e Magus

It is been a while that I wanted to write about digital marketing. Having attended various workshops and seminars on digital marketing, I realize that people were talking the same thing, using different words. The gist being that everyone was talking about digital marketing from a campaign perspective - Earned, Owned, Paid, Social Media. But Digital Marketing is much more than branding or campaign led... It is how we use the existing and emerging technology to create a positive impact on our business. My thoughts and trying to decode digital marketing The Digital Marketing overview is all about creating a seamless and effective Digital Experience (DX) for clients. The DX would address the business objectives through strategic initiatives that will address: - Speed/drive marketing objectives - Create positive impact on business objectives - Interact with the customers in a meaningful and insightful way - Future-proofing The 3 pillars that will drive DX are Cu...

Sometime back, Martin Sorrell, WPP’s head honcho, was mentioning about data and how it can help creativity. In fact, he went onto the extent that (ad) agencies are no longer in advertising business ( http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/03/24/sir-martin-sorrell-definition-creativity-needs-change-we-re-not-advertising-business ) In today’s world, you are surrounded by data. In fact, it is happening right now when you are reading this. Your browser, the webpage, your device, everything is collecting data. From a marketing perspective, it was always a numbers game. Only difference, now, the numbers has become bigger and complicated. So, what is data? It is nothing but a collection of values - numbers, words, observations. Most creative folks in the agency would be aware of the numbers/stats quoted in the market research done by the planning team or client’s marketing team. It is just that, previously, it was mostly qualitative but now it is quantitative. While there are tons o...

Generally, I blog then tweet about it. Some instances are exception. Couple of days back, I put out a tweet  giving 5 building blocks for digital strategy.  5 building blocks for your #digitalstrategy : devices, channels, data, enterprise applications, & content — Zentosh (@zentosh) March 20, 2016 Many had DM’d me asking for the details of it. So I decided to give an explanation on why I considered them as key filters for digital strategy Every digital strategy starts with the customers: - Who they are? What they want? What they are expecting? How is technology impacting their behaviour? What interactions they are having with competitors, category, etc. How you want them to interact or experience with your brand…..and by customers, i mean not just consumers, they are also your employees, partners (suppliers, vendors, sellers, etc) Once the customer need-behaviour-experience is identified, then it needs to be looked through these 5 aspects: De...

Image source: Forbes.com Online advertising spends, including spends on Adwords have been coming under a lot of scrutiny and discussion. In a world of numerous options, the marketers are looking for the greatest ROMI (return on marketing investments) Traditionally, search marketing has been the most effective way to reach the target audience. Target audience defined here are the people who are in-market for a solution that pertains to the product or service offerings. However, with proliferation of different platforms, the way people discover and consume content too has changed. The beauty of Google was that it’s search results were the closest to what people actually wanted. ( While I have a different take on this, I’ll save it for a different post of a different date ). When the paid search was added to the search results, a clear demarkation with the paid content on the right and organic results on the left still kept the ‘territorial integrity’ in tact. Even when the ...

I first joined Twitter in 2007, thanks to a client campaign activity, and was managing and maintaining their Twitter handle for few months. A year later, I personally got active on Twitter.  My Twitter experience has been 3 stages.. Stage 1: Era of egghead DP & many personal tweets. Yes, it was that time in India, when you could send your tweet through SMS, using a basic feature phone. Stage 2: An era of relevancy… when most fake profiles disappeared from the follower list, the tweets were relevant to the news/topics/people that were of interest to me,  Stage 3: Era of confusion.. Today, I’m not sure why my Twitter timeline means to me. It is a hotchpotch of GIFs, Videos, crazy #tags, irrelevant tweets Of late, Twitter has been in the news for all the wrong reasons… Their earnings are down User base is mostly stagnant and in some geos contracting A lot of senior management people are leaving These are signs of an organisation that is ill, ...

My previous post was about how and where we get ideas for innovation. This post seems like a natural progression to it. Having run a startup from coffeehouse ( Cafe Coffee Day and Costa Coffee ), here are few tips, I’ve learnt along the way.. Find a coffeehouse that is spacious The coffeehouse should be close to place of prospective client(s) / home Choose a corner place.. It will provide for some privacy  Always place your order (Coffee or Food) early Tip the waiter/barista  Check the place you sit for phone signals and wireless (internet) strength See that the place you choose is in line of sight from the counter Be pleasant with the staff and also with people who occupy tables close to where you sit Check out if the cafe has a loyalty program and get a loyalty card Carry good quality headphones with mic (the ones that cancel the background noise) Know of any other hacks that a startup should consider when working from coffeehouse, do let me know ...

Having been an entrepreneur for over past 2 years and consulting for various startups on their business and marketing strategies, I had gained a lot of real experiences about the startup ecosystem.. from ideation to fruition  We all know that startups thrive in places where there is: economic growth access to capital young and educated work-force favourable government policies But, where do people get ideas for startups? Ask any startup founder and they would say - personal experience, market trends, existing problem or questioning the status quo, etc to be the top reasons which ignites the idea spark in them. A careful analysis of the top categories of startups (mostly technology startups) shows us that startup ideas thrive in the ‘border areas’.  Business is nothing but a form of structure that delivers value to stakeholders. The structures are formed basis specific activities. Every sphere of activity has a boundary and with each different boundaries...

Happy New Year to you all.. While consulting for clients (especially, startups) during the past year, I realised that most of them have a basic query… Give us some tips on digital marketing. While the topic itself is vast, here are few tips, in random order, which I think will be helpful to marketers  Keep (Customer) experience strategic and campaigns tactical Have an ‘Always On’ digital activity (Search, Online PR, Affiliate Marketing, etc) Build database, as and when possible and keep it consolidated Move on, somethings will not work for your product/brand. There is a difference in ‘Be In Social’ and ‘Being Social’. Social should be way of life for your company/brand, not a channel Every campaigns should have ‘learnings’ as a KPI Always keep a minimum percentage of digital marketing budget for innovations. Try something new, else you’ll never learn Your digital marketing should have at least 2 members - One who is digital savvy, and the other who is similar to yo...