Category: Marketing

Marketing in The Age of Corona Virus

Marketing in The Age of Corona Virus

By Neel Sinha

11 focus areas to use your B2B marketing dollars.

Whatever said and done Corona Virus is an amazing ice breaker. Begin a communication with Corona Virus and even your unintended audience will sit-up and pay attention. With due respect and concern for those suffering or having suffered from the dreaded virus, because life must go on, here are my two bits on how the now christened COVID 19 is impacting marketing as we know it, and how we can adapt our marketing budgets to best leverage from the situation.

While corona virus has impacted the overall economy and it is on a downward spiral across sectors, it is clear that the Market is down because of the ‘Collective Mood’ of the ‘Overall Market’ not because a big bank has crashed or there is a finance pressure in some geography because of a war.

This ‘mood thing’ however is leading to an unprecedented situation, because the markets do not know how to tackle this. Handling mood swings are not the domain of finance geeks and economists. Then, who bells the cat. At a macro level, creating moods, has always been the job of marketers. This time around marketers would take this experience and possibly take the lead in turning around the ‘mood’ of the markets and the never before Nobel Prize for Marketing (not economics) will be awarded to a humble marketer somewhere – just a thought.

But Marketing, in itself has taken a hit. The biggest area where Marketing is starting to see a big slump is the contact programs like Events, Meet-ups, Roadshows sponsored seminars etc., This is where the 2nd big money was. (The first is obviously the TV Ads). Till now enterprises sponsored ads for stadium full of people and corporate events filled up very ball room of every 5 star property without a day to spare. Now all this going phut, all of a sudden, organizers, advertisers, CMOs have no clue what hit them and where and how to spend their parked budgets and generate leads for their sales folks.

To set another background, it is clear that market demands, though may get deferred for a short while is not really going to reduce, specially for Technology companies (Technology powers everything, every video that gets created on Corona virus gets stored a million times creating a need for million times more storage, speed and power requirement!! Research needs humongous servers powering AI applications!! Working from home needs data-centers powering cloud for VPNs and so on and so forth). So is the story with Healthcare (for obvious reasons), Maybe Automobile (People may start preferring personal drive than public transport) and then each industry powers the other and while business models may shift , maybe shopping malls to online retail, overall market demand would exist if not increase.

What next in marketing, is the ‘no brainer’. So much ‘no brainer’ that even the guy supplying nails to the event guys is suggesting the option of going digital and is figuring out online SEO courses that could teach him Nail-biting trends in digital marketing.

With so much of introduction, to address the ‘Why’ Digital Marketing in the age of Corona Virus, the question is How and What in Digital Marketing.

Here are some 11 pointers which could be strong contenders for the focus of enterprise marketers’ budgets.

  • Greater focus on leisure content: In the near short future (hopefully short) lot of decisions are possibly going to be taken on the home dining tables – with working from home CXOs. In such scenarios, content that can compete to some extent with Netflix and occasional TV News on Corona Virus could have a greater chance of being consumed than regular B2B content.
  • Mobile friendly Content: Content that is mobile friendly – larger fonts, maybe a short video, a gif, contextual, shareworthy will possibly have a greater reach and recall and mobile trained contet teams might be up for a raise.
  • Online events such as Webinars: Webinars are a great format to explore in today’s context. They get you the best of three worlds – event kind of reach, digital kind of coverage and heavens kind of ROIs if done well. Read more on webinar strategies in my article on webinars.
  • Social Media Marketing: A good place to be if there are enough creative brains to power a continuous stream of awesome content to compliment the Ad-budgets. With more budgets shifting to SMM, the differentiation would be the content.
  • Email Marketing: For the same reasons as above, Email Marketing will only be effective if the CTA is powerful enough to entice an action, specially because the SPAM filters would be on an overdrive to ensure that all the emails powered by the Event Budgets do not burn-up your target audience’s hard drive.
  • Whatsapp marketing: Whatsapp marketing is not marketing – it is intrusion. Possibly the way it has to be handled therefore has to be more like – your TG says “I want to read it on my mobile, can you share a pdf.” What I call hook marketing. In other words the bait has to be in an opt-in in another campaign like registering to receive a whitepaper or attending a webinar and then on Whatsapp takes over. Give a shot on building a team for Whatsapp friendly content.
  • Content Syndication: Syndicating content with large publishers is expensive and does not always yield ROI class results but if there is a good content journey that drives the audience from top of the funnel towards down, the rewards could better. So if you are planning to include this in your campaign, focus on the content journey.
  • Videos: With folks sitting at home (and working 😊) consumption of video as a content would surely surpass the recent peaks, it has seen. Enterprises should focus more on multimedia content, irrespective of being lifestyle videos or info-illustration and animation videos.
  • Augmented Reality: AR has long been inducted by marketers as a marketing tool. In the absence of contact programs, this could see a greater adoption as a means for engagement with innovative interactions led renditions.
  • Website based Marketing: This is a pick from the past. When websites came up there was a rush to get audiences to visit website, so much so, that website marketers ignored the very product they were supposed to sell. Guess the time has come back, and we borrow some dried up leaves from the technique and build a whole new perspective on how audiences consume websites. Interactivity, content gamification, gratification for engagement can now all happen at the virtual home of the enterprise (maybe a microsite), aways from the threat of the Corona.
  • Tele-Calling: More monies available to marketers (savings from events etc.) focus may shift to getting more tele-sales. My take with Tele-sales would be to use as the last mile solution. Let the scenario for the tele-call be created by the digital campaigns and get the to prospect call the call center. If it is too much of outbound, my guess is people are going to get irritated in the middle of their tele and video conferences and prime videos 😊 and therefore becoming counter productive.

While humankind today is far more intelligent and capable to handle COVID19 like threats and things would come back to normalcy sooner than later, the scenario today could possibly lead to new disruptions in the way enterprises market their solutions and it would benefit all.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best!

Until then. Happy Marketing!

About the Author:
Neel Sinha is the Founder & Principal Consultant at nFaktor a B2B Marketing Agency. Nfaktor has offices in India and Singapore and works with leading enterprises on their marketing and Content Strategies across industries and geographies. Nfaktor has worked on multiple campaigns in the areas covered in the article specially in Content Syndication, Social Media Marketing, Website based Marketing and Webinars (with nearly 1000 webinars executed till date).

Read the author’s article on Webinars here.
https://www.nfaktor.com/blog/six-ripper-tips-to-gain-maximum-roi-on-your-webinars-in-2018/

Collaborative Team Efforts: A Revolutionary Tool for Start-up Success

Collaborative Team Efforts: A Revolutionary Tool for Start-up Success

By Neel Sinha

Any entrepreneur with a vision can initiate a new business or start-up. However, entrepreneurs who embrace the “single army” approach usually regret it later. It takes a collaboration of many people to achieve success. Multi-skills, experience, and competencies are required for success. Collaborations help to fulfil this goal.

In a highly competitive and unpredictable environment, one needs to change their organization to rapidly recognize and adapt to new opportunities and threats.  “Collaboration” is the new buzzword that paves the way for accelerating innovation, improving agility, increasing adaptability and cutting costs; all in a single go!  But, for the traditional and independent entrepreneur, adopting a collaborative culture is not so easy.

Based on the fact that our brains work better individually, and tend to break down in groups; most people are seen to prefer working independently on a task. Certainly, it’s not without good reason. Take the case of programmers, who are much faster when coding as individuals. Artists rarely collaborate, and when they do, it is not all that well.

However, there are exceptions to every rule!  If so many struggles on being team players, why is collaboration such a premium? It must be noted, that things that are good for one aren’t always easy.  For every industry, there are huge benefits to creative collaboration. In today’s fast galloping world, collaborative efforts are proving to be a revolutionary tool for start-up success, let’s discuss how:

Feeling of a “win-win” Situation: It’s the feeling of a win-win situation that collaboration results in, opening a lot more possibilities and opportunities.  As the saying goes, “Two heads are better than one,” Seventy-five percent of employers consider teamwork and collaboration as being very important to the success of any business.

Effective collaboration helps a business network to gain exposure. Being successful in business requires to consistently make connections and form alliances. Every contact one makes may not result in collaboration, but every time one reaches out to someone to explore the possibility, one is expanding their network. Mutually complimenting and benefitting each other, collaboration and networking go hand-in-hand. They are both crucial to the long-term growth and potential of an organization.

To keep up with market demand and competition, it is critical for businesses to find ways to innovate at a faster pace in this continually connected world. Partnerships and collaboration between start-ups and corporates help to generate and sustain creative energy.

Starting at the Top: Trust forms the basis for any successful collaboration. Company culture via the actions of the founder requires to treat everyone with respect along with giving regular constructive feedbacks.  Large organizations usually seek the innovative power and focus of start-ups. So, It holds no secret that innovation is the key to success for both start-ups and corporates.

Collaboration between the two worlds is mutually beneficial.  Most start-ups have the mind, skill, and tool-set along with an entrepreneurial passion and focus to facilitate their growth.  But these start-ups often lack access to clients, capital, and resources; which the large corporates have in abundance. Apart, the larger corporates have the distribution power to grow successful innovations fast and are experts in executing known business models. Therefore, connecting with corporates can provide start-ups with useful connections, access to resources, market expertise, and brings in revenue.

Access to More Constructive Inputs: Good ideas can come from various quarters.  More the voices, the better. These ideas or inputs that come in from various sources are critical in arriving at a clear decision taking into account:

  • What is important
  • What is possible based on constraints
  • Coordinating effective actions to produce successful outcomes

Collaboration enhances personal communication skills. When the team members interact and play to their strengths, they learn to be authentic and genuine; thereby increasing their effectiveness as well as skills. Collaboration enables to reach agreements faster.

Depending upon the culture, education, background, or life experiences; each person develops a unique quality.  When individuals collaborate, they bring thoughtful ideas to the open for discussion. This collaborative approach is a great way to re-invigorate and ignite a business with spontaneous energy.

Embracing the uniqueness of each employee and contributor and being truly receptive to their ideas; a business earns a wealth of new ideas.  As we see, an environment of collaboration generates creative energy that helps a business to drive innovation and stay competitive.

Improving Return on the Initial Investment: As per studies conducted, the gains emanating due to collaboration ranged from three to six times. This Return on Investment (RoI) is generated by avoiding costs, reducing costs, optimizing business, and arriving at faster business decisions.  It should be noted that the chief executive officers of both the corporates and start-ups share the most common strategic goals of growing their company, improving competitive positioning and generating revenue.

The start-ups have limited time and resources to prove the robustness and viability of their business model, and have to manage their time as efficiently as possible to deliver a Return on Investment. Engaging with a large organization can help them in achieving their goal successfully.  Innovation can be fostered between technology start-ups and large corporates benefiting both sides. It helps larger corporates to enter and create new markets, while on the other hand, it helps start-ups to develop and scale up their products.

A company achieved a greater RoC (Return on Collaboration) when it understood and smartly decided to use centrally-managed services and gained metrics as seen below:

  • Increased productivity by reduced average meeting time
  • Faster start-up time for meetings
  • Increased collaboration
  • Across-the-board travel costs reduced by more than a third
  • Quality of life of its employees improved because they did not have to hop on a plane as often.

It’s quite well known how start-ups like Uber, Airbnb, and Facebook disrupted traditional markets. Larger corporates try different ways to harness innovation by tapping outside potential. In order to stay innovative, it is necessary for larger corporates to collaborate with start-ups.  As we conclude, one can see, once better tools are deployed within a collaboration; the return on investment improves gradually giving shape to a collaborative culture. A collaborative team effort is indeed a revolutionary tool for start-ups.

Disclaimer: This blog was originally published in website: Digital Doughnut