Digital Marketing Success made simple for SMEs - Part II

Continuing from my earlier blog post, here you go:

Your basic digital toolbox

• ·        A couple of latest, well-equipped computers/laptops with the latest software
• ·        Key team members equipped with Smartphones for smoother mobile access to                digital networks
• ·        A good, solid broadband internet connection: This facilitates faster data uploading,            downloading  of  heavy files – content, videos, audio
• ·        A good brand plan in place – The digital plan is a subset of your brand plan and has          to cater to the brand’s larger goals
• ·        A sustainable strategy and wherewithal to continue the digital plan over the long                  term
• ·        The right team mix with knowledge about your business and knowledge about the              digital ecosystem

The dos of a successful digital strategy 

• ·     Align it to the big picture: Align it to your brand /company strategy and goals
• ·     Budget: Earmark a budget for digital from your marketing or advertising budget. Set clear milestones and       monitor progress weekly/fortnightly/monthly
• ·    Plan the digital activity step by step: Else, you might get overwhelmed and not be able to do justice to          anything
• ·    Don’t be present on all digital media: Be there where your target audience congregates. For example,  Facebook may not be the place for you if you are into auto components. Research and find the digital  platform – social media sites and websites where most of your target market/buyers go. Don’t be on  Facebook just because everybody else is there. That could mean a waste of valuable budget
• ·  Sustainability is key: Digital is no jadoo-ki-chaddi (magic wand); it is a long term investment. If you expect overnight results, you are likely to be crushed. Digital is more about building your brand/name over a period of time. It is about diligent, sustainable efforts worked upon every day so you are visible to your target market and stay top of the mind. Giving up is not an option.  

• ·    Have an internal digital team: Even if it means two or three people; have an internal team for this job. Sustained effort is a must; moreover, your internal team can do this job better than entirely outsourcing it to an outside agency. You can do that initially, and then train your team to take over, with a consultant overlooking the progress weekly.
• ·    Offline presence and delivery: Promises made online have to be ‘kept’ offline. In simple words, what you promise, you have got to deliver, else you are likely to lose face and therefore business and reputation. Your online reputation must always have an offline plan to live up to your word.

The good and the bad about digital

The good

• Your markets and marketing are at your fingertips and can be reached through even a mobile
• You can achieve far more marketing effort in a lesser amount of money as compared to printing           costs or traditional media expenditure
• Digital marketing can be implemented sitting right at your desk. All you need is a well-equipped,    reliable computer
• You can find your buyers from all over the world and reach out to them in a jiffy
• You can incorporate to-the-minute updates about your products and services and stocks, so your  buyers always know the latest information about you
• You can also effect online orders and make the buying and payment process simple for your buyers, thus saving valuable time

The bad

• Starting digital activity with a big bang and giving it up in a short time is a sure case of loss of face – it   may amount to lack of seriousness on your part and present a wrong image to your buyers
•  Being everywhere on the digital platform without a clue of what will work for you or where your buyers are
• Allowing your digital activity to devour your entire marketing budget without assessing if it is the right strategy
• Not having your digital strategy aligned to your brand strategy/company strategy

They did it. You can do it too.

B2B, they say is not cut out for digital. That’s a myth. Many big and small enterprises have proven this wrong. We will look at how two companies did it the digital way and successfully at that. 

Dell’s Digital Savvy 

Dell is known for its digital experimentation. Dell even won an award for its focused campaign on LinkedIn. This campaign included creating a close network of IT professionals that it wanted to target for its core products. This activity by Dell focused on using custom groups on LinkedIn.

Dell has a huge number of popular B2B Twitter feeds it operates. Some deal with company news and announcements, while others are dedicated to answering customer service queries. Dell Cares PRO provides 24×7 global support and Dell for Business answers questions from small and medium size businesses. Different feeds also communicate with one another to ensure that customer queries are dealt with through the proper channels. To make sure it stays on top of things, Dell’s social media command centre collects customer conversations around the web that enables the company to effectively identify problems, address complaints, collect feedback and respond to it.

OfficeYes.com

OfficeYes.com, India’s #1 e-commerce firm for B2B Office Supplies, recently introduced a new range of School Stationary Products and launched it via a campaign on Twitter.

The challenge was to establish the category, generate a buzz around it and subsequently drive sales for the new range of products amongst the right TG. They knew that their right TG i.e. School Students may not be majorly active on Twitter and therefore wanted to focus on driving traction from their parents, elder siblings etc who are a more evolved set of users on Twitter.

To do this, they launched the campaign with the insight that people love to reminisce and talk about their School Memories. People were invited to tweet their favorite School Memory using the hashtag #SchoolMemory. Their winner was declared each day and rewarded with a set of Back-To-School Goodies.

The conversation was kept subtle about School Memories and purposely stayed away from blatant selling while reminding our followers that Office Yes has introduced a new range of Products that might interest them. As a result, they saw a 154.2% rise in mentions and 113.5% increase in retweets without any media budget being spent. Office Yes was successful in reaching out to over 1.6 lakh Twitter users in 20 days and saw a 50% hike in the number of followers as well. The brand maintained an engagement score of 99% through the course of the campaign and hence despite being a B2B setup, Officeyes successfully established School Stationary as a part of its product portfolio.

You may feel they can do it easily. But believe me, taking the first, step, even a small one, is the way to success. When are you going to take that step in your digital journey? 

Digital Marketing Success made simple for SMEs

Enter a hotel lobby, a conference room, an office reception, an airport or even an airplane; chances are you will catch all souls there talking, browsing or playing with their Smartphones or tablets or reading on their Kindle Fires. Phones, tabs and laptops have changed the face of the game of business. Technology rules our lives today-both professional and personal. Digital is big for the biggies as well as the SMEs; like it or not, in business of any kind, digital connections make all the difference.

So where do you begin with your digital endeavor? Your website.

A website is one of the most important elements of a digital branding plan for your company and is usually the starting point. A website is the first thing your buyer will check to assess you, to see what you have to offer, your capabilities, your expertise, your people and your history. If you are absent on the WWW (the World Wide Web) you are missing out on the opportunities that would have come knocking from the country and the world. For your business wishes to come true, you don’t need a genie, you need a well-thought out website that catches your buyer’s interest, keeps him engaged for some time with relevant, mature content and answers your buyer’s unsaid questions. If you are successful in making the buyer call you/reach out to you, you have hit the nail on its head. But a website is just the beginning; you have a long way to go on the digital journey.

The typical digital elements in an SME branding plan

Digital rules the roost in almost every branding plan today, whether B2C or B2B. And no, if you are thinking digital means Facebook, Facebook and more Facebook, nothing could be further from the truth. The digital medium comprises of far more elements than a Facebook. Social Media (Facebook, Linked In, Twitter) is just a part of the digital ecosystem for a brand today. 

Digital typically comprises Social Media, Content Creation and Management, Blogging, Community Building, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Email Marketing. However, the digital world is ever evolving and you are sure to find more elements. For the time being, suffice it to understand these few a little more.

 Social Media: These are social networks (some professional networks, others, social) on the web/Internet typically, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Slideshare, etc.  

     Content Creation and Management: Content in the digital world, is King, Queen and heir. The more you create content (text, audio content, video content, webinars – seminars on the web, freebies), integrate it and manage it well, the more you will rule the World Wide Web for your industry.

·     Blogging: A blog is a web log – a log of ideas, expert information, important information, expressions and thoughts on the web. You can launch a blog of your company/brand for free. A blog being what it is, it helps you create a reputation of an expert in your field over a period of time, provided you regularly write blog posts (articles), at least once a week. Focus, continuity, relevance and sustained efforts will ensure your blog gets you attention from prospects.

·        Community Building: Communities on the WWW are common interest groups. If you know the group which has the characteristics of your target market, you can build this group and create a community. You can create a new group or community yourself. The communities could be for a cause (Save Pune Traffic Movement), an interest (Marketing Masala), a shared-interest community (IT Engineers Group, Retail Community, Ad Women Community, Working Moms  and so on and so forth). By targeting your target market (community), you ensure your marketing efforts reach the right audience.

·        Search Engine Marketing (SEM): This is based on keywords or search words that go into creating small ads. You pay for these ads and the space and search engines like Google, Bing or others, catch the keywords and ‘show’ your ads to your target audience. This way your company and your products get seen by the right people and enhance your marketing efforts.

·       Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Again, a search tool, this is something you get done for your website. SEO specialists or web development agencies and consultants can help you optimize your website and web presence to ensure effective marketing.

·     Email Marketing: Post the death of the snail mail – the old way of posting letters, email marketing is the quickest and a cost effective way of reaching your target market. However, this tool is prone to inefficiencies, as it resorts to bulk marketing and hence may lead to wastage of efforts and resources. With a proper email marketing strategy however, far better results can be achieved. There are specialist agencies which do this kind of work, but the best way is to go through your digital consultant/agency’s advice and see how important this is in the scheme of your digital plan.

Digital is not free. It involves costs.  

Contrary to what most of us tend to think, digital is not free in the true sense. Oh yes, you don’t have to pay a dime to open a Facebook account or a business page, or even a Twitter, LinkedIn,  Slideshare or You Tube account; but to market your services and products effectively, you have to budget it separately. All these platforms have a paid ad option, where you need to pay for the ad space and the ad creation. If you get the platform right and the content right, there’s no stopping buyers from reaching out to you. Consider ‘digital’ as an investment and not an expense, and you will start enjoying the results.

Are you ready to take the digital plunge?

Digital is an alien world for many of us, fret not. The word ‘digital’ tends to push your marketing team out of its comfort zone; so resistance is inevitable; but nothing which cannot be overcome with a bit of planning, learning and persistence. To date, marketing collaterals meant printed brochures, leaflets, catalogues, press ads, magazine ads; at the most, it meant product films and corporate films and even exhibition stall designs. From there when you are suddenly thrown into a virtual world with PowerPoints, Social Media, Content Marketing towering over you, jitters are normal. But getting a handle on those is also imperative – easily achieved when you talk to the right agencies/digital agencies/consultants and get the right marketing team on board. 

Advertising for SMEs – A useful tool.

The world is no more round, it is turning flat; in simple words, competition that was restricted to your own country or may be a few neighbors, has exploded to include the world. India has suddenly been thrown into the limelight and become the world’s outsourcing poster boy. Everyone wants to work with India in one way or the other. Future super power or something else, India is on the upward curve. All the more reason why you should be looking at advertising seriously.

But what is the need for advertising? 

Advertising is a necessity because of competition, because the market is limited but the players are many; because advertising brings in more prospects, advertising helps to build your brand, create the right impressions and attitudes towards your product in the mind of the consumer.

However, the success of advertising depends a lot on planning in advance – not just what you should be talking about in ads, but also when to talk, where to talk and whom to talk to – which means, the message, the time and the media should be planned well in advance. Why? There is a simple reason: to ensure you get more value from your ad spend!  Having an advertising plan (Ad Plan) in place is a good way to begin.

Simple questions to ask yourself when you work on an Ad Plan.

• Why do I want to advertise?
• What is the annual budget I have for this activity? 
• Who is my target audience for the advertising?
• What do I want to achieve through this advertising?
• What media best suits my purpose? 
• What is the competition doing in terms of advertising? 
• Is it successful? If yes how? 
• Is it a failure? Then why and how?

Have an annual budget 
Having an annual budget earmarked for advertising is worth the initial effort.  But what your budget should be depends entirely on what you want achieve. It might be a good idea to begin with a fixed percentage of your total annual revenue as your ad budget.
Typically, companies earmark anything between 2% to 10% of their revenues as their advertising budget. The bigger ones go for the bigger spends and the smaller ones prefer something that suits their pocket size. There is nothing hard and fast about it though and you could begin with something even less than 2%. The key is to begin and stay put. Advertising is about being consistent without expecting overnight magic in sales figures.

Study competition that is more successful than you
Imitation is the best form of flattery, as goes the saying. First know your closest competition and then study them in detail. Then study how they advertise and see the results of the campaign. It may do you a lot of good to initially follow and work on some tips from the competition’s ad strategy and see if they will work well for you. As you get comfortable with the whole process of advertising, you can develop your own, solid Ad Plan.

Have a company as your gold standard 
Among competition, identify one company/brand as your benchmark, your gold standard. This is the company you want to be/or reach. Also plan for the right time to reach your goal and the how you plan to reach it.

Set realistic goals
There cannot be anything as important as the ‘Setting of Goals’ in your Ad Plan. A goal has to be specific, measurable, achievable, reviewable and bound by time. Only if you set goals, can you compare if you have reached those or you haven’t. After a certain period, a review is essential. Analyze and see if you are on the right track to your goals; if not, do a course correction.

One trap that one tends to fall in, when one says ‘goals’ is the ‘sales growth’. That is the ultimate aim, no doubt, in fact, the ultimate goal really is ‘increasing profits’ and not just ‘sales’; but there are many others on the goal list. Example – increasing brand awareness, increasing brand visibility, improving recall, inducing trial, giving out information (example when a company merges with another and a new entity is formed, or when a company changes its name, or when a company has an IPO coming up and so on). In any of these cases, the goal has to be specific, for example, “We want to increase brand awareness by 10% all over India”. The more specific the goal, the more accurately you can measure the ROI on your ad spend and ensure better results eventually.

What advertising cannot do
Advertising is there to promote your product/brand/company/event. Advertising cannot, however, improve your product – it cannot improve your product features or its functioning or its after-sales support. It cannot stop the product from mal- functioning. For example, if you buy a washing machine after reading an ad, and the washing machine goes kaput in 6 months, you are most certainly not going to blame advertising for its failure to deliver! Or, when advertising gets people to a car showroom, but the sales guys there are not trained well, that again is not advertising’s fault. For great advertising to work, you ought to have a great product that delivers to its promise, consistently, year after year!

Usually many companies expect too much out of advertising without knowing what they are doing it for! That’s the trap one must avoid.

Action is critical 
Once your goals are set and the ad plan is formulated, action is advisable. If things work, that’s what we wanted. If they don’t, roll up your sleeves and get back to the goal resetting. A simple way of getting into action is breaking your annual ad plan into small, easy-to-digest tasks. This is done by making a month-wise event calendar for the year. By events, we don’t always mean events, they are actually the tasks or activities under advertising that you need to do in that particular month. An annual advertising plan can overwhelm a beginner; by working out an event calendar, life becomes simpler and you can breathe easy.

Where should you go with your advertising? And how to avoid media mania 
Media mania is about people wanting to go all over the media –in newspapers, TV, radio, hoardings, social media – everywhere. But one needs to control this sudden media lust and go only where you will find your audience. The trick is to identify your Target Audience very clearly and then find out what places he visits, what he reads, what channels he watches on TV and which radio channel he listens to. Then go where you find your customer. This way you plan your ad budget well, save on unnecessary spends and get the most out of your advertising rupee. For example – an automotive parts supplier should ensure he is ‘seen’ by his customers – so he should target the auto belts of the region. He should see what the decision makers do, read and watch. And should go there with his advertising.

Reviews are important – monthly, quarterly and annual 
Reviewing an Ad Plan is extremely important. It can be done on a monthly, quarterly, 6-monthly or an annual basis. Review the Ad Plan with your team members and the ad agency if you have engaged one.
If budget permits, you may even want to explore the idea of hiring your own advertising or marketing communications consultant.

Internal advertising should not be ignored 
Along with an external advertising plan, it is also important to focus on internal communication to motivate your employees as they are your best brand champions. Internal communication could be in the form of an HR training manual, posters, contests, internal celebration of important events, etc.

Grow your network
Networking is now more than just a buzzword. It has the potential to keep your cash register buzzing. Growing your network, both real and virtual, can make that big difference to your business. It can help you generate good word-of-mouth at a much lesser cost. This takes us to digital advertising or digital communication, which has assumed a key role in promotions. More on the subject later.

Keep advertising. Keep growing.

The best time to begin advertising is anytime now. Start small so you can grow big. Increase your spends gradually. You don’t have to have a budget of crores at the outset. Start small, grow steadily, advertise big.
But before you do all of this, start working on your advertising plan.

Happy Advertising!

The Basic Branding Kit SMEs must have - The How

SME - Basic Branding Kit 

At the outset, when you are about to enter the market fresh with a dream and a mission, you need to have the following:

1.     Brand Identity

i)                Brand/Company Name

ii)              Brand/Company Logo

iii)            Company Stationery – Visiting Cards, Letterheads, Envelopes

2.     Brand Strategy – A document that details:

i)                Brand Core/Essence – Who am I?

ii)              Brand Vision and Mission – What is my purpose?

iii)            Target Audience – Who am I talking to?

iv)             Brand Positioning – How does my Target Audience see me?

v)               Value Proposition – Why should my Target Audience buy me?

vi)             Brand Personality – What do I look like, come across like, what is my personality as a brand?

vii)           Brand Message – What should I say (through any form of communication) so that my Target Audience responds the way I want them to?

3.     Road Map – The document that details where I am headed in the next 1, 5 or 10 years.

4.     Essential Collaterals – Website, Presentation, active Digital/Social Media presence

You may feel this is too much work and consumes too much time. But in this cut-throat world, you may not have a choice really.  

Invest a little time and money in your brand – it pays.

As you get busier in running the company and business, you will tend to ignore your brand and branding. It is a natural progression for most and needs to be consciously dealt with. Your brand is not ‘any other product’, it has the potential to join the ranks of big brands. If you believe in this, then you must invest time and money in your brand. Treat branding as a continuous growth program; you will do yourself and your brand a world of good.

The homework you need to do, to begin a branding program for your company

A little homework goes a long way in making your branding exercise fruitful. Just some rough notes on the following would be enough to kick start your branding program with your consultant/agency.

    1)     Who am I? (Your company)  

•          Who is my buyer? (Who do I want my buyer to be?)
•         Who are my competitors?
•         Where do I want to be?
•         Where am I today?
•         What does my buyer think of me today?
•        What do I want my buyer to think of me?

If you are too busy to work on these, no worries. Your agency/consultant will help you answer these. Just make sure you make some time for them.

SMEs in the industrial /engineering segment can immensely benefit from branding

The irony of today’s global marketplace is that there are few biggies, companies who make it to the Forbes list; while there are probably millions of others who are in the SME segment. The clutter is more here than there - at the top. The clutter gets worse in the industrial/engineering/B2B segment; what with thousands of small and medium sized companies vying for the same share of the market pie! Evidence lies in the way these companies are identified by their ‘industrial belt’ status and not by their name. If you check with your buyers, you will see the truth in this statement. No prizes then for guessing why branding assumes all the more importance in this segment! Every company – small or midsized, has the potential to become a known brand.

You have a good product, a good team, great potential and a global market. What you need is good branding, a solid plan, a sound strategy and a clear road map. Armed with these 4, SMEs can break clutter, create flutter and even take the market by storm. Branding gives you an opportunity to go from a ‘registered vendor’ to a much-in-demand company; it ensures buyers can ‘search’ you, ‘Google’ you from a sea of unknowns. Branding makes you known for what you are – in the country and in the world; it gives you a chance to make an effective statement; it makes you stand head and shoulders above the rest.

Every product, every company – small or midsized, has the potential to become a known brand. It’s all in the mind and more in the branding. If you are inching towards the big picture you have sketched for your company, branding is where you should begin.

All’s well that begins well. Happy Branding!

SME Branding - to do or not?

Branding – To do or not to do?

When Yahoo! redesigned its logo recently, it flew in the eye of a news storm with branding gurus vociferously rooting or hooting the change down.  When our own homegrown Bajaj Auto overhauled its logo in year 2004, a good 5 decades or so after its birth, the fraternity debated whether Bajaj was justified in spending a few crores for the change. Reebok, a few decades back changed its logo every two years; while Coca Cola still has its good old logo and so does Nike. Some companies have spent millions, while some lucky ones have spent a mere hundreds on designing or redesigning their logo. Which makes us wonder - what really makes a company go in for a logo redesign? Or how important a logo is really? Does every enterprise, company – even a midsized one or a start-up really need a logo in the first place?

Logo or branding- a reflection of the company’s core.

A company name and logo go far deeper than being a cosmetic garb. The name and the logo together reflect the company’s core values, its essence, its raison d’être. Bajaj Auto’s new logo captured the company’s changing policies, its growing markets, its global moves and its new standing, while retaining its core. A branding exercise is not just a design or logo exercise but a discovery of what the company really is at its deepest level, its culture, where it stands, what it stands for and where does it want to go and how. The new Bajaj Auto logo stands for its 5 brand core values - Learning, Innovation, Perfection, Speed and Transparency.

Whether it is Bajaj, Yahoo or an unknown, every company, no matter what its size, needs an identity.

As clutter dominates the global markets, as competition grows exponentially, as USP (Unique Selling Proposition) stands at the risk of obliteration, it becomes all the more critical for every company to have its own unique identity. Every company needs to do this exercise of finding out its unique position. It needs to find a way to establish itself firmly in its customer’s mind (positioning), create an identity that reflects its core and resonates with its customers for life. Without an identity, the company will be just another faceless product, unknown, unnoticed and unidentified.   

What is the right time to go for an identity or branding exercise?

The right time to go for a branding exercise is NOW, if you haven’t already started working on it. With the immense benefits of branding, it’s never too late to begin. For the start-ups and the debutantes, it is utmost important to enter the market with the branding in place. Let’s not think whether sales should come first, or branding; each has its importance and cannot be compared or prioritized.  If you have a good product, good sales spiel, you are bound to grow big and fast in a new industry, but as you will later discover, even the competition has grown as much. This then becomes your perfect branding time.

Branding, creating an identity, creating a vision, mission, a set of values, a purpose and philosophy statement – all of this should start before you start marketing yourself in the market. It should be done before launching your company, before inviting buyers to try you. That is perfect timing for creating an identity, for branding your enterprise or your offering.

In the next post, find about how to put together a basic Branding Kit.

Extract from my article in Sampada Diwali 2013 issue. 

Known Devil v/s Unknown Devil

The 80-20 Golden Rule for Winning More Business

Whether you are a freelancer or an agency, this is a golden rule that works for both, when you looking to win more business.

I have, very often, in my enthusiasm and weak moments spent hours/days/months chasing a new client. And then in my wakeful hours regretted every such moment; as most of such chasing turned out to be unfruitful. I chased new clients, they ran away, I did not get them and I lost work on hand too. At the least, I lost precious time that I could have spent on ‘work in hand’. 

Does it mean I should never chase new clients?

Nope! 

It means that I should chase old clients. 

“Huh? You out of your mind or something? Why chase old clients? They are yours anyways!!” sneers my inner voice.

No my dear Watson, you chase new work from old clients. I can bet you that you will end up winning quite some work this way. 

“How? Why?” – Inner voice

Because, my dear, a known devil is better than an unknown devil. And you are the known devil for your old client. 

Here’s why the client prefers the Known Devil:

a)  The client knows you well enough to trust you (the fact he is still sticking with you shows his trust in you amply).

b)  The client knows the way you work (he knows that when you say you will deliver tomorrow, the max you will take is another day to deliver). But the client does not know about the new agency and is terrified they may not deliver at all.

c)   The client has included you in his comfort zone and unless it’s an emergency (like when the boss is angling for another agency), he would choose to stick with you

d)  It has been proven that 80% of new business comes from 20% of your customers/clients and 20% comes from the 80% whom you have never met or are meeting for the first time.

e)  Obviously, there are no prizes for guessing, whom I will chase – the 20% who are my special clients- trusted, good old known devils. 

f)   It has also been found that if the client is looking for a fresh approach and invites a pitch from new agencies, eventually they will give you part of the work or come back to you in a couple of years with the whole brand jingbang.  

In this dog-eat-dog word, the known devil wins!