How to Start Content Writing? [Step by Step Guide]

The only thing constant in life and digital marketing is ‘change’. And by now we are more than used to it. More the companies invest in various internet marketing campaigns, more is the influx of data. That data which holds the potential to not just sustain their business but also turn it around, if used optimally. Data focused marketing requires a lot of testing and comes with its own set of challenges. While many businesses are actively synergizing data into clever campaigns to reach out to their customers, they are still facing a lot of stumbling blocks when it comes to online marketing. Common Challenges Faced by Digital Marketing Executive: Every minute, a new business is trying to build its presence online. The market is cluttered as ever and the consumers are spoilt for choices. The competition is getting worse day-by-day but at the end of the day, businesses are selling the same thing to the same people at the same price. Which means whatever they are saying through their marketing channels is only adding to the consumers’ disinterest. What can they do to break away from this pattern? Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Invent new digital customer experiences that make their brand stand out. Use data-focused marketing to localise global data and personalise it to resonate with the local consumers. Let’s look at the consumer’s ideal journey across digital channels to understand this particular challenge. Say a consumer is accessing Facebook on his phone and has come across an interesting video Ad. He watches it, likes it and moves on. The next time he is browsing on his iPad/Tab looking for products like the Ad he saw on Facebook a week ago. This time a Google Display Banner about the product he is looking for pops up. He is interested and goes to the landing page to check the product/ brand but drops out without making up his mind. The very next week the same consumer goes to the website of the said brand buys the product. Magical, eh? But this kind of concrete conversions is a distant dream for most online businesses as they are often trying to figure out which marketing channel should they push the most. The answer is, ‘all of them’ – social media, website, the right technology tools and mobile. Use target group segmentation and then wait to find out which of these mediums work and which of them are passé. Unless a business justifies its digital experiments in the form of ROI (return on investment), it is very difficult to understand the effectiveness of any online marketing campaign. ROI can be measured by tracking every single marketing activity in real time and clubbing the results with the sales report. But the challenge is not all marketing activities are easy to track. Best Online Digital Marketing Courses Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To explore all our certification courses on Digital Marketing, kindly visit our page below. Digital Marketing Certification That’s where marketing analytics and inbound marketing come to the rescue. Marketing analytics help in deciphering the credibility of the existing or incoming data and inbound marketing campaigns give tangible numbers performance-wise. Better the numbers more will be the budget for the next digital marketing campaign. All said and done, today’s challenges will be tomorrow’s guiding stars. Hence, experimentation in digital marketing is key if a business wants to ace it in the long run. Top Digital Marketing Skills Online Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Programs SEO Optimisation Courses Performance Marketing Certification Search Engine Marketing Course Email Marketing Strategy Content Marketing Strategy Social Media Advertising Digital Marketing Analytics Website Analytics Online Display Advertising Best Affiliate Programs upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? 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Back in my agency days, I was really confused as to how my team managers could magically divide the client’s budget on digital across channels like Google & Facebook, and across networks like Google Search, Shopping, GSP, Facebook Targeting & Remarketing. They would estimate some “industry standard” click-through & conversion rates and apportion the client’s money across these channels to achieve the desired goals either transactions or leads. Over the years, I’ve realized that marketing managers figure out some of these industry thresholds and develop some templates which helps them accurately coin strategies that are at least 70-80% of the desired results. In this E-Book, we’ll be taking you step by step, in how you can create a comprehensive 3-month comprehensive digital marketing budget strategy. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. What You’ll Learn from this E-book? This e-book primarily aims to make you independent from your marketing managers, and helps you create Digital Marketing Strategy & perform budget allocations for all the online channels, and highlights the levers that you need to focus on when you create your strategy around thresholds & metrics – 1. Deep Dive into Primary & Secondary Metrics – Learn why CPCs, CTRs, Conversion rates are so important. 2. Understanding Your Target Consumers – Learn How to think about your target audience & then take a decision on which channels & networks you want to allocate money to. 3. 1st Month’s Budget Plan – Learn Step by Step for a Travel company, who wants to create a Digital Marketing Strategy & Budget Plan for the 1st month on Google & Facebook. 4. 3-Month Budget Plan – Learn how to expand your 1 month’s pilot to a 3-month quarterly strategy, also check the pitfalls & landmines of digital PPC you need to avoid. Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses Bonus Section : We have also shared a compilation of 10 top performance marketing strategies that have worked well for both e-commerce & lead generation businesses, which you can use as a starting point for your digital marketing strategy. You can download the e-book from the below link Free of Cost. Do let us know your feedback. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Featured Programs for you – Advanced Certificate in Digital Branding & Advertising from MICA In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing

The difference between good and great is never the hard and sharp skills which can be measured and quantified, it is always the softer, rounded and scruffy stuff which is tough to learn, unlearn and asses. Ironically, the hard is easy and soft is difficult. An un-shakeable rockstar digital marketer is not just made up of data, analytics, optimization, tools, impressions, clicks and conversions. He is made of rigor, curiosity, intuition, persuasion, adaptability and negotiation. Doesn’t sound like a chapter from organizational behavior 101? Well, it does and it is the what great marketers are made of. No, he is not made of dimensions which can be measured through the spider web charts. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. The difference between a good and a rockstar digital marketer are the soft skills which can’t be put in a spreadsheet. So, here’s how these soft skills can future proof your digital marketing career and transform you into a digital marketing Rockstar: 1. Endless Curiosity The future belongs to the curious and a digital marketer needs to have the hunger to learn more, ask more questions and be curious about everything happening in the marketing world. The pace at which technology is evolving and communication modes and mediums are changing you run the risk of being irrelevant in no time. If you were an SEO expert in 2005 and you haven’t kept up with the pace of the changing landscape, it is highly possible that you are out of your job right now. If you were a social media marketer 5 years and you haven’t bothered to move beyond likes and vanity metrics, you would probably not be of any use to brands anymore. Be curious, learn new things, spot and explore opportunities to deliver superlative results for your business. 17 Essential Digital Marketing Skills for 2017 Pro Tip: Use Feedly, Subscribe to 10-15 blogs on areas which interest you within marketing, read religiously, document your learnings and run 5 experiments a month. See the results in 6 months. 2. Powerful Intuition It doesn’t always help to hide behind data and argue on results with data that is sparse, insignificant and used merely to fill up a table. You should not fear the unknown when faced with situations where there is no precedent or no means to measure, it’s ok to rely on your intuition. If you have a deep understanding of your consumers and business you will fail less. Empirical data doesn’t help you always, path changing innovations are based on strong intuitions. Tip: Deep dive into consumer research, brand tracks, media planning, business results. No, it’s not the job of the ‘brand’ or other functions. It is yours too. Take a few bets early in your career. Fail. upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – Webinar with Q&A Session on Digital Marketing document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/kapil-panchal-alumni-talk-about-careers-in-dm.mp4 3. Exceptional ability to Persuade Great marketers have an exceptional ability to persuade. They know how to align themselves to the big hairy audacious goals of the top bosses without compromising on what they think is right for the brand and the business. As a digital marketer, you will need to persuade your bosses to run experiments, run campaigns which are superfluous and to spend on marketing even in hard times. Don’t give up if you fail once. Prepare better, work harder and reason with a logic. What works? Your ability to listen and understand, passion for the idea and your belief. How to Become a [T] Shaped Marketer in the Digital Age? Best Online Digital Marketing Courses Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To explore all our certification courses on Digital Marketing, kindly visit our page below. Digital Marketing Certification 4. Ruthless Negotiation Truth to be told, marketing is still seen as a huge cost center by most companies. You are the guy who is giving your CEO sleepless nights, you have the power to spend millions at the click of a button after all. When it comes to money, you should learn how to save it and make use of it to fund your experiments. Hence, Negotiate ruthlessly. A strong digital marketer needs to be a great negotiator. Whether it is vendors, tools or media you need to negotiate, not only for money but for anything which makes you more efficient and effective. Bet your CEO won’t stop smiling. Tip: Do not hesitate to ask. Top Digital Marketing Skills Online Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Programs SEO Optimisation Courses Performance Marketing Certification Search Engine Marketing Course Email Marketing Strategy Content Marketing Strategy Social Media Advertising Digital Marketing Analytics Website Analytics Online Display Advertising Best Affiliate Programs 5. Flexibility to Change and Adapt An extraordinary digital marketer keeps himself relevant, he is willing to unlearn and is sensitive to the changing environment and consumer. The channel strategy which worked well a year back might not be the best choice right now, the optimization techniques, the growth hacks which delivered a year ago might not yield the same results. It is of utmost importance to be nimble and change course if the results don’t seem to agree with your plan. Pro Tip: Don’t overtest, handle your ego, be willing to unlearn and make new mistakes instead of repeating the old ones. We are living in exciting times where the lines between various functions of marketing are blurring, marketing is increasingly becoming the center of the business and it is changing and evolving rapidly. It will become increasingly complex to take black and white decisions and hence a rockstar marketer needs to build soft skills which are enduring. The career opportunities in digital marketing are plenty; you get to choose what you want to become. If you are curious to get into the world of digital marketing, check out upGrad & MICA’s Digital Marketing Program. Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing

Influencer marketing campaign trends have been in vogue since the advent of social media marketing. With celebrities, subject matter experts, social media enthusiasts and entrepreneurs building their own world of fans and followers, influencer marketing has become more of a trend than an invaluable business marketing tool. The Need to Evaluate It is very easy to employ a group of small to mid-level influencers for short campaigns or outbursts like contests or offer announcements and get your hashtag trending or acquire the set number of followers or sign-ups. But if you are looking at building your brand image through an influencer marketing campaign, it calls for a thorough evaluation of your influencer targeting process, your campaign agenda and execution, and how best do you use your learnings for the next campaign. Daunting, is it? Relax. There’s an easier way to go about this. Simply seek answers to the following questions and put them to good use. Do you have these 17 Essential Digital Marketing Skills? Questions to ask while evaluating an influencer marketing campaign: 1) Are you working with the right influencers? When it comes to the influencers, it’s not just their incredible number of followers that matter but also the kind of conversations they have with their network. You are working with the right influencers if they love your brand by genuinely tagging/mentioning you in most of their conversations or if they are already talking about your forte/industry and all you need to do is give them a brand name as a plugin to their social chatter. When Amazon India launched Kindle Paperwhite in India, they wanted to inculcate the habit of e-reading among the Indian readers. So, they got bestselling Indian authors Ashwin Sanghi and Amish Tripathi to feature in digital films which showcased the authors’ journey from reading books to e-books. These film spoke volumes to the Indian readers subtly highlighting the features of Kindle. 2) Do your influencers have the right followers? All influencers have extensive reach owing to their massive fan following. But the kind of followers they have plays a crucial role in an influencer marketing campaign as that defines the actual reach of your content. For e.g. if you are a brand selling baby products, let’s say Smart Bottoms Inc, and you have teamed up with mothers, it is essential for them to have other mothers as their major followers with active conversations revolving around babies and motherhood. Only then will your brand mention seem relevant and authentic. How to become a T Shaped Marketer? 3) Are you supporting your influencers? Your collaboration with your influencers doesn’t end at briefing them about your objective and letting them do their work by mentioning you everywhere. As a brand, influencer promotion is your responsibility wherein you leverage the content shared by your influencers by sharing, re-sharing and posting them on your brand pages periodically (with relevant tags and mentions) to appeal to your influencers’ network and attract loyal followers for your brand. Disney Baby’s Instagram account has built its popularity solely by repurposing and re-posting UGC content sent by moms from around the world. By giving out themes and tips on motherhood and parenting, this account has not only encouraged moms from around the world but has also shown them ways to have fun creatively with their babies. 4) Have you set any guidelines? Setting up ‘influencer guidelines’ for all your influencer marketing campaigns is essential as that will influence your sales through top-of-mind brand recall than just increase the number of followers. For e.g. on platforms like Instagram where you can tag brands in the photos, setting up a clause to tag you in the comments/caption will help as the tags are generally not readable on the photos whereas in the caption they are loud and up front. Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses 5) Is your campaign social enough? Finally, is your influencer marketing campaign social enough to be talked about in a wide network as opposed to a niche audience? Does your campaign have the potential to be a social media influencer in itself, trend for a while and lead to a V.2.0 purely on the basis of its popularity? Well, let’s evaluate it together by looking at an example. Consider Tata Bolt’s #GetSetBolt. It looks like Tata Bolt had all the answers to the above questions before coming up with an idea for its launch campaign #GetSetBolt. It teamed up with just four powerful twitter influencers and #GetSetBolt to reach out to its social savvy millennial TG (Q1.) – who also happened to be the followers of the said four influencers (Q2). Unlike the usual influencer campaigns where the influencers are asked to tweet and make noise, Tata Bolt created a reality show called #GetSetBolt where the influencers were locked in glass cubicles. To get out of these cubicles, the influencers had to procure the symbolic Bolt key. They had to achieve this by generating maximum buzz amongst their followers (Q4) using the hashtags #GetSetBolt and their team names – #TeamAshwin,#TeamGabbar, #TeamTrendulkar and #TeamRahul named after their twitter handles. During the campaign, Tata Bolt through its own Twitter handle seeded tweets, updates, video snippets featuring the influencers and the progress of the contest regularly to leverage the accelerating buzz created by the influencers (Q3). But what made this campaign a social media influencer in itself was the type of engagement. (Q5). Influencer Marketing is a Silver Bullet if done correctly! The fact that it got the followers to actively participate along with the influencers with gratifications lined up for both the top influencers and followers (here supporters) made this influencer marketing campaign one-of-its-kind. Also, the gamification bit added a lot more fun and frolic to the campaign where the Twitterati actually played along to unlock the key instead of tweeting a cascade of senseless tweets. Simplicity and tact, that’s all it took Tata Bolt to #GetSetBolt and make the best out of an ordinary influencer marketing campaign. So, how do you evaluate your influencer marketing campaigns? Have you come across any unique insights that are share-worthy? Go ahead, spill the beans. We’re all ears! Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Featured Programs for you – Advanced Certificate in Digital Branding & Advertising from MICA In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – How Marketers can enable Sales for Success? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/abhishek-ballabh.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? 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Who is this Digital Marketing Quiz for? Are you an Entrepreneur with a fancy for Digital? Or a Brand Manager wanting to focus on Online Marketing? Maybe a domain expert looking to diversify her skill sets? Well, this test is for everyone, conventional marketing professionals who are interested in Digital Marketing as well as new entrants who are looking to make a start in the digital domain. Experienced Digital Marketers between 4-6 years of experience also will find this challenging. Digital Marketing Knowledge is hard to test, honestly speaking, what do you test in a Digital Marketer? Her capability to manage Lakhs of campaign budgets across Google and Facebook? Her ability to create a robust inbound engine that takes away paid marketing heavy lifting to ensure a sustainable CAC? Or her ability to optimize landing pages, create killer email drips and be a pro at Analytics? If you are a beginner in digital marketing marketing, and want to gain expertise, check out our digital marketing courses from top universities.  17 Essential Digital Marketing Skills which will help you Rock! We at UpGrad’s Digital Marketing Program team were pondering the same questions, which lead us to create this Cross-Channel Digital Marketing Program. After some passionate debates among domain experts, we agreed is that a true Digital Marketer is someone who can fit all the pieces back to the puzzle! What to Expect in this Digital Marketing Quiz? Well, we have created an adaptive learning test, which first takes your input on how well you think you know Digital Marketing. The consecutive questions adapt on the basis of your performance. So even for beginners, this test is a great experience to discover the scope of Digital Marketing. For pro Digital Marketers, this may end up becoming an addictive challenge you love to solve.   Be ready to expect anything and everything starting with an email drip campaign to A/B Testing, to Programmatic buying! Friendly advice: Don’t bother searching these questions on Google, you won’t find them! You could try to crack the test multiple times, and we will appreciate your attempts. 😉 Top 15 Digital Marketing Interview Questions Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses What happens if you perform really well? We’ve kept aside some really awesome goodies and gift vouchers for the top scorers. But that’s not it, we’ll also be giving out scholarships to a select few of our 5 Month Digital Marketing Online Program. So spread the word to all Digital Marketing enthusiasts out there! If you want to learn and work on real projects, engage with industry mentors & receive a valuable certificate, check out MICA’s Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication specialises in Branding, Social Media, Content Marketing and Analysis. In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing

What is the secret to a Successful Marketing Career? (At least 1 of them) See by the time you finish reading this article, two people across India will be placed with a digital marketing job! To give you some perspective of the abundance of supply vs demand. Coming to demand, across the digital landscape, there are several roles that exist like brand management, or content, or SEO; or even PPC. Further, secondary functions like graphic design or data analysis also play an important role in digital marketing. There are tons of questions that people have when they want to upskill themselves from say, traditional to Digital. Many of these revolve around salaries, skill sets, domain knowledge, techniques, strategies and what not! Then there are more fundamental questions like: “should I join an agency? A brand or work as a freelancer? ” Or “Which digital marketing segment is right for me?” Before any of this, how do you envision your Digital Marketing career growth, the answer lies in the T. Who is a T Shaped Digital Marketer? The answer to these existential questions are not simple, some gurus have coined the term a “T Shaped Marketer” which probably makes the closest cut. Rand Fishkin from Moz mentions 4 very interesting insights of T Shaped Digital Marketers which have contributed to Moz & other organizations. Being a T Shaped marketer is highly-desirable these days as we’ve seen in the industry. It means you not only have an in-depth knowledge in one function of marketing (like, paid marketing), but also understand marketing functions overall. This eventually helps you grow towards an all-encompassing role, not limited to a silo. Truth be told, most industries are hungry for T Shaped marketers, not just Start Ups! The Secret Sauce behind T Shaped Marketers? Well we thought so too, a T Shaped marketer is probably a myth! But  at the depths of our research at UpGrad, we realized that at the heart of every successful digital marketer lies 3 essential elements: Having a data driven approach Grasping & solving the business challenge Application & not just digital strategy gyan Now, once we identified these core elements, we made sure that in our digital marketing program was raised on these 3 pillars.  We realized we were not the only ones thinking about T Shaped marketing… Who else is talking about the [T]? T-shape marketer is somebody who has a broad understanding of different marketing channels and a deep domain expertise in either 1 or 2 areas. What you typically find in a market are domain experts, people who specialize in one specific area, but what you need is, and that is where the biggest gap is, people who come with broad understandings of different channels and have specializations in certain areas. – Karan Sarin, Chief Marketing Officer at Razorpay So let’s think out of the box, and argue, why these three elements are required for you to become a digital marketer? Secret Sauce Element #1 : Solving a business challenge All Channels, Tools and Strategies are Useless if You Can’t Solve a Business Problem Whether it’s a brand you’re working for, or an agency, or even as a freelancer; you need to understand how for different business situations; channels & strategies combine to deliver optimum results. How did we infuse business situations in our Digital Marketing Program? Mere Case Studies would not cut it! So we identified business challenges across industries, company sizes and their maturity and picked out 15 businesses. These were facing marketing challenges across one or many digital marketing functions. What did HDFC Life do when their Google Search Channel was proving too expensive? How did layered targeting on Display Channels solve this? Did a Microsite really transform Thomas Cook’s revenue streams with round breaking SEO? How did persona based creatives help in habit generation for Grofers?  All of these case studies were infused at the end of every one of our program modules. But you can just read a 1 pager about 100 such case studies on say, the lighthouse insights blog! The difference is, we actually went to each of these brands, sat down with them, understood their challenges & how they solved them. After multiple interactions we then created a custom, detailed case study. These have data tables of campaign performances too. We’ve kept the format at an Ivy League standard, meaning, you don’t just get the problem & solution to spoon fed to you. Instead, you are given the business challenge with data tables all in videos which recreate the atmosphere the brand was truly facing. You then need to apply the learning from the module to actually solve the business case. Post submitting your answers, you are graded based on our rubric grading systems and finally exposed to the solution. You get to experience the way that brand applied strategies to succeed. Are you a [T] Shaped Marketer? Take the Test Now! Secret Sauce Element #2 : All Gyan means Jack is dull! Digital Gyan is one thing, Applying it for a Real Life Business is what Industries seek After speaking to hundreds of seasoned digital marketers in the industry, we realized that students can only become job ready if they are experiencing real life marketing campaigns for a business. We partnered with GentClub, an upcoming e-commerce apparel recommendation engine that picks out outfits for you based on your requirements. Owing to the digital first nature of the business, it fit perfectly into every avenue of paid and organic marketing. Starting from google adwords, SEO, display marketing, social media marketing, remarketing to content, inbound marketing and much more. Doing this individually at the scale for hundreds of students was a challenge. So we focused on the major elements that a student needs to learn. Primarily: Business goals translating to campaign goals Competency for all launch elements like – Campaign structure, Targeting, Communication & Settings Post Launch optimisation drive If a student is solving the Live Project element of remarketing, he put into the shoes of the marketing manager of GentClub. He will then need to plan remarketing campaigns for GentClub basis their target audience. Once campaigns are launched, there is an optimisation drive, where all students are given the chance to improve the campaign’s elements like creatives, targeting, bids, budget and more, based on the real data of the campaigns. For the same students need to focus on channel level data, and optimise based on his learning from the remarketing module. If his suggestions are chosen as the final ones to be applied on the marketing campaign, then if improves his grades on the Live Project segment. Who else is talking about the [T]? Imagine the alphabet ‘T’. There is a stem which goes horizontally and there is a very deep vertical stem. So, you might be a specialist in search engine optimisation or social media marketing or email marketing but you need to understand all the other components of digital marketing as well. So, if you are not a T shaped marketer, and are very comfortable with (at least aware of) tactics other than yours, you will not be able to contribute effectively to the campaign. Apurva Chamaria, Vice-President & Head – Corporate Marketing, HCL Secret Sauce Element #3: A Horse with Blinds can only Execute! Understanding the Marketing Journey: Depth in Strategy is Key If you are new to marketing, or already a marketing professional in the branding segment, or a domain expert, or someone entirely new to marketing; you need a different approach to understanding channels, buyer personas and digital marketing metrics. In the beginning you need a website and/or app. Be it any brand, you would be building a presence, getting quality traffic across different digital channels like Google & Facebook. Working on your organic strategy with SEO driven content. Working on repeat user acquisition and finally setting up analytics dashboards to optimise your marketing efforts. At the heart of all these strategies lies the customer purchase funnel and it’s importance. While strategies are created on Digital, the target groups and their journeys across the purchase funnel of attract, nurture, convert & delight are always in focus. In the end, the student will be in a position to tie all of these digital marketing channels to create a cross-channel digital media plan that solves the brand’s multi-objective goals. Data elements help. One needs clear application driven questions that test business goals’ premise, the targeting and communication elements across all digital marketing disciplines. The rubric driven assessment layer vouches to do exactly that with more than 200 questions, that has a mix bag of data tables and comprehensions. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses Extra Seasoning #4: Tools will give you the Reality Check! The Digital Tool Artillery Executing channel strategies is only possible if one has clarity on how to use tools over a spectrum of elements in Digital. These start from goals, targeting options, ad formats, bid and budget flexibilities and also the array of optimisation capabilities that different tools & interfaces allow. In our Digital Marketing Program there is a resources section that ties to every channel, and showcases exactly how each interface & tool can be used to launch campaigns and derive insights for a given business goal. Some insightful tools like Unmetric for social listening or Hootsuite for social scheduling has benefited students. In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses Are you a [T] Shaped Marketer? Take the Test Now! This 10 question adaptive test will test your skill quotient across top Digital marketing disciplines. How much did you score? upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4 Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? 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This is a Guest Post by Deepak Kanakaraju  What’s the secret? Advertising on Facebook is a hard nut to crack. I have seen digital marketers complain that Facebook ads do not work at all. Some advertisers say it works for B2C (Business to Consumer) but not B2B (Business to Business). To be honest, I have seen very few marketers crack B2B marketing with Facebook. The behavior of Facebook Ad Engine is as complex as a person and you will understand it better as you spend more time with it. Recently, I have been running a lot of Facebook campaigns for B2B companies and I have learnt a thing or two about how to make B2B marketing work on Facebook. What does it mean to create the right ad? The first thing that you have to keep in mind is that the mood of people looking at Facebook Ads is completely different than when you advertise on Google AdWords or LinkedIn. When it comes to Google, people are looking for you and they are searching for you with ‘keywords.’ Here, you can directly tell them what your offer is and they will just buy it. On LinkedIn, people are in a serious mood as it’s a professional network. But people log onto Facebook for catching up with their family and friends. Your ad may backfire and could even hurt your brand if you do not get the messaging right. Imagine that you are in a store and someone walks in and asks for a specific product. Google search is like that. Imagine you are in a business networking event and you walk up to a person to talk about your business. LinkedIn is like that. However, think about approaching someone to pitch your product who is having a good time at a bar with his friends. He is sure to get irritated. Facebook ads are like that! You are interrupting people who are just not in the mood for what you have to sell. Now think about what would get a person’s attention when they are hanging out with their friends… Probably an offer that is too good to be true and an offer that they cannot refuse. If you understand their needs and pain points, you can create such an offer. It has to be something that is free, useful, doesn’t require a huge commitment from them and easily accessible. A free e-book, or a free webinar, accessible from a landing page which collects names, email IDs and phone numbers, would work well in this case. Once you generate the lead, take them down the funnel, slow and steady. If you start selling early, people may get pissed off. I have seen people come back to the ad and leave negative comments if you managed to catch their attention with a nice ad but then didn’t deliver on the promise. How can you target the right people at the right places? If you understand your customers, targeting the right people on Facebook would be easy. You need to get your targeting down to a narrow group of people who are your potential customers. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. You can do some good targeting only when you have a lot of details about your customers. You should know about your average customers’ needs, pain points, demographics and psychographics. What’s their age, relationship status, what are their goals and challenges, their household income, what they read and consume online, and more. The more information you have, the better you can target. When you are targeting based on interests, make sure you narrow your audience with the ‘AND’ parameter, rather than the ‘OR’ parameter. For example, if you are targeting startup CEOs in Bangalore, you can target them with their title and interests; for instance, online news sites like YourStory, Inc42 and so on. If you add title ‘AND’ interests to match, your targeting should get pretty accurate. Note that the narrower your targeting, the higher will be your CPM and CPC. But that’s ok, because B2B leads are going to be much more valuable, and FB ads with good targeting will definitely be much cheaper, than LinkedIn Ads. Another way to target potential customers is to re-target your website visitors. With Facebook Pixel you can now re-target your website visitors on Facebook. If you haven’t installed the Facebook Pixel yet, do it right away (here’s an implementation guide). Apart from telling you your capability to re-target, it would give you various options such as conversion tracking, deeper insights into your audience and the ability to create lookalike audiences. With re-targeting, your target may be very small. However, another interesting thing you could do is, develop lookalike audiences based on your website visitors. Facebook will look at all the data they have on your existing website visitors and based on that will create a much larger audience for you, who are similar to your seed audience. Facebook uses its own algorithm to do that and does it extremely well. Work on your funnel and target market If you have a high enough budget, you can reach any target audience on the web. However, since we have limited budgets for advertising, we need to be efficient with our campaigns. The only way to be efficient is to ensure good targeting, good ads and an efficient funnel. What about increasing CTR? If you target the right people, your spillage would be less. Your CTR will be high and your conversions will also be high. In addition, to get a high CTR, you need to also have good ads. These ads should not only attract attention but also communicate the right message to your audience. Once you get your target’s click, you should have a good landing page that converts well. Best Digital Marketing Courses Online Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To Explore all our courses, visit our page below. Digital Marketing Courses You should also have an ace inside sales process, or a drip marketing flow – that converts cold leads into hot leads; and a strong product that sells at a favorable profit margin. Your LTV and profit margin, per customer, will define how much you can spend on your marketing campaigns. The right targeting, the best possible ads, an efficient sales funnel and a strong product are the four main pillars of a successful business. All marketing channels are just a means to reach your target customer. If you get these right, not only will your Facebook Ads work, but any digital marketing campaign will bring you successful results. 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Welcome to the UpGrad Podcast, ‘Marketers Unite!’ In this post, Neil Roy of UpGrad talks to Sujoy Golan – current head of Marketing at Unbxd & former Global Digital Head at InMobi.   PODCAST Timeline (in minutes): 0-4:00 – Explore Sujoy’s Tech Background 4:00-8:50 – Learning at DirectI 8:50-10:50 – Transitioning to FlipKart 10:50-16:00 – Growth at Inmobi 16:00-21:00 – Vision at Unboxed 21:00-24:20 – Views as an IIM-C Faculty 24:20-26:27 – Parting Advice on Digital Marketer’s Unite Series with Sujoy Golan Neil: First of all, I’d like to thank Sujoy for speaking to us and kicking off UpGrad’s, first ever, Podcast Series. ‘Marketers Unite’ could not have asked for a better and more insightful career journey where Marketing and Digital Marketing is concerned. Sujoy was candid and completely transparent regarding the struggles, challenges and ultimately, victories that have characterized his ascent in this domain. It goes without saying that the world of Digital, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution as some like to call it, is already here and having an impact on businesses like never before. Marketing, has been especially reformed. Sujoy helps us get a sneak-peek into this phenomenon and how it already is (and is likely to) affect how Marketers think, whom they target, how they do this targeting, the medium they use and how they track the impact on consumers, business, etc. So here goes! Hope you enjoy it. Engineer in the Making Neil:  I see that in terms of education, you have had a tech background and you passed out of IIM and you got into a few tech jobs after.  So if you could take us a bit through your tech background and then the transition to digital or marketing that will be great to start off. Sujoy:  Sure, Neil.  Thanks for having me…  So, right out of college I did the regular thing – engineering – which so many students end up doing today. Essentially I knew this was going to be setting the trend for what was to come later in my career. This was also at a time when IT services hiring was really big and IT services jobs were the most coveted on campus. Sujoy:  But this did not excite me too much for a bunch of reasons, and interestingly – maybe I just got lucky with it – the first company that came on campus, was Soliton Technologies.  This was before the IT guys could come and pick up a huge number of students. They said they could fit in an applications engineer. Essentially, this is somebody who would understand the system, go and make a preliminary solution, which would then get sold to the customers and they said there was some amount of sales exposure as well. Tech Learning at Soliton Technologies Sujoy: So I got through. I think I convinced them, came to Bangalore for the job. And again I think I was in the right place at the right time.  It was a company where I was surrounded by brilliant people…  Neil: Ok, so there wasn’t any legacy kind of situation that, this is ABCDEF and this is all you need to do.  Sujoy:  No, absolutely not.  We were able to try out new things.  In fact, I said, hey, I would like to talk to customers, have more interaction with customers.    Back to the Student Life Sujoy: And then I said, hey, the business side looks interesting, and that is when I said OK, that’s maybe the right time for me to do an MBA. Sujoy: B school is a time where you can get as much exposure to different fields and different verticals as possible.  I interned with Castrol – so that was FMCG.  Going and understanding a certain sales channel meant visiting markets across the country. 8 different cities on a bike behind a sales rep. Sujoy: Somebody I know referred me to this company named Directi. This was one of the earliest Internet business pioneers in the country. This was also my entry into digital, I would say. Transitioning to Digital with Directi Neil: So Sujoy, once you have entered into the digital space, I am really interested, And probably I would want to do a bit of a deep dive in each of your roles.  So at Directi, I want to understand what were you initially there for and then how did your journey there and career there evolve. Sujoy: So Directi at that point of time was structured into two different parts.  One part was the suite of web presence products.  When I say that, that means web registrar. And these were products that were not India specific but played on the global stage. So these were some of the world’s largest domain registrars and some of the world’s largest web hosts on the web presence side. The other part of the business was ad-tech, (Digital Advertising Technology). Sujoy: So the first few weeks, months, were spent learning about digital. I did not understand anything, so I spent time understanding what CPC was, what CPM was, what CTRs were, what would a high CTR mean versus a low CTR.  What could it mean? Why do people even click on ads?   It seemed incomprehensible to me how companies could make money by people clicking on ads, because I personally had not clicked on ads.  But we understood that companies like Directi, and also Google and Facebook much later, made billions of dollars through showing users relevant advertising and then users reacting to it.  So essentially I spent the initial part learning the nuts and bolts.  And then started working with customers. I was a strategic partner manager where I managed a few large customers and was responsible for all business with them. Officially, yes. But what I ended up also doing was wearing multiple hats, working on a few special projects with the CEO and a few other people to get things done. While the strategic partner management thing continued, throughout my stint there I did multiple small projects that I worked on, that was the most interesting part of my stint. upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4 Neil: you want to share a few lines on some of these projects and probably how it helped you learn, it would be great for our listeners as well. Sujoy: Sure. To start off, we need to understand the business. How do ad placements impact revenue or impact performance? So we would look at heat maps and determine where on the page… Is an ad on the right side going to be very different from leader-board on the top? Is a skyscraper on the left going to be very different from what is below the fold? So these are technical terms, but essentially that is what we did. There were multiple AB tests running for everything that we tried out. And even to the level of detail to say, ok, if I put a blue border on the ad unit, is the performance going to be different than when I put a green border on the ad unit. And, believe me, there are differences at times. Sometimes there is no difference but you only know when you test. Neil:  So what after Directi? Dreaming with a Unicorn | The FlipKart Saga Sujoy: So that was when e-commerce was growing.  It had started taking off in the path of a hockey stick in India and I decided that it would be good to do something for the Indian market in the new industry that was making so much of a difference.  I joined Flipkart as the category head for cameras and accessories in the beginning, which was the third largest category at Flipkart. Sujoy: Anybody who has worked in e-commerce jobs will validate that e-commerce is like a job on steroids every day.  So it is extremely high-pressure because you are tracking sales of tens of thousands of orders every day and anything that you do, you change a price, you change copy, you add a new product, you run a new promotion, that has direct impact on thousands of orders. Sujoy: Most people who joined e-commerce around that time came from multiple different industries, consulting, FMCG. Again, it was the time of learning and I think this was again a new start in the sense that I had to go to warehouses, I had to go to distribution centers, look at what the picking, packaging, and shipping lines look like, where could the possible improvements be. Sujoy: Then I moved on to a role internally – headed strategy and operations for the consumer electronics category.   Growth at InMobi | Becoming Digital Head Sujoy: I knew somebody from Directi who had just joined this company called InMobi then. Because it was quite unknown, fairly new.  And that is when I joined InMobi.  Mobile, again, at this time was not the hottest thing in the market.  People were still questioning if mobile devices with their small screens would even be used or would have any use for marketers. Sujoy: This was in 2012. So pundits were still predicting if smartphones would be widely adopted. And there was still that open question about whether marketers would find this medium useful at all. Sujoy: So that was the start.  Then they pivoted to advertising as an advertising platform for smartphones actually.  And that was around the time I joined.  I started off in an operations role to get my hands into things.  This was where I managed all ad operations and campaigns for the Indian market for InMobi. Sujoy:  So I worked with a team who would set up these campaigns.  So the campaign setup happened on InMobi’s own ad platform, a known interface where these campaigns would be set up, the ad units would be set up, budgets would be put in, and campaigns would be run but that was obviously not enough.  In the world of advertising you need to monitor your campaigns, figure out what is doing well, what is not doing well, and then optimize those campaigns in order to improve performance.   The entire optimization phase could then go into getting feedback from clients and from customers if whatever we are doing is working for them. There is a feedback loop – if it is working, great, if it is not working is there something we can do better? So we would report numbers and discuss these numbers with customers and then optimize campaigns again.  However, I had not been in the marketing team ever.  I had worked with marketers, I was running campaigns for others, I was helping others monetize, but had never run marketing myself. Neil:  Right. So in InMobi you had kind of the longest time you spent, almost close to 4 years.  So, towards that tenure, I just wanted to understand, what was the importance of team structure and when it came to teams, what was it like at InMobi?  Like, when you were, say, managing teams or a part of teams? Would you like to highlight some insights from there? Sujoy: Yes I think it was extremely important because InMobi was not a small startup and it had grown out of that phase. There were people in the US, working with Seoul, Tokyo, and Singapore. So across time zones and different kinds of customers.  So there was a lot of learning in terms of sensitization of how do customers behave differently in Japan vs the US. And very, very interesting.  For example, if we sent an English campaign to customers in Korea, Korea wouldn’t mind.  Some of them consider English to be language of prestige and they say, ok, even though they do not understand what is written they don’t mind being communicated to, even though they do not completely understand English. But Japan; if we sent a global campaign and it also went to Japan and it was in English, there would be a heavy backlash.  They would be insulted that we did not send them something in Japanese but actually sent them something in English. There would be calls to our account managers and to our sales managers saying what is happening. So it was that bad, and that we only learn from experience. Neil: Interesting. Interesting.  So, just so that our listeners connect with the timeline I have kind of jotted that in a flowchart while you were telling me all this, right?  So, you initially had a tech background, you moved into an ad agency where you are managing clients, parallelly doing projects, and then you moved into a brand looking at its operations. Then you again moved back to like an agency of sorts with InMobi managing clients and then again moved back to the brand segment of it. I wanted to highlight this to our listeners. This multilateral environment which exists and the fact that your career has taken full advantage of it.  And I think that brings us to where you are right now at Unbxd. Do you want to share your opening views on that? 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Sujoy: Unbxd is an e-commerce SaaS platform.  So we work with e-commerce companies to drive product discovery for their shoppers.  Essentially the flagship product is Site Search and this is Unbxd powering site search for e-commerce companies. So this is the search bar on the site on the app. Sujoy: It’s a fascinating space because search for e-commerce, or product search, is very, very, different from the search that Google had pioneered, which is essentially document search, which works on keyword densities, which works on identifying key phrases, etc.  Product search has a lot to do about understanding what your shopper’s intent is, what shoppers are likely to buy if you show them determining ranking across these search results, etc. Sujoy: So it is a complex product but it is a product again that kind of was at the intersection of what I had done before, marketing and e-commerce and digital. Neil: So the next question that I would want to ask is that as Head of Marketing at Unbxd, what are the kind of challenges that you are facing and what are the kind of growth trajectories that you’re looking at, at Unbxd? Sujoy: The objective, which is also a challenge as a marketer, is how do you market something that is very, very technology-heavy and articulate it in a manner the audience understands that is not too heavy and it is just not loaded with technology details alone. Sujoy: Something that I have realized and I have spoken about as well in B2B marketing is that even though you are talking to B2B buyers, they are, very fundamentally, they are consumers first and you also have to appeal to them emotionally, appeal to them and connect with them before just going in with a very bland B2B pitch. So that’s an interesting problem. I won’t say it is a problem that has been solved, but we’re continuously working on it. In-demand Digital Marketing Skills Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Courses SEO Courses Performance Marketing Courses SEM Courses Email Marketing Courses Content Marketing Courses Social Media Marketing Courses Marketing Analytics Courses Web Analytics Courses Display Advertising Courses Affiliate Marketing Courses Role of an Educator | Visiting IIM C Neil: Also I think there is a very interesting bend here and like I know that you are a visiting professor at IIM Calcutta… How has the importance of teaching really benefited your students at IIM and why is it more important to teach digital and marketing overall now than so many trends are changing.  What is your viewpoint on that? Sujoy: Yeah, I constantly worry about material getting outdated before the next session starts, which is true.  This happened by chance over the last few years.  I have been loving the chance to talk to budding entrepreneurs, budding managers about marketing and digital marketing in general. And startups as well.  This is a very nascent area and most institutes, Universities, in whatever form have not done this earlier.  So it involved setting up, identifying what the course structure should be, what the content should be, what works, what might work, what might not, and then create that content from scratch. Sujoy:  The fundamental principles of marketing which are age-old also apply here.  Nothing changes.  It’s only the way that we reach, engage these consumers is what is changing, and there are a bunch of superficial things that change, but essentially marketing still needs to be relevant, needs to be enjoyable, and needs to appeal.  That is what we’re all about.  And this is on the same track, which is what is also my association with UpGrad. This is an opportunity to be part of a new program that was just starting up, and help create part of that course, so which is why it has been great. Neil: Awesome, One interesting fact that you mentioned, and I think we keep on harping about it but it is never enough is the importance of constant learning and unlearning, right? Because the rate at which digital is changing and new things are adding and digital has become more and more tech influenced.  So I think what you mentioned about constant learning is very important, right? Sujoy: It is.  It is. Especially since there is so much changing.  So I myself make it a point to bookmark and read a few blogs regularly in the beginning of the day to stay on top of what is happening.  While we learn, I think we spend time learning in college or in course that we do, we spend time learning fundamentals but there are still trends that we need to see.  There are still techniques and tactics that we can learn so much from.  This only comes from staying updated on the topic. Neil: Great.  So Sujoy, before we put a close to this podcast, because you have been talking a lot about different areas of your career and how different components have influenced the growth that you have seen in your career, so any piece of parting advice that you want to give to our listeners before we go from this podcast? Any particular piece of advice — I am sure a lot of it is floating, but if you could just tell us one particular thing that we need to focus on.  If I am a growing digital marketer, aspiring to expand my role towards, say, being a marketing head in 5 years or 10 years, how should I look at it, keeping the current market and industry in mind? Sujoy:  We all need to educate ourselves and have continuous education to stay on top of what’s happening, so that is just hygiene and that’s something basic that we all need to have.  But I would also say marketing or digital marketing is not rocket science.  There are tools and platforms and theories which we will learn as part of structured programs, but it always helps to think of it from the eyes of your audience, or as a consumer. Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course While we are marketers, we are usually consumers first.  We watch TV, we read the newspaper in the morning, or maybe go on Facebook, we see advertising, we see promotions and some of them appeal to us, most of them don’t.  So I think we have got a very innate sense of what is going to work and what is not.  So I would just like marketers to think about that first and to be very consumer-first.  Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and think before you plan your campaign or you launch it and you might see a lot of things very differently.  That’s all. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. Featured Programs for you – Advanced Certificate in Digital Branding & Advertising from MICA Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? Top 5 Actionable Steps The Complete Guide on setting up a LinkedIn Company Page Everything You Need To Know About Digital Marketing A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing Strategy: What it is and How to create it? Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert Future of Digital Marketing: How It Goes From Here Importance of Digital Marketing: Top 10 Reasons Your Business Needs it Digital Marketing Challenges: How to Win Amidst the Challenges in Digital Marketing

In this post, learn the following about a Marketing Growth-a-thon: Objective Plan Flow Outcomes – Yes 32 Ideas (check the end of the write-up) Bonus – How to prioritize ideas based on scoring If you’re in a marketing team, especially that of a start-up, there must have been many ideas you or your peers would have ‘slacked’ or mailed to your team, or the marketing head. No? Well, more often than not these are likely to be shot down, by the day to day micro tasks, CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) or revenue targets. In the fast-moving start-up space, ideas and experiments often stay half-baked, which has happened with me and many in the marketing team at UpGrad too. Learn digital marketing courses online from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career. So, what do you do? Forget about these experiments? Forget about non-linear growth? NO! Start a Marketing Growth-a-thon! (Yes, conceptually it is like a hack-a-thon. We DO owe it to the tech team *bows down*) So, what’s the objective of a Growth-a-thon? I don’t know for sure, but reverse engineering the process as a participant, I think it’s along the lines of: Discover the top “must haves” and “can haves” of a company’s growth from a marketing dimension Look for Sitting Ducks or low hanging fruits that require a sprinkle of innovation and intiative to test out Look for Logical Tangents or ideas that are out of the box but resonate with the brand objectives/goals Get some Free Pizza (Wait, No… scratch that!) IMPORTANT: Create a Template for experiments & growth, and plot these out on a “goal completion” vs “feasibility” quadrants.  How do you plan a Growth-a-thon? #NeedInitiative First, set the date. We did it on a Friday, which did not impact regular workflow. We had some quarterly and yearly goals for marketing, like getting 1,00,000 visitors to the Blog or building our YouTube subscriber base to 10,000 and so on. This gave us some direction to cluster our ideas. We had around a week to simulate the experiment and hypothesis, make excel projections and finally bring it to critical mass! Executing Phase 1: Marketing Growth-a-thon Focus: Ideate, Brainstorm, Critique, Reality Checks & Validate Even though before the growth-a-thon some of us had half-baked ideas, some what ifs and some were well-prepared; once we entered the room, we were all ready. Creating a Structured Thought Process – #ThrustAreas So, our marketing head, divided the whiteboard into quadrants, and labeled each one of these as – Reduce CAC Increase Direct & Organic Traffic Awareness & Reach Building Communities & Networks P.S: These were our goals from an overall business perspective, (always important to be mindful of even while working within teams and not get stuck in a silo). However, UpGrad is an ed-tech company, it is possible that if you are working in E-commerce or BFSI industries, your quadrants may be different – but the process is key. Basis these thrust areas, we began our hunt… to the center of our brain. upGrad’s Exclusive Digital Marketing Webinar for you – What’s new in Marketing? document.createElement('video'); https://cdn.upgrad.com/blog/rumi-ambastha.mp4   Putting on the Thinking Cap: Fill up the White-Board! As we went from one idea to another, we realised that most were very high impact. Focus areas ranged from optimizing mobile landing pages to reducing performance marketing CAC by more than 30%, to more wild ideas like integrating with Uber or Airtel and package existing content for extremely top-level brand awareness. There were product-centric ideas like building a career chat bot, to even hosting a viral video series for each of our learning segments like Data, Marketing, Product and Entrepreneurship. While these ideas were plotted and creative juices flowed, some ideas went through a few iterations in real time – sharpened, aligned to the brand, our target audience, desired scale and efficiency of paid & organic/viral efforts. Tip: As I kept crying out “implementation road-map,” I was told that, ‘let’s decide that part in the next phase, using a template.’ I realized that implementation or execution often limits our mindset. Over the next 3 hours, we boxed ourselves in with out-of-the-box ideas and soon the board was filled. And yes, after that we did have pizza! 😀 Executing Phase 2: Marketing Growth-a-thon Our marketing head collated all these ideas and shared them on an excel sheet with all of us. Every idea that made the cut (32) were sliced across the following dimensions: Impact Time Resource (manpower) Cost Cross team functionality or dependency This sheet is now to be filled by all 10 team members. Each member was to assign a value to all these ideas across all the above parameters – values of high, medium & low; and ideas that would have the perfect fit, would be now chosen as quarterly projects. Best Online Digital Marketing Courses Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management - MICA Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication - MICA Performance Marketing Bootcamp - Google Ads from upGrad To explore all our certification courses on Digital Marketing, kindly visit our page below. Digital Marketing Certification Executing Phase 3: Marketing Growth-a-thon Implementation Plan Once the projects are decided, the project owners will form teams. These 2-4 member teams would present a detailed step by step implementation plan with overall costs plotted against business goals. The weekly progress of the projects will be evaluated, similar to sprints. The pilot would be evaluated and would require support from other teams like tech or video production and would be assessed before the project starts. Top Digital Marketing Skills Online Advertising Courses Influencer Marketing Programs SEO Optimisation Courses Performance Marketing Certification Search Engine Marketing Course Email Marketing Strategy Content Marketing Strategy Social Media Advertising Digital Marketing Analytics Website Analytics Online Display Advertising Best Affiliate Programs Outcomes: 32 Marketing ideas you can also use We’re now at a very interesting stage of the Growth-a-thon! We’ve compiled all the ideas and given our viewpoints. Sharing the list of ideas below.. Next steps? Prioritizing your growth projects based on scoring If you remember the 6 constraints we spoke about earlier, you could float out an excel to all the team members who can rate ideas “Low,” “Medium” & “High” across these. These could all assume numeric values as 1,2 & 3. Once all the sheets are filled, you can simply add these and you will get a total score of each of the growth projects across these fields. Example: Say “impact” as a metric is given 50% weightage, versus the other dimensions like “cross-functional dependency,” “time,” “resources” & “cost” which could be given weightage of 10%, 10%, 15% & 15% respectively. You can then subtract all the other scores from the impact score for each project and that would give you the final numeric value of the true priority. Basis the final scores, the founders and heads can then take a call to either take a project further in the current quarter or in the next quarter. There could also be some projects which would not be taken forward, basis the scores. A sample of what such an excel sheet could look like: Featured Programs for you – Advanced Certificate in Digital Branding & Advertising from MICA Digital Marketing Free courses to Learn Influencer marketing free course Introduction to advertising free course Influencer marketing right free course SEO basics free course SEM basics free course Email marketing free course Social media marketing introduction free course How to leverage user generated content free course Content marketing free course Fundamentals of marketing free course Brand marketing masterclass free course Popular Digital Marketing Blogs Beginners Guide to YouTube Marketing : Complete List How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel? 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