e Magus

December is the month for Santa Claus and Predictions. Every ‘Influencer’ and ‘Thought Leader’ will come with a bagful of trends and predictions about what’s going to happen next year. In the spirit of yearend and Santa Claus, I too share my thoughts on what the next year holds in terms of digital marketing Customer Experience to drive Digital For the past couple of years, we have been hearing a lot about how digital/technology is impacting customer experience. Now there is a role reversal, Customer experience is going to drive digital innovations Changing formats of content Content has always been about information. Another moniker for Internet is Information Highway. This is going to change. Content is going to become more interactive. Use of visuals, A/V is going to rise. Even the format of engagement - gamefication, conversational, VR, etc will be on the rise Apps to become more personalised and social The integration of CRM principles and social marketing wil...

One funny thing about Digital Marketing is that - CMOs think that it is more to do with technology, and CIOs think that it is more to do with marketing & thus both of them are wary about it. While things are changing and there is a growing consensus within the organisations about the importance and role of digital… the filters through which a CMO or CIO views Digital Marketing is still different.  What is required is for both the CMO and CIO to look at Digital Marketing through the same filters. There might be many, but here are the 5 important things, I want to say to every CIO and CMO out there wondering about digital marketing and how to go about Digital Marketing is omni present…  Inside the company, outside the company, and across all departments & roles you’ll see ‘digital’ in action. Be it social media, data, analytics, mobile technology, enterprise solution, every little and big thing is interconnected and interdependent. The distances between...

You won’t be in a relationship for 20 years, unless you are in love with it. Right? I started my association with advertising & marketing, moonlighting for an ad agency as a copywriter-account executive-office boy-and-all, when I was in studying in college during early 90’s. Even today, advertising & marketing is something that makes my eyes sparkle and heart palpitate. Love for digital is something I picked along the way. It started with spending too much time with my IT/Engineer friends and endless discussions over bottomless bottles of alcohol which gave me a hang of what technology is all about..and suddenly, I was in love with all things digital They say one’s career is defined by the 4 P’s of - Passion, Personality, Pay, and Potential… I’m not sure whether I’d like to see my career through these filters only… but yes, these hold good (except maybe the Pay part :)) Here are few reasons, randomly put, why I love digital marketing & advertising Non-mainstre...

Very Interesting stuff from Investopad team... Ringing the truth of every startup owner & entrepreneur

The birth of marketing is to solve a problem (need), but every marketer faces different problems in their marketing. Most of the cases pertain to the product itself, distribution, resources, budget, etc… but in some cases the challenges can be addressed by technology and digital The Marketing ROI Which of my marketing activity had maximum impact? This is a question that would keep many marketers awake at night. What worked, what didn't work and why are the learnings and application that every marketers look for. Till now, different mediums, and different activities had different measurements and importantly, marketing initiatives were not mapped individually to sales.  Some tools you could check out are - Marketo, Ensighten, Musqot, Ebiquity, etc Engaging with existing customer Digital has made engaging with the customer easier. Since the two way conversation is possible using the technology, marketers should be actively using technology for social media engagem...

Very often, in my early jobs working in advertising agencies, I’ve experienced how both organisations (the agency and the clients) seems to be suffering from digital marketing deficit. From an agency perspective, digital, was viewed as a medium to propagate the communication proposition. For the client, digital was a box to be ticked, in their marketing checklist. In industry forums and workshops, I used to discuss (and also hear) with my peers and speakers about ‘the lack of digital marketing strategy’ or ‘not have a strategic view of digital’ etc… and the scenario is no different, even today. The problem, i’ve identified, is not about strategy but lack of ‘digital marketing culture’ in organisations. Thanks to technology and the connected world, marketing is no longer a prerogative for a bunch of people working in a specific department or of outside consultants/vendors working for them. It is something that each and every one in the organisation can participate in. By Digital M...

Recently, I saw a query in a LinkedIn group asking “what are 2 powerful marketing phrases/words that sell?”. What made me curious was not the answers but the nature of the question, the keyword being “what”.  Internet happens to be the default place where people go for information gathering. The age old principle of information gathering is asking the Five Ws and one H - Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. Getting the most popular response - Wisdom of crowd, or Conformity to existing belief is the solution (information) that we subconsciously look for is what we ultimately click on as part of search results. Did a quick search on the popular Ws on Google trends for the past decade, and something interesting but on expected lines turned out. Below is the image of the same: Looking at the popularity of search by ‘what’ clearly indicates that a lot of things are unknown to lot of people. It also indicates that most people are superficial in terms of what they sea...

There are more than 4.5 Billion mobile users in the world. That is almost 60% of the world population. While the stats and market forecasters might predict a plateau in terms of the mobile sales, I think that the next billion in mobile sales will come from existing users picking up a second mobile phone. I observe that many of my friends and relatives have already started carrying a second mobile phone. The common reason they give is that one is  the ‘official’ phone and the other is ‘personal’. (Note: ‘Official’ does not mean that it is a company owned phone). Meaning,  that the first phone is for all and sundry stuff like browsing, data, etc and the second number for calls and to be shared with important people. This behaviour is pretty similar to what most of us had experienced or done with an earlier technology innovation - Emails When Hotmail started offering free web based email IDs and later Gmail with their unlimited storage, everyone who was online quick...

The simple premise of doppler effect is that the frequency and velocity of a wave varies depending on the distance between the source and receiver. Imagine, Social media as a huge lake and all the brands and people are floating on it. Each conversation is an action that starts a ripple and the same can be felt in the area of influence surrounding the source. The intensity of the wave changes depending on the distance between the source and observer or in this case the receiver. The frequency of the wave being higher when the distance between the sender and observer is near (or coming closer) and lower when the distance is far or receding. In a digital marketing scenario, when an user starts a conversation involving a brand, depending on the frequency of the conversation, we can judge whether the user is coming closer to the brand or receding away from it. Here we have to negate the type of conversation (positive, neutral, or negative). The following scenarios could be played ou...

P hysics has been one of my favourite subject since school days. Thanks to an uncle of mine who gifted me couple of Russian books (english translated) called Physics for Entertainment by Y. Perelman. Digital marketing is a passion that I’ve been pursuing in my professional life. We all know that the underlying aspect of any digital marketing is a combination of technology and principles of marketing. I see many instances where the laws of physics are very much in play when it comes to digital marketing User Experience (UX), as popularly defined, is improvement of accessibility, usability, and satisfaction of any design. In digital space, it is mostly defined by the designs of website or an application (including widgets, apps, games, etc) Path of least resistance, according to physics, is termed as the perceived pathway a forward motion object will take from a set of alternatives. The principle behind it is that the object will always take the path that has least resistance...

This is a Pulse post that I've written earlier in the day Maggi, the 2 minute wonder, from Nestle, has got its 15 minutes of fame...though for wrong reasons. I trust Nestle, as a company, and have faith that if the product did have toxic substance beyond permissible limits, it was by pure mischance.  This post is not in support of Maggi (or Nestle) nor it is to slander them for what happened. There are many more who are more competent than me to talk about it. In fact, as I write this post, Maggi is going for a huge PR exercise to minimise the damage and improve its image.  Being a digital marketer, I generally look at various opportunities and events from the prism of technology and marketing. Is there a value or customer need that the product can satisfy? Is there a marketing opportunity here? Can technology play a role in the same?, etc are few questions, I try to answer. This post is about a marketing idea that came out from watching th...

Manufacturing sector has always been the main driver for economic growth and creation of wealth. Be it large industries or SMEs, they have a direct association in creating more jobs and allied services. One of the biggest concerns with manufacturing has always been that it is very resource-intensive. The factories need to be built near to raw material access. They are capital heavy to start. Logistics and distribution plays a crucial role in terms reach and cost.  The advent of 3D printing technology will change the manufacturing/production model as we know now. Manufacturing might get crowd sourced. In the future, hundreds and thousands of small players (most working from home) will start making different components in small quantities and the same will be collected by the companies and assembled as the final product. Imagine, a manufacturer of Air Conditioners. Except for the crucial components, say compressor, the other parts, like the body, blower, circuit board, et...

The past few days, I've noticed something peculiar happening when watching the evening news on television. Almost all media channels are angry. They are angry with few cabinet ministers, they are angry at the 'system', at business houses, bureaucracy. They are angry with the society, culture, and guess what...they are sometimes angry with themselves too. I was wondering, if their anger is a representation of the audience mindset; which means have 'we the people' become short fused. I guess not One main reason why the media is angry is because they are being displaced from their comfort zone. There is so much external influence in media industry that uncertainty is the underline fear faced by them. Some obvious signs are: The falling view time of news channels... More competitors, less audience Shorter attention span Rising cost of infrastructure and people Falling revenues/profits Digital Technology bringing in more options which are far more relevant ...

A simple relationship framework between people and technology

Literally, the writing was on the wall for quite sometime now. Facebook has officially announced that they will limit the organic reach for posts on Facebook Pages. This means you pay, if you want your posts to be seen by more people, even if they are your fans. For more, read here While it is not end of the road for the brands to increase organic engagement with their audience through Facebook page, it surely puts a spanner to the works on how they will have to spend monies on Facebook advertising. Let’s be honest, most people would not like to interact with the brand on day to day basis, let alone visit the brand page regularly. So such a limitation might actually work in the brands favour, albeit with monies involved. What smart brand managers would need to do is, to increase the relevance of the post and then promote the same. One big difference this new rule from Facebook will make is, brands who have been focusing on increasing likes through paid advertising and...

S tarting of the year is always a good time to talk about trends and how it will impact us. I don’t want to be left behind too :) Year end or Year beginning contents are usually highlights about what happened during the past year, or what is in store for the year ahead. I too have a lot of optimism about technology, devices, digital marketing, and all other  things that I’m interested in. This is a perfect setting for writing this topic. My Kid is right now playing with his toys, building blocks, while I’ve opened my iPad and started typing this blog. There are times when I’m busy with my iPhone/ iPad and he comes over asking me to spend few minutes playing with him. Most times, I oblige. But, there are instances when I deny him my time and continue working on my devices.. his reaction is palpable.It is usually “close your iPad/mobile” “play with me, please” kind of reaction.  This made me think, as we spend more time with our devices, there is a potential for a ch...