When an Internet brand is lured by the TV glamour

Should online brands be advertising on television? If yes, when? This is a debate that gets stirred up whenever a young online brand starts becoming high profile on TV. Having been in the seat of a marketing decision-maker for a successful Internet company, this was a question we came across every year and the decisions we took whether we should be on TV or not was based on a simple analysis of where the source of our business was - in our case, where were the resumes coming from.

The mind started working the same logic when I saw the television advertisement of flipkart.com. As most of us know, Flipkart started out as an online book store but has now added new categories such as movies, mobiles, music, games, etc., to its product range. If we were to focus on Flipkart's book business (which I assume is still the biggest category for them), here's a simple representation of their source of business. 

Representation of Flipkart's likely source of business

Given the above scenario, my marketing priority would be dependent on the size of the opportunity in each box and my own market status.
1. If I am a market leader and Box 'C' is a substantial opportunity and is bigger than Box 'B', my priority would be on Box 'C' followed by Box 'B'.
2. If I am a market leader (by far and not a marginal leader) and Box 'C' is a small opportunity, my priority would be to retain my current franchise while attempting to expand the market i.e., Box 'D'.
3. If I am not a market leader and Box 'C' is a substantial opportunity and is bigger than Box 'A', my priority would be on Box 'C' followed by Box 'A'.
4.  If I am not a market leader and Box 'C' is a small opportunity, my priority would be to go after Box 'A' because that's where the volumes are. If one attempts the market expansion strategy (Box 'D') as a trailer brand, it would be counter-productive and the brand should be prepared to cede most of the expansion benefits to the market leader.

Today's online medium (personally, am a big fan of Google AdWords) with its rich social opportunities is ideally built to accomplish tasks in Box 'A', 'B' and 'C' highly efficiently. Box 'D' is an option that should be explored only when opportunities from the first three boxes have been fully leveraged. 

Flipkart's current strategy seems to suggest that it's a market leader by far and that Box 'C' is a small opportunity. Hence, the need to go offline and attempt market expansion.

Flipkart should ask itself the following two questions.
1. Is it already much bigger than all its competition put together?
2. Are most Indians on the Internet already buying books online?
If the answer to the above two questions is "No", Flipkart's campaign foray into TV seems premature.

At the end of the day, the millions spent on TV should help the brand register a sizeable uptick in sales in the short term (I do not subscribe to the view that TV advertising brings in long term salience and need not necessarily result in higher sales during the campaign period. If I am spending money on TV, I better see higher sales on site. Else, either the creative or the media was a wrong choice!).

I personally like the experience of buying on Flipkart and I do hope the brand is seeing an upward graph in its sales during the campaign period attributable to its TV campaign. However, my personal view is that if the money spent on the TV campaign was spent on online marketing, it would have given the brand far bigger sales leverage. And this point has nothing to do with the quality of the campaign creative!

Employees seek life after work - how are you doing?

With such a vibrant work force around us, it is but natural to wonder about the work-life balance in today's professionals and what contours the after-hours life actually takes. It was with this objective in mind that Knowience Insights commissioned an online survey to understand the after-hours behaviour of Indian working professionals. 

298 working professionals participated in the survey conducted in May 2010. 

1. 66% of the respondents were company employees, 24% self employed / consultants and 10% business owners. 
2. 53% of the respondents were in the 25-34 age group, 26% in the 19-24 years age group and 17% in the 35-44 years age group.
3. Almost 50% of the respondents were from 5 cities viz., Mumbai, Delhi - NCR region, Bangalore, Hyderabad / Secunderabad and Chennai. A significant % of the respondents came from Top 9-15 cities.
4. Information Technology (23%) and Manufacturing (11%) were the dominant industries to which the respondents belonged, followed by Entertainment / Media / Advertising, BPO and Financial Services. 
5. 30% of the respondents were married and living in a nuclear family whereas 25% were married and living in a joint family. A substantial 27% of the respondents were not married and living with parents / relatives.  

Some interesting insights emerged from the survey, conducted in May 2010.

Leveraging one's captive customer database for insights

In the course of building a business, one typically creates a database of customers and prospects. If one agrees that insights are not just important but also critical for creating winning business strategies, then the captive database that a company has nurtured over a period of time is a veritable source of customer insights. 

That said, it is not unusual to find companies - in both consumer and B2B space - not striving to leverage this source for insights. 

Let's take the example of a Bank. In my family, we have relationships with 6 Banks in all - ranging from a relationship of 2 years to over 25 years. This list has 3 foreign Banks, 1 Indian private Bank and 2 Indian public Banks. So far, we have not received a single invitation from any of the Banks to provide them inputs on any facet of their service. To be fair, one Bank does throw up a survey link on its website but none of the other Banks have even tried to engage with any of us in my family. 

In Marketing, everything is measurable

When I was heading the marketing function at a well-known Internet company, my team followed a strict code for measuring every single marketing $ that was spent and thus, the words "Everything is Measurable" became a part of the way we evaluated our marketing campaigns. 

The belief that every single marketing $ should be and can be measured, is at the core of how an organisation views and evaluates the performance of its marketing strategy and plans. And this becomes doubly important for a start-up - funded or non-funded - because ill-advised marketing investments can really hurt a company.

Here are a few best practices I have experienced while putting in place a process for evaluating marketing investment.

Building a crack sales team in a tech / Internet start-up

When one interacts with the founders of technology / Internet start-ups during networking events, one topic that never ceases to generate interest is about "what should one's sales strategy be and how to hire a crack sales team". The reason why this is a hot topic for discussion is because typically most of the founders come from a technology background and have had no active sales roles in their previous professional avatars.

I have also seen many of the founders getting into the role of a Head of Sales - not just taking decisions on sales strategy and doing front-line sales but also hiring sales managers and the team. The passion of the founders to take the company forward can absolutely be not doubted but this trend definitely raises the question - "is sales as easy as a DIY tool"?

In my opinion, any technology / Internet start-up is propped up by 4 pillars - Product, Marketing, Sales and Customer Service and the company would be as strong as its weakest pillar. One would have to acknowledge that each of these pillars is a specialized field and needs specialists to strengthen it. This is especially so of Sales because this is the only pillar that has the responsibility of earning money for the company whereas the other pillars look for investment/spends from the company.

Why tech start-ups should outsource marketing

One of the biggest positives one sees in the growth of India's tech-knowledge economy is the rise in entrepreneurial intent among today's professionals, in technology, mobile or Internet space. And typically, my observation has been that most of the technology based start-ups are started by entrepreneurs with technology skills as getting one's own hands dirty is a great way to become an entrepreneur.

One has had an opportunity to meet with scores of founders of tech start-ups in the last few months and most of them have voiced very similar challenges relating to marketing - "what should our marketing strategy be and what kind of a person one should hire to spearhead our marketing".

My advice to a tech start-ups - "time your marketing hiring".

DHL and a man called Craig

Here's a verbatim account of a story shared by good friend Krish with his friends on Facebook.

"My Daughter Priyanka used DHL to courier her applications to American Universities recently. 7 days later, one of the applications had not reached and my daughter had missed her deadline !

Infuriated, I googled the name of the Managing Director of DHL India and Craig's name popped up.

And though no mail ID was available, I used the usual format (firstname.secondname@dhl.com) and sent Craig a mail, for whatever it was worth.

Less than 2 mins later,I got a response from Craig, saying that , he was no longer the MD of India, but he was horrified that this had happened. He put me on to Minal, who heads customer service in India. Over the course of the day he kept in touch, with single line mails, reminiscent of a certain Mr. Goodman. Minal in the meanwhile managed to contact the University, mailed them and explained the reason for the delay. They accepted the application. Craig was as delighted as I was.

And I am a DHL customer for life !

We often share the stories that have brought us grief.Thought I should share a happy story with you.

Warm regards,

Krish"

These are the stories legendary companies / brands are made of. What story do you have?