"Other people make mistakes- So slow down"

Check out the advertisement below and you can know more about it from our posters put up in the College Campus.

3 Steps to better Understand your Customers' Content Needs in 2015

According to the Content Marketing Institute at least 58% of the businesses have set aside a higher budget for the content marketing and research for the new year 2015. Now their aim is to get to know their customers better to get an adequate return on that budget.

Why must we get to know our customers better than we did in 2014? The most basic difference between content marketing and traditional advertising is an acute focus on our customers’ needs. Obviously, we have to find an overlap between our customers’ needs and our business goals. But content marketing doesn’t work if we don’t deeply empathize with our customers.

Talk To Customers

Big data, for better or for worse, is not a substitute for actually asking your customers questions about their research process and informational needs.

 The questions used to frame the conversation include:

•   What caused you to look for a solution?

•   What did you want to change?

•   Where did you go to look for information?

•   How do you prefer to consume information?

•   Who else helped to evaluate the choice?

•   What pushback did you get?

•   What did you need to build the business case?

•   Why did you choose us?

•   When it comes to the opportunities to improve your business function, what are you most excited about?

•   What aspects of your passions and interests overlap with your occupation?

The final two questions are quite important to understanding your customers at a truly human level.

Validate & Tweak With Web Analytics

For this purpose we use Advanced Segments in Google Analytics. It allows you to define groups of website visitors based on the following criteria:

•   Demographics. Segmentation by age, gender, language and location.

•   Technology. Segmentation by operating system, browser, and device.

•   Behavior. Segmentation by how often a user visits a site and how they interact with the site.

•   Traffic Sources. Segmentation by referral sites and campaigns.

For each of my persona groups, we use the Advanced Segment Reports to answer the following questions:

•   Do they actually behave differently than they suggested in the interviews?

•   What else do they want that was not revealed in the interviews?

•   What do they suggest is an important informational need in an interview, but clearly does not lead to a purchase based on web activity?

The combination of persona interviews and web analytics reports should arm you with a better understanding of that overlap between your customers’ needs and your business goals. You may think we are done and ready to spend the increased budget we garnered, but alas we’re not done.

Craft A Customer Empathy Map

Based on the previous two exercises, we have identified the what customers want and how they generally behave. What we have not yet identified is how they feel.

David Gray, founder of XPLANE, developed a template for an empathy map to fill in the blanks to this sentence: Our users need a better way to ___ because ___.
The questions that asked are

• How do customers think about their fears and hopes?
• What do they hear when other people use your product?
• What do they see when they use your product? What is the environment?
• What do they say or feel when using your product, whether in private or public?
• What are their pain points when using your product?
• Is this a positive or a painful experience for them?
• What does a typical day look like in their world?
• Do they hear positive feedback about your company from external sources?
• What do they hope to gain from using your product?
• Has your customer repeated quotes or defining words?

These are the questions you pose to your internal stakeholders and lead to the conclusions you post in the grid.

We should recognize that our customers are more than web visitors. They are more than their social media posts. They are people with aspirations, fears, challenges and opportunities. We need a combination of qualitative research, quantitative research and group brainstorms to empathize with our customers at a deep level.

We hope this helps you in planning your business’s content marketing.

 Fin J

5 Myths about Social Media Marketing

Consumers have now moved into the digital space, yet they still crave the attention of corporations they admire. Unfortunately, many brands are still getting stuck on social media, failing to effectively utilize this channel.

Social media is constantly changing, so myths are constantly spreading. It’s important to go through some of these myths and figure out where they are following the wrong path.

Myth #1: Consumers Aren’t Reading Your Social Posts

Contrary to popular arguments, not only does your social content get read, it also has the ability to influence purchasing decisions. In fact, HubSpot concluded that in 2011, “67 percent of B2C companies and 41 percent of B2B companies have acquired a customer through Facebook.”

However, it’s important to remember that your reach on Facebook is determined by a number of factors, one of which is fan engagement with your content.

Text-only status updates tend to perform poorly compared to images and links; so, make sure to consider that when creating your social strategy. Well-respected corporations like Proctor & Gamble offer contests and engaging photography send out coupons weekly and anoint very specific employees to be their brand ambassadors.

Remember, though, Facebook isn’t the end-all-be-all of social networks. No matter what the social network, consumers will read any text, video, image, contest or coupon you publish.

Myth #2: Too Much Content Will Reveal Trade Secrets To Competitors

Having thirty pages of content doesn’t make you a bookbinder. The more transparency you maintain with your customer the more trust they have in you, followed by loyalty and increased sales.

Failing to leverage social media will reveal some weaknesses to your competitors, though — like your company’s inability to provide knowledge and remain current within your industry.

Myth #3: Social Media Cannot Heal Reputation Wound

Just as important social media is, it is important to also keep a check on the posts, which get posted relating to your institute. Also, Ignoring website feedback could produce bad social karma. Receiving that indignant Ripoff Report can destroy your reputation in search results.

Professionals know how difficult it is to rebuild a tarnished reputation; avoid this nightmare by implementing an aggressive social media strategy from the very beginning.

Ensure that your social page administrators are empowered to mitigate each problem quickly, individually and thoroughly. As you develop a strong rapport with your customers via social channels, egregious racketeering sites like Ripoff Report will lose credibility.

Myth #4: Social Successes Should Be Gauged Solely By Social Interactions

The numbers of social interactions you get out of a campaign are a KPI, but ultimate success should be measured by sales opportunities or revenue. Interactions may enhance the likelihood of increasing sales opportunities; but, if you don’t close any of those leads, the campaign is a failure, regardless of how many interactions were generated. Marketing exists to drive sales.

Joseph Knoop, a Pinterest celebrity with over 3.8 million followers, is a living testimony that Pinterest isn’t just for creative types and stay-at-home moms, but for businesses, as well. For eg: many businesses have their pages on pinterest. The more their articles or pins get pinned or liked, the business becomes more popular and thus the sales increase.

Myth #5: Social Media Marketing Costs Nothing

Though major social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube are all free to use, hidden costs always exist when implementing a social media marketing campaign. These costs might include spending hours developing a social strategy, creating content assets, posting updates, and responding to customers. An effective social media campaign is much more than one of us simply posting a random blog or FB post when we had time.

To create an active and engaging social media promotion, you need someone who prioritizes and implements the plan, manages the messaging, and monitors the mediums for customer feedback.

Additionally, paid social campaigns should not be discounted — these are very effective for increasing brand awareness and gaining new followers outside of your existing customer base.

So, I now hope you got to know many new things and surely the myths are broken. See our other posts also. J

Marketing In Indian Aviation

Aviation industry is on a boom since few decades. People prefer flying from one place to another than using trains and road transport. Even in India ,demand of air transport is drastically increasing because of the fast lives and increase in economic conditions. Origin of Indian aviation industry can be traced back to the year 1912 . Air travel remains a large and growing industry. It facilitates economic growth, world trade , international investment and tourism and is therefore central to the globalization taking place in many other industries. 75% of the Indian market share is owned by the private sector.

The whole marketing of aviation industry depends on two phases- making promises, keeping promises. The airlines has to focus both on the ground level service as well as the In-flight services. A distinguish in price even promotes and markets your airline .

Premium Pricing- Use a high price where there is a uniqueness about the service.

Cheap value pricing-This approach is used where external factors such as recession or increased competition force companies to provide ‘value’ products  and services to retain sales.

A new concept called Aviationmarketing has evolved over past few years where big firms are hired to market the airlines. These people are experienced in this particular field. They provide a full range of strategic and creative marketing services focused on aviation, aerospace and travel to help a company soar.

Their hands-on approach to marketing manages every phase of the company's program from initial concept to full implementation. With Aviation Marketing Consulting, the airline can focus on running business while they manage the day-to-day details of running an effective marketing program that will generate leads and have sales soaring.

Talking about Indigo airlines in particular, it is the leader today in the domestic aviation industry.

Indigo Airlines is one of the cheapest domestic airlines in India which is owned by InterGlobe Enterprises and Mr. Rakesh Gangwal

The core product of Indigo airlines is of course Air travel. The traveling is mostly for passengers but the cargo line of Indigo airlines is growing fast as well. Indigo airlines, being the country’s largest low-cost carrier offers one of the best airline services in the country. For the past three years, Indigo has managed to create profit whereas its competition has been making loses. This has largely been due to the fact that the airline increased its capacity and efficiency in its services while containing costs. As a way of increasing capacity, new flights have been introduced in order to get more passengers.

For instance, while the total airline capacity in India reduced by 4%, Indigo managed to increase its capacity by unprecedented 39%. Another strategy that Indigo applied is deft route planning such that it increased the number of aircrafts per route instead of only increasing the number of routes. The low-cost model strategy, purchasing only one type of aircraft and keeping the operational costs as low as possible coupled with an emphasis on punctuality are the main reasons for its success even when the airline industry in India was going through its rough.

No airline has worked harder at capturing the local market better than IndiGo Airlines. The airline relies on its cost and availability to promote its brand across the market. This investments in advertisements are low because it affects the cost. However, Indigo did come out with a few TVC’s of its own as well as does good advertising online. The airline has adopted a strategy of connecting flights to other destinations from one destination such that customers will not have to book another airline to arrive to their destination. For instance, it has connected four flights from Ranchi to Delhi, Mumbai, Patna and Bangalore and plans are underway for it to add Kolkata and Raipur.

Fair and Lovely Foundation- How and Why?

What is fair and lovely foundation?

Fair & Lovely Scholarship Foundation is an HUL (Hindustan Unilever Limited) initiative that aims to empower the women of India through education and career development before their marriage, which has been successful since 2003, the year it was first started. The Fair & Lovely Foundation Scholarship helps academically brilliant girls from the lowest economic strata of the society fulfill their dreams of higher education. These young achievers are supported with course fees, accommodation, local travel, books and stationary costs, depending upon their needs. The scholarship is renewed every year on the basis of the performance of the student. Also, it covers money capital, which is helping aspiring women entrepreneurs start their own business.

The recent advertisement, which was launched to promote the foundation for the year 2014, explains about girls looking for a well-settled groom. Instead, making the girl independent is the main target area of this initiative. The foundation identifies academically exceptional girls from financially challenged backgrounds and offers scholarships up to Rs. one lakh per candidate. Deserving candidates are selected through a screening-and-interview process. Panels at the Fair & Lovely Foundation shortlisting phase includes noted professionals from various fields, who carefully interview these girls across five centers: Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Lucknow. Their level of need and desire to excel is taken into account to select the final list of awardees.

The foundation provides resources in education and business to millions of women who use or support Fair & Lovely. Efforts have included:

•   HUL sponsored career fairs in over 20 cities across India

•   Counseling in over 110 careers

•   Supported 100 rural scholarships for women students

•   Created a professional course for aspiring beauticians

·   Created a three-month Home Healthcare Nursing Assistant course open to women from ages 18-30 years

Honoring women across India that have achieved greatness and set good examples for others to follow.

Why did HUL come up with it?

The foundation was basically a strategy to come out of the bad public image which fair and lovely had created for itself. Here’s how:

Until CavinKare’s fairever entered the market in 1999, Fair & Lovely held a 90% market share for the product. Fairever gained an impressive 15% market share since it began being sold in India, causing HUL to respond with increase advertising efforts.

HUL instituted a huge campaign with a series of ads that were centered around “the fairer girl gets the guy” theme. And various other marketing theme where a girl’s beauty and fortune was shown to be based on how fair she is. CavinKare counteracted these ads by taking a dig at HUL’s strategy. They showed ads that encouraged women to be successful regardless of their complexion, but rather more self-confident after using Fairever. The two opposite approaches in advertising put HLL and Fair & Lovely in a bad position to the public and press. The All India Women’s Democratic Association (AIDWA) filed a complaint in March and April 2002 with HUL. The Ministry of Information ruled that the campaign violated the Cable and Television Network Act of 1995, which strives to ensure no ads promote discrimination on the basis of gender, race, creed, color, caste or nationality.

As a result of the backlash against HUL’s Fair & Lovely campaign, the company discontinued the ads in March 2003. Shortly after it pulled the ads off the air, HUL launched a new charitable cause called the Fair & Lovely Foundation, which vowed to “encourage economic empowerment of women across India.”

Its impact:

Fair & Lovely Foundation since inception in 2003; has played an integral role in changing the lives of more than 1500 girls, giving them wings to achieve their dreams by empowering them through education and career development. Through these scholarships, Fair & Lovely opens doors of hope for girls across the country to pursue their dreams. One of the 2012 scholarship winners, Sajneeben whose father cuts and polishes precious gems has to support a family of five on his meager earnings. While her mother, a housewife tries her best to give her children the best of all worlds but the family income is insufficient to support their three children. Sajnee who is studying hard to pursue her studies in her chosen field of Bachelor of Ayurveda, Medicine and Surgery says, “With the scholarship amount that I’ve received from the Fair & Lovely Foundation, I’m confident that I’ll be able to overcome my financial challenges and build a great career”. other 225 girls like Sajnee were awarded with the scholarship in the year 2013.

This also improved their brand image, showing fair and lovely in a good light in the society. Even now, fair and lovely occupies a major share in the market of fairness creams, nearly 53%.

The winners(2013)

Conclusion:

Fair and lovely did the mistake, which cost them a fortune.  The orthodox nature of Indians, and hence by showing the fair and dark comparison the audiences were easy to attract. This even though increased their sales also led to a huge negativity, which resurfaced the minds of Indians. Though the thinking has changed now, there still are many families, which do prefer a fairer bride or daughter or wife than a woman with a darker skin tone. The companies should never forget the impact it has on the society and should be very careful about its actions.  Also, a company before entering a market should do a complete research about the culture, religions, how things work out to be, etc. it helps a lot in knowing which are the target consumers and also what are the means in which this could be possible. Though fair and lovely was successful in knowing how it could increase its sale, the way was not ethical. So, even that’s a challenge. But you have to accept challenges and find a way out of it, even if a mistake; just like how fair and lovely did. ;)