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Marketing

Stories humanize brands: Lessons from B2B brand storytelling

November 30, 2020

In my last post, I mentioned how festivals bring out some of the best marketing campaigns of the year. From Diwali in India to Christmas across the globe, we get to see brilliant films and creatives during this time of the year. The year 2020 of course has been different. Pandemic has changed the rules of marketing to a large extent. But the festive spirit is still alive in the market. I’m sure we will get to see a lot more brilliant marketing stories in the next one month.

Two participants from my last workshop messaged after reading this post. Their feedback – it’s easy to evoke emotions and build stories around B2C brands. How about B2B? This is one question that makes me smile. I get this question asked in almost every session, especially when I am interacting with tech companies. And every time my answer remains the same 🙂 –

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Ephemeral Content: How To Use It Effectively In Your Marketing Plan

November 17, 2020

Between my last post and this, nothing much has changed in my LinkedIn feed, as far as stories are concerned. I see a few folks using it, but I am yet to experience something unique or share-worthy. I plan to try it soon and will hopefully get some data in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, here’s the second part of the post on “Ephemeral Content” and how to use it in our marketing plan.

Before we proceed further, what exactly is Ephemeral Content Marketing?

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What is branding?

June 9, 2020

No, I am not going to write yet another post on a topic for which more than 10,000 books &  8,000,000,000+ google search results exist. Even though millions of resources exist but there are only a few that catch your attention and this post is about that :).

I recently shared a personal anecdote on how brand influences action. What I bought was just another drugstore brand but why I bought it, had some correlation between brand and buyer behavior. The why of my buying behavior resonated with fellow professionals in some of the marketing and startup groups that I am a part of. While I received much positive feedback about the post but it also ignited a discussion on what is branding? Not surprisingly, everyone had an opinion, but not a consistent one. These groups have a mix of professionals from marketing, product, design, and entrepreneurship background and all these roles require an understanding of branding, albeit of a different scale. So, it was interesting to listen to different perspectives, especially from designers and marketers. 

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The value of Brand in the time of uncertainty

May 16, 2020

A couple of weeks back, I was in urgent need of a moisturizer and everything was closed due to lockdown except for essential services. To add to that, I have relocated to a different country recently and I am hardly familiar with my surroundings yet. I went to a shop nearby that had slots allotted to us hoping I will find one of the known brands there. I had a few minutes to browse the store and pick up something before the slot was over. With most of the labels here being in either German or Hungarian, I generally rely on Google translator for help but even that was giving trouble due to flaky connection. I couldn’t spot any familiar product on the shelf. I kept on trying to read different product descriptions with the help of the translator until I spotted this:

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PM, PMM, UX – Are the roles merging?

September 15, 2019

Product Management, Product Marketing, and UX Design – are these roles merging?

My answer – Yes and No.

I get this question asked often these days especially when we discuss the go-to-market plan in my product marketing sessions. The cohorts consist of aspiring product managers and as a logical sequence of the course they go through value proposition, UX design, followed by GTM plan. 

This question is quite genuine considering the way things are nowadays, more so in case of digital products. There are overlaps at times leading to joint decisions. While product management as a profession has been existing since decades but speaking of India, I think this career has gained prominent limelight in the last decade especially in digital and tech organizations. 

The new age PM is not only expected to know about products but also about design and marketing. Similarly, the new age UX is expected to know about the market dynamics and the new age product marketer is expected to know about the value proposition. Today a marketing person can’t say, I don’t understand the product specifications as its too technical. A product marketing person is very much expected to understand everything about the product and own up the growth.

Somewhere it’s all about the user! Everyone is expected to know the user and think about the user, which is great. 

However, understanding design is different from doing design.

Understanding marketing is different from doing marketing.

While as a role, it’s expected that a PM has a thorough understanding of all three but in reality neither of these functions are replaceable. Despite the fact that all these roles are centered around users, a PM, PMM, and UX bring different expertise to the table when it comes to actual execution and growth.

Secondly, it’s also about the stage and scale. For long I have worked in a startup, where I was owning up both the product and marketing along with managing the design team. Initially, it was all good, as it was one team who was owning up the user experience, product, and the growth numbers. But as we grew, this model had scalability challenges and finally, I had senior resources to lead the UX & PM functions as part of my team while I concentrated on GTM & growth. All of them brought in fresh perspectives and expertise into the overall product plan leading to faster launches and sustainable growth.

A PM doing the job of PMM or UX is not sustainable in the long run.

So, are the roles merging? I won’t say these are merging, rather they are aligning to each other more now and this alignment is for good.

The know-how of all three functions are getting interlinked, the knowledge expectations from all three roles are getting merged but when it comes to execution and ownership, these roles have their own identities and independent KRAs to cater to.

And whatever be the role, finally it was / is/ will be about the user and the growth.

So, how is the structure in your organization? Are you a startup or large scale operation? Do you have independent resources to manage these functions or are some of the functions merged in your setup? If merged, is it PM & PMM or PM & UX? Would love to know your opinion on the same. 

Instagram Hiding Likes – Good or Bad?

August 12, 2019

“We want people to worry a little bit less about how many likes they’re getting on Instagram and spend a bit more time connecting with the people that they care about,” – Adam Mosseri, Instagram Chief.

Image Credit – Pixabay

Instagram has hidden likes in 6 more countries now and it’s soon going to be implemented in more geographies.

So this change happened and I think it’s for good, as an individual as well as a marketer. 

I know there’s a lot of hue and cry going on for this feature especially by the influencers but if I think of it rationally, my hunch is, this will fix many ongoing issues with the platform.

While the number of likes was one of the key ways to put a value on a post for the business side of Instagram, but if I think it from the business side I am not sure what purpose those likes were serving.

Not just for business accounts but for regular accounts too, these likes and follower counts have become like a digital popularity contest leading to users taking any measure to increase their worth in terms of social currency.

For Instagram, it must have been a very bold step, something that might even hit their popularity in the short term but considering all types of scams and bots that are floating on Instagram to increase these followers and likes, it’s high time that measures like these are taken. 

Instagram After Hiding Likes. Image via CNN

I have been a huge fan of influencer marketing always; when done right it has given wonderful results for the brands that I have worked for. There was a time when I used to interact personally with the influencers for different campaigns and wow, what a wonderful era that was where some of those influencers actually created content better than us and our agencies. Those content were stunning, useful and worth every penny that we spent.

But speaking of now, the past three campaigns that I have tried hasn’t given us the engagement ratio of even 1%. In fact, nano influencers have turned out to be better than influencers or micro-influencers.

And there is a huge difference in the rates of hiring a nano, micro vs popular influencers these days.

One of the data points from a recent campaign that we did with few influencers –  Influencers with 5k – 6k followers gave us approximately 10% engagement whereas the ones with around 60k followers gave us approximately 1% engagement. We got almost the same results from these two segments but the payouts to them were very different. We paid almost 5x to the folks with 60k+ followers as against the ones with less than 10k followers!

With the bought likes and followers, Instagram honestly speaking has been losing its essence. More than beautiful visual storytelling, it’s becoming an automated-content battleground.

Similar trends have been observed by many other independent studies and research. Recently in an analysis done by Markerly for over 2 million influencers on Instagram, it was clearly found that influencers with 

  • < 1,000 followers average about 8% engagement
  • 1,000 – 10,000 followers average 4% engagement
  • 10,000 – 100,000 followers average 2.4% engagement
  • 100,000 – 1 million followers average 1.8% engagement
  • > 1 million followers average 1.7% engagement

Let’s hope that with changes like these, hopefully, the fake will get filtered out and better features and metrics will get introduced to help both the content creators and marketers. Speaking of features, I think it would be good to have:

  • a transparent influencer platform like Amazon, currently brands are dependent on finding influencers through third-party platforms or agencies. A robust influencer network connecting brands and influencers will be beneficial for all concerned.
  • tools to clearly differentiate between genuine vs bot followers of influencers. I am ok if the influencers garner reach through paid promotions too but at least the bots or fake profiles should be called out clearly.
  • better analytics and reports for brands using which they can monitor the performances of the campaigns with influencers. Payouts can be based on performance and reach. Not only will this help brands, but this will also help the genuine content creators command better deals from brands. 
  • better image tagging for business accounts, so that not just accounts but exact product image/pages could also be tagged.

The wishlist could be more but for now, all I hope is that Instagram retains its original charm and doesn’t meet the same fate as SMS or email.

What do you think about “Instagram removing likes”? Which tools do you use to audit the potential influencer’s account? I am currently using IG Audit and HypeAuditor. Any other good audit/ranking tools that you can recommend? 

It’s the first that’s always the hardest!

February 20, 2019
Image: Unsplash

Two interesting incidents yesterday – one at work and one at home – both again reminded me of a very important lesson – it’s the first that’s always the hardest.

Yesterday, we went to a nearby cycling park with my 7 year old who has been cycling for months now and really enjoys cycling. Though as soon as we rented a cycle at the park for him, he refused to ride. The park had rough muddy patches unlike our apartment’s smooth cemented road and the cycle was a bit bigger than what he was used to. We tried to coax him but he just refused, again and again! 

And then came our parenting storytelling skills to use (oh yes, as I always say, if children are one of the best negotiators, then parents are one of the best storytellers). We changed our pitch, we tried the following and these worked, albeit slow but worked:

  • Instead of saying – try it, it’s so easy, we changed it to – big boys ride big cycles, smaller ones are for babies. Riding bigger cycle will help you zoom faster (he loves speed).
  • If you’re getting scared of this muddy uphill slope, we will handhold you for the first patch. We will be there for you if you lose your balance and fall.
  • Try it out only for 1 minute. If you do not like it, we won’t ask you to cover the whole track. You can get down anytime you want.

Speed excites him and at his age, he has this strong desire to be not called a baby. 

Handholding bit gave him the confidence to try.

Get down anytime you want, eased out his anxiety to go through the whole unknown track. 

After a few initial hesitated pedals, he zoomed. 

Simply put what worked here were:

Value Proposition

Trust

Trial

And I remembered the conversation with one of my clients on similar lines yesterday. They had launched a new product recently with good discounts too but were struggling to meet their conversion numbers. After my initial analysis of their target audience, I felt discounts may not be the biggest triggers for that target segment. They may need a different approach and the first 100 might need a different strategy altogether than the remaining mass.

I shared with them my previous organization’s experience about one of the products that I had worked from scratch, right from concept to launch.

Out of the approx. 10,000 conversions that happened there in 1 year, the first 100 took me more than 6 months and the remaining 9,900 happened in the remaining 6 months :-). And out those first 100, the first 10 were the toughest!

What worked there?

• I was personally involved in first 100 conversions, in fact, first 1000. No outsourcing at all to any external agency.

• A lot of time was spent in defining the value proposition for each stakeholder. Detailed understanding of different audience type was done and then my marketing pitch was customized depending upon the user profile and what would be of interest to them.

• Handholding, training and robust support during the onboarding process to build the trust. 

• Trial to experience the product with transparent, no strings attached deboarding process.

• Taking all possible steps to ensure the first 100 who took a leap of faith with us had an excellent experience. Once they became happy, the word spread. 

Be it anything in life, right from dealing with your child to your customer, it’s the “first” that’s always the toughest. Isn’t it :-)? But if done right, it’s the first that leads to second and so on. 

Digital Marketing is NOT Product Marketing

June 19, 2018

Digital Marketing is NOT Product Marketing.

Even for digital-only products, this remains true.

Time and again, I have been observing this hiring trend where a digital marketer has been hired and is expected to perform the overall product marketing role. When I asked the reason behind this from one of the companies whom I was consulting recently, the answer was:

“Oh we have a limited budget for marketing and we just want to do some Facebook campaigns”.

Ok, that could be for now but what about later?

“Even later, we think our prime marketing channels to promote our products will be digital only”.

Sounds simple and fair enough, isn’t it?

But it’s not that simple in the real scenario. It’s a small company and this marketer is expected to own up the overall “growth” of the product – from awareness to consideration, from lead generation to conversion. Yes, the channels to be used are of course digital.

Considering I have worked in startups for long, I totally understand the need for resource optimization in smaller companies. I have also been a huge evangelist for digital medium ever since the start of my career but, just because your prime channel of promotion is going to be “digital”, you can not expect a digital marketer to do the overall job of product marketing.

The candidate could be an expert in understanding Facebook or might be a specialist in search engine optimization but these can’t be the be all end all of product marketing.

The role of a product marketer ideally starts from as early as the market validation stage, right when the product team starts to conceptualize the product. A typical product marketing role during launch would look something like this:

These roles may vary a bit depending upon the product category and organization, but overall a product marketer needs to have a holistic understanding of marketing and not just channel-specific approach.

Depending upon the growth stage of your organization and product, you may decide to hire the person at an appropriate time but before hiring, do invest some time in deciding your goals and objectives and hire the candidate with the right skills accordingly. You may even decide to give your digital marketer the overall product marketing role in future but this upskilling will take time and may not necessarily work always. 

Thank you for visiting my blog & reading this post.

Context Marketing – 5Ws and 1H Model

May 31, 2018

This one is one of my favorite marketing quotes these days 🙂 

Content and context matter the most today, isn’t it? 

Before you proceed, can I request you to pause for few seconds and think about the last advertisement you clicked on any digital channel —just anywhere, any ad? 

Before writing this post, I carried out this check multiple times and more often than not, I observed myself clicking on sponsored posts only if they were very appealing visually or the initial blurb looked emotional or entertaining or had the specific information I’d tried to find recently. In a nutshell, it’s the content and context that made me click. I am sure, it’s the similar trigger for many of you. There’s nothing new in this; since ages it’s the content and context that have been working for marketing but in this current era of digital excess and content overload, these are the only two things that matter the most – great content and right context!

You might be having great content but if you haven’t figured out the right channel and the right time to deliver your content, it’s gone. And same would be true vice versa, a perfectly planned campaign with the right audience segmentation is of no use unless you have content that can attract and connect with your audience.

While almost everyone is aware of the value of good content and context but the truth is, very few focus on the these holistically. Content is a lot more than beautiful visuals or infographics and context is much more than just geo-targeting or re-marketing. One of the most fundamental definitions of context marketing is, “delivering the right content, to the right people, at the right time.” Sounds simple, doesn’t it? However, the more data we have about our user, the complex it gets to do contextual marketing. There are many framework and tools available that you can use to plan your content marketing but for context marketing, it’s evolving every day, simply because the algorithms and engagement level at each channel are changing at a very dynamic pace.

Personally, for me, the framework that always works for context is the traditional 5Ws & 1H model. As long as a marketer you spend sufficient time on your Ws and H, more than half of your task of segmentation and user understanding is done. Although it looks simple, I think very few follow it diligently. Next time you think of promoting your content, spend some time to address the following:

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  • Who?: Like any other kind of marketing, setting up a context starts with “WHO”. Who is your audience? What’s his/her personality? How would you describe him/her? Sketch out the “who” part using any good persona template. The clearer you are about the “who” part of your target, the easier it would be to plan out your marketing campaigns.
  • Why?: Once you’ve defined your audience, it’s extremely important to address the “WHY”. “Why” should your audience notice you or click through you? If you don’t have a “why”, it’s highly unlikely that your audience will have a “why” to click through your content. Have a purpose and address your user’s needs. As long as you provide answers to their needs, they will always have a reason to be attracted and engaged with you.
  • What?: Delve deep into your audience’s behavior and you will get the answers to your “WHAT”s. What has been the purchase behavior of your audience? What kind of campaign interested them? What kind of campaigns escaped their notice? What are his interests, what stage of buying cycle is she at? The more you are aware of what interests him/her, the more contextual you can be.
  • When?: Earlier, the “WHEN” part was the simplest of all to define. Not anymore. In this multi-screen, hyper-connected age, this is the trickiest to define. Your audience could actually be looking out for you almost anytime, anywhere. Do some data digging and figure out if there is any “when” trend that exists, like, what time of the day, which day of the week, any seasonality during holidays or festivals etc. 
  • Where?: “WHERE” forms a very important part of contextual targeting, from location to devices, from channels to platforms, know your user’s  preferences and target them accordingly.
  • How?: And the last bit, “HOW” to do contextual marketing? Well, as long as we have the answer of all Ws and, then if we merge the demographics with behavior and needs, we can target the right audience, with the right messages, at the right time. A detailed post on “how” to do contextual marketing is coming up soon as the second part of this post. 

Till then, I’d love to know more about your favorite tools and framework for context marketing. 

If you found this post interesting, it would mean a lot to me if you could click on the “like” button below to let me know. Thank you!

*Icons used in the image from iconscout.com