Category: Digital Marketing

User-Generated Content: Transforming Customer Reviews into Marketing Gold

User-Generated Content: Transforming Customer Reviews into Marketing Gold

November 2, 2023

Most businesses understand the need for cutting-edge marketing in an increasingly competitive environment. This is where user-generated content can be a veritable game-changer. With evolving consumer behaviour, tried-and-testing marketing playbooks are changing rapidly. Social media usage has increased exponentially, making digital marketing a vital component of the overall strategy for companies. India had around 755 million users of social media in 2022 while Statista has also estimated that this will go up to 1.17 billion users by the year 2027. Another disruptive aspect is performance marketing, giving more freedom in terms of tracking brand reach and coordinating marketing initiatives to sustain bigger campaigns. This focuses majorly on profitability and revenues.  Now in this context, it is worth mentioning that brands have realised how essential it is to scale up their overall visibility, especially in the eyes of modern-day consumers in order to build that coveted connection with them. With user-generated content, brands can offer customers a unique chance to contribute actively towards the growth of the brand without sitting back and watching the action. UGC marketing strategies have become vital in terms of influencing the purchase decisions of consumers while enabling brands to scale up their visibility and market reach while achieving their desired growth objectives.  What is Meant by User-Generated Content?  User-generated content is also called content generated by consumers. This refers to brand-based and original content from customers published throughout multiple channels including social media platforms. UGC marketing strategies encompass various aspects including videos, images, reviews, testimonials and even podcasts.  Customer reviews or user reviews in marketing campaigns contribute immensely at every stage of the buyer journey, spurring higher engagement and driving conversions accordingly. Customer-focused content can be used extensively throughout social media platforms, checkout pages, landing pages, emails and many other strategic locations.  How Does User-Generated Content Help?  User-generated content like customer reviews and videos can help considerably in the following ways.  It can thus be said that UGC is here to stay and how. Most buyers today look for customer reviews before making a final purchase decision. Hence, more brands will look to leverage user reviews in marketing campaigns in order to connect better with their customers. The multifarious types of UGC can be used at every buying stage for enhancing not just conversions and sales, but also engagement levels and the overall ROI (return on investment). Authenticity is the need of the hour for brands along with originality. UGC is what ticks the boxes on both these counts.  It also contributes positively to the overall reputation and progress of the brand, since consumers get directly involved in the brand’s journey. They turn into unofficial brand ambassadors and play vital roles in fostering the growth and development of their favourite brands. This contributes to deeper relationships that have a positive spill-over effect and rub off neatly in terms of attracting newer people to the community. Brands can thus leverage these communities to not only make them feel more involved and a part of their growth stories but also to garner steady traffic and responses to their campaigns and launches.  FAQs What are the benefits of incorporating customer reviews and testimonials into marketing campaigns? There are several advantages of incorporating customer testimonials and reviews into marketing campaigns. People trust reviews provided by actual customers and these contents also work as proof of the brand’s promises and claims regarding the benefits of its product or service. User-generated content is more authentic helps establish brand loyalty and drives higher conversions and traffic.  What strategies can companies use to encourage customers to create and share user-generated content? Companies can harness diverse strategies to encourage customers to create and share user-generated content. These include launching contests, asking for valuable feedback, creating customer engagement programs, creating ambassador programs, offering rewards, and giving customers a launch pad to be more visible across multiple channels.  Are there any ethical or legal considerations when using customer-generated content in marketing materials? Some of the legal and ethical considerations include safeguarding the privacy of the user and his/her personal details. At the same time, brands should obtain legal consent before featuring any user-generated content. All information shared should be accurate and non-misleading in any case.

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AI Driven Performance Marketing

How To Get Started With AI-Driven Performance Marketing: All Actionable Items

June 7, 2021

AI (Artificial Intelligence) a term that everyone comes across now and then, these days is the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions. It’s the new-gen technology and while many companies have implemented it into their plan of action, many are still conflicting on the idea of its implementation. According to the survey by grand view research, the global artificial intelligence market size was valued at USD 39.9 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42.2% from 2020 to 2027. The continuous research and innovation directed by the tech giants are driving the adoption of advanced technologies in industry verticals, such as automotive, healthcare, retail, finance, and manufacturing. However, technology has always been an essential element for these industries, but AI has brought technology to the center of organizations. Now moving to the second part of the topic that is performance marketing. It is a term used to describe online marketing and advertising programs where advertisers pay programs in which advertisers (a.k.a., “retailers” or “merchants”) pay marketing companies (a.k.a, “affiliates” or “publishers”) when a specific action is completed. These actions can include a generated lead, a sale, a click, and more.  We were privileged to have an opportunity of listening to Chris Wexler, CEO of Krunam – a company founded to fight Child Sexual Abuse Material. Along with him, we had our moderator Aji Issac Mathew, CEO of Digital Marketing University, and Indus Net TechShu. Krunam was started with the initiative to use technology to help children around the world. Before getting into the discussion on the topic, let’s get to know the story behind the unique name “Krunam”. So the name Krunam is actually taken from the name of a woman from northern Thailand, Kru Nam who was a street artist.  She started a community that has now saved thousands of non-state children from their abusive fronts. So the company was named after her as an honor to the amazing deeds that she had done.  Chris gives us an estimate of over 65 million instances of child sexual abuse material being discovered on open websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and many similar websites last year. The tools that everyone uses to get through work are actually being used by predators to abuse children to make a profit out of it. It was important to safeguard the interest of the parents as well as the children and the only way to overcome this was the implementation of AI( because the scale of these events is actually very large and they can only be controlled through AI).  Aji added a very valuable point to the discussion i.e, in the days to come the communities within a brand will play a very vital role in marketing, and these communities will only thrive if they are open and the user-generated content is allowed. He quoted “You can beat a product, You can beat pricing,  You can beat a service but you can’t beat a community. So any brand which has a strong community can easily beat a brand that doesn’t have one.  Chris talked about the importance of data, “one is only as good as his data” was something that just makes a whole lot of sense. The earliest decision is the one that has an impact on your months and months if not years down the road, was also something very rightfully said by Chris. The data collected by Krunam is finely labeled by people that are highly trained, but it’s a very time-consuming process due to the sheer quantity of these data. Now what makes it worth it is arranging this data in a systematic manner has actually allowed them to push the boundaries of computer vision which is really great. And what the availability of this data has done is, it sped up the investigation and actually saved kids. The investigators were now free to save these kids which were actually great from an emotional point of view. The most exciting part of AI and performance marketing is bridging the gap and elongating our understanding of the impact of marketing. With performance marketing, it is important to understand that the clicks are not always accurate and a click doesn’t necessarily mean that the customers are engaging but this problem can be overcome by AI . With the implementation of AI, we can calculate the lifetime value of performance making. It’s difficult to integrate such a large amount of data and this is where AI comes in and makes the job easier.  The biggest challenge that everyone is facing in the present day is the ever-changing technology,  where new brains are required to come in and understand how the new technology functions and then on the other side we have people with more maturity at a business level but who don’t understand the technology. So the question is who will drive this change and take care of it and how the two segments are going to function together and make the most out of it.

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Why Is It Important For Digital Marketing Agencies To Have Deep Tech Capabilities Going Forward?

September 24, 2020

There are lots of areas where digital (or any) marketing agencies can leverage technology to complement their offering. 1) Create unique marketing automation journeys on top of existing open-source products, and have full creative control of the user experience/user journey. 2) Integrating Growth / MarTech Tools (like CRM, A/B Testing, Helpdesk, etc.) properly to ensure that the campaign benefits are multiplied. 3) Websites (along with mini-sites, landing pages) are getting more complex. You should be able to take care of site security, issues like a progressive web app (PWA), site speed optimization, or simply making the website mobile friendly – that too within the constraints of the given content management system (CMS). And besides this, the marketing (design and messaging) needs to be tweaked, optimized, and well-integrated into these frameworks to get the desired result. 4) Build digital assets (often digital tools, e.g. – simple and free cloud-based payroll tool to build an audience for an HR consulting company) that engage the audience and deliver value to create a lasting impact. It is proven that in content marketing, “functional tools” are much more effective and have a longer shelf life, referral, and recall than thought leadership or curated content. 5) Build deeper and contextual (to the business and industry) web analytics layer on top of traditional analytics data to mine insights and act upon them (E.g. when you see traffic increase on a website, what is the actual quality-weighted improvement of traffic from different sources, by different campaigns). At times, you have to pull data from different sources to mash-up and derive composite analytics. Such deeper insights help derive business metrics from generally available vanity metrics. Most importantly, to achieve great results, you need a combination of both the right brain (creative) and left brain (logical thinking) to come together. It just changes the perspective. The challenges which most brands owners face are endless communication loop between agencies (creative+marketing, and tech) when these functions are being performed by two different agencies with different working style. What are your options: 1) Build – The best option. However, you need to manage two opposite personality types in one team, which is not an easy job. It’s disciplined vs. creative, methodical vs. inspirational, geek vs. bohemian. My intent is not to generalize, but highlight the difference in team personality at a broader level. 2) Buy – Acquire a small tech company to fulfill the requirements. Good solution, but cultural integration can be a challenge, and you can gravitate to the same problem that you can have when you build a team in long term. 3) Partner – Do a tightly integrated partnership with a tech agency and dry-run the working relationship on smaller projects or internal hobby projects! 4) Outsource – Find tech firms online or through reference and outsource the tech side to them. This is interesting and valuable leverage that any digital marketing agency ought to build, to stay ahead in the hyper-competitive market of building long term relationships. What are your views on this? It will be a pleasure to know your views, and discuss and learn from you!

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Digital Success Summit 2019: What to Expect

July 18, 2019

A stimulating conference program focused on digital innovation and transformation. Over the years Indus Net has partnered in digital systems with a number of established players. We regularly innovate in Cloud/Data center, AI, Cyber Security, IoT & Mobile Technologies providing organization with the opportunity to keep in pace with global trends. Our Digital Success Summit V2.0 on 8-9 August 2019 with the theme, ‘Growing Digitally, Growing Profitably’ will encompass 7 deep dive workshops on Day 1 and back to back sessions by speakers from around the country on Day 2. Attend Day 1 to gain actionable insights on How to leverage businesses through powerful storytelling with Indranil Chakraborty The need and know hows for digital innovation with Abhishek Rungta How you can leverage content marketing to build your consumer base with Shubho Sengupta Learn the sorceries of social selling with Kiruba Shankar Get your digital marketing right with Aji Issac Mathew How can you use a combination of storytelling, imagery, and testimonials to boost business with Soumitra Paul Learn the best branding practices for your brand sustenance with Laeeq Ali Attend Day 2 to learn from discussions with the likes of Amit Ranjan is Co-Founder of SlideShare, which got acquired by LinkedIn. Since then he has worked with Government of India to build the DigiLocker project, which is used by more than 10 million citizens. Amit has always been passionate about building outstanding products that sell themselves. Learn from him about building virality into the product or service design. A star teen entrepreneur, Atreyam (Leo) Sharma who has been addressing leading technology events globally since 2014, including TEDx talks in India and Luxembourg.He started coding at the age of 11 and the following year, Co-Founded Workshop4Me. Vikas Malpani, a serial entrepreneur who also co-founded, India’s leading property listing platform-CommonFloor.Com. He is ranked as Business World’s India’s Hottest Young Entrepreneur & has won MIT TR35 Young Innovator Award for his growth advices. And hear many others speak on how to make your product or service viral, sales team management hacks, how to build and manage a remote team, consumer marketing on a shoestring budget and about personal branding Why Should You Attend? We are flying in a delegation of 500+ representing 100+ business covering the country, providing your organization with the opportunity to reach an audience including Enterprise CEOs, CIOs, CISOs, MIS / IT Directors PLUS Cloud Operators, Telcos, SPs, etc. Our Summit provide a highly efficient, cost-effective and proven formula for tech industry CEOs and senior execs, to learn through networking in a single location, in just 48 hours.

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Influencer Marketing: 14 Things To Know In 2019

May 17, 2019

Have you heard of Lil Miquela? She’s a 19 year old singer and influencer from California, with 1.3 million followers on Instagram (@lilmiquela). The stunning social media star was invited by Prada to take over its Instagram account during one of its Milan shows. Time magazine named her as one of 2018’s 25 most influential people on the internet. But the only catch is; she doesn’t exist. Yeah, Miquela is a computer-generated model and brands are attracted to her! From Computer Generated Influencers (CGIs) and nano-influencers to Instagram killing accounts with fake followers – 2018 was an activity-packed year for influencers and marketers alike. Here’s a rundown on important insights & news from 2018 that will have an effect on your influencer marketing strategy this year. 1) Micro-influencers are in the highest demand  Micro-influencers, or those with less than 100,000 followers, are the most sought after influencers because marketers feel they are cost-effective and have a better connection with their audience. Brands have collaborated with micro influencers such as Steven Onoja, Yannick Merckx and Miette Dierckx because it’s been reported that micro influencers generate 6.7X more efficient per engagement than celebrities with millions of followers. Brands like Google, Nike, Starbucks, Gillette, Sephora, Coca-Cola, and Red Bull are collaborating with micro influencers who apart from being great storytellers are adept at creating authentic content. 2) More efforts towards building trust & transparency  A startling report in The New York Times uncovers the “black market” of bot followers that can be bought for just a few cents each. And these fake followers were being sold to celebs including athletes, politicians, and film stars. Marketers and social channels are proactively taking steps to address the issues of authenticity and credibility plaguing the influencer ecosystem. Last year, Twitter took major actions towards deleting suspicious accounts from the platform. The purge affected the follower count of celebs including Barack Obama, Katy Perry, and Justin Bieber. It was reported that Katy Perry, the most followed person on Twitter, lost at least 1.5 million followers! Instagram also took a major step towards cleaning the platform. It said we will begin removing inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity. We’ve built machine learning tools to help identify accounts that use these services and remove the inauthentic activity. At Cannes Lions 2018, Unilever’s chief marketing officer, Keith Weed said that the brand won’t work with the influencers who buy followers. He called for more transparency from influencers and urged the marketers and social media platforms to “take urgent action now to rebuild trust before it’s gone forever”. He laid out a three-thronged approach to improve the situation which involves “cleaning up the influencer ecosystem by removing misleading engagement; making brands and influencers more aware of the use of dishonest practices; improving transparency from social platforms to help brands measure impact.” 3) Clamour to grow for real-life like content  It’s an Instagram promotional content for Listerine as it’s been clearly mentioned in the post. Then, what went wrong with this post by Scarlett Dixon? Why did some users go berserk over this post? Let’s check some of the comments Listerine in bedroom… hahahah ridiculous post and constructed/fake reality A picture that provoked a thousand arguments. Personally I see the irony/humour and think it’s brilliantly staged 😉 *gets up, blows up balloons, makes the bed, puts strawberries on top of a plate of wraps, puts mouthwash on bedside table, takes photo Imagine if girls actually looked up to you and realised they could never reach this (which many girls all over the world will never experience pancakes and strawberry’s in a expensive hotel suite) especially the way suicide rates are going through the roof, you keep doing you though Someone even suggested that the campaign was a parody set up by Listerine. https://twitter.com/DaveParkinson/status/1036180435913633792 The more an influencer gives an unfiltered insight into his/her life, the better is the connection between the influencer and the users. We are seeing an emerging trend in the influencer landscape where more and more users are calling out the content creators who cram the feed with over-edited photos and carefully shot videos that border on faux reality. Amidst conversation around social media and its impact on mental health, we will see the trend to continue in today’s age of envy as noted by The Guardian. The report quotes Ethan Kross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan as saying “envy is being taken to an extreme…We are constantly bombarded by “Photoshopped lives” …and that exerts a toll on us the likes of which we have never experienced in the history of our species. And it is not particularly pleasant.” 4) More opportunities for creators & brands There have been a host of developments last year aimed towards helping marketers and influencers collaborate with each other. We saw Snapchat rolling out “Snapchat Storytellers” pilot program that connects brands with popular content makers. Facebook also launched Brand Collabs Manager to help marketers connect with relevant social media creators so they can collaborate on sponsored-content campaigns. It also rolled out a series of features including poll and game features to Live and on-demand video for Facebook creators and new profile settings that let creators place their video content front and center. Also, there have been concerted efforts by social channels towards helping creators earn money and grow their fan base. YouTube, the world’s largest video site, rolled out channel memberships, merchandising, marketing partnerships, and “Premieres” to help YouTube creators generate revenue from their videos outside of traditional advertising. The announcement read With Channel Memberships, viewers pay a monthly recurring fee of $4.99 to get unique badges, new emoji, Members-only posts in the Community tab, and access to unique custom perks offered by creators, such as exclusive livestreams, extra videos, or shout-outs…Since launching in January, comedy creator Mike Falzone more than tripled his YouTube revenue. We want to make it easier for more creators to sell merch directly from their channel. So we’ve built a product that allows them to do just that. From shirts with a logo to phone cases with a creator’s face, we’ve joined forces with Teespring so creators can choose from over 20 merchandise items to customize and sell via a shelf on their channel…The creator of Lucas the Spider recently turned

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15 Actionable Insights From Our Webinar On Digital Marketing Mistakes in 2018

January 11, 2019

We collaborated with DigitalMarketingUniversity.com to organise an insightful session with Aji Issac Mathew, CEO | Indus Net TechShu on the topic “Mistakes that may have hurt your Digital Marketing Campaigns in 2018”. We listed down 15 actionable insights from the session, these tips will definitely help business owners, marketing managers and even people who are into execution. Visit our Facebook page to get access to the entire session video. You can also take a look at the Aji’s presentation on SlideShare. Tip#1: Businesses need to first define the purpose of hiring a #DigitalMarketing agency before investing.   Tip#2: Don’t judge an agency based on your past working experience with a different agency, dynamics change!   Tip#3: Develop a yearlong roadmap in terms of execution and review every quarter.   Tip#4: Identify people responsible for short and long term success and keep a track on the progress.   Tip#5: Don’t invest all the budget on branding, keep part of it for the follow-up campaign to support sales.   Tip#6: Don’t take decisions based on opinions, it should be backed by competition data, complementary products, markets, trends and customer behaviour.   Tip#7: Keep a track of your marketing campaigns every week and brainstorm with the execution team to optimise it at all levels – design, copy, audience selection, channels and budget.   Tip#8: Team structure is key for the best results in #DigitalMarketing   Tip#9: If you are confused in terms of choosing the right channel. Invest the budget in all primary channels and check where you get the best results. Based on the output, plan the budget accordingly going forward.   Tip#10: Spend time in positioning your product/service for the identified customer segment. While you do this, involve your operations team as they have more insights from the real customer data.   Tip#11: Talk about the vision and what the company stands for in front of the customers. Digital allows you to connect with your customers at every juncture.   Tip#12: Invest in the market/channel which is giving you the best results, however, keep experimenting with other channels and see if tweaking the communication is adding value. Tip#13: Don’t create “global content” for the “local audience”. Develop the messaging based on the need of the customer, also in 2019 focus less on creating fresh content but more on consolidating content.   Tip#14: Facebook is a great platform for B2B lead generation, however combining the behaviour with interest always give good results.   Tip#15: Desktop is more popular when it comes to B2B customers, however for B2C it is observed that more visits come from Mobile. Bonus Tip   Digital Marketing University recently announced a Digital Marketing Strategy course for business owners and marketing professionals in India. If you wish to know more about the outcomes you may expect from the course, click here.

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Indus Net Technologies (INT.) Collects Its First Review on Clutch!

December 10, 2018

We offer digital solutions to our clients with passion, commitment, and care. We help clients expand their businesses digitally. Most importantly, we help clients save money by leveraging the power of the internet. Our digital services range from web development to digital marketing. In any area of our expertise, we want to ensure we provide our clients with the highest quality work. That’s why we joined Clutch, a B2B ratings and reviews platform that assesses the quality of our work. Through market research, Clutch is a platform that helps prospective buyers make an informed decision when selecting their next service provider. Clutch’s evaluation of a company’s market presence takes into account their social media presence, industry expertise, and, most importantly, former client projects. By having a profile on their site, we’re opening ourselves up to the Clutch team that will actually call and speak with our business partners to get a firsthand account of what it’s like working with us. We’re happy to announce that Indus Net Technologies (INT.) has ranked highly in Clutch’s analysis; we’re rated amongst the top mobile app development companies in 2018. While this is a great honour, we’re most proud of our client reviews, without which we never would have achieved this recognition. Here’s a glimpse of the first review we’ve collected on our Clutch profile since joining their site! We’re thankful to our former clients for providing these reviews of our work. Because of our high rankings on Clutch, we’re also featured on their sister website, The Manifest, as one of the top PHP developers in 2018. It’s been amazing getting the third-party recognition! In today’s digital world, businesses can’t afford to not have a functioning mobile app. Whatever your technology needs, whether it be a mobile app or a website, we want to provide you with the best technology services. Now that you’ve seen our favourable third-party reviews for yourself, don’t hesitate to reach out to us for your next digital project. We’re proud of our high rankings on Clutch and The Manifest, and we thank all those who have helped our company grow in these past years. We look forward to facing the challenges of the upcoming new year by continuing our award-winning services to new and ongoing clients.

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How to Manage Your Online Store in 2019?

November 1, 2018

With 2019 fast approaching, e-commerce businesses have begun to wonder what they need to do to manage their stores more efficiently. It is no longer enough to just focus on digital marketing or a fast-loading website. Not only has technology changed, but customer behavior and expectations have changed too. Many tools such as CRM may no longer be enough, and newer strategies may need to be employed to manage online stores successfully. While personalizing content and communication helped previously, customers have begun to expect a lot more than that. In addition, customers’ perception about your website security can have marketing and sales implications too. In this article, we take a look at 4 areas which will have a direct effect on your online store management in 2019. Implement software integration quickly 78% of business owners feel that integrating e-commerce is business critical. Integrating two or more software programs helps businesses to eliminate manual entry of data, software bottlenecks, and helps create a centralized repository of information by syncing data from integrated sources. Start with integrating front-end tools such as CMS and e-commerce software with backend programs like CRM and ERP. This helps provide a better shopping experience to customers and turbo-charges e-commerce operations by automating multiple processes such as inventory management, online store-front management, shipping, and checkouts. Tools to integrate: E-commerce platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, PretaShop, etc. with ERP such as Oracle ERP Cloud, SAP ERP, Salesforce CRM, NetSuite CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, etc. Use Case A Texan grocer recently began to sell its products online, particularly on Amazon. Problem: While selling on Amazon helped the grocer to tap into newer markets and increase sales, it simply was not able to manage its orders efficiently. Its staff was over-worked, deliveries were delayed, and negative reviews on Amazon were piling up. Solution: The store was advised by an agency to integrate its Amazon Marketplace with SAP ERP, Salesforce CRM, and NetSuite Financials. The automated data exchange between these tools helped to manage its inventory better and process orders quickly. Results: The store was able to process orders quickly, manage its inventory efficiently, and ensure that shipping delays were avoided. Integrating an artificial intelligence component, aided by natural language processing (NLP) into Amazon Marketplace helped the grocer to recognize and address negative reviews quickly, with prompt and proactive alert messages delivered via push notifications. Customer interactions help you take personalization technology to the next level Personalization is the single most important strategy to enhance customer experience. Most e-commerce businesses have so far relied on personalized content, hyper-targeting customers, and bringing tailor-made experiences to customers. Unfortunately, this is just not enough. What really is required at the moment is to pay more attention to customer interactions. Customer interactions help you to look at each individual customer as a unique human being, thereby assisting you in bringing the best possible customer experience via technology. Predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are technologies that help businesses to derive behavioral insights via customer interactions. Use case Marriott Hotels is the best example of using customer interactions to enhance personalization. The company currently depends on uniquely rich insights derived from predictive analysis and artificial intelligence, to enhance customer experiences. Marriot focuses on customer interactions during searching, booking, and check-in processes to collect and redeploy insight. Insight is used to predict future behavior with the help of algorithms, and bring exactly the kind of experiences that its customers desire. Marriot uses behavioral insight derived via customer interactions to enhance customer experience during booking, checking-in, and while the guest stays. Adopt and implement a Customer Data Platform Integrated Customer Data Platforms (CDP) are at the forefront of MarTech solutions. They not only provide customer engagement and marketing automation features but also help unify customer data, so that data from various sources can be analyzed to derive personalized insights. Current CRM tools only provide insights into customer trends, but they cannot directly tie customer data with sales and marketing initiatives. CDPs have a broader potential than CRM tools of today. Forbes revealed that 44% of surveyed businesses saw a sharp growth in customer loyalty after using CDP. CDPs provide a 36- degree view of the customer by integrating data from various sources such as existing CRM, IoT sensors, online and offline customer interactions, etc. Cloud-based architecture, artificial intelligence, and modern API frameworks have all contributed to CDP’s rise as the most promising technology this year. Use case Deutsche Bahn is the most famous company to use a CDP. When its coaches are overcrowded, it offers a discounted upgrade to its first-class coaches via push notifications on its app. The app intelligently senses who want to travel where, and thanks to the CDP, contextually connects customer data with train traffic information. CDP connects contextual data (how crowded the train is) with personal data of customers (ticket information, location, whether they would be ready to spend more, etc.) to manage overcrowding and enhancing travelers’ experience. Why e-commerce stores need CDP: CDP is the perfect solution for connecting your customer database with a data warehouse or a shop system If you have both physical and online stores, the contextual insight from a CDP will be far more valuable than what a CRM can do Existing systems such as a CRM can be incorporated into a CDP Provides a 360-degree view of each customer Implement security to win customer trust Two major security-related changes affected websites all around the world in 2018. First, GDPR was rolled out by the European Union, which forced most businesses to comply with consent-related regulations and data protection requirements. In addition, Google started to penalize websites that hadn’t made the shift from HTTP to HTTPS. The e-commerce industry saw a flurry of activity, with stores quickly trying to obtain SSL certificates to be able to move to HTTPS. This resulted in a paradigm shift in customers’ thinking and behavioral approaches towards websites collecting their data. Today, data security and protection is not only about keeping

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How Technology and New Media Are Shaping the Future of Advertising

September 10, 2018

In recent years, the advertising industry has experienced often painful changes and has found it difficult to keep up with the pace of technology. What used to be dominated by TV (video format) and print, is now increasingly chaotic, and different media are used to reach the target audience. Usage of data and personalization of data to create more specific ad content has forced many agencies to get into a survival mode. The future of ad agencies and advertising as a profession lies in the ability to swim in the direction of technology while remaining creative at the same time. Of course, this is no easy task, and there are multiple ways technology is shaping the future of advertising every moment. Let us take a brief look at the future of advertising shaped by technology, and the new media you might want to consider if you are an agency looking to advertise. Here are the top trends. Location data to influence advertising Currently, location data is mostly used for marketing purposes. However, in the near future, more advertisers will look at launching campaigns specifically based on location data. GDPR may work out in favour of advertisers because many people do give permission for their location data to be used. What was earlier a grey area will now be a clear pathway to target people in specific locations and send them ads. Mobile devices will spur location-based advertising further afield and will help predict trends as well. In fact, ad strategy will begin to rely on location data more than ever before. A paradigm shift from offline to online Digital advertising has actually caught up with TV advertising. The share of advertising budget by channel is exactly equal to each other at 41% for TV and digital ads. Print comes at a distant 10% in ad budgets. What this really tells us is, there is a paradigm shift taking place in the ad industry, where campaigns are now written by default for digital channels, and TV and print are going to become after-thoughts. What we will also witness is the convergence of digital and traditional advertising, which actually has taken place if you notice the figures. In the near future, the share of TV is likely to fall further, with a potential for print to increase. Richer graphics and return to creativity offline With online advertising getting busier and more serious, creative will find more freedom to experiment in print. Online advertising has already become mainstream and is subject to decision makers’ opinions and strategy, leading to less elbow room for creative professionals. On the flip side, print will see a gradual return to creativity, and more expensive ad campaigns may actually be run via print media, simply because those who still tend to stick to print medium tend to be better educated and more affluent. In other words, digital will encourage print to become more niche, and that is not something bad. Application-based advertising Digital advertising is fueled by mobile users, and it is no surprise that the future of advertising will depend on how agencies tap into this medium. App usage has increased dramatically even in the last few months when we consider emerging economies like Brazil and China. In the US and Europe, much of advertising growth has taken place in the realm of mobile applications, and this is something that cannot be ignored. In-app ads and users’ geo-location together can transform the way we understand advertising today. Ads are going to be personalized further Much of the changes taking place in the ad industry due to technology is because of data. Data is helping ad managers to access insight that was previously impossible, and that’s leading to a greater degree of personalization. Personalization of ads is also important because digital ads rarely enter the periphery of perception of web users. Many of them have begun to use ad-blockers and to make sure that an ad reaches the intended viewer, personalizing it is very important. Without personalizing, you stand the risk of being blocked or just being ignored. Focus on content Finally, another important trend is the quality of the content. As content developed for online usage is searchable, it is very different from creating ad content for print or TV media. Advertisers will need to focus on the quality of content and ensure that they are filled with rich media in order to attract the attention of consumers. In fact, ad content will tend to become more informative and realistic than persuasive. Persuasive and creative campaigns may find better use in print media offline. Here are some new media to consider Location-based mobile technology While mobile ads are nothing new, you might want to focus more on location-based mobile ads in the future. Consumer lifestyle is defined by mobile usage, and people move from one place to another, and they are always connected via their mobile phones. This makes location-based advertising very important and crucial to ad success. Focus on developing ad campaigns that take this into consideration. Use location data to create ad campaigns that are super specific and targeted. In fact, using predictive analytics may even help you predict when the intended target audience is going to be in a particular location. In-app advertisements The most important of all the new media are the applications themselves. Mobile applications present a challenging but very lucrative medium to advertise. In-app advertisements can very well race past TV ads and they come in a number of types. However, making in-app ads attractive to consumers while also being non-intrusive depends on the ad interface designer. Make sure that in-app ads focus on user interface and intuitiveness so that consumers do not feel intruded upon. App usage tends to be a private activity and the perceived intrusiveness of your ad can seriously affect your campaign. Social media advertisement Without a doubt, social media advertising will continue to remain the most important platform for advertisers. Ad agencies will need to

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Digital Success Summit: Learning to Achieve Digital Success in India

August 8, 2018

Digital adoption in India has been phenomenal, and the rate at which emerging technologies are embraced by Indian businesses is equally impressive. Part of the reason why the Indian market is more amenable to digital adoption is the fact that it is the hub of software development and outsourcing since the early 1990s. From those early days of information boom to today’s Blockchain development and mobile eCommerce, India has come a long way and is much ahead of other nations. Yet, digital adoption needs to take place at the grassroots level and most Indian businesses today have not exploited the infrastructure and services available to them to bring their products and services to the global market. There are some important reasons why Indian businesses in general, have not adopted technology to boost their ROI, unlike their tech counterparts who offer technology-related services and products to a global clientele. While the Indian eCommerce industry is growing at a rapid pace, regular businesses, stores, and enterprises are still treading slowly when compared with global peers. This unique dichotomy exists not only in India, but also in other emerging countries where a certain tech-savvy section of the business community adopts digital, while the rest of the business and enterprise community does not make use of the facilities, services, and infrastructure readily available to them. Why are Indian businesses slower in digital adoption? To the casual observer, India seems like the hub of all software and technology related activities. After all, India serves as both the backend and frontend of the world’s technology-based economy. Yet, in its own backyard, businesses are slower in adopting a technology, and a closer inspection will reveal that most small and medium businesses in India’s hinterland are simply not made use of the digital tools available to them easily. This is mostly because : Non-availability of information Much of India is rural, and even in the larger cities, business owners do not have information related to digital technologies available to help boost their businesses. There aren’t many outreach programs for business owners to refresh them about the latest technologies such as IoT, artificial intelligence, Blockchain, or even various facets of cloud computing and automation. The result is, businesses still use outdated marketing techniques, spend more money and time on campaigns that do not fetch the results they seek, and traffic that simply doesn’t convert. Inaccessible services and products While Indian tech companies virtually run much of the global economy, back home, businesses do not have access to services and products available to their international peers. Businesses have still not adopted eCommerce technologies, many still use manual methods in place of automated solutions, and advanced conversion rate optimization techniques, etc. are still unheard of. Making existing digital facilities available to Indian businesses is crucial to digital adoption in India. Both cloud infrastructure and marketing automation solutions are widely available for international businesses, but yet out of reach for most Indian businesses simply because they are not easily accessible. Lack of guidance and support While there are several technical consultants in larger cities of India, the consulting guidance and support available to businesses are not adequate. There simply isn’t a cohesive network of technology service providers dedicated to bringing digital solutions to Indian businesses. Regional digital summits are crucial in helping raise awareness about facilities and infrastructure available to businesses of various statures to lunge forward. Regular summits can help businesses to not only understand the products and services available to help them adopt digital solutions but also to scale quickly. Absence of digital-first culture While lack of information and inaccessibility of digital solutions can be blamed for slower adoption among Indian businesses, there is also an absence of digital-first culture among many businesses. Many businesses still hold on to legacy systems and operations which are not relevant anymore. these methods, tools, and technologies simply hold them back, while their competitors who adopt newer tools and methods achieve success quickly. With this in mind, there need to be more digital events, summits, and conferences which normalize digital adoption among the Indian business community. The Digital Success Summit, 2018 It is with all these reasons in mind that the Digital Success Summit has been organized. The summit brings together a variety of speakers, keynote presenters, and workshops to participating businesses and entrepreneurs, to help them adopt digital solutions quickly and efficiently. The Digital Success Summit 2018 will be held in Kolkata, West Bengal, on the 10th of August. The summit will help business owners to adopt the most useful digital strategies to achieve success and growth. The conference will help businesses to Understand how the internet works and is governed Choosing the right domain name for your business Understanding what cloud computing is all about, and which cloud hosting to choose If you should get a mobile app developed or not Use marketing automation and marketing KPIs to drive more sales Maximize online leads to sales conversion rate Learn how to create viral content and engage in influencer marketing Choosing the right CMS for your website, and using conversion rate optimization (CRO) tricks Using paid marketing to drive eCommerce transactions and creating trust using personal branding How to bring a digital culture shift in organizations, and making sure that every business is safe from cyber attacks Understanding IoT and analytics The Digital Success Summit has been specifically organized to help Indian businesses to overcome the hurdles in adopting digital solutions, and get past their cultural barriers to embrace a brave new world which will lead them along the path of competitive edge, global success and business efficiency. From digital infrastructure to media and advertising, and from business enhancing catalysts to KPIs and analytics, the summit has got all things digital covered for businesses to achieve success.  

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