When should your marketing start?

Convincing the customer to use your product or service and making the customer form a long standing bond with it is the ultimate success point for a marketer. For this to happen your marketing should not start from the point when your product is ready. Your marketing should instead start even before you consider building a product.

For all we know, successful products or services are made to solve a customer problem. Once you have identified a problem and have felt a strong need for a solution, even before listening to your demanding sense of urgency and going ahead and building a product, you should initiate your marketing, i.e. the research.

Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor. Neither is opportunity the sole direction to your company or product.

The decision making of many entrepreneurs gets taken over by a strong urge to quickly make the product, sell it and make money. Instead of deeply analyzing the customer’s problem in all variations and judging to themselves if their solution is ‘the solution’ that meets customer’s needs, many companies simply get on with building the product and dump it on their sales team to somehow sell it. The above said behavior of companies is called ‘Marketing Myopia’, where short-sighted mindset and illusion of understanding the problem leads a way to business failure.

For easing out the problems of your future sales team and ensuring positive growth of your company, taking the plunge with complete understand of your market is the only way.

Below is a 7 Step research every entrepreneur should conduct before taking the plunge.

1.  Understand the problem (Problem Statement)
2. Who are facing the problem? (Know who are your customers)
3. How many of them are facing such a problem (Know the Market Size)
4. The solution required to solve the problem and its features (Define your Product/service)
5. Is there any pre-existent solution for the said problem already in the market (Market Scape)
6. If yes, how many such solutions are available? (Competitor Analysis)
7. How much cost would you incur in developing the solution for a customer and how will the customer pay? (Viability or Feasibility Study)

Is your business idea viable?

Viability of a business can simply be defined as the ability to survive financially in a longer run and have sustainable profits. Many ideas of products and services might seem to deliver a great end consumer value and also be interesting to implement. However along with the delivery of a great consumer value, the profitability of the company in a longer run is ‘the important factor’ that keeps the show running. As an entrepreneur, before taking the plunge, it is highly recommended to perform the below viability checks to know for yourself if your idea is going to make you money or not.

Define your product/service 

• Define to yourself clearly what you are delivering. 
• Is it a product or a service? 
• What would be the features of the product or the package of services 

Define your ideal customer and market. 

• Know who your customers are 
• Know what they really want 
• Know how many such customers are there in the market (market size) 
• Is there any competition in the market? 
• If YES, how many competitors are there? Who are the big players? How is the market shared among the competitors? 
• If NO, try to see why hasn't anyone started such a business that you’re coming up with. Know what would have stopped anyone from starting up? 
• How are your competitors offering their products and services? 
• At what price are they offering them? 
• What can you do to penetrate and counter competition? 
• At what price should you be selling your product or service to counter competition and be able to sustain? 

Demand Analysis 

• Why should you do this? 
• So that you don’t end up setting up a company that sells a product or service that no one wants or very less people want. 
• Demand analysis is a very crucial activity. You should know if there is any demand for your product/service. If yes how much? 
• Reach out to a sample size of your target customers and conduct a primary research about the customers’ interest on your offering. 
• Try to know how much they would be willing to pay for such an offering. 
• Factor your findings from the sample size audience to the whole market and know the real demand. 
• Once you know the real demand, you must be able to comprehend what kind of a demand your product has. 
• Below are the various kinds of demands. 
• Full demand – A positive sign to you, where the customers are happy about your product and they want to buy from you.
• Overfull demand – Your offering has huge demand, many customers want to buy it and you won’t able to supply as much.
• Declining Demand – There is demand at the moment for your offering but the same might go down slowly.
• Negative Demand – Your product might be beneficial to the customer but her still doesn't want to buy it. E.g. Insurance
• Unwholesome Demand – This kind of demand is when your product is not useful/beneficial for the customer but still wants it. E.g. Cigarettes
• Irregular demand – Your product might be useful only at a given point of time in a period. In other words the requirement is seasonal. E.g. Umbrellas.
• Latent demand – The customer might not understand the usage and importance of your product while making the buying decision, but might feel the importance after he has purchased a different product/service. E.g. Normal mobile vs Smartphone. 

Once you have done all the above activities, you would have a clear answer to the question “Is your idea viable?” and you would able to make a conscious decision in moving forward with your idea.

How to write a great Blog Post? - Best practices of Blogging

Why to BLOG?

1. A chance to speak in detail to your audience/peers/customers/target group.
2. To establish a knowledge strong hold in your personal circle/community/industry/business
3. Contribute back to the knowledge ecosystem, in your area of interest/industry
4. Use it as a key tool in building your personal brand.

What kind of content SELLS or goes VIRAL?

1. Short and to the point (...most 'read' blogs are written in 300 – 500 words).
2. Properly proof read ‘data sets’ to substantiate your assertions/points.
3. Usage of imagery would paint your points even better
4. Plain and neat language – (…it’s good to refrain from using the Shakespearean vocabulary)
5. Use good and qualitative media – Info-graphics and a video blog once in a while

**Use your blog’s analytics to figure out which blogs have done well, try to understand the elements of that blog that brought in the good readership, build further upon those elements.


**Never be in a hurry to hit the “Publish” button. Always save your content and read your blog after a while, assuming yourself to be the reader. You might find things you want to omit or add.


**Great & Sharable content always strikes an emotional chord with its target group. The emotions that have been the most compelling across digital media are as below


Positive emotions: Amusing, Inspiring, Cute, Illuminating. Negative emotions: Shocking, Fearful, Anger, Controversial

How to write an ENGAGING blog post?

1. Try to tell a story
2. Use a catchy title – HOOK #1
3. The first paragraph should glue the reader – HOOK#2
4. Use a casual tone -  Make it sound like a conversation
5. Allow it to sound personal – As your own opinion
6. Ask questions, invite comments & start discussions
7. Take care of the bare minimums – grammar, punctuation & language tone

How to GAIN/RETAIN readership?

1. The readers should have a take away in every post, through which he/she should be able to positively take a decision or make/change their perspectives.
2. Do not Direct-Market yourself or your product/service. The reader should never sense any marketing flavour in the content. Such content will not bring back the reader.
3. Break a bigger topic into smaller topics and write posts as a series. 
4. Place links to your other blogs in a post, where ever possible.
5. Reach out to other blog posts on similar topics – post your opinions and leave links to your blog.
6. Leverage your blog posts on your company’s social channels – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Quora, etc.
7. Reach out to the communities and forum discussion boards in your industry – engage yourself in the discussions and leave mentions of your blog post & links.

"Haath uthao aur paar karo!!"

The City of Hyderabad is one of those few cities that has evolved upon a very old and strong cultural base. Our biryani, sherwani, qubani aur deccani ishtyle are jamana old and irreplaceable. While most things about Hyderabad fascinate us, there also are a few jamana old habits of our Hyderabadis that frustrate. One among them is a custom practiced by alarming number of Hyderabadis which could be absolutely fatal to the practitioner and also a few others along with him. This one's name is the "haath uthao aur road paar karo" custom.

Such a menace we Hyderabadis can be on the roads, when we simply throw caution to the air, lift our hand and cut through the heavy traffic. We risk our safety and also the safety of the motorists, who absolutely have no idea when we are going to cut into their way. This habit is so deeply rooted into us, that there is no descent way left to stop us from doing this. 

The discipline in this matter can only be made sure by The Govt. and GHMC. (Who by the way should have pro-actively observed this menace and have taken steps to control this problem) One of the solutions to this issue can be the construction of high, un-mountable dividers on major roads, that wont help this random road crossing. This construction should of-course be coupled by foot over bridges every 1 kilometer.

Jai Hind, Jai Hyderabad!!

Image Credit/Source: http://www.thehindu.com/

Why TV ads are such a waste today.

I was watching ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ on HBO last night. Bane kicks batman’s @r$e and sends him into the hell hole to wait for his permission to die and <bliPPP> a commercial break... I flip the channel to Discovery-Turbo and there was this guy building a chopper with Gold & Titanium-alloy parts for a Sheikh in Dubai, crazy stuff!!! He assembles the chopper and realizes that the base frame is not up to the mark and he had to do the whole thing again, and <bliPPP> a commercial break. I flipped back to HBO and there was a commercial there too, so I start watching the repeat telecast of BPL, Man City vs Arsenal and it suddenly strikes me, the guys that get their commercials aired on TV are simply burning their money. Is there anyone out there that really watches the ads on TV.

Business houses invest a lot of time and money in coming up with concepts, developing advertisements, comparing various media, buying the media with great TRPs and getting the commercials aired. Which simply is becoming a lost cause. The TRPs of the TV programs would however be high on the charts because people watch just the programs and skip the commercials. Some thing to really think about.

The Print Media's Ad Revenue still Sliding

With the rise and increase in appreciation to the online media, the traditional print media has been seeing a drop in the percentage increase of circulation every year. As per The Guardian's, Dec 2009 issue on this subject, all the major print media of the world i.e. the likes of SUN, The Daily Mirror, The Telegraph including The Guardian had seen a dip in circulation numbers every year from 2001 till 2009, and the trend was still on till 2013. The advertisers quickly grasped the trend and hence, the print media's revenue in terms of advertising has been seeing a dip every year since 2003.

According to the Newspaper Association of America, the total revenue from print advertising in 2012 was at $18,931(Mil) against a $44,939(Mil) in 2003. It’s not obnoxious now to declare that the print media is no longer a great watch out space as much as the new age marketers are concerned. On the other hand, the print media's digital counterparts seem to display a higher reach potential with cheaper space for advertising, and so have become the prime tools in everybody's advertising strategy.

Conventional modes of advertising are almost Dead.

How many of us rush into a store to buy something, right after we see its ad on TV? The answer to this question is MOSTLY NEVER. Ideally, we buy when there is a need. Although, when we buy we might consider that particular brand whose ad we saw on TV. But, it again depends after how long we are buying such a product, it could be days, months and in few cases like automobiles and real-estate, years. This is where most conventional advertising tools like the ads on TV, Radio, Newspapers and Billboards, etc., seem irrelevant to most consumers that interface with them. People who watch them are mostly not in the same context of making a buying decision right away. These media mostly reach a wrong consumer that has no use for the product, or could reach the right person in a totally wrong time. Even more a depressing fact about these media is that their 'reach' to a certain target audience is not measurable.

Take an example of an average Indian family with middle level income, the grandfather, grandmother, the father, mother and the two children watching a movie on TV. The moment a commercial break comes up the mother rushes into the kitchen to bring in something to eat for the kids, the grandpa goes to the loo, the children run around and play, in the meanwhile the father flips the channel. Now, who has watched those commercials? The business houses might have invested  a lot of time and money in coming up with reasonable concepts, developing advertisements, analyzing various media, picking the best one with great TRPs, buying the media time and getting those commercials aired. Which simply has become a lost cause and effort. On the other hand, the TRPs of that particular TV program would however be high on the charts as the family is back into watching the movie after the commercial break. We business houses consider that, not so firm TRP data in deciding upon which media to buy for our advertising.

Let’s consider the same family in another situation. Let’s say no one in the family moved and all of them sat through the commercial break. Like most general TV ads, let’s say there were ads about an automobile, one related to FMCG, one about an educational institute and another from a tampon brand.  Now in whose mind does an advt of an MBA coaching institute ring along with? It would years before someone from this family is ready to sign-up for one. The FMCG stuff would mostly be thought about in the beginning of the next month. How often does an average middle income level family decide upon buying a car? And the ad about the tampons is surely out of discussion. These two situations paint quite a picture, how simply the advertising on TV is ignored. May be, in rare situations you might sit through and watch a commercial, for the humor or glamour in it, but making a buying decision is still far off. 

This concludes that in most situations the conventional old school forms of advertising, are simply being ignored by today's average consumer. These media are not capable enough to draw a full marketing circuit that ends in customer conversion. The pivot points in the marketing circuit they can afford to draw are very disconnected. This disconnection leads to the loss in customer's attention. The loss of customer's attention mid-way is a huge loss that the marketers can afford today. And so, the old means of marketing communication are in no position to provide the deserved level attention to the brands, and ultimately they are also failing in providing the deserved customer engagement. They are still a great means for brand awareness, but are really dull for brand engagement. Marketers today need to focus on tools that empower them in drawing a firm connection between customer's interests-needs-brand awareness and finally engagement. Choosing specifically the best tool that simplifies and does the task for them is the key.