other necessary details.

Jot down your goals

Answer all the W-questions for your own understanding and strategic planning of SEO using keywords. W-questions will include- who are you, what is your business about, what is your uniqueness, what is your website about, what services will you give on your website, etc.

Focus on search intent

Search intent is the intent or reason why people search for a specific term. People’s search habits are driven by various factors, and you need to analyse these factors for attracting them to your website. Focus on factors like what are they searching for, do they buy the searched product or just browse for it, etc.

List all the topics related to your business

Prepare a list of subsections and sub-topics of the main aspect of your business. This list will comprise all the topics related to your business that will help your website to rank on search engines. Suppose you are selling shoes and footwear items online. The subcategories/topics can include Men’s Shoes, Women’s Shoes, Formal Shoes, etc.

Create a list of seed keywords

Make a list of seed keywords. These are the keywords that are short and typically one or two words long without any modifiers. The seed keywords should be related to the various subcategories and topics that you listed in the previous step. For example, if the seed keywords for your online shoe store can simply be running shoes, sports shoes, Nike shoes, etc.

Search for long-tail keywords

While seed keywords are short terms, long-tail keywords are more descriptive words that are closely related to your business. These long words describe your businesses’ smaller sub-topics. For example, a long keyword can be ‘size 11 men’s Nike running shoes.

Use good keyword research tools

Always use trusted and reliable keyword research tools. Some of the best tools are Google Keyword Planner and Keyword Tool. These tools help you in shortlisting the right words related to your business/ brand while suggesting additional ideas for related keywords.

Keyword Competition Analysis

By doing keyword competition analysis, you can find out how difficult the ranking process will be using a particular keyword. The competition for a keyword can vary depending on how popular the keyword is and industry competition.

On-Page (On-Site) Optimization

On-page SEO, also known as On-site SEO, is the process of optimizing a website for search engines and users. Along with ranking your website higher on search engines, the purpose of on-page SEO is to optimize and update the design, user experience, content and relativity of your businesses’ website with target audiences.

On-page SEO techniques play a major role in making your website resonate with audiences through with the help of elements like meta tags and content activity. SEO practices generally include improving title tags, content, internal links, and URLs for helping rank your website higher.

Why is On-Page SEO Important?

On-page SEO is important because it helps in getting your website and its content recognized by search engines for relevant searches by your potential customers. Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) play a major role in building the image and presence of your business through websites and web pages in SEO. Search engines like Google understand what users are actually searching for when they type a query and deliver search results that meet the needs of the user.

This all is greatly impacted by SEO. And to ensure that your website is well-optimized according to the latest trends of the SEO and search engine practices, it is necessary to do on-page SEO for text, images, video, or audio content of your website. These are the elements that are visible to the public and play a key role in the SEO process.

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A website’s appeal, relatability and creditworthiness are attained by linking it to other reputable sources on the Internet from behind the scenes.

How does on-page SEO work?

To understand the functioning of on-page SEO, it’s important to understand the following key elements of it:

Title Tag: The title is placed at the header of each webpage of your website. It provides context as to what the topical subject matter of the respective page is on.

Highlighted parts are the examples of SEO Titles

Meta Description: Meta descriptions provide a description of what the page is about, and are often displayed in the SERPs (search engine results pages) underneath the title of the page.

Highlighted parts are the examples of Meta Descriptions

Headlines: A headline is necessary for you to determine if a customer clicks on your website or just sees it. It is necessary to create headlines that interest users and attract them to click through and continue browsing the website.

The highlighted part is an example of a Headline

Header Tags: Header tags are used to identify headings and subheadings within your content from different forms of text.

SEO Writing: SEO writing comprises writing content while keeping both search engines’ and user’s perspective in mind. SEO content has to be refined, apt and relevant.

Content Audit: Auditing helps you evaluate whether your existing content is achieving its goals and gaining ROI. It tells you what you focus should be on while creating relatable and SEO standard content.

Image Optimization: Optimizing images means using high quality HD images to make your website stand out and more attractive.

User Engagement: User engagement means retaining users on your website. To ensure that users do not bounce off your website, your content should interact and resonate with the audiences. To increase user engagement, factors like site speed, user experience, and content optimization, among others, are of key significance.

Off-Page (Off Site) Optimization

Off-page SEO, also known as off-site SEO, consists of actions taken outside of your website to increase the ranking of your website within SERPs. Off-page SEO activities include improving search engine and user interaction of a website.

Why is off-page SEO necessary?

A website’s appeal, relatability and creditworthiness are attained by linking it to other reputable sources on the Internet from behind the scenes; this isn’t visible to the normal users. Linking your website with various credible sources on the internet is that major function of off-page SEO. It expands your business website’s influence by gathering views through links from other sites that are similar to yours.

The relevance, trustworthiness, and authority of a website make it a success. Off-page SEO plays a major role in helping you build a credible website and improves its ability to rank high on SERPs.

How does off-page SEO work?

Creating backlinks, i.e., an incoming hyperlink from one web page to another website is central to off-page SEO. Search engines use backlinks as indications of the linked-to content’s quality. Thus, a website with numerous high-value backlinks ranks better than an otherwise similar site with fewer backlinks.

There are three main types of backlinks that run off-page SEO practices. They are:

Natural links

These links are linked to without any action on the part of a page owner. For example, a food blogger adding a link to a post that points toward their favourite produce farms is a natural link.

Manually Built Links

These are linked to by purposefully link-building activities. For example, the food blogger can add activities on her/his blog, like a website URL, unmoderated blog comments, guest post signatures, advertorials (advertisement + editorial content), embeddable widgets, other user profile pages, etc.

Self-Created Links

These are created by activities such as adding a backlink in an online blog, writing platform, comment signature, etc. with optimized text.

Other than earning links from external websites for off-page SEO, there are other actions too that help your website to get ranked higher. These include:

Social Media Marketing

Using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc., to market your products and services.

Guest Blogging

It refers to getting your website’s content written by an outside writer.

Linked & Business References

This refers to the online references related to your business that are not linked to your site. They present an opportunity to claim new links.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing involves brands collaborating with online influencers to market products or services.

SEO Best Practices

Best SEO strategy helps you know what’s working and what isn’t. SEO is an ever-adjusting approach. It is an ongoing process as you have to keep adding and updating it along the way in order to stay relevant.

SEO best practices are the safest and most effective SEO activities that help you in substantially increasing the visibility of your website. Following are the best and most effective SEO practices:

Align your content with search intent

Write a compelling title tag and meta description

Optimize your images

Optimize your page speed

Use internal linking

Improve the user experience on your website

Include keywords in your URL

Focus on getting more authoritative backlinks

Publish long-form content

Avoid keywords stuffing

Conclusion

In a nutshell, SEO tools are important in helping you increase the value of your website in accordance with the standards of major search engines. And with improved search traffic, it helps you give a major boost to your business.

Now that you are familiar with SEO, you should move to the next best strategy to leverage your gains by SEO into getting substantial business growth. Use SEM- Search Engine Marketing; it is the practice of marketing a business using paid advertisements that appear on search engine results pages. Read more about it on our website.

The post Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): A Guide for Beginners appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Digital Marketing – Dutch Uncles

Digital Marketing Automation: The Step-by-Step Approach

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I have always experienced that marketing is always considered as a cost centre. I think it is high time we consider marketing as a revenue centre, because your reason to exist is itself a cost.

It is all about Customer and Consequences

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I always feel that insource and outsource is a great marriage, you should have the right combination of resources inside who are great managers, who can manage people, who can manage partners and run the campaign.

An integrative and consistent approach – Need of the hour

Audience Asks

For me, marketing or promotion leads to better reach, But the number of sales is very insignificant. What should I do?

Can OTT platforms help in reaching marketing goals? Isn’t it too expensive?

Rite KnowledgeLabs, The Corporate Read To Digital Content

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With accelerated adoption of digital platforms and an overall shift towards virtual interactions, one of the key benefits has been the creation of a level playing field for women in business and technology.

Zahara Kanchwalla – Pioneering the idea of content-first

Previous stints of Zahara Kanchwalla

More content, less clutter: End-to-end, turnkey digital solutions

Zahara Kanchwalla success mantra – what can you learn?

Being a Part of YouTube, This is How SimSim Can Achieve its Mission

YouTube acquiring Social Commerce Startup SimSim

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According to FICCI-EY Media and Entertainment Report 2021, the number of video viewers has increased by 15% in 2020 to reach 468 million and this number is expected to grow to 650 million by 2023.

How this Acquisition will benefit SimSim

Video Marketing and Micro-influencers: The game-changers in e-commerce

Major Influencer in purchasing decision

Builds Customer trust and credibility

Niche Audience and Loyal Brand advocates

What Lies Ahead for the Social Commerce Startups

Digital Marketing Automation – The Step-by-Step Approach

Attendees will get insights into:

3×3 Content Strategy Landscape for B2B Marketers

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In order to understand the content strategy landscape, one needs to be able to find the right balance between quality and quantity, while also making sure that it is something the audience wants.

How would you define content strategy?

How do you smartly budget and invest in content marketing?

Audience Q&A

How do quality and quantity work? How do we balance the content?

How do I verify initial pieces of content?

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Competition and the ability to identifying it plays a big role in content strategy. At the end of the day, you need to be able to differentiate your business from the rest of the players.

How important is content-linking within the website?

Is it important to use different types of content strategy?

Is it possible to make the content evergreen so that it remains of the same value even after a year?

Is Digital Marketing Emerging as a Good Career Option Post Covid-19?

How is Digital Marketing helping small businesses post covid-19?

Trending career options in digital marketing

Digital Marketing Management

SEO Analysis

Social Media Marketing

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Due to Covid-19, offline businesses have gone online, and they need Digital Marketing to increase their outreach to consumers.

What’s in it for me?

5 Reasons Why SaaS Marketing Fails

Benefits of adapting to SaaS are evident, then why is it so hard to market SaaS products to traditional Indian businessmen.

How a SaaS product is sold?

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A great first experience is the mandate for a successful closure. The post-trial period is a good indicator of that.

Awareness

Education

Selection

5 reasons behind marketing fails for SaaS

#1 Poor Discoverability:

Incorrect Prospecting

Poorly executed Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy

Not measuring right marketing metrics

Language of marketing communication

#2 Mindset of SMB:

#3 Switching Cost & customer lock-in:

Failing to build trust, loyalty

Difficulties locking-in users

Crowding of market (buyer’s market)

#4 Limited interoperability

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A typical SaaS Founder is more of a tech genius than a marketing person.

#5 Poor Integration support:

Impact of Marketing Fails on SaaS product

So, what’s next then?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): A Guide for Beginners

SEO - In this digital age, marketing has transformed in ways like never before.

SEO and Its Importance