Small Is Beautiful. Less Is Better.

By Shilpa Vishwanath

In recent years, technological advancements through the internet and mobile have brought the marketer and the consumer closer to each other and faster than ever before, offering the marketing manager opportunities galore. But the channels to reach out to the audience are larger in number, fragmented in viewership and erratic than ever before. Every brand worth its penny has a website to boast of, Twitter feeds and Facebook posts, ad campaigns churned out overnight on the mac and blogs with content that would take you a lifetime to pore over. Every marketer is everywhere at once! Agencies are frantic, fragmenting into niche offerings to cater to clients’ every whim and give them a worm’s-eye view into the number of tweets and Facebook updates per day.

All very good. But it might help us marketers to step back a bit and take a bird’s eyeview of the brand and its market direction. We need to make sure the brand talks and looks the same in print, on TV, on the product label and on the internet.

Very often, clients tell us ...”I need to launch my revamped corporate website in six weeks to ensure it is up in time for the big offline event.”But then, people at the big offline event are hardly going to look up your revamped website on that very hectic day! Point is when you are building something as important as your corporate website, you need a messaging that is accurate and stronganda layout that is eye-catching and easy on the visitor. You need to ensure that all the knickknacks have found their place on the website that does due justice to them. The world has shrunk and you have customers looking up your brand...intentionally or accidentally and either soaking it all in or writing your product off their list forever, before you can blink. Time to get back to the basics!

• Ensure your online presence is consistent and complimentary to your brand’s offline presence. You cannot have the website in blue and yellow because it is the favorite color of the Director’s wife and so will get you an easy approval on the design!
• Have a clear plan and goal in place. Decide what you want from your online marketing efforts. Identify ONLY a FEW action items and keep at them. LESS IS BETTER.
• Keep it simple. You will not achieve much having a website, a blog post, a Facebook page and a Twitter feed each managed by random disconnected people. Keep your communication plan simple. Choose a primary vehicle to publish your message. And keep it easy for your user too. No lengthy forms, no multiple pop-ups. Use technology wisely to make it a pleasant experience for you and your visitor.
• Kick-ass SEO is a must. You can have the best website in the world and it won’t do much for you if you don’t come up in relevant searches.
• Monitor and track all your activities. It is no longer about ’Do it. Shut it. Forget it’. You got to keep at it and check on the metrics often to see how the results are panning out.
• But then, online marketing is NOT instant coffee. Sure, it is faster than what print campaigns were 20 years ago, but this doesn’t mean you jump off your seat looking at the website traffic trends every morning and making course altering business decisions. Watch the trend, study, analyze, compare and then act!
• Keep the communication going! Don’t you hate it when coffee brands on Facebook and Twitter post that cheeky early morning update “Good Morning, so how’s your day looking?” and then fail to check on you for the rest of your day?! Be clever about your online communication plan. The internet is all about ’engaging‘with the consumer. Use it well and for meaningful conversations.
• Always ensure you write back to customers who write in with ’Complaints’, ’Suggestions’ and ’Feedback’.
• Use all channels of technology – mobile, email, online advertising, podcasts, webinars etc. to stay in touch. But do not be nosy. Communicate only when required, and communicate well.
• And oh yes, most companies online fail to recognize the importance of a good copy editor. Please, please do NOT put up a post in abbreviations! Ensure you pay well to get a good copy editor to scan EACH and EVERY one of your posts before they go live! 

Writing Content that Works Harmoniously with Design

By: Sandhya Ramanujan

As a marketing outsourcing company, we routinely develop content and design marketing collaterals such as brochures, flyers, presentations, website content etc.  More often than not, clients who require content to be developed also require it to be put into design. It has been our experience that the key to producing a great piece of published content is the ability of the content and design teams to work collaboratively from conceptualization to production. 

 Some things that content writers can do at each stage of the collateral’s lifecycle to ensure collaboration and quality output:  

• Brainstorm & conceptualize with the design team - This involves looping in designers from the beginning and sharing content ideas in a template form – something as simple as a word doc template serves the purpose effectively.
• Identify themes and key messaging ideas - Passing these on to the design team before they hit the drawing board helps them produce design elements compatible with content messaging.
• Share benchmarks, best practices & study the competition – This helps shape designers’ ideas and mold their output to best suit the content being developed.
• Understand the technical limitations of the design software/platform – This ensures the development of content most suited to the intended software/platform and also enables fruitful discussions and ideation with colleagues in the design department
• Edit/change content, if necessary – In order to suit design requirements, changes such as additions, deletions should be factored in, if the need so arises. This fosters a give and take relationship between the two teams which in turn helps in enhancing the quality of output
• Provide constructive, quality feedback – The content writer’s feedback helps tweak design to make it more high impact. By editing and offering suggestions on content layout, page breaks, line breaks etc. designers can incorporate the content in a format that conveys the message most effectively.  

The simple lesson here is that working collaboratively with a team spirit applies as much to content and design teams as it does to any other area of business.

Three Lessons for SMB Market Success

By:  Vinod Harith

We deal a lot with SMBs (apart from being one ourselves) and spend significant time and effort in making their businesses successful. The many years we have worked closely on delivering marketing and sales programs for them has given us a fair deal of insight on the magic formula that can deliver market success for SMBs. If we peeled off the several layers of complexity thrown up by market factors and other stuff we can’t fully control, there are three rules that can ensure SMBs achieve market success, no matter whether you do it yourself or you outsource your go to market.

1. Clarity of outcomes: Decide what you want. Is your priority building a channel, acquiring trial customers, increasing walk-ins or improving sales? All of the above, unfortunately, is not an option. Many SMBs spread themselves thin by going after multiple objectives, often emulating marketing programs or strategies of larger peers. What we have found to work: focus on one or two key objectives that you can afford to invest time and resources on, govern closely and achieve ROI. Ideally start with the low hanging fruit - choose your most potential markets, most effective channels and easy to market services and not the other way around. Lesson: Dig deep, not wide.

2. Patience: This is easily one of the top reasons for market failure given that most entrepreneurs are typical type 'A's: aggressive and impatient for success. Most worthy go to market efforts are marred by frequent changes in strategy, people, moving off goal posts and more importantly 'pulling the plug' off marketing due to inability to sustain investments. What we have found to work: don't start a program unless you have the patience, intent and funds to sustain a minimum of six months of marketing effort. Lesson: if you keep pulling off the plants to see if the roots are growing, you're never going to have a garden.

3. Screw theory and learn from others: Most entrepreneurs try to learn from peers and believe what worked for others will work for their businesses. Unfortunately, life is not so simple. Every go to market effort is unique, especially in the current dynamic market context. Be willing to make mistakes, experiment with new ideas and innovate in the marketplace. Past experiences are at best data points and not the Holy Grail. What we have found to work: You need the agility to learn from the market and make dynamic course corrections as you go along. Lesson: Its the rolling stone that gathers no moss.

Marketing Turns Inbound

By: Sandhya Ramanujan

With growing evidence of increased ROI and sales, Inbound Marketing is swiftly acquiring a sweet spot in the marketing mix of businesses. According to the 2012 State of Inbound Marketing report by HubSpot, businesses that primarily use inbound marketing techniques reported 61% lower Cost Per Lead (CPL) than those relying heavily on outbound strategies. This is because inbound marketing is able to deliver high quality leads with low cost marketing channels such as SEO, Social Media and Blogs.

The advent of inbound marketing has led to the growth of data-driven results, where marketing efforts are subjected to objective measurement. 2013 will see decision makers allotting more resources to create a robust inbound engine that will generate traffic, leads, and conversions in order to fuel the demand generation engine. Inbound marketing practices are also a lot easier on the wallet when compared to conventional outbound strategies like PR. 

This avatar of marketing brings together a series of tactics that include maximizing the use of social networking, setting up a user-friendly website, a regularly updated blog etc., in order to help with lead generation. It mainly encompasses the following 4 key areas:

• Generating traffic to a website through SEO, social media marketing and blogging
• Managing online lead generation efforts by developing relevant content (such as landing pages)  in order to leverage the traffic resulting from the SMM campaigns 
• Implementing targeted lead-nurturing campaigns aimed at converting prospects into clients
• Applying metrics, analytics and measurement at every stage in the process to continually course correct and improve results

Inbound marketing is all set to change the way businesses study their target audience, comprehend their needs, and engage target audiences with relevant premium content in order to turn them into leads, and finally into customers. Use it to your advantage or get left behind!