MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

People spend a lot of time on the mobile phones, on the computers and in different
digital and social media channels to collect information, connect with others and research
about destinations, about restaurants, book tickets, buy products and services. So, it is
quite apparent that businesses big or small new or old actually want to also engage with
customers.

They want to leverage the digital and social media channels to connect with prospects,
get them to buy their products, engage with customers, enhance the customer experience.
However it is important to recognize that while organizations want to connect and
leverage digital there is too much of information overload for individuals.

So, “marketing can no longer be about the stuff that we make that we want to sell but
about the stories that you tell”. And once the story is also sort of get amplified it helps
the brands. But before we try to leverage internet and the digital channels to tell our
stories it is important to step back and understand the value delivery process.

Every organization especially a commercial entity exists to create value for someone.
Once you create value there is an opportunity to appropriate value. So, it is important to
understand this value delivery process. So, I am going to use the first stage process to
explain this value delivery. The first stage of the value delivery process is choose value,
the second stage is provide value, the third stage is communicate value and the fourth
stage is sustained value.

Let us look at each of them, each of the stage, the activities involved in them and then
sort of understand this whole value delivery process. Choose value is the strategic aspect
of marketing. Segmentation, targeting and positioning; so, in segmentation typically a
marketer divides the market into homogeneous groups.

Groups that are similar it customers are similar on some characteristics demographics,
psychographic, lifestyle, values, behavior all of those and that is applicable for both
consumer as well as business markets B2C as well as B2B markets. Once you do the

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

segmentation you have to decide which segments you want to focus and that is called as
market selection or targeting.

But you also recognize that when you target a particular segment your competitors are
targeting similar segments. And that is where you have to decide your positioning. The
value positioning focuses on the target segment, but gives them the reason to buy you or
choose you instead of competition.

So, value positioning is simply targeting plus differentiation the reasons why your target
customer should buy from you and not from competitors. So, choose value is really the
strategic aspect of marketing. Moving on to the next stage or the next step provide value.
Once you have understood the target segments requirements, the needs and you have
decided your positioning you will incorporate them those features, those benefits, those
values into your product or service or solution.

So, product development and service development follows STP or Segmentation

Targeting and Positioning. And typically organizations follow a elaborate product
development process or service development process starting with need identification,
concept, development, testing, prototype development, commercialization and the entire
process.

The third stage of provide value is pricing decision. And that is when you would
typically involve finance, operations and other departments in the organization. But
pricing has to actually meet the customer’s expectations, be competitive and at the same
time help the company recover its costs with a margin. So, pricing has three legs the
customer the competitors and the company and the company’s perspective it is the cost
that it incurs.

Once you have decided the pricing you would go and decide whether you should do it
yourself or outsource it. So, lots of companies manage the operations themselves, they
manufacture products themselves, they run factories, but several other companies

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

outsource it to others. Apple is a great example it designs, it markets, it has retail stores,
but manufacturing is done by its partners globally.

The next stage or next step in provide value is about distributing and servicing which
means that how do you how do customers access your product, how are you how are you
going to make it available? And that is where you have an opportunity to think about
new channel sub distribution.

For example, from physical to digital channels or make sure that the Omnichannel
experience is very good whether you are selling in physical stores, E-commerce outlets
or your own website and digital channels. If it is a durable or if it is a service which
requires support you will have channels for servicing and supporting the products and
services. So, that sort of covers the second stage from choose value to provide value.
Now how does the prospects and the customers come to know about you?

So, you would have to communicate value. So, that is the third stage, then the third stage
we focus on communicating. So, recall that you know you have to do the initial part
which is choose value and provide value before you move into the third stage which is
communicating. In communication you typically use your sales force it can be telesales,
it can be in person, in business markets typically your sales force will go and meet your
prospects and existing customers.

And they would communicate why these customers should buy your product. Companies
also run several promotions, they offer incentives and that is part of sales promotion.
And increasingly companies target customers using integrated marketing
communication, which cuts across traditional channels like TV, radio, billboards,
newspapers, magazines and digital channels, social media, internet, E-mails whole bunch
of them.

But what is integrated in IMC. Integrated means that the message is consistent its
integrated across channels and when the prospects and customers come across this
communication they get a consistent view about the brand and the company and the
© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

offering. Finally, the fourth stage which is sustain value. Now recall that the markets are
very competitive which means customers have lots of choice.

So, what worked a few months back or 6 months back or 1 year back does not
necessarily work now. Because customers have changed computers have introduced new
products and services. So, how do you prevent value erosion? So, the first step in
sustaining value is prevent value erosion. And that is where you can use a lot of digital to
get insights about the market, use those insights to tweak your product, upgrade your
product, come up with new innovations.

In competitive markets branding gives a lot of advantage. So, you have to invest in your
brand, enhance its equity such that customers have favorable associations, they are aware
of your brand, it helps you increase your market share and you are able to come on the
price premium. And finally, you need to build relationship with customers who bought
your products and services.

You have to engage with customers who have used your product and they should
continue to buy from you. So, sustained value has three distinct activities preventing
value erosion which focuses on innovation, new product development and co creation in
the digital age, brand equity and finally building customer relationships.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy
Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

Having understood the value delivery process and the marketing strategy framework let
us think about how do we apply it in the context of digital marketing. I am going to
discuss a framework for digital marketing. The 5 Cs framework which is the analysis
part, if we sort of rearrange that; you can rearrange them as two parts and that you can
see on the slide.

The external part is what I call as the environment and the internal part is shown as the
company. So, the external part includes the 4 Cs and in marketing we focus a lot on the
customers. So, customers are at the center then your collaborators in the top you have
competitors and the context which is the pastel.

So, these are all outside the organization, these are all external to the organization. And
what is internal to the organization is the marketing group or the strategy group which
does the analysis. So, marketing analysis and then they take action. The action or the
implementation is through the marketing mix elements; the 4 Ps in the case of goods and
7 Ps in the case of services. So, the company or the internal part is analysis followed by
action.

Now, why are we doing all this? We need certain outcomes. What are those outcomes? If
you are an organization, if you are a business, if you are a firm does not matter what kind
of entity you are creating value for someone and in marketing we focus a lot on creating
value for customers. What are some of the common measures that we use to understand
whether we are creating value for customers?

The first one; obviously, is customer satisfaction. The prospects that you attracted to buy
and use your product pay for your product, use your product or service are they satisfied.
Increasingly we are using lot of other measures called value equity which helps us
understand are we providing superior value to our customers. Brand equity mentioned
about it as part of the earlier frameworks and then relationship equity do people enjoy
interacting with us will they prefer me over others even though they have choices.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy
Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

So, if the organization creates value for customers you also have to have reciprocity. And
how does that work? Basically you need to appropriate value from customers. It costs
you money to acquire customers there is acquisition cost, it costs you money to retain the
customers. So, you might want to make sure that the customers are profitable which
means that there is they generate surplus.

Now, in any business it does not happen necessarily that all the customers are profitable,
but definitely profitability of the customer is a very important metric because that is how
you measure whether the customers that have attracted are generating value for the
organization. So, the outcome the first part is you create value for the customers and then
you appropriate value that is true the customers create value for the business.

Finally, if you have profitable customers then your sales will grow, your profits will
grow. And if both the things happen which means you are growing profitably the firm
will be valued better. Valuation in the firm typically for listed firms is all about the
market capitalization.

So, a company like apple with around 308 billion dollars turnover may be 30 percent net
profit which is consistently growing. So, is valued at sometimes 2.5 trillion dollars, 3
trillion dollars that fluctuates, but basically from the investors perspective or then the
shareholders viewpoint is this company capable of generating surplus on a consistent
basis for the long term then the valuation improves.

So, the outcome is very important. You create positive outcomes for the customers,
customers and then appropriate some value from that in the form of profitability and if
you the firm continues to grow profitably then the firm value goes up. So, marketing
strategy; the purpose of marketing strategy is to have all these outcomes. Some for the
customers a lot of it for the firm itself.

And finally, it influences it has impact on all the stakeholders definitely the shareholders,
but also others like employees, other partners collaborators.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

Digital is not just limited to communication. If you think about the Augmentation and
transformation of the product, products are getting infused with digital. So, there is a
core product or a service, you will see that the core product itself is getting augmented
through digitization. So, a taxi service or booking a hotel is now largely driven by apps
and services which are online.

So, inherently if you think about the entire experience you see lot of augmentation that is
been done through digital. And will spend some time later in the course discussing some
of these examples, traditional businesses like hospitality business for example. Largely
pre-digital it was largely through phones, emails sometimes in paper, but over a period of
time they have infused technology.

Not just in the purchase process which is absolutely most visible one even during the
when you stay in the hotel, that experience is augmented because you have apps, which
gives you information about the new sites that you can visit, you can give instant
feedback, you can share photographs, you can actually raise tickets for issues that need
to be handled all on the phone in your palm.

And so that means that the overall customer experience is much more augmented
because you have augmented the product experience itself.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 Digital Marketing Strategies
Prof. Shainesh G

Framework for Digital Marketing - II

The Framework for Marketing Strategy is a
Good way of actually visualizing the role of digital.
Now if you look at the customer,
The customers are people like you and I
And we are surrounded by digital.
We use search engines,
For seeking information, we use social media
To keep in contact with people,
We use chat platforms,
We use E-commerce platforms to
Buy products and services
And then there is this whole
Aspect of what is called Omnichannel.
Which means that, even if we
Have a physical channel like a retail store
We also want to interact with them
On digital channels on their websites,
On chat bots, on the social media
Handles of the organizations.
How do organizations make sure
That they provide a seamless experience
Across all these channels?
Finally there is this whole element
In the external part which is
Called say a contextual interaction.
So, what is this contextual interaction?
So, I talked about pastel
To explain or elaborate on this context.
Now think about in the digital context,
The interaction between legal and political
Or legal and technological contextual interaction.
So, contextual interaction means that
Among the pastel elements there is
The interaction between two or more elements.
For example, in Europe politically they
Took a decision that privacy is very important.
So, the laws were formulated
Which meant that the search engines
And technology companies could not collect
A lot of our information which are private.
And which makes it more difficult
To show appropriate communication or advertisements.
And remember that all of these
Companies or most of these companies
Generate profits and revenues
Primarily through advertisements.
It is just a matter of time before
Other countries start tightening the privacy laws.
© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Prof. Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategies" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations,
pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 Digital Marketing Strategies
Prof. Shainesh G

And that has an impact on

The business models itself.
So, there is interaction between technology
And legal and political
And that is a contextual interaction.
And that would increase
Across the markets, across geographies.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Prof. Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategies" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations,
pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

Digital Business Models; how do you develop a digital business model especially for
existing businesses which are going through this transformation. So, one of the things
that you have to remember is that organizations are moving from primarily from place
physical to space and lot of it is in the digital part. So, when you move the organizations
the companies need to strengthen the digital business models. So, what does this mean
the business model canvas gives you overview of the elements of any business model.

Now, digital business model can be conceptualized as having three broad kind of aspects
and it must offer good content, it should offer good customer experience and it should
provide access through platforms. So, success is determined by this; how well you
perform in all these three elements of content, customer experience, and platforms. So,
each company does not necessarily need to be a leader in all the three areas.

So, how do you assess? Where to prioritize? Where to focus and improve? So, here is a
simple framework to assess the status of your business currently. So, in terms of content
what is being consumed in terms of information available on your digital properties, your
website social media handles so that how good are you at the content marketing. Can
customers find what they want on your digital properties? Is the is all about the content.

So, in terms of rating you can have a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 stands for it does not create
business value and this 10 stands for create significant business value. So, you can rate
yourself today. And in comparison, if you are planning to make investment decisions you
need to see how will it play out in the next 3 years. If you want to improve certain areas
you need to make those investments.

So, given the current status you need to rank yourself in terms of using 1 2 3 with 1
being the most important and the importance of each of the three areas for success in
your business. In the 3 years and that is where the context is so important that we
discussed earlier in the marketing strategy framework.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

The context keeps changing you know competitors are making those investments you
have new kind of competitors for digital natives who are coming and competing in your
space whether its Fintech and financial services or AdTech companies which are taking a
lot of business from the traditional advertisers and if you think about travel hospitality
every industry is getting disrupted.

So, from content what is consumed and how can I make it available to customers very
easily or prospects was looking for information we move on to the experience. How is
this whole thing packaged? From the time, customer is seeking for information or
prospect is seeking information to the purchase process usage all of them is the
experience and again you can use the rating the rank and the rating to identify to sort of
assess your status currently and how it will be 3 years later.

Finally, all is all about the platform how is it delivered and so you think about retail
chains who used to generate significant amount of the revenues and profits from physical
stores, they are setting up their own websites, they are moving into e-commerce sites and
they are setting up their own channels for making sure customers have great omni
channel experience.

If they want to buy from physical stores they can buy from the physical stores if they
want to try the products in the physical stores and buy online preferably they should buy
from their own platforms. So, how is it delivered? So, these three elements content
experience and platform can be seen as the elements of where you can shift your
business from the traditional conventional and the current to digital business model.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

Let us look at each one of them in some detail. What is content and what are the
elements or components of this content, how much of your revenue is generated online,
it is a good measure of content it is quite obvious that if it is information based services
including financial services news sites, channels, it is much more easy to shift a lot of
content online and increase the share of revenue that you are getting online.

The second question of the content you provide today, what do your customers find most
valuable. Third question what other content could you provide that customers or channel
partners or other partners would value or pay for who will be responsible for content in
your enterprise and that is a very important decision.

You want to provide a seamless experience you want to provide content which reflects,
what customers want, what value and maybe they are willing to pay for it. So, you need
to have a complete content management team who is responsible is responsibility for
digital products and information held by different groups currently.

So, many organizations start by having a separate sort of a team which is managing the
digital presence and they do not work very well with the traditional group which is
managing the physical products. So, should it continue or is it just the initiation and then
you move forward and you try to get synergies and work together. So, that is all about
content.

The second element which is very important for all organizations is the experience, how
good is your customer experience and who owns that experience, are there cracks in this
customer journey, are there cracks where customer is not handled very well, what aspects
of a digital customer experience, do customers like, what aspects you do not like and find
them to be very frustrating, who has the best customer experience in your industry
consider both traditional competitors and new entrants, who are digital natives.

Think about food delivery services. Traditionally, one would call up a restaurant place
order share your address the delivery happens and you pay for it. Now, with the entry of

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

whole bunch of food delivery apps Swiggy, Zomato and others you have a completely
different experience. Once you are registered and you have downloaded the app and you
have all the details it is done in three or four clicks from searching to placing the order
tracking the delivery and getting it in hand.

The final one is what we call as a platform. What does a platform mean, how good are
your internal digital platforms and who owns them. So, it is not just about customers and
external, but also internally how is information shared and how do decisions take place
how can you expose more of your internal digital platforms to your customers to
improve the experience.

So, that primarily through self-service they do not have to reach out to anyone they can
actually find out where the order is like in food delivery apps or an Uber, where the cab
is currently when they are waiting for the cab to pick them up. How can you better
leverage the market for your platforms; for example, the cloud the software as a service
partners external data because you engage with customers how good are your partner’s
platform.

So, when you still sell through in financial services industry; for examples if you if your
asset management company which sells mutual funds a lot of the sale is rooted through
the intermediaries the financial advisors they happen to be the first point of contact with
your organization how good are they partners platforms.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy
Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

So, irrespective of the state of affairs, now or the current every organization will have to
incorporate digital in their business model there is no escape because that is where the
customers are spending a lot of time. So, what are some of the elements? What are some
of those capabilities that you need to develop, if you are an existing organization?

There are two broad areas that will really help to start with. One is learning more about
customers and second become more of an ecosystem; organizations want to be part of an
ecosystem and I will spend some time explaining that. How do you learn more about
customers; digital is a great opportunity for organizations to get insights about customers
without necessarily asking them all the time.

You do not have to conduct service you have access to the usage experiences they share
reviews both positive and negative. So, it is much more easier in a digital context to learn
about customers. So, one must use the digital capabilities to obtain information about
customers their goals their life events their usage experiences it is not enough to collect
that information and retain it to the marketing or custom facing groups like customer
service.

One needs to amplify the custom voice inside the organization and especially for large
organizations. What is it that customers want? What is it that they are actually getting
from other competitors? The more the data that you collect about customers it is easier to
do evidence based decision making with data there is a lot of emphasis on evidence
based decision making.

So, customer usage customer data customer insights can be used to make decisions and
they will match the customer requirements be able to personalized customized offerings
and they will lead to superior performance. A very important aspect of learning more
about customers is to develop a integrated multi products channel customer experience
which means omni channel experience whether you are going to the branch interacting
with the call center or using the online website to the bank or using an app; you need a
very integrated and seamless experience.
© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy
Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

The second element or second aspect of digital capability is becoming part of an

ecosystem and not just be part of the ecosystem become the first choice in your space
and I will give you some examples as we go along. This would require the organization
and the leadership to build partnerships.

So, every organization cannot do everything, no single organization can do everything.

So, we need to build partnerships and partnerships are not necessarily easy because the
partners have different priorities they have different objectives and. So, you need to work
with sometimes conflicting objectives.

The third element of becoming more of an ecosystem is this whole concept of service
enabled interfaces which can be used by others. So, if you think about technology
companies that is very natural a search engine like Google allows companies to adapt it
for their own use.

So, if you have a website with multiple products you can use Google for search within
the your website which has maybe hundreds of pages. The other examples come from
easy plug-in for example, if it is a food delivery app or a cab service you can use Google
maps very easily. So, you are creating service enabled interface which are used by others
through APIs.

What is more important when you become part of an ecosystem is that you become more
efficient, but at the same time you are very compliant and compliance today with
increasing emphasis on data privacy and data handling that becomes a source of
competitive advantage that is a competence that one needs to develop.

So, data security becomes very very important and it is not just limited to technology
companies, but also products and service organizations which have are collecting data
from customers. Finally, I will give you a few examples of how you can become a part of
an ecosystem; let us review some of them.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course
"Digital Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy
Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

Now, let us look at a few examples of companies which are trying to build an ecosystem
partnering with others. So, I will start with HubSpot. HubSpot and its ecosystem.
HubSpot is a global leader in content marketing and it realizes that well it may be the
leaders or one of the leaders it does cannot do everything itself.

So, what does the HubSpot ecosystem look like and what is the potential? IDC it is a
analyst company assess the ecosystem of HubSpot will create around 19 billion dollars
of opportunity. Who are the partners, who are the stakeholders in this ecosystem?

On the HubSpot ecosystem includes 100,000+ customers in 120 countries, are there a lot
of solution partners of 5,000+, there are community members users 130,000+ and there
are user groups they form groups, they share information, they share knowledge, they
help each other there are 150 such HubSpot user groups and then over 70,000 people
attended inbound conference which is a flagship event of organized by HubSpot.

So, when you have access to this network and there are opportunities for professional
development and even for students. So, HubSpot has created something called as a
Educator Partner Program Community. Now what does it do? It is meant for faculty
members, professors where HubSpot posts updates about the products, software and
certifications and that can be useful for someone for classroom discussions, provides
teaching resources, job postings.

It also enables the instructors so the teachers to share information about the courses, get
feedback, access information about how other professors integrate an HubSpot into
typically the digital marketing course and their success stories and their experiences. So,
we are trying to create the next generation of digital marketers who will be adept at using
content marketing.

Another example comes from India. So, Udaan is a B2B E-commerce company which
connects the manufacturers with the retailers and wholesalers. So, unlike the E-
commerce companies which we are used to as consumers like Amazon or Flipkart;

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Udaan focuses on manufacturers and connecting them with the retailers and wholesalers
especially in small towns and rural areas.

When they studied this market, they realized that it is not just making the products and
services available which involves setting up a large system for logistics and supply chain
it also required them to set up something which will help these retailers finance. So, they
set up a company called Udaan capital. Through the ecosystem they empower the small
businesses especially in small towns.

And again, this involves partnerships this involves sellers 30,000+ sellers 3 million
retailers and lots of transactions. So, make it much more simpler for the retailers and
wholesalers to buy from manufacturers who may be based anywhere in the country and
then get it fulfilled because of regular deliveries and working capital needs some met
through Udaan capital.

Let us look at the ecosystem that India’s largest bank is trying to create through an app
called YONO, you only need one. So, the app focuses on lifestyle and banking it has 45
million customers, 90 million downloads and its one of the most popular banking app.
But it does not stop at just transferring funds, making payments, it helps you make
purchases on E-commerce sites.

You can shop and order, you can take investment decisions, you can invest in insurance
mutual funds, you can book a cab online, you can use your credit card and debit card and
there are specific products for farmers and other loan products that could be available.
And this is a network, this is an ecosystem that will continue to expand and not just limit
state with the State Bank of India, but with other banks.

The third example of a network is Clirnet which is a startup which wants to create a sort
of a CME a digital live CME continuous medical education for its network of 2,50,000
doctors many from small towns and rural areas. By connecting doctors who traditionally
would attend conferences to update their knowledge with peers, with specialists who
maybe many of them could be in the large cities.

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a couple of other examples InMobi group which has InMobi it is a platform for
MarkTech market to drive connections between brands and consumers and it has a
content offering which helps customers access content on their mobile phone. And
finally, proposal which is actually a content creation. So, InMobi is used by large brands
to reach out to consumers who are digital natives and who access information only on the
mobile phone.

Finally, a traditional business retailing which is in the form of a digital business now
BigBasket it has a network it has an ecosystem where it connects with farmers, works
with them closely, they have agronomists and scientists who work with the farmers to
improve the yield.

Finally, they have distribution centers and to make sure that the farm produce fruits,
vegetables other kind of products are available to customers within 6 hours of harvesting,
80 percent of the products that they deliver to the customers through the E-commerce
platform is something that is harvested in the neighborhood of large city usually within
60 kilometers distance such that the products that are harvested in the night are actually
delivered by middle of the day.

And so, this requires you to work with a much larger ecosystem. So, these are examples
of organizations in a tech space who have leverage partnerships to create new digital
business models.

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Professor: Wonderful. Okay. So, I'm going to ask you illustrate how a business, a service organization
should go about developing its digital marketing plan, especially the communication plan on digital
platforms?

Nalini: Yeah. So, I think the starting point always is the audience. And there's one side of course, is
your business goals. What are you trying to achieve? And it's really important to understand what is
the role of digital within those goals? Because it's not, unless you are completely e-commerce
company where everything has happened digitally, most organizations, especially the service
organizations, there is an offline and an online kind of a component to the mix. So, I think the key is
first to say that what's your business goal? Of which, typically you will have an acquisition goal, and
you'll have a retention goal, right? And there will be a maintenance goal as well. If you especially have
SAS products, for instance, where there are subscription products, and therefore, the renewal
becomes important, just pop your maintenance of the customer base. So, usually, we look at it as,
acquisition maintenance and then upsell and cross-sell. So, the key is really again, the driver is
customer lifetime value. How do you unlock it? And for that, then I think there are two journeys you
want to understand. One is the customer's life stage journey from the time you acquire them, how do
they progress? And especially, if you're in a space, like say banking and so on where the customer
needs change according to their life stage, then you want to track that as well, equally in hotels, for
instance, right? So, in more, let's say high ticket hotels, initially when people start in their career et
cetera, they may be staying in lower level rooms and so on, but as they progress then they get
promoted and things like that, you want to understand their needs and the differences in their
requirements, which come out of their life stage progression.

So, I think when we talk about customer journey, we tend to only think about how the customer
engages with a particular company and the purchase journey in terms of a specific horizon of just a
year or so to say that, okay, where do we engage and is he going to be interacting with us on Facebook
or Instagram and things like that. But I think the larger question really is that what are the customer
needs determined by his own or her own life stage? So, from there, then I think the question really is
that who is your audience? Who are you trying to attract? And what is your value proposition? That
to me is not different for digital versus any marketing set up. So, that's the basic common-sense old

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principles, nothing has changed on that. I think where digital comes into play is really that, how do
you reach your audience? Because today you have the option of engaging with them on multiple sets
of media. While that has created a lot of opportunity I think there's also a lot of chaos because what
was usually, a fairly linear customer journey earlier where we could think of as awareness, interest,
desire, and action, think of TV and messaging like that. Today it is longer so, right? I mean, even to
buy, for example that I normally give is I bought a vegetable chopper recently and I start my search on
Amazon, which is literally the bottom of the funnel, right? Where we would have thought that people
would be researching somewhere else on the internet, but that's not the case. You go buy it, then you
realize it's not what you needed. And then you go and search on YouTube or I asked my sister and
things like that. So, I think one of the things that we have to account for is these non-linear journeys
and in the context of that then saying that, okay, who's my audience? What I want them to do? And
what are they interested in? And how do we find the intersection points to be able to actually
represents some value because otherwise, I'm seeing people are just too busy to engage with ads and
especially, when it comes to advertising on digital, we all use adblockers as consumers. And yet, that
advertisers will somehow assume that consumers will be looking at our ads, right. So, I think the key
is really that relevance and personalization is becoming, which is extremely important to be able to
continue to hold the person's attention after all when you're on Facebook and you're looking at feeds
and pictures of friends and family, the last thing you want to do is really click on an ad. So, unless, we
advertising is so persuasive that people want to engage with a messaging, so which is why to me, I
think that's the other part, which is very key.

So just to recap, the first is, of course, the goals. What do you want to do? Second is that if you're
saying acquisition, retention, upsell, cross-sell, and how do you get value out of it, then the grow, think
of which is the audience if cohorts that we are trying to reach. And, of the audience segments, usually,
some will be available in your internal databases as well. So, there are existing customers and there
are prospects, of course. But I think the other key thing is existing customers are also today it's not
like I can just email everybody. If someone has opted out or some people just don't look at emails,

Which means that I have to see whether I can actually target existing customers on other platforms
where they normally go.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations,
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So, we start in general with the assumption that let's fish, where the fish are, which means
wherever our audience naturally is going, let us be present there. And then, find a way to attract
them to our own properties whether it is a website or a Facebook page or a YouTube channel or
whatever we want to do, and once they come, then it's a question of how you keep them engaged
and how do you encourage them to come again and again, and the name of the game in this whole
thing is really that, how they put a relevant value proposition, as well as the content, which people
actually want to engage with.

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Marketing Strategy " delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course " Digital
Marketing Strategy " delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Professor: Okay. So, it's my pleasure to welcome and introduce Nalini. Nalini Guhesh is the
Managing Director of Ogilvy Analytics, Network Analytics, and CRM. I'm going to request her
to share her journey after graduating from IIM Bangalore dealing with primary different
facets of marketing and brand building.

Nalini: Thank you Shainesh for having me.

Professor: Yeah. So, maybe you should start with your early part of your career when you
were involved in direct marketing and then moving on to digital marketing in the last few
years.

Nalini: Sure. So, after graduating from IIM, I think I worked for one year in a pharmaceutical
company and then joined Ogilvy and made her direct as it was called at that point. So, it was
all about one to one marketing, but this was before 2000, before the internet era so largely
they used to use direct mail as a primary medium, and then came telemarketing, and a bit
and there would be events and things like that as well as part of the mix that we would use,
but primarily the whole idea was how to build relationships with customers using one-to-one
contact. So, as part of that, I've worked with, 5- star hotels, business to business companies,
there was also Korea companies, so it's a range of clients that we worked on, but mostly in
the services or B2B because it just was too expensive to do it on fast- moving consumer
goods. So those days, I think primarily deeper because of the high cost of the medium, we
were restricted to where the purchase price was high and let's say there was consideration
period and so on, and therefore, you wanted to keep in touch with the customer. So, I
worked in that space for about 10 years in a number of different things.

So, interesting cases were for example, of course, the hotels and couriers, and all of that was
interesting but one of my first clients was actually, embroidery thread quotes company, which
essentially was it was a club of needle-craft enthusiasts and used to do a monthly magazine
for the needle-craft enthusiastic. So, the whole idea was how do you build usage of the
embroidery thread? And that essentially meant inspiring the needle-craft members where
ideas and designs and so on, that was also an interesting case of how you can engage and

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 1

therefore, get unlock the value in that customer base. So, that was about 10 to 12 years I
worked in direct marketing and then I quit, and then I did my Ph.D. and then went back into
analytics. So, in my early part of the career I was more in direct marketing, planning,
databases, what they called us database marketing those days and then I also headed up
telemarketing at that point, we used the telephone as the next medium to be able to build
relationship and one of my best case studies was for a Korea company where literally it was
account what we call account-based marketing today I think they did at that time. It was all
about how do you manage not the A accounts, but really the C&B accounts there were
smaller accounts where the sales guy cannot go and spend too much time with them. How do
you use the telephone to build a relationship and make sure that you maximize the share of
the customers for your business? So, those were some of the case studies, which are
interesting where we kind of transitioned from pure direct mail to actually adding other media as
well.

After doing my Ph.D., I went back to work in the industry and by sheer serendipity, I went
back to Ogilvy, where there was an analytics hub and I think because I added analytics later,
in a sense, I could see the application of data and analytics in the CRM space. And, once I
went back, I think by then internet was high, digital was available. So, it's really a good place
to be able to build relationship with customers because you have so many different channels
and touch-points to be able to actually engage with customers across the digital ecosystem.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Professor: What about the budget part? Many times, I've heard from entrepreneurs,
especially the startups saying that we seem to be spending a lot and not able to see the
returns.

Nalini: Yeah. I think that's... So, in terms of budget, I think like I said I think key is
targeting. So, when your budget is small, you just don't have the luxury of being able to do
spray and pray kind of a thing. So, that whole piece of while I think a good thing with your
Google and YouTube and Instagram, Facebook, et cetera, is that for any level of budget,
you can reach your audience, right? But how do you sharply target and actually engage
with them? It requires a deep understanding of who your audience is, what do they do
there? And therefore, what are they looking for a kind of a thing? So, in this, to me, the low
hanging fruits for any startup or a small budget organization is the first thing we look at is
really SEO and paid search because that is something that the search intent is already
there, people are looking for something. So, you're not at the top of the funnel. You're
fairly close to the bottom of the funnel. It's only a question of finding the match and being
able to bid intelligently to be able to attract the right audience.

So, we start, usually, those are the first channels you look at, but that's a limited inventory
channel. So, it's not like you're going to find everybody plus it's also a very competitive
marketplace, and your competitors everyone's trying to bid for the same audience. Then
you go a little above in the funnel and look at other media, like your social channels or new
sites or entertainment sites and things like that. I think one of the other thing is the kind of
domain you are working in, so for instance, I have a friend who runs an e-learning,
offshore e-learning development company. So, I think one of her best audience finding
and digital marketing efforts have actually been in the e-learning industry platform, which
is a worldwide platform where people, the same audience goes to look for content. So, she
places a lot of content there. She does webinars regularly out there and has built an image
for herself. And the question that you're asking Shainesh was exactly initial stages when...
I think she's been at it about for the last several years. And initially, her whole thing was in
LinkedIn and placing so many, I've done a hundred e-Books and like there are only that
many likes and nothing much is happening kind of a thing. But she's one of the persistent
types, she continued to do it, but what's interesting is when I told her why don't you look at
the organic traffic on your website, how is that improved? And there's a remarkable jump
after she started, doing a lot of webinars and that emailing industry platform, plus

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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putting content on LinkedIn, as well as reaching out to her customer base. So, it doesn't
always happen that people will click on that last email that you've sent to so that you're able
to say, Oh, I sent a hundred emails and I got three orders out of that because that is not the
way it works but when you look at the system as a whole so for example, the inbound
inquiries jumped up quite a bit steadily has gone up as her presence in that whole content
space has improved. Again, I think on its own, the digital is not going to be a magic pill,
right? So, for instance, in that particular case, she also that e- learning industry does a
ranking of the service providers. So, she was number three, then she's become number two. I
think this year she's become number one. So, there is certain credibility attached to it. The
kind of logos you attract on your website, then you have to have all of that displayed as well.
That just attracting is not enough, the believability of your value proposition and how you
engage with the customers and the customer satisfaction itself. So, everything goes together.
I would say budget-wise I am trying to figure out an ROI. There is unfortunately no direct tool,
which will easily say, okay like for every dollar spent, I got so much, yes there are algorithms,
there are statistical techniques, but I would still look at it in a holistic way to say that you have
to have all the pieces of your system working. And then you do see over a period of time that
there are returns to the money that you spent.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Professor: Okay. So, what about the big brands, large service organizations, which seem to
have moved very quickly, have a very strong presence on digital media and how do they
measure because they have a long track record?

Nalini: Yeah. So, there again, I think, for instance, we worked with a technology company as
well as a couple of other services organization and so on. So, there are, I think there are
somewhere, for example, if I take a mobile phone company, the app is there, you know what
the customer is doing, and you get immediate feedback like you put a campaign in the
market, you know people are responding or not kind of a thing whereas in the technology
company where the sales cycles are long and they can actually take 9 to 12 months for a
sales cycle to come, there then we look at really campaigns and the number of leads it is
generating, and we track the leads to conversions as well.

Now, in addition, there are techniques like attribution, which basically tracks all the various
touchpoints. What has your customer been exposed to versus final conversion which
happens? And there are again statistical algorithms to be able to say what actually
contributed to the sale? Similarly, there is a media mix modelling, which is there, which again
is a statistical technique to say the spends in various channels versus the revenue to be able
to say what is the impact of each of these channels on the actual sale. So, we use these
techniques to understand what is the incremental contribution that each channel is making,
and the optimization of the budget system based on these kinds of ROI techniques fairly.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations,
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Professor: So, what are some of the terms and the buzzwords that as a learner or as a
budding marketer one should know in the digital space?

Nalini: I think I would say in the digital space, or certainly, so there are different aspects of it,
right? So, let me start with the website, I think most marketers have a website as a central
part of their ecosystem. So, with the website, I think there is web analytics basically in terms
of, and Google Analytics is an easy tool, which doesn't require highly intricate knowledge
and things like that. So, I would say that within that there are terms like, how many visits are
coming? What is the bounce rate? Are people engaging? What is the conversion goals? And
what is the path to conversion? These are some of the things that are looked at within the
website essentially to understand customer behavior and to say that within on domain
journey itself are the breaks happening so that you see people coming, but they are not
going beyond the page, for example, or they go beyond the page. For instance, I was telling
you in the technology company, there's a registration form. So, out of 100 people who
opened one person is actually submitting completely, which means 99 have lost. So, these are
all the tools that are able to help you understand this. So, this is very important part.

The other is this in terms of media, it is really targeting the channels that are programmatic,
which is essentially, you're able, and there's also things like dynamic creative optimization.
So, today you can, you don't have to deliver the same ad to everybody whether it's a video
ad, whether it's a banner ad, I actually have a pretty different ad for every smallish segment
at very little incremental cost. So, I think those are personalization at scale is something
which is very gaining importance this year for most marketers, especially, the consumer
goods and so on who are also talking that saying that how do we personalize at scale? So,
that's the part with media and then the results of media again, attribution and a media mix
modelling would be the two things which people use to understand as to what is the effect on
actually convergence, for instance, then there is, of course, with respect to the website and
search is another key place to look at their search engine optimization and how do you
optimize your website so that it ranks on top when customers are searching, right? So, that's
a very key part I would say for starters. I would definitely go read up and everything is
available. Enough material is available. So, it's easy to go and search and actually look up
these things.
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And then you have, of course, the old email, which is still a very good workhorse. We ignore
it in the whole context of paid media. But the fact is email response rates, even though
they've dropped over the years are still much better and much better returns than paid media
many times. Only problem is that, how do you make sure that people don't opt out? So, this,
the other thing that you have to worry about really is the privacy because although India is not
so much, but if you take Europe, etc, the GDPR is very tight. And to that extent, that whole
thing of making sure that you are respecting the consumer privacy both in terms of consumer
perspective plus a legal standpoint. That's the other piece, which are important things to
know about.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Professor: You've talked about this paid media advertising, and then when you land up you
go to the website and there is some of a disconnect. So, how important is this distinction and
the synergies between paid, owned, and earned media talked about in this context of digital
marketing.

Nalini: Extremely important. I cannot understate the importance of this whole thing. And I think
what's happening is in the bigger companies because there are different agencies or
different departments looking after each of these it becomes problematic to have a, but the
customer doesn't look at the company as these departments, right? You just look at it as one
whole organization. So, apart I'm saying paid owned earned is one piece, I'm going beyond
that to say, for example, if you take a mobile phone, right? I mean the number of times mobile
phone, I've had a problem, I've registered a complaint, and then you'll be getting message
after message saying there's a fantastic scheme for you or buy this or buy that same thing
with banking, right? You have a relationship manager, who is saying, oh, you're very
important to the bank and then somebody calls you to say, do you want 2000-rupee loan
because that's been outsourced to somebody else, right? So, I think this... and which is
really frustrating. And I think as customer experience, a customer is expecting consistent,
authentic experience with a company. So, just because as a large company, we are not able
to get our act together. Then I'm saying we are not delivering on the customer expectations.
And then you shouldn't be surprised that, the customers go and look out for competitors
really. So, I think it is extremely... So, a simple thing, for example, we have a methodology
called performance accelerator, where if a campaign once it is into the market not doing too
well, we literally do what's called campaign tear down. So, you will get a team, which has not
worked on the campaign to sit down and critique every part of it. And so, what they normally
do is to put all the messaging on long-board. And then they literally take a thread and they
will connect everything. So wherever, for example, ad is saying something, the website is
saying something, which is resonating with what the ad is promising then the thread is
connected, but if it's not, then you will not connect it. So, you know that there is something
broken out there. So, sometimes this, I mean, it seems like such a... it's just common sense
really, but if we in a rush to get things out into the market. Sometimes, if nobody sits down
and takes a whole, then people don't take a holistic look to say, actually, is everything actually

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 1

resonating? Does it look okay? Even the pages on a site, for example, you go to three
different departments sites, and you will feel that you're talking to three different companies,
right? The look and feel of it or the brand identity they don't follow. So, I think these are basic
challenges which are there, but it's absolutely. I think one of the first fundamental principles
that you want a coherent experience, you want to deliver a coherent experience to the
customer. And today also, the other thing is that because the journey is nonlinear when the
customer is visiting a particular page, it doesn't mean I'm seeing this change his mind and
wants to go to something else, right. So, the interconnection even the journey within the, for
example, for a large company, this becomes even more difficult because you've hundreds of
pages. And a customer wants to be able to navigate from anywhere to anywhere and yet, how
do you manage that becomes a challenge, but we have to deliver to the customer.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 1

Professor: So, in all these discussions, we have to keep the customer in mind and I'm thinking
how the customers go with this information overload. Companies and competitors, there are
too many choices. So, how do customers cope and how do we keep that in account when we
are creating this campaign and messaging and all of those?

Nalini: I think so one of the... thanks to Google all of us, right, we use that as they are first
day of dealing with complexity. And I think we also smart enough. as consumers to tune off
when somebody just giving marketing speak. So, you're saying you're looking for something
you want and what's happening also is there's also influences like on many of the expert
topics you follow influencers to say what is their point of view on that, right? And then, of
course, the review sites are there so which is why to me a campaign cannot exist its own.
For example, if my Amazon reviews are terrible then the very best campaign cannot really
deliver on the results. So, you just have to manage, so that which is why to be customer-
centric and understand what all the customer does. So, they are going to YouTube and
checking out, they are going to Google and searching for things, they are going to reviews
minimum reviews and look up, right? If I just take these three things, then I have to make
sure that my brand is present in all of these places. And there is a reasonable level of us. Of
course, you cannot control it every negative tweet out or a negative review out, but largely, if
you're able to manage then the credibility is there. The other is this whole thing of simplicity.
So, which is the toughest piece, it's easy to say, but I think this whole thing of how do you
make the journey simple for the customer? And one of the starting points, especially in B2B I
find, I think in the customer, in a fast-moving customer goods in general are messaging is
your emotional. Historically, because TV ads and so on, it always is at an emotional level. It's
never at a rational kind of thing. It's the high-ticket items where we get into, consumer
appliances and things like that then it becomes a thing of cost-benefit and features and
things like that. And then when you go to B2B it becomes even more of the stuff of feature
comparisons and product knowledge and things like that, but I think in this whole thing of
that, how do we simplify? And this... it tends to because of all these rational arguments, if
generally, our messaging tends to way towards selling. And you miss the marketing part of it,
right? And one of the things we try to do is that, if you look at it as a Venn diagram, where,
what is your customer care about? And what is your business care about? Now, there has to
be an intersection. But you have to talk in that intersection, then it's a sweet spot where a
customer is willing to listen to you. But if you are talking only your stuff now, the customer
© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

doesn't care really. Oh, so it's really fine. And if you don't have an intersection, then you're
playing in the wrong market, right. So, there is always an intersection when you are trying to...
and you have to find that intersection and you want to make sure that the content is actually
catering to that part. And in that, I think the other thing is that I think many companies do it
quite well, where they actually have platforms which are at a category level, right? For
instance, somebody selling a shampoo can have a hair-care portal or if I take a paint's
company can have interior decoration or home decor portal where the brand may not be the
most important piece in that space, but you are helping the consumer navigate their whole
thing of how to do up the house and so on and making it simple for them, the reality is that
every consumer's confused with the kind of stuff which is available.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 1

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

Professor: Yeah. So, I'm also going to request you to share some experiences of using this
influencer marketing, especially with Instagram and other social media channels. How do
brands, especially service brands leverage the power of influencer marketing?

Nalini: I think so it is the minute there is an expertise involved in the product use, right. Then
I think the influences become extremely important. So, if you take... I think the number of
now especially with COVID, the number of Cookery shows that we all watch, and you can see
that the products which they are endorsing, et cetera, is only increasing. So, I think, but the
minute you go into a larger space of, let's say B2B, for instance, there again, there are
specific influencers and again, some influencers you can engage with them commercially
where they will offer. Typically, each influencer tries to keep their brand-neutral kind of an
approach that's how the influencer continues to get his following as it is. But again, to me, it's
that how do you find the intersection between what the influencer cares about, talks about,
versus what your brand stands for, right? So, you have to be able to give that influencer
enough material for them and to be able to recommend your brand, because if he is just
recommending for the sake of it, then I think customers are also smart, they see to it really.
So again, I think these influencer's to me are important in specific areas where there is
people are looking for some expert opinion and things like that. So, that's where I think... So,
you usually now the thing is that influencer again, social media, et cetera, there are tools to
be able to have an influencer score on various dimensions. So, it's just not the number of
followers, but also their standing and how much engagement is there and things like that
based on that these deals are done.

Professor: Okay.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 1

Professor: So, if you have... one final question about digital marketing assets that
companies keep, start-ups, and big companies. How do you measure overall that this is
creating impact not just a specific campaign or a whole, some kind of positive impact and
sentiments or awareness and all those metrics? How?

Nalini: Yeah. Okay. So, what we, again, like I said, the measurement is a different level, so
there is at a brand level. And then there is of course at the demand generation level, right?
So, the campaigns also some... increasingly the lines are getting blurred because there
will be what we call as audience-built campaigns. So, where you don't measure
necessarily as to whether they are buying something or not, but just because they come to
your site, you at least have the cookies and you are able to re-target them and you at least
know that who's interested. That's still a goal. Now, the other is at a brand level then we or
larger companies do this well in terms of having a brand health panel and they track
regularly. The other is of course sentiment in terms of in social media, your brand can just
get chilled overnight. So, tracking that and responding to that and the sentiment analysis,
and today what's happening earlier sentiment was largely done using texts depending on
what people are tweeting or posting and things like that, but today I think images have
become a very important part of it I mean a platform like Instagram has more images
than... So, I think emojis have become very important. So, now this whole tracking of
sentiment based on all of these signals that the customer is sending out has also become
important. It is extremely important as, so I would call this actually as part of I wouldn't call
it digital, but it's almost like a market intelligence mechanism, right? So, what you normally
do is that you are tracking certain if you are a B2B, you should be tracking social groups in
LinkedIn you have specific groups which are to do with your space, in which case what's
actually happening there gives you important insight into what are the upcoming trending
topics, which are important to your customers. And then you want to again, see whether
they follow those topics are they falling into the intersection of what you sell versus what
the customer is looking for, that gives you an indication of what are the next thing that you
should be talking about in your campaigns, in your website, in your channels, and things
like that. So, that's one part of the regular post in the social media and so on in terms of
how many times the brand is mentioned, or branded search how much has happening? All
of this, I think to me is market research. Search also is market intelligence of yours. It is the
easiest and if you take search and social, social is like your what you would have done as

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

focus groups in your old market research where you chose the Prof. Shainesh
audience, and G
you sat and
you had a guided script and you ask questions. Instead, this is an unguided
Week 1 multiple focus
groups which are happening. It's up to you, how you put a boundary and you learn from
that really.

Professor: So, there's also this phenomenon of this customer community which emerging,
where either their brand creates these communities, or it evolves out of its own
where people have interests and they talk about it? How have you leverage the power of
this community?

Nalini: I think couple of... in our company, for example, a couple of clients where they
have used it very successfully, especially as young mothers, because again I think
different groups or developers, for example, for the technology company extremely
important because there is a cohort which is there and the belief and let's say the credibility
of that peer group is far greater than let's say a marketer or any other expert and so on.
So, in this again, both types are there either the company enters as a participant or in
some cases, you are lucky, you have whitespace and you can actually set up the
community itself for the audience kind of the thing. But, again, the measurement of whether
it actually makes an impact is hard because in a sense it's more long-term because you
don't want to use it as a selling medium, but at the same time, it is a captive place where
you have all your audience available. So, as long as you are subtly able to introduce when
relevant and so on then it works very well.

Professor: So, it can be used as for example, a consumer panel in traditional packaged
goods companies, you can leverage the community to introduce them, let them test your
offerings before it's introduced...

Nalini: Yeah. I think that also people use though, although our company and I'm not aware
of whether they specifically used it, but I think this whole thing of co-creation as well
involving customers in the actual creation of products also companies are doing it pretty
much. Yes.

Professor: Wonderful. Any last comments before we conclude and especially on...?

Nalini: I think the only message that I would have really for anybody jumping into digital

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK103x – Services Marketing:
Concepts &
Applicatio
ns
Prof.
Shainesh G
Week
3 happening. But I think
marketing one, not get overwhelmed because there's just too much
the thing is not to lose your holistic view of a customer-centric ecosystem with... any
ecosystem which is changing every day. But, the base principles don't change all of this
jargon, etcetera has its place but I think it has to be seen in the context of what you want to
achieve and that's not changed for last so many years, right? I think trying to get that
customer value and locked.

Professor: Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Nalini.

Nalini: Thanks, Shainesh.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Services
Marketing: Concepts & Applications" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo,
data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK103x – Services Marketing:
Concepts &
Applicatio
ns
Prof.
Shainesh G
Week
3

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Services
Marketing: Concepts & Applications" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo,
data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 2

Welcome to the module on customers experience in the digital context. In our daily life we play
the role of a customer we buy products, we pay for them and we use them. So, effectively we
play the role of a buyer, a payer and a user. And digital has a significant role to play in all these
roles as consumers.
So, reflect back on things that we really buy or use or pay for. Compare it with what we used to
do maybe 10 years back or 15 years back and you will notice that digital continues to sort of
make this whole process whole journey much more simpler for all of us. And our expectations
are rising because of this whole simplistic Journey that we are able to manage using digital.
Now, what are the implications? For the brands and for the managers who manage these
brands or the marketers who run this sell this product so market these products and who build
brands using digital. So, in this module we are really going to focus on the essentials of
customer’s journey within the digital space.
And so we will notice that digital and physical continues to play and impact our journey and
from a managerial perspective or from a learners perspective we need to understand how do
we navigate this customer experience or the customer journey overall.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 2

Yeah, when we are looking at the customers journey in the digital age we also have to wear the
hat of the marketer and when you wear the hat of a marketer you are really thinking about how
do I make my brand successful in the digital age. How do I leverage digital to succeed in a
market which is characterized by customers increasingly using digital for the entire purchase
and consumption process?
What explains the success of brands in the digital age? Think about the brands which are very
successful; obviously, the most common names that will come to your mind will belong to the
technology space Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and whole bunch of social media kind
of you know platforms. But there are also a lot of brands which have leveraged which are not in
the technology space, but they have leveraged digital to become much more successful.
And they span across product categories and service categories ranging from package goods
to durables to appliances, electronics automobiles and services. So, what are the
characteristics of these successful brands? So, if you think about the most successful brands
that come to your mind you will find one key element these brands really focus on the users
and not necessarily only the buyers.
While buying is an important aspect digital gives you lot more opportunity to engage with the
users. So, broadly we would want to define and differentiate between the traditional brands
which are successful maybe 20 years back 30 years back and with brands which are
characterized by success in the digital age.
Primarily, I would think about four different areas of focus which made this brand successful.
The first criteria for success is where do you position yourself. The traditional Brands really
focused on the minds of the consumers. The occupied a spot or a space in the minds of the
consumers with respect to their competition they would highlight the differentiation they would
really focus on the target customers and reinforce the differentiation which gives the customers
the target customers the reasons to buy.
On the other hand the digital brands have really made a difference in the lives of the customers
so it is not just the minds of the customers. They impact the lives of the customers because
they are with the customers throughout their journey. Through information, through
suggestions, through experiences which are enabled and sort of you know sort of advanced by
using digital technologies.
The second criteria is what I would classify as engagement. Traditional brands have been very
good at engaging with buyers. And once the customer buys the product or service they were
not so good at the usage stage because you need the customer to actually come back to you
and explain or share some experiences.
On the other hand the digital brands or brands which are used digital they engage with the
customers at the user stage which means that you have a lot more opportunity especially for
durables electronics appliances automobiles and other kinds of products and services. Which I
bought once, but get used for a long period of time and you can use digital technologies and
platforms to engage with customers at the usage stage which is typically for many brands
much more prolonged.
The third kind of third criteria actually on which this traditional brands differ from the digital
brands is the investments. So, investments is a third criteria on which the brands differ the
traditional brands versus the digital brands. Traditional brands are very good at investing in
pre-purchase through promotions and sales activities.
But in many cases they just sort of forget that selling is the end of a transaction, but a
beginning of a relationship. On the other hand the digital brands invest a lot in post-purchase
renewal and advocacy. They engage with customers on a much longer period of time they
engage with the customers and enrich that usage experience. Which means that, many of
these customers become relationship customers they are willing to advocate they are willing to

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 2

sort of repurchase and they become loyal customers.

So, even for traditional brands it is an opportunity to really leverage digital to engage with
customers and the post purchase usage kind of a situation. Finally, the fourth criteria is what in
services the concept of moments of truth. So, what are those moments of truths? Moments of
truth are those occasions those instances when a prospect or a customer gets in contact with
any aspect of a brand and makes a judgment about the quality.
Now, traditional brands are very good at really focusing on the stage before the transaction,
such as researching, shopping and buying the product. Whereas the digital brands are very
good at focusing on those moments of truths which are after the transaction which means
delivery, usage, service, education and finally, motivating customers to share their experiences
hopefully positive experiences which become part of the review process for new prospects.
So, if I were to summarize the difference between the digital and traditional brands are on four
different criteria on positioning on engagement the priorities in terms of investments and finally,
the moments of truth that you want to influence.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 2

It seems that everyone understands intuitively the need for improving customer experience or
CX as they say, but how do you align the business with customer experience. So, businesses
have a big challenge in terms of understanding the concept that you know customer
experience is absolutely important at all stages, but then they need a way to translate that into
action or they need a way to actually implement it.
So, in businesses again you know typically, the top management really is interested in making
sure that the strategies get executed strategies get implemented. So, one of the ways you can
implement it by actually measuring because what gets measured gets managed. So, it is
important to have dashboards which are viewed by business leaders include this CX metrics.
You need metrics which are sort of collected automatically, regularly, frequently and then they
become part of the overall metrics that are viewed by the business leaders. What are some of
these matrix? For example, you would want to know the frequency of customer purchase
especially existing customers it is easy to think about custom frequency of custom purchase in
context like grocery or you know frequently purchased products typically cycle would be a
weekly or a fortnightly or sometimes in monthly, but there are products that are purchased less
frequently, but customers use it over a long period of time.
Are there opportunities for you know providing services, support and some other kind of a
service which would require purchases and how do I engage with customers in those situations
for example, durables. So, frequency of purchase depends upon the characteristics of the
business and the product and the service, but that is very important metric I mean which is
useful for the business leaders.
The second metric that typically business leaders would be interested in is the level of churn.
How many of the customers are being retained from whatever period? So, in the beginning of
the year the retention level was 80 percent, 90 percent has it stayed at that level and then one
you look at the overall at retention and churn level the other is at segment level.
So, you would find that there are certain segments which are have exhibit sort of high attrition
on the other hand there are customers in other segments which who stay for much longer
period of time and so that is very useful for taking action because one would like to understand
why customers are churning and then sort of initiate action to reduce those churns especially
with profitable customers.
The third metric that you really want to worry about is the length of customer retention, how
long the customers stay with us. Our averages again in this case are very misleading. So, you
need to have fine-tuned level wise customer retention data its average length means that if you
have invested in acquiring a customer and the customer stays for a long period of time you are
likely to have a customer who is profitable and the lifetime value is higher for them.
Another metric that is interesting or useful is the average level of cross sell or basket size.
Intuitively, this much more easy to think about it in a supermarket or retailing context, but this
also equally true for products which companies which are multiple products and all can be used
by the target customers.
So, it is not good enough to have one kind of a product being bought by the customer, but
many companies which have multiple products and services would like opportunities to cross
sell and increase the basket size. From a service perspective one would want to look at
complaints and service issues that are frequently raised.
So, you would want detailed analysis of why customers are complaining, what are the issues
that they are raising when they reach out to the contact centers and that is typically part of the
service department’s mandate, but you know these are sort of precursors or advanced or lead
indicators of customer’s retention.
So, it is important you address those issues right in the beginning. So, average complaints, the
trend all of these are metrics that senior business leaders would want to know about. Another

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 2

one metric that is again useful across B2B as well as B2C context is the average cost of
service issue.
Ideally, a service or a product should have a zero defect, but in reality customers will have
experiences which are not necessarily zero defect in which case as a seller as a marketer as a
brand owner one has to address those service issues and that is the major cost not just in
monetary terms and financial terms, but also in terms of time and effort and the fact that the
customer is unable to use the service. So, that has to be addressed and so one has to have
this kind of metrics.
Again the classification of metric of the complaints in terms of you know the top reasons for
complaints, how frequently it occurs, you know does it cut across all kinds of customers or
those are metrics that one would really want to dig deep into. A very common metric that is
now very easily available is what we call as the customer sentiment.
Customers are much more prone to actually sharing their experiences by through likes, through
forwards, through reviews and not necessarily limited to the company's website and digital
properties, but also on third party sites like for example, tripadvisor for tails and hospitality
industry or travel industry or on Amazon or E-commerce company’s sites where your brands
are sold. So, it is important for brands to keep track of the customer sentiment and compare
with their own competitors.
In addition to some things which are automatically collected or initiated by the customers as
brand managers as brand owners one has really think about conducting surveys, reaching out
to customers, conducting them frequently incorporate the voice of the customer through
operational and behavioral data.
A lot of data is collected automatically in several service context like banking financial services
where every transaction gets automatically captured. So, behavioral data has to be sort of
combined with operational data and the survey based kind of perceptions and beliefs data and
that gives a very good insight overall in terms of what the customers feel about the brand and
the organization.
So, to sum up basically we are saying that you know if you want top management attention you
want to also make sure that your customers are having a good experience using your product
and service it is important to have metrics, it is important to have measures which are aligned
with understanding this customer experience which are aligned with actually improving them on
a regular basis.
So, what gets managed, what gets measured gets managed and so metrics are something that
is easily available now, data is available a customer generate data, the companies generate
data, the operational systems generate data and supplement that with observation service and
other kind of methods of interviews.
For example, to find out what customers really feel about using your brand and that will be the
starting point of understanding the customer journey and being able to influence them and
provide outstanding customer experience.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 2

Customer journey. Let us try to understand the customer’s journey as in a typical journey in our
real life also customers follow a process, a path which will have multiple stages. Traditionally,
in the theory of buyer behavior we had a few stages and they were seen as fairly linear. The
first step in the theory of buyer behavior would focus on what is called as the need recognition.
There is a need which arises and that can be fulfilled by buying something and using that
product or service. So, the first stage is need recognition.
The second stage in this journey would be typically information search. The customers would
seek information, if they have used the product or service they have some experience they
may ask their friends, they may ask the relatives or colleagues or they would collect information
from commercial sources for example, mass media television newspaper.
The third stage is actually the evaluation of alternatives. Now, if you collect information you
would also want to compare as customers they would have their own criteria for evaluation,
quality, performance, reputation, price, features, benefits all of those are typically the criteria
that customers use to evaluate the alternatives.
Once this evaluation is done typically customers will purchase and the purchase process will
lead to the customer having the product or service or the ability to use the service or the
product because now the customer is typically paid for it. The usage experience determines the
customers decision whether the customer should actually come back and buy the same
product, same brand or switch over and start the whole process again and so this stage is
actually post purchase evaluation the usage experience.
So, if you think about this whole process it is fairly linear it is also sort of a funnel and this is
depending upon the product category and the customer's involvement level this could be very
short or this could be very prolonged process. In business markets, for example, you know this
process which is high involvement very expensive products or services that the organization is
buying would involve a much longer process because many people get involved.
So, to sum up if you think about a process largely focus in the buying process it starts with
need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post purchase
evaluation and as I said the post purchase evaluation based on usage experience determines
whether the customer starts the process all over again in the next purchase requirement or
short circ is the process and just goes back and buys the product which she had bought in the
previous occasion because she is happy with the experience.
Now, how do we translate this whole process in the digital space in the digital age. So, one of
the ways that you can actually map it is a use a compact visualization which maps it from end
to end from right from the need recognition to post purchase usage experience and then this
can take many forms for example, info graphics, illustrations, diagrams and this may vary
across products and consumption situations.
So, in the map typically of a customer journey one has to be very careful about including all
touch points the customers come in contact. Use that information or they get in touch with the
brand or other sources including non-commercial sources review sites digital platforms all of
those.
So, typically in the early 90’s before the sort of prominence of digital this was a fairly linear,
traditional and a funnel kind of a shape where typically the choices would sort of narrow down
from a wider range to a few and finally, the customer would purchase one brand or the other.
Today, the markets does understand that the path to purchase is non-linear it is also becoming
circular it is also expands with more information being available at different stages. And so it is
not necessarily always a kind of a straight linear path, but its circular and one has to
understand as a marketer or a brand manager to be able to use information and make it
available to customers and customers are today banking a lot more on others actually not
necessarily the brands themselves to make those decisions.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 2

It is also important to acknowledge and recognize that the customer journey is not standard for
the same product it could vary depending upon the customers experiences the segments that
they belong to and so one has to keep variants of the same journey for the product purchase if
for different segments of customers and the specific purpose of the customer.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 2

To illustrate this, I am going to show you an example and sort of a hypothetical example using
the multiple stages of customers journey. So, let us look at a 5 stage kind of a customer
journey. Starting from awareness, need recognition and awareness, consideration which
includes evaluation of alternatives, actual purchase then the usage experience which includes
service and support.
And finally, loyalty expansion which includes for example, using information that you send in
the form of newsletters blogs and the customers engagement through contact centers and
reaching out to you for support. So, this awareness consideration purchase, service and loyalty
expansion process is not linear as you can see from the image here.
And typically at the early stages you will see that the companies use a lot of mass media, they
use a lot of public relations mass media like radio, television, outdoor and they would also want
to encourage their existing customers to sort of provide testimonials, word of mouth and
positive referrals. As we move down this journey from awareness to consideration you will see
that a lot more digital content starts coming in.
Because that is when customers also actively searching for information. Assume that a
customer wants to buy a car or want to change the smartphone that she has. The customer
also takes initiative search for information online then gets exposed to paid content digitally
there could be emails that are reaching out to the customers through the promotions that the
organizations are doing.
Customers visit the websites, reach up to the landing pages because they have clicked on
some PPC’s or pay per click ads and they may be getting emails from the companies and
competitors. All of them help the customer sort of shortlist and reduce the choices. And finally,
the customer after evaluation of alternatives decides to buy. And today you will see that it is not
necessary for the customer to really visit a store. They may visit choose to visit a store.
So, it becomes one of the channels that you are actually leveraging for especially for products
which require the customers to touch and fail and also collect some information. At the
purchase stage it can be done through the agents, through sales, agents, through brokers,
through the mobile apps and your own website which enables E commerce transactions or you
are available on third party sites, all of them are actually part of the purchase process.
Now, we also noticed that in many products and services customers do this whole concept of
showrooming. What does that involve? Customers walk into a store specially for example, the
department store; they want to try out some products, especially clothing and they want to
touch and feel that experience it and go to the trial room, try it out they feel good about it,
sometimes they will immediately take a photo and share it with their friends on Instagram and
then get feedback and then decide to buy.
But surprisingly, many customers do not necessarily buy in the store. They would compare the
price in the store and see if its available on online channels and they will make the purchase
and that is whole concept is called as showrooming. Because, they want the comfort of touch
and feel, but they want to also get the best price. And especially, if it is available very quickly
they may change.
So, leading players especially department stores and chains are actually becoming much more
savvy in terms of understanding this Omni-channel behavior of customers and making sure
that the prices do not change so much prices are consistent, services are consistent, allow
customers option to sort of switch between physical to digital channels seamlessly.
Once the customer has purchased the product then you need to support the customer; you
need to provide services. And again, so the traditional method of reaching out to organizations
would be toll free numbers and call centers that is getting increasingly replaced by contact
centers which are automated apps which provide services chat bots which enable a lot of cell
service and increasingly moving towards the leveraging self-service technologies.
The service and the usage experience is another opportunity to run promotions with customers;
because they want to remind them to sort of buy new products, use existing services and they

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 2

have signed up and especially they have given the permission, if they have given the
permission it is much more easier based on analysis of the usage to provide promotions which
are relevant for those customers.
The final stage, now you have acquired a customer the customer has been using a product
and service for some period of time you want to expand the loyalty; you want to retain the
customers. And that is where you want to share information in the form of inviting them to visit
your blogs, share newsletters, run your loyalty programs reward programs and use the
opportunity to understand the experience through surveys and satisfaction studies and
interviews and other observation methods.
So, to sum up this journey actually is no longer linear, it varies from customer to customer, but
more importantly it gives an opportunity to map the entire process from the customers
perspective. As a manager, as a marketer, as a brand manager one has to be conscious that
the customer journey differs for different customers for the same product depending upon the
customers experience, customers involvement and the nature of the product and service.
So, it is important for organizations to create this customer journey maps for different segments
of customers and understand how customers collect information, how they share information
and be able to sort of provide overall seamless experience.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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Week 2

So, how does one go about creating these customer journeys? So, there are 5 things that one
needs to keep in mind. The first requirement is to map this customer journey for a specific
buyer persona. So, we are going back to the basics of marketing, segmentation, targeting and
positioning. So, we are thinking about this target customer and this person especially in
consumer markets one needs to understand the persona of this buyer.
So, the first step is understanding and sort of articulating the buyer persona and I will explain
that later. The second stage is really about understanding your buyer’s goals. What does this
persona? What is this individual want to achieve? The third stage is mapping out the buyer
touch points, which includes organizational touch points from multiple sources and also other
touch points where the organization does not have a control.
But it is important to understand what factors, what aspects influence this buyer. The fourth
stage is, a fourth aspect is really about identifying the customer pain points. So, one we are
mapping this customer journey. For this buyer persona, there could be a different pain points in
terms of interacting with the touch points. So, it is important it is key to really to identify those
pain points and the final stage is really to prioritize and fix the roadblocks which are related to
these pain points.
So overall, if you think about a customer journey you start with a buyer persona, understand
the buyers goals, map the different touch points that the buyer get exposed to including touch
points which are not controlled by the organization, identify the customer pain points because
after buying the customer really uses the product and service and throughout this whole
journey customer may have experiences, which are not necessarily positive. And then finally,
prioritize and fix the roadblocks.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 2

What does that mean when we say buyer persona? To create a customer journey one has to
start with an individual and this individual ideally you should be able to describe this individual
in at least a page. What are some of the things that you should include in this description?
Obviously, one needs to use certain demographic variables to explain for example, age,
education, income, you know background you know interest.
So, all of those segmentation variables that we typically use in terms of demographics,
psychographics, behavioral should be used to explain this by a persona and that would include
for example, values, attitudes, beliefs or lifestyles because all of these factors influence the
purchase decision influence the factors which drive demand.
Once you have described this buyer persona you really have to think about what is this buyer
want to achieve what are those goals. So, determine the goals for each customer phase before
you map insert for the same service when the customer is in hurry or there is an emergency
the goals are very different from when the customer has a lot of time and how do you facilitate
that.
So, there are different ways to understand the customers goals one can conduct interviews for
different customer groups, you can survey customers and find out their goals get user
feedback, existing users feedback, study the customer support emails transcripts when they
call up or reach out to the contact centers and then use that to understand or identify the
customer queries in each phase.
Use customer analytics tools to gather information. So, there is a process that one needs to
follow to understand the goals for customer under each phase of the journey and that will
determine how you are going to make it seamless, make it simple for the customers reduce the
pain points for them.
Once you have understood the persona and the buyer’s goals the next step is really to map out
the touch points. So, what are these touch points? Touch points are those occasions or
instances when the customer comes in contact with your brand before during and after they are
purchased.
So, its throughout the entire customer journey and this may involve offline may involve online
may involve marketing communication that you are sent to the customers through any channel
could be in person could be over phone and could be over emails on the website on your
especially on your digital properties including a company website and other social media
handles analytics including Google analytics is very useful one can look at behavior flow report.
For example, it or the goal flow report it shows how a customer or a prospect or a user moves
through your site from one interaction at a time. On the other hand, the goal flow reports
displays the path your visitors follow to complete a goal conversion and that may include actual
purchase, but many times it is just leaving information like this is my E-mail ID and this is my
phone number and please contact me. So, the goal conversion could vary depending upon the
purpose of that communication.
So, if you want to map out the buyer touch points including online and offline you will realize
that customers get exposed to multiple touch points and there would be preferences depending
upon the buyer persona and the buyers goal in where they want to spend more of their time
and where they collect the information it is a big challenge really to sort of integrate them, but
the fact that the tools are available technologies are available and many large brands are using
them things are becoming much more simpler to identify and start using them.
Yeah, so what are these touch points? So, just to illustrate you know touch points could be
word of mouth, could be the promos that have been run by the organization, it could be E-mails
news items about the brand and the product social media handles advertisements and mass as
well as traditional media and digital media pay per click advertisements online, it could be your
loyalty program with existing customers customer service, blogs, forums, promotions that you
run email.
Including things like your packaging and your invoices if the product is sold in retail stores that

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 2

becomes a touch point in terms of how customers experience your product. So, it is important
to map all these touch points and make sure that they are consistent and they provide a good
experience to customers when they are seeking out information or deciding to buy.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 2

In the next stage after you identified all the touch points for different buyer persona, it is
important to recognize that you know many of them do not provide a good experience or they
may fall short in terms of what customers expect. And I call this stage as the pain points. It is
an organization or as a manager one has to really think about those pain points; those touch
points which provide positive and negative customer experiences.
Ideally all touch points should provide positive experiences. But in reality, many of those touch
points end up becoming pain points because they do not give very good experience to
customers. Let me illustrate this from a travelers experience for different persona. And so, if
you think about a travel, a trip that has been made by you in the past; you would notice that as
a customer, as a user you would have use different channels.
So, recall that the customer journey involves multiple stages starting with awareness,
consideration which involves evaluation of alternatives, purchase and then post purchase
service and engagement. So, if you think about the entire customer journey, as a four stage
process a prospective customer or a buyer persona would engage with multiple sort of touch
points.
This may involved the company’s website; website which is available in the mobile, mobile
website it can be a sort of a app that the company has provided or a third party app like a trip
advisor for a travel can be available on the social media. It can be phone, it can be in person
because there are outlets or agencies and they may be automated chat support; both robotic
chat supports as well as sort of human chat support.
Now, let us look at a three different persona. Person who is a business traveler let us call this
person as Ramesh a 35 year old business traveler who travels frequently will typically have a
very short journey; literally because he travels frequently used to seeking convenience, save
time and effort and the priority is to really fulfil the goal which is usually having some meetings
in another city.
So, the awareness stage would be largely for example, hypothetically in this case could start
from the website on the desktop, consideration is very quickly done and the customer buys the
books the ticket maybe plans for a stay in a hotel and then you know decides very quickly and
makes the purchase. So, it is basically 3 different steps across this journey.
On the other hand, if you take someone who is a retired person, who is maybe 65 year old and
this person wants to make international trip and you are trying to map out this persons
experience; let us call this person as mister Srinivasan a 63 year old retired and wants to go
international travel internationally and starts by actually accessing the website on the desktop.
So, the initial awareness stage, he is looking for information and the touch point is a website
and you will also notice that throughout the journey, there are circles and there are sort of
boxes and stars. These represent the different personas. So, in this case the sort of square
boxes are representing mister Srinivasan who is a retired person who wants to take a trip.
And it is a much more elaborate process as you can see from the map; the this person uses
multiple channels including chat support and you know at every stage. And then finally, is also
much more longer period because international is more expensive high involvement and
maybe the uncertainty is high because this person may not have traveled very frequently
abroad.
On the other hand, if you take a college student say 19 year old college student who is actually
making a trip deciding to purchase the ticket and make the trip and she may start the social
media, access more information on the mobile website. And then come back and you know
look at the app that she downloads does some more research in the consideration stage and
then finally, makes the purchase reaches out to the makes a booking on the mobile app and
makes a trip and finally, signs up for the loyalty program.
You will also notice certain boxes which are red or green. The green ones are actually
providing positive experiences; the red ones are negative. And it is not a specific channel that
is giving positive and negative experience. It differs from the customer persona. So, customers

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 2

are comfortable, tech savvy may find it much more easier to use app; whereas, someone for
example, the retired person may not find it very easy.
So, this kind of a customer journey and mapping process helps you identify the different touch
points which are giving positive and negative experiences and one would want to really reduce
those pain points by making it simpler, more convenient much more easy and give alternatives
for the customers.
So, to sum up basically the customer journey is a very useful concept which can be
implemented, it can also become a diagnostic tool to understand the overall customer journey
across the touch points and across the stages of purchase and use of the product and service.
So, mapping the customer journey is just a starting point as I said it is a wonderful diagnostic
tool.
It helps us identify which touch points at what stage of the customer journey is giving positive
experience or negative experience. So, the diagnostic tool is only useful, if one can use those
findings to improve and enhance the overall customer journey. How do we use this customer
journey mapping to prioritize and fix the roadblocks? The diagnostic tool really helps identify
those negative experiences and positive experiences.
So obviously, the negative experiences have to be sort of eliminated or removed and the
positive experiences have to be enhanced especially the ones which have a emotional content;
you know when customers feel good or bad about certain experiences it has an overall impact
on their assessment of the quality of experience. So, one really need to prioritize and fix those
roadblocks.
Is there a need to break everything down or and start from scratch or other simple tweaks that
can help us really make a big impact. So, it should be an ongoing process; it is not a one size
fits all first you recognize that and it is not something that you can sit back and relax because
the entire market is dynamic.
So, to sum up, the customer journey is a useful diagnostic tool to understand how customers
experience your product or service and then constantly work on improving the customer
experience by prioritizing and fixing the roadblocks.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 2

So, to conclude in this module on Customer Experience in the Digital Context, very late
focused on factors that will determine success for brands in the digital age, we spent some
time understanding how customers experience is influenced by multiple sources in the digital
age.
We spent a lot of time really trying to understand this whole process of customer journey
across multiple stages, across multiple touch points and then create a sort of a diagnostic tool
which helps us identify those experiences which are positive and a few which may be
potentially negative and what is impact and more importantly from a managerial perspective,
how do we sort of resolve or rectify or improve those touch points which may be negative.
And finally, we looked at a few examples including travel, hospitality, and health insurance to
understand and sort of apply those concepts in real life context. So, I hope you all would be
able to apply this concept when you really start using it in your own sort of you know work or
organizational context.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 3

Digital outbound marketing. So, in this module we are going to cover a lot of aspects of digital
marketing communication. What does it mean, how companies decide, how to leverage digital to
reach out to the target customers?

So, we will focus on different aspects like what are the characteristics of digital marketing
communication, use a framework called 6M’s marketing communication plan framework, we will
also have a separate digital marketing framework, we use a POEM kind of a framework which
stands for Paid Media, Owned Media, Earned Media.

So, POEM stands for Paid, Owned, Earned media. We have certain aspects of specialized aspects
of digital marketing which is called native advertising. And then we will try to understand this
whole concept of paid search, what are some of the decision variables that as a manager as a
decision maker you have to focus on. And then at the end of it we need to spend some time
understanding the effectiveness of all this outbound activities marketing activities.

Including for example, search where you spend money and display ads which are used by
companies to reach out to target customers. So, this entire module focuses on digital marketing
communication. Why is this important, why is digital marketing communication important?

A way simply companies are spending shifting a lot of the resources budget from traditional
media to digital marketing. And so, we will spend some time understanding the trends but later,
let us first step back and think about where does this fit in the overall value delivery process.

If you recall in the initial modules, we talked about the value delivery process which has 4 stages
choose value, provide value, communicate value and sustain value. And each stage has multiple
activities. It is important to recall that communicate value comes up only after you have chosen
value and you have found a way to create or provide value through product development, service
development, pricing, sourcing versus making decisions and distribution or servicing.

So, communicate value; so, broadly this digital marketing communication comes as part of the
third stage of the value delivery process. And finally, we will also later talk about how do we sort
of sustain value by preventing value erosion, brand equity and customer relationships. So, let us
keep this overall picture in mind when we are talking about digital marketing communication.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 3

What are some of the trends in digital marketing? Step back a bit and think about what we as
users, consumers or as individuals where do we spend most of our time now, where do we collect
information? If as users and consumers we are spending a lot of time on our devices online and
finding information communicating with people, friends colleagues, relatives then it is obvious
that the marketers and the brands are also available online.

So, clearly when you see when you are whether you are watching a match a audio or reading
about news or receiving mails, sending mails, you will find that ads are being shown to us. Billions
of display ads are served daily to users for online. Why is that? The ads have shifted from the
traditional channels like television newspaper radio billboards and others and we will see some
data you know.

Online a very important reason why companies are showing ads when we was because when we
are searching for information on a search engine like Google, very simply because our search
reveals intent it is very direct. So, if I want to if I am traveling to another city say Bombay or
Mumbai and I am looking for a hotel near the airport and my search says hotels near the airport
and I am specify 5 star hotel, 3 star hotel, 4 star hotel.

What does it show? It reveals intent that I am going to travel, I am looking for information so that
I can take a decision. Now, typically when you do that you will notice that the ads pop up. When
you have these keywords saying that hotels near the airport Delhi airport or Mumbai airport or
whatever or New York airport, it shows my intent as a user. And everyone who is marketing
property which is located near the airport would want to show the ad because they want to be
chosen by the users like me.

The other trend that you notice is the content used to be largely text earlier. Now it is becoming
richer, its bit getting enhanced and there is lot more video lot more animation that comes up. Now
one big advantage is it attracts attention, but also it helps people stay with those ads for longer
period of time compared to text.

In terms of growth, we see a shift from devices PC’s and tablets to mobiles so, smartphone. So,
the growth that is happening in terms of usage is from a platform perspective it is on mobile.
Similarly, the domain growth is in social. What does that mean? It is actually not the traditional

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 3

internet, but people are spending a lot more time on social media and hence you are served with
lot of ads on social media whether it is Instagram, Facebook or you know whatever your preferred
social media channel.

All of them have led to a situation where the online advertising span is growing dramatically. The
CAGR or Compounded Annual Growth Rate is double digit. And usually its coming at a cost the
trade-off is that companies are deciding to spend lot less on the traditional channels like television,
newspaper and radio.

But a very important trend is that for strong brands both online as well as offline activities are
becoming very intertwined. So, the users are you are likely to influence users if you have a single
narrative across all your online and offline activities. So, these are some of the trends which helps
us understand this whole concept of digital marketing communication.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 3

A communication value should drive your Promotion Strategy. Because promotion is a very large
part of your overall expenditure marketing expenditure. And hence the choice of the media for
example, determines a significant part of your expense. So, one has to be very careful about
choosing that. And so, there is that in terms of choices that are available there are many.

This includes a traditional broadcast media like the television, a radio, a print newspaper,
magazines and out of home you know billboards and even for example, television screens or
panels in the retail stores like department stores or inside the airport at different places restaurants.

The other option is really the direct response which includes E-mails telephone and the traditional
mails that used to be sent to customers or databases. A digital includes obviously, internet and the
mobile based kind of options, it is also search ads that you can serve or search engines.

Social media, a big part of it is now shifting to user generated content where users give for
example, feedback, they map reviews, they write about product experience, they write about
experiences of staying in a hotel, about using a product or service. And the final one which is
increasingly becoming important and in competitive markets is what we call as inbound
marketing or content marketing which motivates users to visit your digital properties.

Finally, there are lot of offline activities which help connect with the users and consumers. And
this may involve sponsorships, events for example, sports events or entertainment events or you
know festivals, setting up your own booths in different venues or you can have grassroots
activities in for example, in community centers, residential apartments or colleges, universities
wherever your target customers are available.

As I said all of them requires expenditure and whenever there is money that has to be spent, I
there is a lot of attention. So, promotion usually happens to be one of the largest expenditure
under the overall marketing mix elements within the marketing mix elements promotion is a
significant part of the expenditure. So, the understanding the value that communication can create
should drive your promotion strategy.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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A very simple way to visualize the digital marketing framework is to look at the two key entities,
you know there is this Company which has something to sell or something to market and there is
a target Consumer. So, the 2 C’s is the focus of Digital Marketing Communication. A company
typically can do two activities.

One is what we classify as outbound you know traditionally one would release ads to reach out
to your target customer. And that is outbound you know you can have use any channel a television,
radio, newspaper all of that or you can send out mails E-mails and letters to your target customer.

The other one is what we call as something that is initiated by the consumer and they reach out to
the company. This could be and that is classified as Inbound marketing. What are those? For
example, consumer reaches out to organizations for a service, for requests, for clarifications or
they are interested in the product and service.

And so, digital allows lots of opportunities multiple channels available today for consumers to
reach out to organizations. And a very interesting thing that is developed in the digital space is
the interactions between the users. And that is facilitated by the Social Media and Mobile
Technologies.

So, in the outbound one typically the company has a lot of control, now you decide what to
communicate. Inbound the consumer decides what they want to reach out to you for. Whereas
when consumers and users are interacting amongst themselves the company does not have a role,
they may be talking about your product, they may be talking about your experience and they may
be positive or negative.

But it is important for organization every organization today to listen to the social media chatter,
what consumers and users are talking about your products, what they are writing as reviews, if
they are positive sort of amplify them, if they are negative address them and then sort of minimize
the disruption that can happen because of this user generated content.

So, broadly there are three kinds of communication: outbound controlled by the company,
inbound controlled by the consumer and when consumers or the users interact with each other
using any of the platforms say Facebook or a WhatsApp, using mobile technologies we are hoping

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 3

that its positive for the company, but not necessarily always. We have seen enough viral videos
of customers sharing sort of horror stories of experiences.

So, but as a manager as a marketer it is imperative that one should have mechanisms, one should
have systems to keep track of what is happening in the social media about your brand. So, there
are tools which are available to help you, listen to what customers are talking. So, this framework
is a simple framework to help understand the different kinds of communications that is happening
around your brand.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 3

Digital Outbound Marketing. So, what does it mean when we say digital outbound marketing? Its
really the use of internet and connected devices to reach out to the target customers also to engage
with existing customers. And this is if you look at the data and the trend on where companies are
spending money it is very evident that the resources financial resources are shifting from the
traditional media to digital media.

In three years actually, between 2019 to 2022, what is expected is doubling of spend by companies
on digital platforms. So, if you look at the numbers it is around 25000 crores to almost 49000
crores on digital. A television on the other hand, has grown a bit from 36000 crores to, but not
much to 42000 crores.

A print has shown a decline and then sort of stabling, but you know increasingly as you can see
from the data of marketers in india very clearly while the total spend is increasing from over
85000 86000 crores to 107 crores. The portion or the part that is being allocate to digital is
increasing the fastest is showing the highest growth rate.

Now, this is no different in other markets if you look at data from North America, Europe, Japan,
Asia Pacific, the trend is exactly the same. Clearly, the marketers are simply following the users.
If users are spending a lot of time and in a day on social media and digital channels marketers are
simply following them and the data is simply reflecting the fact that the spend is increasing
because marketers are reallocating the resources.

The other reason why the expenditure on digital platforms has increased is simply the number of
companies which are spending on digital. Startups, small companies find it much more easier to
spend on digital platforms than on mainstream television, print and radio because upfront
production costs are much lower and they can potentially target the customers much better.

So, there are many reasons why this expenditure on digital is increasing, but one sort of
underplayed role of small businesses is sort of always overlooked and that is getting reflected in
the expenditure.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 3

A Communication Plan. Now, organizations communicate with the users with the stakeholders
and it is good to think about a framework. So, I am going to use a very traditional conventional
framework called 6M’s framework. So, what are these 6M’s ok they stand for Mission, Market,
Message, Media, Money and Measurement. So, the 6M’s Mission, Market, Message, Media,
Money and Measurement. So, let us go through each one of them one by one.

So, a mission is really helps you focus on the objective. If I am running a campaign, what do I
want to achieve? What is the objective? Now, objectives can be classified in marketing context
especially in terms of 3 A’s; Awareness, Attitude and Action. I should be able to set up objectives
in terms of awareness.

For example, among my target customers the current level of awareness, about the product, about
the brand, about the features, about the benefits you say 30 percent and I am going to run a
campaign for the next 3 months, I want to increase this 30 percent to 40 percent. So, awareness
is one objective and that is measurable completely measurable.

The second one is attitude. Among those who are aware, what is the attitude? Do they think
positively about it about my brand? So, as I said 30 percent are aware maybe 20 percent of them
have very positive attitude. So, I want to increase that to 25 percent or 30 percent that could be in
second objective.

The third one is action. Now, I have achieved certain awareness, I have achieved certain positive
attitude I want them to actually go and buy. So, currently from among the 30 percent awareness
20 percent positive attitude only 5 percent are buying. So, I want to increase that to say 7 percent
or 10 percent.

So, the campaign should have every campaign should have an objective if you set up objectives
then you can measure it and evaluate whether it is successful or not. So, that was the first M
Mission. The second one is the market or second M is Market. For whom is the campaign
intended? Who is the target customer? And it is useful to think about a custom persona.

A college going student 21 year old, parents are funding the college expenses and you are trying
to reach out to this customer and you are selling jeans a pair of jeans ok that is a persona for a

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 3

campaign for a marketer who is selling jeans. You can have another persona which says, well
kids and who would use jeans, but the parents are the decision makers.

So, remember that the product is the same its jeans, but one is targeted at college going students
the other one is for younger kids where parents would decide what kind of jeans the kid should
wear. So, each campaign should have very very clearly well defined target segment. If I
understand the target segment; I will be able to communicate with them I will be able to engage
with them and whatever message I were use makes sense to them.

So, that draws that that takes us to the third element which is Message. What should be
communicated? What is the content of the communication? Remember that, you may your
product may be a wonderful product your service may be a great service, but you know
communication is very expensive.

So, you want to highlight what is different what is special and what benefits will the users get.
So, you cannot have lots of content what you need to do is just be very sharp in terms of what you
want to communicate. So, that is the message part of the 6M. The fourth M stands for Media.
What vehicle should channel should I use?

Should it be digital, should it be traditional, should it be mass media like radio television or should
I send emails or should I use a combination, should I represent on social media, should I have
search in search Ads all of them are actually the media decisions what channels you would want
to use.

The fifth M stands for Money. How much is the total budget that I have? How much money I
should spend? And how do I allocate it across the different channels or different medium? And
the final one final or the sixth M is Measurement. How do we know whether it is working the
campaign is working or not. So, the measurement has to be decided up front and that is driven by
the objectives that you have set for the campaign.

If you run a campaign for 3 months and you have certain awareness, attitude and action objectives
you do not have to wait for 3 months to find whether the campaign was successful or not; you
will start measuring it from day 1 and digital helps you assess that very very easily quite a bit of
it very easily not all of it, but quite a bit of it very easily.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 3

So, the 6M’s framework is a useful framework to think about; what you want to achieve, for
whom you want to reach out or who do you want to reach out, what is the content of the message,
which channel should I use, how much money do I have how and how do I allocate it across
different channels and finally, how do I measure how do we evaluate the performance of the
campaign.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 3

The DM Framework is a useful snapshot and you can to get an overview of all the elements that
comprises of this Digital Marketing activities that an organization can undertake. So, there are
four different components. There is a input component, there is this whole media component or
media element and then thus the role of the marketer or the analyst and finally, as an organization
which has brands there is some kind of a output that you are looking for.

So, let us look at these framework in some detail. We start with our strategy framework which
has external and internal components. The external components are the customers and the
regulators. Yeah, so consumers or users have needs the company and its competitors are actually
trying to reach out to these consumers the target consumers using digital marketing and finally,
the industry the company and the players compete in an environment which is regulated by the
government.

So, the government has regulations, government has regulations in terms of how data is used the
data privacy is a big issue now. The government is also a big source of data. So, there is lot of
public data that is available which is used by companies. So, the first component of this
framework or first column of this framework is all about inputs based on customer needs,
companies and their competitors who want to market their products and services and finally, they
operate under certain regulatory frameworks.

The second column or the second element is all about the channels. As I briefly mentioned earlier,
it is there are three options. One is the paid option, the second one is what is called as owned
option and the third one is earned. So, let us spend some time understanding. The digital
marketing media has can be sort of conceptualized as poem paid owned and earned media. Let us
look at each one of them in some detail.

A paid options include Search Ads which means that when customers or users are searching for
some information your Ads show up on search engines or on social media sites. Owned media
includes your own website your social media handles and you have lot of control on that.

And then the third one a very interesting one is what is called earned media. What is earned
media? Earned media is when customers talk about you, you get public relations, media talks

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 3

about you newspapers, digital channels, televisions talk about your brand and hopefully they are
all good positive ones then they are called as earned media.

So, the three media options that are available definitely you spend a lot more money on paid the
owned is you largely makes make investments content marketing and try to attract the users to
your platforms, your website, your social media handles. And finally, others talk about you
hopefully all positive which is earned media you know whether it could be consumers, it could
be reporters, it could be journalists, it could be analysts if they are saying good things about you
that is earned media.

The third element of this framework is what we call as a role of the marketer and the analyst.
Now, marketer and the analyst will have questions the queries for example, which channel is
working best, which advertisement which campaign is doing better than others ok, what needs to
be tweaked.. So, really this question answers to these questions come from data that you are
collecting through the campaign.

They help you curate they help you sort of modify they help you put together elements in a typical
campaign through lot of analytical tools that are available and many of them are supported or
available on the platforms like Google has Google analytics, Facebook has its own analytical
tools every social media platform has its own analytical tool. Finally, all this analysis is used to
optimize and make recommendations.

So, in terms of a as an analyst or a marketer when you need to take decisions the good thing about
digital marketing is that there is lot of data the challenge is really to make use that data for analysis
and optimize and improve the productivity of your campaigns finally, the organization wants
certain returns the organization wants results organization wants outcomes.

So, you need as a marketer and as an analyst to assess the return on marketing investment return
on digital marketing investment. So, you need to have measurement models you need to isolate
you need to try to isolate the benefits and the costs of campaigns and at the overall level at each
individual campaign as well as at the overall level.

So, that you are achieving your objectives that you started off in your 6M’s framework that we
talked about in the 6M’s framework. So, the company is returned is interested in the returns of

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 3

marketing investment marketing communication investment that is the big investment that they
make and they do not want to wait for the end of the period they wanted.

Today, the managers and the CXO’s the CMO’s are interested in seeing how the campaigns are
performing across different platforms on a pretty much much more regular basis, sometimes even
daily because there is a possibility there is lot of opportunities to modify alter or take on those
campaigns which are working very well and sort of drop those which are not working.

So, from inputs to channels to the your role as a marketer or analyst the outcomes for the
organization this framework basically covers all of that.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 3

A Paid Media let us try to understand paid media because that is a significant part of the overall
communication expenditure. Paid media is when companies organizations they have to spend
money to reach out to the target customers. So, how does it work really? So, you typically have
some kind of a auction of ad space in real time and the search engines like Google would charge
for only when the user clicks on the ad which pops up or which is shown when the user is
searching for it.

So, that is one way of actually paying for results the and the result is a very intermediate result.
So, if you notice whenever you search for any information on Google there are certain 3 or 4 sort
of links pop up right on the top, sometimes on the right hand side you will have also the images
which pop up. And then there; which will show ads which will start by saying ad; which means,
that these are ads which may be relevant for you.

Then you have a set of results which come at the bottom which is called as organic, I will discuss
organic links that come up. So, in Google we have a very famous saying that the best place to
hide a dead body is the second page of Google ad. So, whenever you look at a search engine
results page, you enter a few keywords and Google will typically say that a millions results in 0.6
second. How many times have you gone to the second page or the third page?

So, these are all called as Search Engine Results Page, SERP. And as a user you will observe that
most of the time we do not go to the second page or third page. But Google typically throws up
1000s of pages because there are millions of results which come up. So, what is it that, you have
to pay for if you are the advertiser. Obviously, you do not pay for when it is not clicked. So, paid
media largely focuses on click through rates and when you have to make the payments based on
the clicks.

So, you would want to be right on the top, as an ad or as organically searched one in the search
engines results page. So, there are metrics like for example, Cost per thousand impressions or
Cost per acquisition that one needs to sort of manage and observe and sort of track and see the
trend such that you can improve that this matrix.

So, some of the main categories of trade media include, Search ads that I briefly mentioned,
Display ads where impressions are more important and display ads can come up on different sites.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 3

For example, when you are watching reading news, watching a an event, a match or a sort of a
music event, but you are on YouTube, you are on Instagram all of them leads to display ads being
displayed.

You can also have Paid social media ads, paid social ads typically pop up on your YouTube,
Facebook, on Instagram all of that. Then there are there is a category called Affiliate ads and
finally you have e-commerce ads. So, this space is evolving, but the most common one where
companies spend money is a mix of search ads, display ads.

Search ads can be on the internet or can be on social media and then there are two categories
called affiliate ads and e-commerce ads we will spend some time understanding all of these
different categories.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 3

So, let us start with the first one which is Search Ads. What are Search ads? Search ads are Ads
that are served to users on search engines. So, remember the trigger usually is the user who says;
well I am seeking some information. Think about situations where you have sort information
when you wanted to search for food, for restaurant, search for a movie ticket, search for
information related to a trip that you wanted to make any of those.

So, these are the ads that are served to users on search engines. So, when you search enter these
keywords. The search engine tries to match the result such that your information search is the
purpose of your information search is satisfied. The second one is what is called the Display Ads.
What are display ads? They are text, visual, video advertisements that are served to users on
display ad networks.

So, I have introduced a new term called a new phrase called Ad network. What is Ad network?
An Ad network is the collection of advertising real estate from numerous websites or usually
publishers. So, obvious publishers are news sites and you know blogs and pages of magazines
and all that.

But you can have people having write ups for example, a famous chef in India like Sanjeev
Kapoor, would have his own blog, would have his YouTube channel and there are when you visit
them you see ads been displayed. Here you are not searching for anything, but ads have been
displaced and you would always wonder why that happens.

So, if you think about a situation where you actually search for say for example, a toaster in the
morning and the search engine results came up and you chose a brand you liked a brand then you
went to your E-commerce site for example, Amazon or Flipkart and you evaluated it maybe then
you bought it also.

In the evening, when you are reading news on your favorite channels say NDTV or BBC or CNN,
you see the Ad for toaster popping up, but you are not searching for a toaster at that point of time.
So, that is how in digital space based on what you did your interests, your queries and whole
bunch of information that has been collected to a period of time they show ads which are hopefully
relevant to you and those are called as display ads.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 3

The third category is paid social ads, but these are the only difference is they are used or they are
served on social media platforms. Now, social media platforms have a big advantage because
they have collected a lot of information about what you do on them what you communicate the
kind of photos that you put up the kind of write ups you read the messages that you engage with.

So, it collects a lot of information even though you are not searching for anything and based on
where you spend more time on a specific platform the paid social ads come up and again you may
have a model which is based on impressions or based on clicks the payment model could differ
across the channels and you have as a marketer you have a option of having search ads being
displayed on social media or display ads being used on the social media platform.

There are a couple of other categories one is what we call as Affiliate ads. What are these affiliate
ads? These are advertisements that are served to consumers or users on third party websites they
differ from the display ads because they were a very different payment model and the control of
the seller or the marketer in terms of the ad placement is very different as against the search ads.

So, I talked about a famous chef having digital properties and ads of different kinds of products
many related to cooking and many related to food products could be displayed, but also based on
the user. So, visit the website and the digital properties you can have affiliate ads typically the
owner or the publisher in this case a famous chef gets paid for ads that are displayed and the
mechanism could be either based on click or simply impressions.

And the final category which an important category is what we call as E-commerce ads. These
are ads just served to consumers on E-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra all of
those. A big advantage on E-commerce platforms especially when you have apps when consumers
have downloaded the apps on the smartphones is it is very very directed. So, when you visit the
E-commerce site it is usually at the end of the purchase funnel.

And your intent is to buy you may want to compare, but the E-commerce platform like Amazon
controls and the ads which will be displayed the sequence of the products or brands that are
displayed all of that is controlled by them and that is a big source of revenue for this E-commerce
platforms because it is at the final stage of the purchase process.

So, inherently when we think about any digital property whether you it is a website or it is a social

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 3

media handle on Instagram or Pinterest or YouTube it has three Objectives. One you would want
Traffic which means you want your target customers to visit your property. The second is what
we call as Conversion that is not enough to just visit what you want them to do some action.

It may mean downloading a brochure, it may mean you know reading up more about going to
multiple pages some of these are actions which can lead to a final purchase and final objective;
obviously, is Revenue and profitability financial objectives and you would want if you are a
company, if you are a brand owner, you would want to manage your digital properties attract
users attract your target customers and generate revenues out of that.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 3

A Paid Search. Paid Search is and it is a very very important tool in the hands of the marketers
and one has to understand the concept behind paid media and how do what are those variables
which help you take the decision. Now, think about phase paid search as a sort of a way as a very
important way to reach and communicate to your target customers.

So, there are three entities that are involved. There is a Marketer; that is you. There is a User; that
you want to target. And there is a Search engine which is being used by the user to search for
information. Now, the whole thing is managed by the search engine like Google. And what does
the Google want? What does Google as a search engine want?

Google wants to make sure that the user gets access to the right information that she had in mind
when she enter the Keywords. So, the keyword is an absolutely important starting point. And as
a marketer you have to decide which keywords I want to use because this has financial
implication. The second part is you have to Bid for keywords.

So, for example, if you are selling a television, if you are a large brand like Samsung and you
want to sell your 4K television so; obviously, you will bid for 4K, you will bid for a certain size
of the television say 40 inch television or a screen or you may have other words which are relevant
which are used by a consumer or a user who is planning to buy a television.

So, the second element of this variable is the bid the amount that will bid for the keywords such
that when someone searches for this information by giving keywords your ad comes up in the
first page of the search engines result page. The third one is what we call is the Adcopy.

Now, if the Ad pops up or comes up on the first page of the search engines result page SERP the
user has to click and the user is influenced by the Adcopy what is written there in two or three
lines or a few phrases. Now finally, what happens after the user has clicked?

So, there is there are three steps that the user is already done user has a interest in collecting
information about say a TV user has certain keywords that as she uses and then she sees some
Ads which come up on the top and if she clicks then she reaches a landing page.

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Assuming this is Samsung it reaches the landing page of not the main page of home page of
Samsung, but a page which shows which is closely aligned with the keywords which means a 40
inch television, 4K television. So, it should land up there. So, Landing Page is a very important
decision and large companies would have millions of pages that they create.

And then a final thing, that is important if you are selling largely in a particular city or a country
you can set restrictions this keyword is only applicable if the user is based for example, in
Bangalore or in India. So, you can have restrictions specify that a user in the US, who is using the
same keywords will not be shown the Ad because you cannot sell to them, you may not be mark
selling your product in those markets.

A smaller businesses; for example, a restaurant in a city like Bangalore or Delhi can have
restrictions such that it knows that people are not going to come from outside the city to the
restaurant. So, it can show the ads only in a particular city, it you can go down to the level of
actually geo fencing it to the level of a few hundred meters for example, in a shopping mall.

So, there are restrictions you can have restrictions based on any demographic variable age of the
user for example, other demographics and geography is one of the very obvious restrictions. So,
broadly were talking about five different kinds of variables that marketer and the digital marketer
has to decide which keywords.

So, you are basically getting into the mind of the user and thinking about keywords which are
relevant for the product or service that you are selling. The second key variable is the bids, the
bid amount. The third one is what will you communicate when the search the Ad comes up on the
search engines results page and then when the user clicks on that ad hopefully they click on the
ad they land up on a page and what is the message.

So, you need to make sure that the Adcopy and the Landing Page the message is consistent you
do not want people to land on you already paid the search engine and you would they will bounce
off. So, the bounce they should spend time on your page and they should go and search collect
more information hopefully they will end up buying whatever you are selling and finally, you can
limit. So, that the clicks are not wasted and you do not waste money. So, these are some of the
key variables in a search Ad.

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Week 3

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Prof. G Shainesh: Yeah. So, you have inherently in the entire business you have lots of stories.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: Yeah.

Prof. G Shainesh: And lots of interesting things. So, I am sure that you know this content that
you have on you know can attract a lot of people it is a lot of people how do you use content
marketing to you know not sell the product, but to create this excitement around, play around
footwear and about letting people know about the possibilities.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: So, we are generating a lot of content were not talking about our footwear
and.

Prof. G Shainesh: Yes, yeah.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: Having to buy it at all, we are talking about foot health. So, we have a you
know a doctor from who is the educated from the all India Institute of Medical Sciences and he
is a ankle specialist.

Prof. G Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: And he talks about why you need good footwear and why footwear shaped
in a certain way is good for your child’s health. And we know that our product actually lines up
to that. So, that is one way that we are putting out videos where people can communicate. We
used all the mediums that we can look at you know articles through blogs LinkedIn for instance
or Facebook.

Prof. G Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: We have also used some top level athletes to talk about our product.

Prof. G Shainesh: Yeah, ok.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: And we hope that brings the credibility that as a new brand that we do not
have you know. So, that is where were using some of the experts to talk about foot health and
good footwear for children actually.

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Prof. G Shainesh: Ok. So, you have signed up some of the iconic stars you know from Rahul
Dravid to others. So, what has been the experience working with them and also how does it sort
of build the credibility that you spoke about?

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: Yeah. So, you know if I will say that in a short history one of our biggest
achievements has been to get somebody like Rahul Dravid to believe in the vision that we have.
It did not take us too long in the second meeting he signed the dotted line saying that I will come
on board. He is an investor and a mentor he had the same problem buying shoes for children. So,
he kind of relates to it.

Prof. G Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: So, Rahul has actually been extremely involved with us you know he is
working to hear where the business is going helping us with talking to the team, motivating them
much like what he does with the Indian cricket team.

Prof. G Shainesh: Absolutely.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: But we are fortunate that he is doing it for our small team of 10-12 people.
So, he comes with a certain credibility. In fact, the shoe I will just take it and show this is the
same show that he also wears for.

Prof. G Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: For his training with the Indian cricket team.

Prof. G Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: So, it is the same shoe were not making anything specific for him. He picks
it up from the same production line that the child uses.

Prof. G Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil:. So, if it can be you know if it is working for somebody of Rahul Dravid’s
level it will definitely work for a child from a you know durability foot health point of view (Refer
Time: 02:55).

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Prof. G Shainesh: Wonderful that is a great endorsement.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: You have got you know some of the other things were trying is we have got
a person who is walking 20,000 kilometers across India for a certain costs. And he is been wearing
a shoe. For us it is a way to kind of stress test the two shoes in a way that we can never otherwise
do it.

Prof. G Shainesh: Absolutely.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: (Refer Time: 03:12) who else will walk 20,000 kilometers. So, periodically
this is where some of our science based background is helping, every 2000 kilometers we taking
the shoe back, we are test sending it to a lab and testing how the shoes performing.

Prof. G Shainesh: (Refer Time: 03:26).

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: After 2000 kilometers and so that we in the next version we can keep
changing anything that we need to do.

Prof. G Shainesh: Wonderful.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: 2000 kilometers is roughly what a child would walk and run in a school
year.

Prof. G Shainesh: Ok (Refer Time: 03:36).

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: So, this is the best way to kind of.

Prof. G Shainesh: Test.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: Test that.

Prof. G Shainesh: Yeah, in real life conditions.

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: Conditions, yeah.

Prof. G Shainesh: Is absolutely yeah, extreme actually in some sense.

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Week 4

Prof. Ravi Kallayil: Correct.

Prof. G Shainesh: Very good.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 4

So, Inbound marketing has to have a very holistic and integrated strategy. And why would one
worry about inbound marketing. That has been seen that inbound marketing helps consumers rich
prospects and sort of build relationships. So, managers believe that if you have a collection of
communication strategies and techniques that are focused on pulling the prospects and customers
towards a business, then you can have very strong engagement with them.

And as an as what are the outputs or outcomes of this whole process they engage with your
products your services and offerings and you can build very strong relationships with these
customers. So, what is it what is inbound marketing? It is a holistic and integrated strategy to
attract the right prospect and nurture them until they are ready to buy a product or service.

Now, why would that happen? In today’s sort of hyper competitive market and consumers and
users are overloaded with information. So, they do not like to be disrupted with aggressive sales
promotions. And that is where inbound marketing plays a role inbound marketing provides
content that is relevant for the users, it offers them answers, it offers solutions to customer
problems and one can use social media search engines and actually interestingly promotions to
reach out to them.

If the content is relevant and you are not trying to sell something through an hard sales process
then many of these users would believe would start believing that you have the expertise. And if
you have the expertise you also have a solution to solve the problem and then end up buying your
product or service.

So, what are different kinds of inbound marketing content? Broadly they can be classified as
content that gives information, that creates awareness and that helps them take action. So, on the
one hand you have information that can be classified on the basis of the purpose which is create
awareness to action. And on the other hand you can classify this content in terms of what it does
to the customers.

Does it inform them or does it inspire them? So, inspiration and information on one axis and
awareness and action on the other axis. A different types include obviously, your text news
articles or you may have audio video content, you may have infographics, e-books, white papers,
blogs, content in different forms, addressing certain customer needs, needs for information, needs

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Week 4

for solutions all of that.

And inherently inbound marketing uses a lot of your own properties to attract them, but they are
also present on social media and other channels that you may find where your customers are
spending time.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 4

Prof. G. Shainesh: What is also interesting is in addition to being a successful global marketer,
Raja is also an author and a thought leader and I am going to spend lot more time on the book
that he has written he has put together a bestseller Quantum Marketing. And that is relevant for
the course because we are going to talk about the digital transformation and the New Paradigm
as he calls it the 5th Paradigm.

So, I am going to request now Raja to talk about, the changes that has happened and the different
paradigms and what is the future of marketing.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: So, you know I keep saying that marketing is not a new craft or a new
field, right. There is evidence of marketing that was found in the ruins of Pompeii, which was
more than 2000 years back. And there was a rudimentary manifestation of various elements that
were practiced today like, location based marketing or recognizing the fact that the medium,
influences the message perception pretty significantly.

So, they used to have political candidates whose posters were protect stalling their virtues, on the
homes of the wealthy people or highly influential people and the it was fascinating and again
likewise if you see the concept of logos, they were there almost 12000 years back in China. And
the; so, its been there as a field, what I call as the first paradigm of marketing.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: And which was the one which prevailed the most was the focus on
product. The concept was if you have a fantastic product, quality wise, functioning wise,
performance wise you price it appropriately.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: You package it attractively and you distribute it widely people will
absolutely buy your product. And why would they not? Because it has got everything going for
it. And people are after all logical in their thinking and rational in their decision making. Now,
this was the first paradigm that prevailed the longest, which is the product marketing paradigm.

Paradigm 2 is where marketers have realized that there is something called human psychology,

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sociology, anthropology etcetera. And they said actually wait a minute, people are neither logical
nor are they rational.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: In their actions and in their thinking, there is something else which is
driving them. The way they decide, they make their choices is driven by emotions and feelings.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: As opposed to rational thinking people might think that they are
making rational decisions, but its actually a fallacy. When that realization came into marketing,
the entire field went through a major transformation where companies were started to leverage
the aspect of emotion pretty significantly on the one hand and companies like Mastercard even
have gone to the extreme, where we stopped showing our products completely.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: So, even to the exclusion of products you communicate, and that has
actually been one of our I would say biggest successes as a company, where we launched the
priceless.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Campaign with the father and son going to a baseball game and they
said that you know price of tickets for the game is x dollars, price of soda 5 dollars, price of
autographed baseballs 40 dollars, but the time spent with your 11 year old son is priceless.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yes.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Those are the things that you have to focus for everything else there is
Mastercard.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yes.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: So, we do not talk about the brand or the product at all, we just. In fact,

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even relegated to a secondary level or even a tertiary level, but that was an instant success and we
have we are just celebrating the 25th year.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yes.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: In 20 22 for that particular campaign which is phenomenal for us. And
there are number of other brands which I have gone in. So, this is the second paradigm of
marketing.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Which is all centered around the emotional aspects or emotional
marketing. The third paradigm of marketing was at the mid-1990s. Where with the advent of
internet, there was a complete different dynamic of how you could reach consumers and how you
could communicate with them, how you could engage them. And coupled with that second aspect
which was data analytics, till that time data analytics was more for the finance for pay, people or
accountants.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Or you are into you know various.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Other fields engineers and so on, but not for marketing. But when
marketing actually saw the joys of data analytics and combined with the launch of the world wide
web which is the internet, marketing moved from the second to the third paradigm, it became
technologically driven, it also has become data driven.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Then in 2007 with the launch of iPhone, the aspect of connected mobile
devices became.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

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Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Ubiquitous, at the same time there was also a Facebook, which scaled
as a social platform. So, that was the birth of.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Really the social media platforms and between social media platforms
and the mobile connected devices that were universal, lives have changed completely and
marketing moved to the next paradigm which is the 4th paradigm. And that is where you have
aspects like location based marketing or mobile marketing, influencer marketing, social media
marketing all these things came.

So much so that there are estimates which showed that more than 50 percent of what marketers
spent today, they spent on media which did not exist.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Before 2007. Now, if you notice, each one of these paradigm shifts
was driven by 2 aspects, 2 technologies at a time. But now, we are at the verge of an
unprecedented level of disruption, with nearly 24 technologies that are coming at us like a tsunami
from artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, wearables internet of things, meta
verse you are talking of a cipher cryptocurrencies and blockchains autonomous driving vehicles.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Blockchain yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: These technologies some of them are independently capable of
disrupting like AI.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: It could be huge AR could be huge, but the confluence of these
technologies is going to be totally game changing. It is going to result in a paradigm shift with a
level of disruption that has been unprecedented till now and that is the 5th paradigm. And my
whole premise in the book and that is what I try to expand yeah and I say that like in the world of
physics, classical physics was all about.

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Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Understanding how the world around you works by formulating the
laws of motion, laws of electricity, laws of magnetism and so on it helps you understand.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: And then leverage the forces around you the nature. But when
humanity discovered outer space because of technological advancements.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Or inside of atoms classical physics could not explain the phenomena,
that was the scenario when quantum physics was born. And that changed our understanding of
the how things work around us completely.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yes.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: And that is now a significant field which leverages, which is leveraged
for a lot of things that we do which would not have been possible without quantum physics. In
much the same way in this 5th paradigm every single strategic framework head theory and
principle of marketing gets questioned.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yes.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Many of them will undergo a traumatic change and you need a new
way to do marketing, that re-imagine, reinvented marketing is what I call as quantum marketing.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Quantum marketing yes.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: So, quantum marketing is the classical marketing, what quantum
physics was to of a classical physics, that is how I would like to frame it as. And it is very exciting
as a field and as I said its completely disrupting, everything that we know and so, you have to re-
imagine and reinvent everything and that is very exciting.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah ok.

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Prof. G. Shainesh: So, coming back to this 5th paradigm in the quantum marketing for a marketer
what does it mean and maybe you can just take your example of you know your role as the chief
marketing officer even 10 years back. When you started the journey with Mastercard versus now
what does it require to be successful as a chief marketing and communication officer you know
and what are the lessons for someone who was starting that journey as a fresh graduate or you
know.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Happy to share that.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: So firstly, if I look at my own journey, I have been growing with these
technologies evolving with these new platforms coming on and so on and so forth. If you know
and understand those platforms well and you are able to leverage them well you can be hugely
successful.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Now, I will give you some couple of examples like you know 10 years
back we have not heard of anything called artificial intelligence yeah, there was some kind of
artificial intelligence as a vague nebulous concept, but it does nothing tangible. We used to do in
the B2B marketing something which is like RFP responses take a simple thing which is very
predominantly B2B company. So, when a bank floats an RFP we respond to it.

So, typically to put what we call as draft 0 to answer all the questions and put the stuff it would
take us about 8 weeks time.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: And once you have got the draft zero then you start refining and fine-
tuning the value proposition the offers the pricing and everything that takes a few more weeks
and then you give it to the client. Now, fast forward it to today. Now, AI has come in. So, we fed
to the AI engine all the RFPs that have been you know in front of us over the last several years.

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Prof. G. Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: And what our responses have been and what the results have been which
RFPs we succeeded in winning?

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yes.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: And which ones we did not so, the machine started learning. Plus we
connected that machine to all the aspects of Mastercard in terms of databases whether it is
websites or mobile and our repositories and our libraries of material everything has been
connected to it. Now, today what happens when an RFP comes it comes to my area and one of
my folks they pick it up they feed it into the AI engine it spews out a very sensible draft 0.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: In 4 minutes.

Prof. G. Shainesh: 4 minutes as against 8 weeks.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: 8 weeks to 4 minutes.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Now, still it is not 100 percent.

Prof. G. Shainesh: (Refer Time: 02:44).

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Because it is learning and it is on a journey. So, we got a small team of
people who then will start pouring over it. And over the next seven and a half hours they refine it
fine tune it so, in 8 hours our RFP is ready.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Wow.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Draft 0. Now what happens the people in finance and in sales etcetera
they can then start working on it right away and submit it in just 2 or 3 weeks after that which
also now we are beginning to start looking at RF AI to see if it can work well in terms of crafting
the value proposition crafting the pricing etcetera and we are not too far off. So, this is one

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example. Let us take another example. We used to do digital marketing for a number of years you
know.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Typically your communication has to be appropriate to the context. So,
suppose two individuals are having a conversation and if you want to join the conversation you
have to sort of continue or play or build up on.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: What they are already talking.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Exactly yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: That is the relevance. Now, we used to look for relevance in the past and
some if there is a conversation happening as a trending topic on say movies then we will put in
an advertisement there hey Mastercard will give you special access to some movie premieres or
whatever it is that kind of a thing. It used to be a manual process and we could catch maybe about
one or two such trending topics and make the whole thing and then serve it, but then once we
identify we had to create an ad.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Once you create that you have to decide where to place it and once you
place it then you have to measure into A B testing and say this is working this is not working. By
the time you have come up with the optimized one and put it in the conversation has already
moved to something else.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yes.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: And the effectiveness drops if you are not contextually appropriate. So,
fast forward today we created what we call as our digital marketing engine which is proprietary
to Mastercard. The AI engine predicts a trend.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Ok.

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Prof. Raja Rajamannar: It does not look at the trend, but it predicts a trend and these we call them
micro trends which typically last less than 3 days.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Once it predicts the micro trend, it looks at all the inventory of either
messages, offers or products that we have got. It determines the relevance which is the most
relevant one for this particular trend or micro trend.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: It takes that converts it into a banner ad and it chooses the medium based
on where the conversation is happening.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: It does A B testing dynamically optimizes it measures the ROI and
meanwhile it is predicting the next micro trend.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Wow.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: Now, what happens as a result of which the effectiveness of our
campaigns compared to previously optimized solutions we had our tactics and strategies we had
it is almost like 4 to 8 times.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Times yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: The level of effectiveness.

Prof. G. Shainesh: 4 to 8 times yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: So, the literally the increase in productivity if you say 4 to 8 times looking
at the other way around I can cut short my budget.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: For a given output by one by you know I can make it one-fourth or.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Prof. G. Shainesh: One.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: One-eighth.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Yeah.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: And still be there. So, with the result of which I am able to optimize my
marketing investment on the one hand or I am able to for the same dollars get phenomenal output
that is been huge and this is being really driven by AI big time and its across it board. And if you
looked at other interesting things are right now we are using AI only for a static communication.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: We are not yet using for video we have been trying it out, but I can tell
you clearly the next 20, 18 months I am fairly confident and optimistic.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Ok.

Prof. Raja Rajamannar: That we will be able to create video based ads as well.

Prof. G. Shainesh: Wow.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Let us focus on one aspect of engagement which is sharing. Why would users share content
especially videos? And you would have in your social media groups you would see that there are
certain kinds of content which goes viral which gets forwarded which gets shared. So, let us try
to understand this aspect of sharing the content specially from a marketing perspective.

Now, research again shows that people share videos, link to brands that they like. For example,
if I like Amul or Fevicol; I am likely to share the brands and the videos which have been created
by these brands. So, liking of a brand is related to the sharing of the content.

The content has to be compelling. So, compelling video content, sort of compels, sort of helps the
brand fans or other influencers to share the content. So, the video has to be content the video has
to be very compelling and should have content which is very interesting and so it motivates the
users to sort of share it with others.

Creative videos; videos with superior creativity are liked forwarded and viewed more often than
something which is not so creative. And viral videos typically have a higher intensity of emotion
could be both positive as well as negative. So, the intensity of emotion is another reason why the
content especially videos get shared.

If a person feels very intensely emotional after feeling after watching a video the likelihood of
that video being shared is much higher. And so as a marketer one has to understand some of the,
this basics about why content would get viral or get shared even if it does not get viral. So, a few
things that we mentioned earlier includes hyperbole content.

Content which is very exaggerated is something that gets shared, but it does not mean that you
know it is positive for the brand it can be problematic because if it creates negative emotions like
anger, then it is not necessarily good for the brand especially for a commercial brand it may be
ok for a political party, but not necessary a brand which is trying to sell products and services.

Content that is novel and sometimes incongruent; create this feeling of surprise and sometimes
fear and it increases views and liking. And we can look at some examples of content that have
been used by brands which are soft drinks brand or even for a campaign which helps people sort
of address their fears about you know mental issues.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Now, finally, content that is emotionally surprising and arousing sort of generate more likes and
views they get shared more frequently and so there are some examples that we will discuss from
airlines context or brands which have used content during certain celebrations or for example,
women’s day.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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A content marketing a key part of inbound marketing is really the content. And this the
understanding comes from the fact that customers really do not care about you as a brand owner,
brand marketer; they do not care about your products and services, they care about themselves,
they care about their wants, they care about their needs and that is the starting point for any content
marketing.

So, what is content marketing? Content marketing is really creating interesting information that
your target customers are passionate about and when you provide that information they would
actually pay attention. So, it is a technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and
consistent content to attract and retain a defined audience your target audience and then drive
some kind of a profitable action from them.

So, if you are a business organization if you are a commercial organization you would want to
use content marketing to attract your target customer’s and lead to that should lead to certain
action from them. Obviously, it may lead to sales and profitability. Let me illustrate it with an
example of a retail brand. So, imagine a retail brand that is selling clothes and it wants to build a
brand awareness and generate sales; that is usually the objective of any retail brand.

Now, this particular brand could utilize content marketing to create a variety of content about
fashion, lifestyle that the it is target market is searching for online. So, if you are selling clothes
you want to be seen as an expert on fashion and lifestyle. So, the content gives you an opportunity
to put yourselves in front of users who are actually their target customers.

Now, the customers are visiting your properties or your target customers visiting your property
because you are seen as an expert in fashion and lifestyle. They may go to the next step from
visitors they will convert into leads and some of them will convert into customers. So, that is an
example of using content which is much more broader which makes sense for the target customer
and then you are attracting them to your properties digital properties you know social media
handles and converting them.

So, the basic understanding in content marketing is that users dislike aggressive marketing
aggressive communication; they dislike hard sell pictures. So, content marketing provides an
opportunity to gradually build and nurture a relationships with complete strangers, but who meet

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 4

your target customer profile. It allows you to establish your expertise in an area of concern for
the or area of interest for your target customers.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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So, what are the business objectives of content marketing? So, in management we have a very
popular saying what gets measured gets managed. So, one should have objectives before you get
on to actually creating content for attracting visitors; it costs money, it requires resources. So, you
need to assess what is the return on these investments that you are making.

So, typically in content marketing you have a few objectives. You want to attract your potential
customers to visit your properties because that is where you have the content available. So, you
want the first step is usually first objective is usually turn potential customers into visitors your
target customers into visitors.

The second objective would be to convert or turn these visitors into leads so that they leave some
information and you can reach out to them you can contact them explain and get them to buy your
product or service. So, the third objective is to convert these leads into customers. Once the
customers have bought your product used your service; they should have a good experience with
that usage experience and they should turn into clients which means repeat purchase.

And finally, from clients they should become subscribers or promoters which means that if they
had a great experience they should share that and that adds on to your entire sort of portfolio of
content. Because if users, if your existing satisfied customers share content that is much more
authentic than when the company says my brand is my product is very good or you know that is
what every company says.

So, in terms of objectives business objectives; the first one is railing converting potential
customers into visitors which means you want to attract them to visit your properties. If they
spend time understand the offers, understand the whole expertise that you can bring in which
solves a problem. Some of them will leave information behind which helps you follow them reach
out to them and so they become visitors become leads and finally, leads get converted.

But when you are planning for content you have to keep this business objective that some of them
some of the content will lead to conversion and finally, sales. But most of the time content should
really focus on establishing your expertise. So, we go back to the whole customer journey and the
sales funnel.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 4

Converting or reaching out your target customers and converting them to visitors is top of the
funnel. So, usually the first step is to attract your potential customer to your website or your social
media handles and you can have lot more fine-tuned measures. For example, one would want to
know the navigating behavior, how long they stay, what are the things that they are looking at,
when do they disengage.

So, it is important that in the first stage first step you have lot of measures which help you
constantly improve the experience of the user when they are engaging with your content. Once
you have attracted them to visit your properties some of them will leave information which leads
to this whole process of creating leads.

So, the next step of is really to convert visitors into leads what does leads mean a visitor is
unknown, but a visitor consciously takes a decision that I will leave my name behind phone
number and maybe Email ID, sometimes organization name or some personal details which helps
you follow up with them then this visitor has become a lead for you because it shows a an interest
in your offering.

So, frequently you will see companies having websites where the content is only accessible after
the visitor provides some personal information and an explicit acceptance which allows you to
contact them. So, many times you will notice that there are white papers or research reports, which
has a summary, but if you want that entire report you have to leave that information behind your
contact information.

Once you have allowed access to the content which is limited access and you have this leads you
can follow up with these leads and get some of them to convert into customers and finally, the
customers if they have good experience of using a product or service depending upon the business
some of them become subscribers and many of them if they had great experience they become
your promoters.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 4

The Content marketing has a different stages different Phases. So, if you are planning any
initiative on content marketing there are three stages that one would recommend. The first stage
is what we call as generation, generation of content. The second stage is distribution where do
you make it available. And the third one is what we call as measurement; so, generation,
distribution and measurement.

In terms of content generation one needs to follow certain principles. As you would recall this
content has to be useful for the reader, for the viewer, for the user. And hopefully this user is a
target customer. So, content should always be created or developed from the perspective of your
target customer.

And it is important to keep this in mind because many times as brand managers, as brand owners,
as product managers we are very excited about our own products and services that we offer. And
we do not think about the consumer. And the consumers as I said earlier is not really interested
in your brand and your product because consumer is interested in herself.

So, when you where the consumer hat, you are going to develop content from the perspective of
this consumer what is the problem being solved, who is this buyer, what is the persona? So, you
need to start by understanding your target consumer. What are the what is the kind of information
that they search for, where do they navigate, what do they do when they are on my site on my
properties, what kind of information, what kind of advice do they find useful?

So, when the content is created from the perspective with the consumer you are likely to have
content which is useful, which is relevant and which helps the consumer solve the problem or
address the query that the consumer has. The second key principle is about alignment.

The content has to be aligned with the brand, it has to be aligned with the other marketing efforts
including a product, your value proposition, the positioning of the brand, all of them should be
aligned. And the content should respect the brands identity, its personality and the DNA.

So, here we fall back upon the search engine optimization principles which will help you manage
and improve the traffic volume, because same content can be provided by competitors. And so, it
is equally important to keep track of what is working for your competitors and learn from them.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 4

There are tools like Google Trends which helps you understand which are the keywords, which
are popular, which are the keywords in your category, which are relevant because lots of users
are using that. So, the second principle that I talked about is largely about alignment with the
brand. And the moment you are talking about positioning you are also looking at the choices that
are available to the customer which means your competitors.

The third part about a third principle for content generation is this whole focus on low advertising
tone. One needs to create content that is useful, that is interesting that is entertaining, but please
do stick to facts. When you compare products your brands with others stay with facts so, that it is
verifiable, it is measurable.

Respond to customers or users questions; for example, a customer may be looking for a design
options and she is designing her redesigning her kitchen. So, if you are a company which is into
interiors, if you have in designs which are very inspirational, which are very creative, it would
attract customers who are seeking design ideas.

You may also have ideas and maximizing space in kitchen which is the reality for most
households. And that is a very useful tip for customers who are really thinking about you know
maximizing space in the kitchen. So, if you have ideas which have come from designers and you
are seen as an expert in maximizing space in the kitchen.

So, natural follow through is that you establish the expertise and many of the customers will visit
you, talk about you and acknowledge that they got ideas from you. And some of them will actually
end up buying your products or services. A very important thing is to make sure that content is
not seen as a sales pitch, but a genuine response to queries, information that the customers have
or the users have.

The final principle in content generation is this whole idea of continuous production. Now,
content that is created once may be seen by or watched by viewers. But if you do not keep this
flow of content new content they would not want to revisit. So, you need to give that reason for
them to revisit your properties. And it is important to plan with deadlines, names, resources such
that you have a schedule a weekly schedule, a monthly schedule and an yearly plan.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 4

Things that have worked for you in the past for example, content that was interesting that has
actually worked you may want to update them. And this is this helps the search engines to actually
redirect traffic to your properties. So, update your content reshuffle it and republish it. But as long
as you make sure that content is produced regularly and sort of updated, you are going to set
attract existing visitors to revisit and give reasons for new people to come in.

So, the first stage or the first phase was content creation or generation. And the next stage you
have to take the decision to distribute. So, in distribution, one of the key decisions is channel
decision. Where would you want to be, where do you want this content to be available, on which
platforms are you going to concentrate your efforts?

Now, it is easy to think about the platforms that you like. Remember the content is not created for
you, it is created for the user. And if you have a target audience in mind a persona in mind you
have to really follow them. How do you add more value to your target audience?

So, the first thing that you really think about is where does your target audience spend time and
what is the objective of spending time on that platform. For example, if your target audience
spends a lot of time on Facebook or Instagram they want to be there and that this drives your
decision the channel decision.

Interestingly in content marketing also you may want to consider paid distribution. Because
studies have found that well executed paid distribution reflects back into the organic unpaid
distribution. So, users interaction with a paid page for example, a display ad increases the chances
of users community getting exposed to content organically too many of them share the content.
Organizations marketers also use sponsored content or influencers to sort of and where they have
to actually pay for this distribution.

A key aspect of distribution is getting your users to spread the content and we call that as
engineering virality, what are those content that become viral. So, if its it the content is in the
form of a story and uses the basic principles of storytelling for example, a temporal sequence,
relations of causality in the content, it becomes more interesting it becomes more relevant and its
presented in a way that is easy for the user to share.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 4

And finally, the third stage or the third phase is all about measurement. How do you know that
the content that you created is actually making an impact? And so there are many methods for
measurement that we will see in the next chart.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 4

Search Engine Optimization or SEO and this is the term that you would come across very
frequently in the context of digital marketing. Why is it important and what do we mean by SEO?
Let us look at some data. 60 percent and research shows that 60 percent of the buyers would seek
information online before making a purchase.

So, they would search for information online before making a purchase. And that is not limited
to the consumer market even B2B that is business market buyers, buyers and business market
almost 67 percent of the B2B buyers start the buying process with a broad online search.

So, whether its consumers people like you and I or buyers who are playing the role of a on buying
on behalf of the organization they start the buying process or search for information online. So,
what does SEO mean or SEO or search engine optimization is a comprehensive plan to get more
visitors to your digital properties, your website or your social media handles when they are
searching for information online.

Usually through search engines and as I mentioned largely on Google; so, successful SEO
includes on-page strategies on your properties that you control that you manage which use the
intent based keywords. Remember that the user when they are keying in those keywords there is
an intention there is an intent. And you use those intent based keywords to attract them to your
properties.

So, there is a part which focuses on on-page strategies and there is a whole bunch of activities
that you have to do off-page strategies which earn the inbound links from other websites. So, in
search typically your authority increases if lot of other people other websites or blogs or write-
ups are referring to your property, which means you are more credible.

So, it is not just enough to do things on your property, but make sure that you have linkages to
someone else’s third party properties where the publish the user when they are searching for
information are directed. And those links are one of the key criteria for actually getting more
visitors to land on your page.

So, to sum up SEO strategy should have two broad kind of activities. One which is meant on your
page, on your properties that is called on-page strategies and a lot of it is off-page strategies which

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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Week 4

are third party sites or you know places where visitors would visit and they get directed to your
property. The more the links between them the higher authority, higher yoke get on a quality score
which is used by Google to determine whether you come up on the first page or in the fiftieth
page.

So, what are some of the components of SEO? In search engine optimization some of the
recommendations are that you should have content which is appropriate size, you do not want
people users to land up on your property and the content is very thin. So, size is important.

Some of the recommended size on the of content is around 2500 words, but that is really a ballpark
figure. Make sure that you have done all the hard work of attracting them and there is enough
useful information for them to spend read through or watch. The second component is the time.
How much time do the visitors spend on your property is determined by the quality of the content,
the relevance to the query that they had and whether they find it useful or not.

The third one is popularity, if it is if you have pages or if your content is popular, it will attract
lot more viewers. I have mentioned about linkages you know everyone has content which talks
good things, which talks positives about whatever they are saying usually their own brand or
product.

But remember in content marketing or in inbound marketing we have to take the users perspective.
And users like those content which is seen as more authority, which are seen as more credible,
which are seen as high quality and the signals are given by other properties other sites which is
off-site.

Finally, what is actually conveyed, what is written or what is being shown in the videos. So, if it
is text largely the focus on the text, if it is a web page which with written material it is the text.
So, size, time, popularity, text and linking are key components of any search engine optimization.
Let us look at some of them in some detail.

So, for example, popularity: Popularity is determined by many factors on your pages, on your
social media handles and also by the linkages from other sites, other properties. The linkages how
do you build that and how do you assess that is actually shown in this chart. Look at the details
which ones are directing traffic to your properties, the more those numbers and more credible

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 4

they are you are seen as an authority, you are seen as high quality, you are seen as someone who
is credible.

And then finally, the text part you know if you search for information on surfing for example,
you are most likely to see a detailed description of surfing on Wikipedia. And why does it become
an page which is seen as an authority on surfing? Because it has text which talks about surfing,
waves, ocean and all the content that is useful.And remember that Wikipedia is created by the
users. So, it is seen as more credible source than someone.

And people are not really interested in buying anything at this stage they just want to know about
surfing. That leads to if you are seen as an authority and you have something to offer which solves
a customer’s problem or helps them get the information that they are seeking the authority score
goes up; which means that it has impact on your quality score and lot more people will find
something that is relevant for them.

So, I hope you enjoyed learning about inbound marketing in this module. There is a lot of
technicalities involved. So, I would strongly recommend that you go through the exercises and
activities and the caselets that we have included in this module to make the learning much more
sort of interesting. And at the same time something that you can actually start working on.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 5

Social media, in this module we will focus on how do you leverage social media. The coverage
includes understanding why social media is such an integral part of digital marketing strategy,
how do you use it for insights, innovation, product development and then this whole idea of
connecting, creating those connections using social strategies.

I will also have some examples of very strong brands which have leveraged social media to
connect with customers, create engaging content and sort of enhance a brand appeal. And finally,
how do we assess the measurement, how do you assess the return on social media campaigns. So,
let us look at where does social media fit in, in the entire scheme of digital marketing
communication.

So, in earlier modules really focused on outbound marketing, inbound marketing and social media
is really used by users and in the marketing context as consumers to connect with each other. And
today most of it is done through mobile technologies through on their mobiles.

Some of the technologies that are used in mobiles are apps where you have direct contact with
customers because they are using it for availing your service a banks State Bank of India's, SBI
YONO is a good example of an app which is predominantly used by the users on the mobile
phones. But where do we bring in social media we will see some of those details as we go along.

It is ubiquitous, it is almost omnipresent today. And social media is used by our almost 4.65
billion people around the world that is around 58 percent the global population. And the amount
of time that an average user spends on social media is around 2 and half hours, 2 hours 30 minutes
that is huge amount of time that people spend on social media.

So, it is natural that if you are a marketer you would want to leverage social media. It is big,
already very big almost 60 percent of the population is using some kind of social media. It is
growing faster than any other communication channel; it is also emerging as a primary channel
for communication. And the second part is more important, which is social interaction.

So, it is not just as a primary channel for communication, but also for social interaction,
interaction with friends your colleagues, acquaintances and other groups. Users are actually using
it for general requests, queries, feedback, complaints and compliments. So, in a marketing context

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 5

customers are using social media to connect with companies for getting the queries resolved,
sharing information or asking for feedback and giving feedback.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 5

So, in terms of growth as the chart shows different social media platforms have grown faster than
any other mode of communication that has emerged in the last century. As you can see the time
taken to reach 50 million users has been fastest for Facebook, Twitter and the internet. And digital
marketing we are really thinking about we are really planning to leverage social media and the
internet.

While social media has grown exponentially it is also important to remember that social media is
not just Facebook and Instagram it is covers a wide range of platforms that is available for
organizations especially from platforms for blogging from microblogs to social commerce
monitoring for reviews and so there is a plethora of options that organizations should definitely
leverage in terms of its marketing efforts.

When you think about leveraging social media, we are not just limiting ourselves again to the
communication part we can actually visualize the entire value chain and use social media to make
an impact on different components or different elements of the value chain.

For example, you can have open innovation platforms, which leverages social media for product
development or you can have viral video campaigns or campaigns which are used for
communication and brand building efforts. One can also think about using social commerce for
sales actual selling process.

And finally, once you acquired the customers, you know there is a whole bunch of opportunity to
service them, support them through social customer care or social media platforms which are used
for customer support including Facebook and your pages and properties on social media
platforms.

So, the range of activities that can be delivered by using social media is fairly broad. This
communication is the most obvious one you can think about internal applications. There are tools
which allow organizations to use social media not just for external purposes, but also for internal
purposes. Tools like slack that is used for collaborations internally.

It is used for recruitment of human resources of people that is typically you want your employees
and their contacts to apply using social media. And finally, external communication is obviously,

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 5

about newsletters, your marketing communication and external promotions that you would want
to run. So, it is not just limited to communication, but will focus on how you leverage social
media for other parts of the value chain.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 5

Social Media for Open Innovation, what comes to your mind when you think about innovation?
The examples that you would talk about innovation is usually something that you create inside
the organization, you know organizations invest in R and D in technologies and they create new
products and services.

But in Brazil fiat which is one of the world's largest car manufacturer car brand actually used the
customer insights to create or co-create a brand called Fiat Mio that is a design that has won
several awards, it is an example of social media leverage for product development. So, on Fiats
website users from 160 countries submitted more than 11000 ideas.

Now, one can get overwhelmed with the plethora of ideas that come in. So, what is the role of the
designers now? The designers actually acted as project guardians than as creators and they
documented the development process and blogs, they shared information, they picked up the ideas
that will work with them and created a product which is went on to become a very successful
product from fiat.

Let us take another context that is packaged goods or consumer packets industry CPG industry or
in India we call it as FMCG first moving consumer goods. And this initiative was undertaken by
Procter and Gamble which is the world's largest CPG company. P and G launched its connect
plus develop program more than 10 years back, that was the time when social media was gaining
prominence.

It developed more than 2000 global partnerships, delivered dozens of game changing products to
consumers and accelerated the innovation development process and increased its productivity. It
set up its own social platforms to invite contributions and discussions. And the ideas that are
received are logged in the company's Eureka Catalog. And one of the innovations that is an
outcome of this whole collaboration with customers is what is known as the Swiffer brand of
cleaning products extremely successful brand.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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Week 5

So, we looked at leveraging social media for innovation or product development which is
traditional role of companies R and D and technology team. Next we move to this whole concept
of social strategies. Now, what does social strategy mean in a marketing context? Research
indicates that the businesses or organizations that thrive on social platforms do not just sell stuff
they actually help people connect. So, social strategy is directed towards connecting people.

And what are some of the challenges that they help individuals overcome help them overcome
four different kinds of social challenges. They help them connect with strangers, they help them
interact with strangers, they help them reconnect with friends and finally, they help them interact
with friends. So, there is this whole process of connecting with strangers or friends and interacting
with strangers or interacting with friends.

Before we get on to the examples of connecting with strangers and friends; let us sort of contrast
digital versus social strategy and primary from a communication perspective. The primary
advantage of a social strategy over a purely digital one is in tapping into how people really want
to connect with each other not with the company. I think this is very important.

Social media platforms first help people connect with others other people not with the company
they are really not interested in connecting with you. So, a business with a successful strategy
social strategy should first focus on helping people form and strengthen relationships.

The second one would be really think about how does it benefit the company. If I facilitate the
formation and strengthening of relationships how does that help me as a company. So, to
differentiate between digital and social strategy a lot of times digital from a communication
perspective is largely used to broadcast commercial messages and then seek customer feedback
to facilitate marketing and sales goals.

On the other hand the social strategy's purpose is to really help people improve existing
relationships or build new ones and in return we want them to do something for us. So, in many
cases these new relationships help you reduce the cost or increase revenues and we will see some
examples.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 5

Nike is a great example of a company which has used social strategy to help people connect with
strangers, but they share a passion for example, running or sports and so you recruit people who
have similar interests and at a very low cost and they interact with each other, they share data,
they share their exercise regimen and they create a small community for themselves.

So, there are four ways of pursuing social challenges. One, reduce costs by helping people meet.
The second one is increase willingness to pay by helping people meet. Then you can reduce costs
by helping people, strengthen relationships. And the final one is increase willingness to pay by
helping people, strengthen the relationships. And we will discuss some of these examples, use
examples to explain this in more detail.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 5

So, what you will see here is a 2 by 2 kind of a matrix. On the one hand on the x axis you have
strategy impact and on the y axis we have social impact. The social impact how do you establish
relationships and how do you strengthen relationships? So, two component or two parts of this
social impact. And the strategy impact is can I reduce cost or increase the willingness to pay
which hopefully increases your revenues and profit abilities.

Yeah, so, let us look at the first one which is reduce cost and establish relationships. yelp is a
review site usually for restaurants and creating those reviews are expensive. So, you want users
to be actually creating that content. And so, you create small communities within this whole
process where people are who are interested in visiting these restaurants are actually sharing
content which is useful to others.

So, yelp acquires content by helping people meet the right reviews. So, yeah sort of rewarding
and recognizing people who write reviews which are useful for others, but at a reduced cost. On
the other hand you may established help people establish relationship with complete strangers for
example, American Express.

It increases the willingness to pay, it helps American Express social strategy helps professionals
to meet others like them, if they maintain the card membership which is always a premium card
membership. So, there is a willingness to pay. Because it helps individuals, professionals
established relationships with strangers they would not have met otherwise.

The third example is zynga which helps strengthen relationships, but also reduce the cost. zynga
helps friends stay in touch if they recruit new players and retain existing ones. So, your cost of
attracting new customers is reduced or users is reduced. Finally ebay helps you strengthen your
relationships and increases the willingness to pay by allowing people to strengthen friendships
through gift giving if they ask friends to buy from ebay.

So, you are actually strengthening the relationships and it is very appropriate because ebay has
this whole facility whole platform of gift giving. So, what are the benefits of this kind of an social
media strategy? One there is this whole delivery part, integrated social media delivers exposure,
awareness, helps you create fans, helps you create leads which improves your sales and at a
reduced overall expenditure, marketing expenditure, communication expenditures reduce.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 5

Because a lot of the effort that you would have undertaken is being done by people who benefit
from the social media that you have created, the platform that you created or yeah allowing them
to engage and interact with others. Integrated social media also facilitates this feeling of trust and
affinity.

Leads to creation of communities and obviously, it helps based on the information, the usage
behavior in terms of dissemination of very targeted offers. So, that is it can deliver exposure
awareness which is typically communication perspective. And also facilitate actually this feeling
of trust and affinity because of the community that is formed.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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Week 5

Let us look at some examples. Amul is the leading brand of food products in India. Everything
related to milk; from butter to cheese to milk and variety of milk products Amul is the leader,
almost 50000 crores which is roughly 7 billion dollars. How did a brand in the packets could
industry like Amul leverage social media?

The key principle was about campaigns that are thematically consistent and integrated across the
platforms. And I will show you or explain to you how it worked for Amul. Tagline of utterly
buttery delicious slogan and there is blue head Amul girl who is very prominent as and it is
understandably so because it is almost a seven and half decade 75 year old brand.

It is ranked among the top five advertisers in India and the turnovers over 50000 crores last year.
It the brand is visible prominently in traditional media. For example, television, print, outdoors,
radio, but in the recent past and especially in the last decade or so it has moved very strongly into
the digital. And one of the things that they have done very well is strengthening the presence on
social media.

So, they run this live recipe content on Amul's Facebook page which attracts over 10 million
views daily. The content and communication is presented in regional languages in Arabic because
they are very strong in the Middle East through social media handles and they have enabled them
to bring very strong bonds with customers across the country and in the Middle East.

So, what does it mean when we say thematically consistent and integrated? Let me illustrate it
with an example. In April 2020 at the onset of the pandemic, Amul created live recipes with two
chefs on Amul's Facebook page. Now, remember that is a time when the all the restaurants were
shut down people could not go out to restaurants; the chefs were pretty much sitting idle at home.
So, that this live recipes were created at the in the kitchens of the chefs and the way being
broadcast on Amul's Facebook page.

In the next sort of 9 months by January 2021, they had 2000 live shows and this shows a very
long shows; 45 minutes sometimes half an hour, 1 hour long. This led to a rise in followers
because by the numbers show that Amul's Facebook page, the number of followers increased
from 1.4 million to 2 million. The icecream Facebook page followers increased by 54000
accounts.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 5

The average duration of these live shows are 45 to 50 minute per recipe and Amul created over
90000 minutes, 1500 plus hours of original content till January 2021. Now, this is the content that
is created by users by chefs and it is very engaging content, but it is real it is live and it is not
something that is done in the studio and they can be reused many times.

So, if they are thematically consistent, it sort of highlights a brand, it uses the chefs, it uses the
same thing across channels including print media and digital media. It has to do with food the
recipes and most of the recipes would have something to do with milk based products cheese,
butter and others.

What is impact? It reached 1.3 billion Facebook accounts over 277 days less than a year. Average
daily reach was around 6 million Facebook users for 9 months. Total views on Facebook page
was 163 million minutes over 277 days. The brand reached 96 million unique FB accounts in
India alone plus over 3.5 million abroad in North American and Middle East.

Hugely successful and there are several such examples of companies that have leveraged digital
media to create content and connect with customers and they go back and watch it again, read it
again and endorse it and share it and forward it.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 5

So, in Social Media one of the important elements is this whole concept of Endorsement. Now
interestingly social media endorsements do not necessarily work the way you might think. So, let
us look at some of the research questions that we explored in a study. A very important aspect of
a social media campaign is the sole idea of well like, share or a comment.

So, what is the value of a like for example a Facebook like? Does it finally, have an impact on
revenues? So, if you are on social media campaigns does it improve your revenue and
profitability? A systematic way of studying this establish that the marketers often consume
confused with the cause and consequence. Let me illustrate it.

It is possible that getting people to follow a brand on social media makes them buy more that is a
fair assumption. But it is also equally possible that those who already have positive feelings
towards a brand are more likely to follow it in the first place and that is why they buy more. So,
if I really have positive feelings and I like the brand I am likely to follow you, but it may not have
an impact on my purchase behavior because I was already buying a lot of it.

So, it is important to recognize that social media does not necessarily work the way many
marketers or managers think it does. So, mere endorsing a brand does not affect a customer's
behavior, does not necessarily to increase purchasing or spur the purchasing by friends. So, what
does it do?

So, there is a lot of effort and money that is being spent on getting endorsements from users and
also for from social media influencers. So, when you have endorsements with branded content
the assumption is that social media pages are gathering places for loyal customers that is a fair
assumption. But it is equally important to recognize that is people do not visit social media pages
or they do not use social media for sales for marketing information. They are there primarily to
interact with each other.

So, it well it offers brands a unique source of customer intelligence because a lot of usage is
automatically captured, it also gives you feedback from a very crucial cohort and it can be
leveraged to build new and more successful develop and improve the strategies. Because there is
a lot of usage experience that gets automatically collected when people are on social media. So,
the final question is how do you measure the return on social media campaigns?

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 5

The return on investment. So, how do you measure the ROI on social media campaigns? Because
a key part of your social media strategy is to assess the impact and ROI is one of the best metrics
to measure the impact of your campaigns. So, you may have to before you decide your social
media campaigns, you have to decide what is the objective, what is the purpose, what is your goal
in acquiring; for example, likes on Facebook or any other review site.

Is it to increase sales? Is it change offline behavior or accomplish something else? So, one has to
decide and that depends largely on the kind of business you are. If you have customers, in if you
have customers of a bank; you would want them to recommend the service to others in which
case the likes should be linked to new accounts being opened or just a positive word of mouth
says that which indicates that the customers are satisfied, they are happy with the service they are
actually receiving from the bank.

Now, to test the returns typically you need to have a method, you need to invite people to like
your page. So, there has to be an invitation method. So, one simple way is to obtain the email
addresses or contact details of people in your target market or your target customers.

And when we talk about content marketing or inbound marketing the invitation typically allows
them to access content which is valuable which is useful or relevant to them only if they share
some personal access information details like phone number, Email and name.

Now, if you want to assess the impact of this likes for example, you may have to want to plan a
systematic study that is A B testing is something that is very commonly recommended, invite half
of a sample to like your page that is your treatment group and the other half of the users from
your control group.

And record the group to which each customer is assigned or user is assigned and then compare
the behavior in terms of the ones who were influenced who liked and what was their outcome,
did increase the sales from this, did you get more purchase from this group, did they sign up more
forms or did they visit your branch for example, or did you accomplish something else from this
group and. So, A B testing is normally used to assess the impact of the initiatives that you have
undertaken on social media like likes.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 5

Confirm your assumptions by actually see whether the liking really worked. So, people who
signed up and so you will hear marketers or specially startups founders saying that look I have
10000 likes on a social media platforms say Facebook, but no sales. I do not see any sales coming
from these likes. And that is it is important to understand why that happens because many times
people like certain things, but it does not translate into an action.

So, there may be multiple steps that is involved and you may not be able to connect it back. When
you use social media for advertising for example, you want to compare the performance of
something that you would run on a social media campaign that you run on a particular platform
for example, Facebook. Some of these ads on Facebook ex are exposed or reach out to your new
recruits and then compare the performance with once would not get exposed to the campaign on
that platform.

So, many of the many other times you run those campaigns you pay to promote those posts and
see the impact on groups which indicated that they liked it and the ones who did not like. When
you are checking the response the focus is on measuring the behavior that you defined up front.
And to improve the accuracy aim for a large sample size and make sure that your Email list is as
current as possible email list or your you know phone numbers just database of phone numbers.

So, the social media objectives are very very different from many traditional objectives. And these
objectives drive the metrics that metrics that you would choose. Typically, in a marketing context
you would look at traditional objectives would include sales or revenues, cost efficiencies,
product development, marketing research, insights that you would get for improving your
products and services.

Social media objectives which have been used also in many traditional media objectives is
awareness. How many people in your target group know about your brand? A very important one
which is different from traditional media is engagement; how much time they spend, how many
of them forward, how many of them review, how many of them leave a comment, how many of
them share and that influences the word of mouth.

So, one of the key social media objectives is word of mouth and remember that word of mouth
can be positive as well as negative. One of the metrics for brand engagement is whether the user

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 5

has shared it with others and if it is positive word of mouth it travels and it is seen as much more
credible than what the company would have done.

So, traditional objectives would be met through a roundabout way slightly longer route because
there is this whole process of customer journey which social media helps you achieve.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 6

Customer insights and engagement. Now, if you recall from our discussions in the previous
modules whether it was the value delivery process a marketing strategy framework, we have
emphasized a lot on the customers. Whether choosing value process a stage of the value delivery
process or the external elements of an organization which includes customer at the center.

So, a framework the framework for marketing strategy and especially digital marketing involves
the customer as a key stakeholder outside the organization in the macro environment. And this
customer is today surrounded by digital whether it is a search engines, e-commerce platforms,
social media and chat platforms or interactions omni-channel experiences that customers have.

So, how do we leverage this understanding of customers in everything that we do from strategic
to the tactical or the execution element of the marketing mix? So, it is easy to keep this customer
at the center and surround the customer with different elements of digital and social media. And
think about the customer’s journey starting from awareness to information collection, evaluation
of alternatives, actual purchase, experience post purchase experience, satisfaction, dissatisfaction,
engagement and sharing.

And so, the customer goes for the entire journey in any purchase process. And the organizations
would typically use many sources, many tools. For example, internet is very obvious in the
context of digital; they may use cloud computing, cloud for storage, cloud for engagement, cloud
solutions. Today customers access information through smart phones and the mobile phones.

So, mobile is definitely something that organizations would want to use, they use voice
technologies, IoT’s in devices which is Internet of Things and new technologies will keep coming
in. And organizations even though they are not themselves inventing them they have to use this
technologies. Think of ways of improving either the content engagements or the platforms.
Underlying all of these technologies has is this whole piece of analytics which is also constantly
evolving.

And organizations does not matter which sector they operate in banking, financial services, health
care, hospitality or packaged goods industry they are using a lot of analytics. And artificial
intelligence, machine learning, standard tools are being used by organizations big and small. So,
the customer journey is the starting point for any organization to collect insights.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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Week 6

Customer Insights and engagement: So, what are customer insights? Insights help us develop a
deep understanding of customers, covering their needs their preferences and behavior. Custom
behavior is changing it is getting influenced by digital it is there is a generational change that is
happening, younger customers are much more digitally savvy. And fortunately for businesses for
organizations there is a lot more source to get this insight.

So, organizations have an opportunity to know their customers better because there is a wealth of
data that is available. Recall that in a communication perspective from a communication
perspective there is outbound communication there is inbound from customers reach out to
organizations. And when customers reach out to organizations using any channel that is they leave
data behind they share information and that becomes a source of insight.

The other part which is which provides the wealth of data is when they interact with others on
social media platforms. So, in terms of availability of data there is in fact, a problem of plenty.
But for organizations for smart marketers the wealth of data can be utilized in every stage of
market strategy. From product design to customer targeting to positioning and regular
engagement, which helps fine tune their marketing mix elements.

And customer insights is an ongoing process, collecting data from customers using that to tweak
your strategy improve your execution and even in the marketplace all of them are an ongoing
process. So, what is this customer insight? It is an interpretation used by businesses to develop a
deeper understanding how their customers think and feel. And thinking and feeling influences
behavior, which includes behavior like intention to recommend actual recommendations purchase
and sort of feedback.

So, all of them could be different elements of this behavior. For insights we go back to basics, we
analyze human behavior, in a purchase and use context. When we analyze human behavior as
companies as managers we really understand what our customers want? What the needs are? And
most importantly why they feel this way? It is important to understand the foundations of
customer behavior before we can try to influence them.

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G Shainesh: So, see you talked about sustainability and you know the reducing the carbon
footprint. I see that across your complete value chain from manufacturing to the materials to even
in the packaging what inspired you to do that? You know.

Ravi Kallayil: No, we come with this belief that you know making money is not the only thing
that is important from a company perspective. And I think a lot more thought is now evolving
around the fact that companies have to be more responsible in terms of building the community
they live in. Yeah.

G Shainesh: Yeah.

Ravi Kallayil: We kind of early on in this process, but one thing that it has come from my own
background working doing community work in India is that here the lots of ways by which we
can help build the community in India.

G Shainesh: Yeah.

Ravi Kallayil: Ours is 100 percent, made in India product you know designed for the Indian
consumer. So, if there is a way to kind of help the community we wanted it to do it. So, and then
we tied it with sustainability.

G Shainesh: Yes.

Ravi Kallayil: So, we said instead of cardboard boxes which has a life of 10 minutes after the
shoe is bought and gets thrown away and people can see it being thrown away.

G Shainesh: Yes.

Ravi Kallayil: And it hurts them to throw it away because they do not know what to do with it.

G Shainesh: Yes.

Ravi Kallayil: We said, why do not we ship the shoe in bags.

G Shainesh: Yes.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Ravi Kallayil: So, these are bags made with cotton cora cloth and stitched by in fact, a group of
girls who are HIV affected you know they do the work for us you know it is a group that the
society is kind of completely forgotten about.

G Shainesh: Ok.

Ravi Kallayil:, But they learn stitching, they do the bags for us and we ship it in that way the
employees feels something good is happening in.

G Shainesh: Ok.

Ravi Kallayil: What they do and we are trying new find a way by which we can even inform
consumers.

G Shainesh: Ok.

Ravi Kallayil: About what the impact of their buying is. For us it is an important thing, it is a lot
more effort to source packaging from a smaller group.

G Shainesh: That is right.

Ravi Kallayil: Than from an established company, but we believe that is an absolutely important
and right thing to do from a large interest of play to achieve that.

G Shainesh: Ok. Yeah, that is I think while he was mentioned that you know it may not really
result in too much of as an important factor in the buying decision, but I think overall the
environment is changing all the discussions on climate change sustainability.

Ravi Kallayil: Yeah.

G Shainesh: And we see in the marketplace also that a lot of products are banking on or
highlighting the sustainability aspects hopefully consumers will start paying attention and maybe
paying a premium for this such an (Refer Time: 02:25).

Ravi Kallayil: We got a lot of good response on the packaging infected.

G Shainesh: Ok.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Ravi Kallayil: One is when they see a bag, they feel something is different. Second one, when
you tell the story it makes it a lot more powerful (Refer Time: 02:35).

G Shainesh: Absolutely. Yeah, that is right.

Ravi Kallayil: That they have made the right buying choices.

G Shainesh: Yeah.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Having sort of summarized the ways or methods in which you can collect information and insights
develop insights about customers let us look at some examples. I will start with Netflix a
streaming platform and then we will look at a retail chain where it is much more sort of complex
and multiple touch points are used.

So, let us look at how Netflix actually collects information insights about customers and uses that
to personalize the entire viewing experience. So, what does Netflix do? Netflix relatively because
it is a digital company a digital platform, it has an advantage, it has access to all your previous
viewing behavior. Now what does it do with the viewing behavior?

If you have watch certain movies or your series or shows or documentaries it uses those
algorithms for better recommendations. And the key is really personalization, it refines it helps
businesses, refine the way you communicate with them, refine the way you can engage with your
customers.

So, if you look at the screen what you see what you notice is; obviously, whenever Netflix has
new releases whether it is a movie or a series or a documentary it comes up on the top. So, when
you click on the app you will see that whether it is on a phone or your TV screen. Then based on
your past experience it will recommend certain movies. Now how does it work?

At it is base it is basically called as a very simply it is called as a market basket analysis. The
recommendation engines work on the basis of what works very well with a certain kind of
product. In the case of streaming it is also what others have viewed. For example, if you have
watched a certain movie for example, in this specific context To Kill a Mockingbird.

Now, other people have watched To Kill a Mockingbird would have watched Gone with the Wind
or you know they would have watched Interview with Gregory Peck or something. And so that
becomes the basis for you to see in recommendation and Netflix algorithm will recommend a
certain set of shows or movies based on your viewing behavior.

And it is much more easy to view see that in a context like Netflix, because it is automatically
collecting information about a behavior usage behavior in this case viewing behavior they are
able to recommend things, which are very close to what we would like. And it is reinforced by

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 6

many other people who may have watched this combination together.

Now let us look move on to a retail chain. So, Landmark is a large retail chain which operates in
India with over 550 retail outlets, and it collects data from millions of customers every day. So,
what does it do with the data that collects? The data is used to develop insights and enable and
encourage customers by providing delightful shopping experiences and incentives.

So, one has to also incentivize customers through this engagement process and every time you
interact with customers you are collecting additional information. So, they use typically
organizations would like to know what is it that customers are doing? And use that for
segmentation, and you will get insights from by asking questions like why?

What is it that the customers are doing? What will I use it for and why do customers actually
behave the way they are behaving? So, the what part helps you fine tune your segmentation? So,
typically the data that is collected includes demographic variables like age, region, city the store
where the customer typically goes and buys there could be behavioral segmentation for example,
loyalty segments and you may have levels tier 1, 2, 3, 4 or green, yellow, red.

You may have some variables like lifetime value or life stage of the customer. A young customer
older customer; customer with family based on actual just purchases you know what stage of the
customers life stages. Does the customer use physical store online store or a combination of both?
What kind of categories does the customer shop based on point of sales information point POS
data?

Is it grocery, is it clothing, is it fashion products, is it you know durables, is it kitchen items all of
those are actually categories the customer shops. Then you may also have some psychographic
variables like interests and beliefs which requires customers to share the data through service.
You also have a past data in terms of NPS Net Promoter Score if the customer has clicked on and
responded or you may have feedback data about usage experience.

So, there is a whole bunch of data which helps you improve the fine tune the segmentation. In
terms of customer insights you may also see whether the customer has certain brand affinity or
category affinity that the customer typically comes to my SPAR supermarkets or hypermarket to
buy for example, fish or fruits or vegetables and there is a certain affinity to certain brands. You

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 6

can also do use that to conduct market basket analysis what does the customer buy on every
purchase location.

At an aggregate level one can also do catchment analysis how far do the customers travel from to
visit a particular store and you have multiple formats under Landmark. From clothing to home
improvements like Homecentre, Lifestyle, Max, SPAR, multiple formats. Now, that is not enough
this just tells us who this customer is what is the customer actually doing the behavioral data?

What is important is to understand the underlying reason and that is answered by why? And for
why really you need to go and conduct market research. You may have millions of customers, but
you do not have to ask millions of customers, you can conduct a survey multiple surveys with
small samples. You observe customers when they are buying in your stores.

You observe customers when you when they interact with you on online platforms or through
your apps like SPAR.com. You can conduct a shopping journey analysis you talk to customers
you interview them you conduct surveys and you ask them about shopping from alternatives your
competitors. So, all of them helps you understand why they do what they are doing in your
premises or on your platforms.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Yeah, for insights you need analysis. So, let us look at some of the analysis that organizations
would do and especially retail chain like Landmark would do at its base you need to understand
customers. The foundation for any analysis for Customer Analysis is customer lifetime value. Is
this customer profitable, how much does the customer spend, average bill value for example,
how frequently the customer purchases from you weekly, monthly, fortnightly or you know
quarterly.

So, different kinds of frequencies and then finally, we are looking at estimated period of
engagement with the brand you know. For example, grocery like Spar a supermarket or
hypermarket you will see more frequent engagement, purchase occasions. But there are
products that you sell through a home center where the frequency is low, purchase value is high
and is there an opportunity engage with customers based on what they have purchased from
here, ok.

For example, if they bought kitchen items you know juicers and food processors can I engage
with them because they are not going to buy the next one very soon, can I engage with them
through recipes that I send now that I have the phone number and the E-mail ID’s. So, the
analysis at the customer level is used for trying to assess the value that you can provide for each
customer.

What is the value proposition which means the benefits that you can offer the customers? What
kind of offers now promotional offers can you run? How do I improve the customers usage
experience or shopping experience? And then how do I align my brand with the beliefs and the
product experiences?

So, the analysis at the customer level is useful for providing the relevant value. And finally, this
can be done if you know the customer context in lot more detail. Life stage is something that we
talked about earlier, but could include things like location, personal milestones, if you have for
example, date of birth, birthday is a very important milestone.

Professional Milestones like promotions or career events. There could be social events like
festivals and promotions can also be through the base on the basis of time of the day you know
what kind of interactions you can do based on time as an important factor that you would use as
a variable that you would use.

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So, analysis for improving the value that you provide to the customer in a specific context. And
so, the context is very important and the more you understand the customers the richer is the
understanding the context. Finally, why we are doing all this? You know we need business
objectives we have business outcomes that we desire.

So, at the customer level analysis or insights helps us understand Headroom opportunities, what
does that mean? Headroom analysis typically helps you identify what is the potential to improve
the sales and profitability of each customer based on what they have purchased from you.

One can also look at channel penetration, is this customer primarily a physical store customer or
this customer primarily online channel customer, is there opportunity to cross sell use both the
channels. One may be more profitable than the other. There is also an opportunity for category
penetration. Based on all the purchases the customer does you know that the customer has a
potential based on understanding of household whether I can have more of grocery items,
clothing items or fashion items or durables.

And finally, one can also look at format penetration physical versus digital channels motivating
the customers to use your apps for example. So, all of them could be different ways of engaging
with customers. So, as a business you would want your customers to visit your store.

So, use lot more online channels and preferably your own platforms like spar dot com or lifestyle
dot com or your apps rather than the e-commerce channels where you have to share a lot. But
the reality is many customers would prefer the e-commerce third party platforms rather than
yours. So, you may have business objectives to improve those performances.

So, to sum it up actually if you think about the overall purpose of this analysis is to improve first
provide value to the customer and then the customer provides value to you and those are
reflected in your business objectives.

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The analysis and the insights are useful to retain customers and obviously, provide value to them.
They also help the organization the businesses improved the decision making by making them
more customer-centric. It helps organizations or marketers really review, revise, update the value
proposition which is reflected in the product, the range that you keep and the prices that you
charge.

So, a lot of decisions in the retail stores or your chains are which has a direct impact on value
proportion is influenced by the analysis and insights that you gain. It helps you improve the
fulfillment process; you know customers for example, today many customers want to place orders
online and then they want to try the clothes or the products in the store or vice versa.

Their customers who come to the store because one in especially in max and lifestyle that they
want to try out the clothes, but they want to see the price online and then make the purchase. So,
overall, from a retail store perspective the overall shopping experience is improved across the
channels. A very important aspect of this engagement is post sales service many products unlike
grocery and vegetables and fruit many of the products that are bought from these stores requires
support, they require service.

For example, kitchen appliances or furniture or you know products like durables that you buy
from some of these home centers. So, you have an opportunity to engage with customers, improve
the value proposition and all of them if you are able to sort of synchronize it reinforces the brands
purpose the core purpose of the brand across different formats that you have.

The analysis again and the insights can be used to drive the customer engagement which improves
for example, in a competitive market the frequency of purchase, the shopping value and
obviously, the retention part. So, there is this whole customer engagement framework which has
multiple stages.

The organization has certain objectives for example, reduce churn winback customers who have
left who has stopped shopping from you, I increase the penetration in certain group of customers
and certain target segment and has an objective which is achieved through investments.

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Week 6

From a customer’s perspective the triggers are based on customer journey and data. So, initiatives,
marketing initiatives that you undertake are based on customer journey and data. And you would
today’s context many organizations use predictive models for next best engagement.

Because there is a balance a fine balance that you would draw between overwhelming the
customer through too much of communication versus just giving the right kind of messages and
communication. And the models can are useful in terms of deciding the content, the promotional
offer and the kind of experience that customer would have.

So, all can be tailored and personalized for the individual customers. From the content in the offer,
one would also think about what are those best medium and at what time. So, one can orchestrate
the time and the channel and the medium of communication using customer insights.

And finally, all the inputs that you have the stimulus that you provide should generate some
response to for this engagement. And if the response is positive that provides additional data
additional insights to upgrade your predictive models. So, it is a cycle that is driven by business
objectives, but completely aligned with the data and the insights that you collect from customers.

And the more engagement that you have in the customer reciprocates in terms of response your
models keep improving and the response keeps improving. So, to sum up the customer
engagement drives retention, helps improve the frequency of interactions and shopping value
finally, which generates positive surpluses for the organization.

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Week 6

So, if you are running an organization if you are a marketer for an organization what are the
opportunities for growth? Ansoff's growth matrix is a very useful framework to visualize the
opportunities for growth. So, if you look at the matrix it has 2 dimensions. On the one hand you
have markets existing and new markets and on the x axis or on the horizontal side you have
products.

So, it is a product market combination. On the product side you have existing products and new
products. And there are, so effectively it is a 2 by 2 matrix which has 4 quadrants or four boxes.
Let us look at each one of them. As an organization and you want to leverage digital to grow you
have an opportunity to grow through market penetration.

So, what does that mean? Market penetration basically means that you have an existing set of
products, you are targeting set of target customers and I want to increase my share. So, you are
not really creating something new you want to look at ways of increasing your sales grow your
market share. So, that is one way.

Obviously, all the insights, understanding of customer journey is useful in achieving market
improving a market penetration. What is more interesting from a digital perspective is the
opportunities to leverage the two other boxes or two other quadrants which is product
development and market development.

So, what does product development mean? Based on insights from customers existing customers
existing market that you are serving you develop new products. So, it is the same existing market,
but you are creating new products and customer insights are useful in developing these new
products.

So, there are multiple growth opportunities. One can grow through market penetration which is
existing products in existing markets, you are aiming to increase your sales, increase your market
share and customer insights are obviously, useful. And with digital channels you also get a lot of
information based on actual usage behavior.

But more importantly there are two other opportunities where you can really drive growth
innovation has always been linked to growth. And so, product development is obviously, an

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Week 6

outcome of innovation. But today’s world in digital space and digital era when you can use a lot
of customer insights from your existing markets to create new products.

So, we will spend some time understanding this whole process of product development and
especially leveraging digital. The other opportunity is, you take your existing products into new
markets. And we will have some examples, an illustrations about how companies, leading
companies are actually using digital to address what they call as white spaces.

Traditionally the country manages for large companies would ignore certain spaces, certain
segments because they were not viable using physical channels for communication, distribution
or can I now use digital to reach out to those markets. And obviously, the fourth option is
diversification, new products for new markets, but that is not something that we are going to really
focus on. So, we will spend some time understanding the two quadrants which is product
development and market development.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Product Development; now for any organization product development is one of the most risky
and one of the most high investment decision. Now it is absolutely important to get it right most
of the time. And product development benefits from knowledge insights about customers.

Because if it helps improve the success by getting those insights understanding customer journey
you have a higher chance of success you have a higher chance of reducing the failures that is
typically part of the product development process. And product development are absolutely
important for any growth opportunities. So, all growth strategies typically would have product
development as a key element of the strategy.

The knowledge that you get from customers especially in the digital context is absolutely essential
throughout the product development cycle. So, we will spend some time understanding this
product development cycle and how it is uses customer knowledge. It also uses the customer
voice through a combination of qualitative and quantitative research to understand and fine-tune
the needs wants and demands of customers.

So, you want to incorporate the voice of the customer you know throughout your product
development process. So, very progressive organizations the successful organizations would
always have methods to sort of validate the ideas throughout the product development process.
So, if you in if you look at this graph what you see as 2 dimensions, there is this number of ideas
which move from one stage to another stage and the process that is followed.

So, what you notice is from 3000 raw ideas and around 1.7 launches there is only one successful
product which really does well commercially in the marketplace. So, in a typical stage gate
product development process you start with lot of technical (Refer Time: 02:12) and intellectual
property research for example, automobile industry or pharma industry or technology industry.

The typical point at which a patent is applied for is the early development stage. And finally, the
success rates is very low as you can see 60 percent success rate after launch and if you have gone
through this process you have made a lot of investments. So, the once we succeed should help
you recover all the costs or the investments that you have done in ideas that did not succeed.

So, rightly so product development has lot of visibility and attention on the top management

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Week 6

because it is very risky and if it does well if it performs well the rewards are very high. So, risk
and reward goes on simultaneously. So, one of the very popular traditional method of product
development is what we call as a stage gate new product development process so NPD process.

Typically, it may will have multiple stages starting from discovery or ideas screening. So, at every
stage you will see there is something called is the gate where you actually reduce the numbers.
So, the 1st stage here is called a scoping that from multiple ideas that you get you do not want to
take all the ideas to the next stage. So, you will reduce them by doing a scoping exercise.

In the 2nd stage you may want to build a business case. So, there is a nice idea, but is this viable
financially and operationally. So, there is a screening process and there is a gate. And the next
stage is actual development usually in the lab or the product development team gets involved, but
you get customer insights customer feedback market feedback into this process again you short
list or reduce the number of prototypes that you would go to the next stage.

Stage 4 is when you actually do the testing and validation and many times in real usage conditions.
That helps you again reduce it so there is a gate and then stage 5 is when you launch commercially
in test market sometimes you go for national or global launch, but usually it is where you observe
the performance of the product and that is post launch review.

Has it reached the customers or customers buying it is a repeat purchase is it being is it being
sought after product is how is it performing with respect to the competitive offerings all of them
are actually part of the post launch review. So, this is the stage gate process is in is a traditional
way of developing lots of products and also services.

Because you know you do not want to fail you want to improve the chances of success and
different stages and gates help you reduce that and every time you want validation and customer
insights and customer journeys and the analysis that you do help you validate this.

So, today in the digital era the possibilities or the potential to use customer information, customer
insights has improved or increased manifold across all stages of this new product development
process.

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
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Week 6

What are the roles of the customer in this new product development process? At each stage you
can have customer providing inputs and so the customer plays the role of a resource. So, for
example, the new product development process ideation you would want to validate the idea with
customers. So, customer is actually providing ideas as a resource it is source of knowledge
experience.

Customer can also play the role of a co-creator. And that is usually the design and development
stage you may want to in B2B markets many times you have lead customers you do the alpha
testing in-house beta testing is usually at customer premises a industrial products very common.
So, you can have customer as a co-creator. You can also have custom as a user during product
testing and product support.

So, at every stage you can think about customer having a role a formal role. A customer can be a
resource of a source for ideas, based on usage experiences, shortcomings of existing products
needs which are enhancing. A customer can be a co-creator which is used in design and
development and customer can be user when the prototype is developed and you have testing and
you have product support experiences.

So, what are some of the key challenges? When you have customers as different roles. Many
times you would have challenges related to the appropriate customer as a source of innovation, is
it the heavy user is it the light user who is this customer a knowledgeable customer. So, depending
upon the kind of customers you have you need to identify the appropriate customers as a source
of innovation.

How is it? The idea is relevant only for a very small segment of customers. So, is it a innovation
that will be appealing to a very small niche. So, the appropriateness is something that you need
to assess who would be the source of information. And that is used for selecting the customer
shortlisting the customer. One can always think about the customer as a innovator, but not every
customer is an innovator so you need to be careful about selecting them.

In many technology products for example, subscription services like Adobe for example, Creative
Cloud. You do not have to run a specific market research the usage experience itself shows which
customers are more advanced users and if I need to improve the service or product should I pay

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Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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Week 6

more attention to these advanced users. Does it require incentivization? Why would customers
participate in your new product development process?

So, many organizations and mechanisms a formal mechanisms to incentivize customers. For
example, many companies run contests where design ideas are sourced from customers through
competitions and the award-winning ideas get converted into products like Tanishq for its mere
range of jewelry which was targeted the young executives they ran contests and they would select
the best ideas and then incentivize the participants as well as the winning idea.

So, lots of companies run this kind of contest to source ideas from customers. Do I have the
infrastructures especially the information infrastructure for capturing customer knowledge? So,
this a big challenge for organizations because information does not come in once through one
source through one method it could be emails it would be videos it could be digital diaries so do
I have the where without make sense of all the variety of information and knowledge that I am
collecting.

And finally, in product development is it going to be relevant only for the existing customers or
do I see a potential for future customers I mean who are not currently maybe prospects they are
not using my products and services. So, product development inherently focuses on existing
customers, but they may be a bigger opportunity of this product being used by non-customers
currently non-customers, but they are part of your target.

So, there are these are some of the issues that one has to grapple with, but if it is better to be
prepared with these questions and move forward rather than discovering them later in your new
product development process.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 6

A co-creation. So, how do I involve the customer in the co-creation process? So, the new product
development process is typically a organizational perspective, firm perspective. Co-creation is
from a customer's perspective customers engage with organization proactively to create
something new.

So, in today's world firms rarely innovate alone and the term co-creation is not new, but something
that is receiving a lot more attention both the managers and scholars. And that is thanks to the
digital opportunities to engage with customers, collect information make them participate in the
new product development process.

So, the technology industry open innovation has been very very common has been very prevalent
for the last two decades if not more. So, open innovation is a system whereby the innovation is
not performed solely within a firm, but rather it is undertaken cooperatively to include external
players including for example, developers in the software industry context.

So, sales force for example, has a formal mechanism by which companies and individual
developer’s customers and users create applications which are then available on app exchange for
others to use. So, if I am a user of sales force and I experience some I create something because
based to make it simpler to undertake a certain task I have an opportunity to create that and make
it available for others who may be facing similar issues.

So, open innovation is very very common in the software industry and technology industry where
many of the users and especially the developers have fairly advanced. But similarly in other
product development context; for example, packaged goods L’Oreal is a great example of a
company which involves customers to showcase how they use the product and those insights are
used for creating new products.

Some of the practical challenges faced by managers is; to what extent can customers be creative
if you are creating a new product. What tools and processes enable effective co-creation efforts
with customers? One does not want to set up expectations very high and then find that you are
not able to manage.

So, what are those tools and processes? What strategies are effective in using social media for

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 6

innovation digital diaries where customers share the usage experience is a very important tool
used by cosmetics companies. Companies which enter food products which are used for cooking;
for example, they leverage customer’s usage experience because many customers share the
recipes share the cooking experiences and many of them actually take videos and share them on
channels like YouTube and Instagram.

So, what strategies are effective in using social media for innovation and what types of social
media work best for a specific innovation effort? For example, incremental something new or
radical in most cases we see that incremental improvements are much more easy much more
amenable to using a lot of customer insights.

Whereas radical innovation radical the new products rarely come from customer use customer
insights because customers are in many cases not able to articulate what they want, but they are
able to understand where there is a shortcoming and those shortcomings in existing products and
services can be addressed. If you have been systematically collecting customer insights watching
them, observing them and identifying the bottlenecks in the current usage experience.

So, co-creation is definitely an opportunity for involving customers in new product development.
Once you understand those challenges and are able to address them, it can be a great platform a
great opportunity to create new products and services.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.
 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 6

Market development. So, we are moving from product development which is creating new
products for existing markets to market development. And in market development typically you
have existing products, but you are taking them to new markets it could be segments within the
same geographic market or it can be geographically different markets or you can have any other
ways of actually classifying this market or categorizing this market.

But the concept is that you have existing product meant for a certain segment of the market and
you are taking this product to new segments it could be any variable geographic, demographic,
psychographic any of those variables. So, the market can be defined based on any of the
segmentation variables. A framework that is very useful to assess the opportunities for market
development is what is known as MARACA.

So, MARACA stands for market availability that is MA real-time analytics RA and customer
addressability that is CA. Now, this framework is used by technology companies for example,
company like HubSpot which is into content marketing and which can potentially make its
services available in the 200 plus countries, but it decides where to prioritize, how do I prioritize
which markets I should be available.

So, the metric is for example, market availability and that helps you describe for example, the
size of the market? How much opportunity does this market offer? See, HubSpot is targeting the
SMEs- small and medium organizations. So, some of the examples of this metric would be what
is the size of the potential customers? What is the potential revenue from this market? India versus
for example Nepal or India versus Sri Lanka or India versus China so, you can evaluate the market
availability.

The second one which is RA in the maraca kind of a framework is real-time analytics. So, if you
are already presented the market you need to assess the traction. How are we currently performing
in this marketplace? And the examples of real-time analytics includes local traffic leads being
generated, how many of those leads are being converted or closed and from among those
customers who started using your product or service.

For example, a subscription how many of them are being retained you can go down in technology
subscription services for retention of at monthly levels also you will know the monthly active

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

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Week 6

users how many of them are retained, how many of them have not transitioned from in a freemium
kind of a service like HubSpot, how many of them stay as a free customers and how many of
them transition to a paying customer in a freemium model.

The third metric is customer addressability that is ca in maraca ease of entry how well do our the
current products and services address this market ok. So, ease of entry could be a very important
characteristics and that may require integration with local payment systems this is true for large
global companies.

Do I need to localize the product? The language localization is the easy part, but you may have
to localize the product for to meet for example, regulatory requirements or customer preferences
and do I need local distribution channels local partners. So, these are all about customer
addressability.

So, the MARACA Framework is a useful framework to assess the opportunity for market
development with existing products you are going to new markets in many cases it could be
geographic markets it could be nations, but many times you create products for different segments
within the same geography also.

How do you leverage digital for market development? And I am going to sort of differentiate
using this framework in terms of opportunities for the same product in emerging markets or
developing markets and the developed markets. So, at the center what you will notice is B2B
digital marketing initiatives; where you reach out the value chain entire value chain and the focus
is on lead generation lead segmentation and engagement with the users.

In a B2B context, the tactical approach may involve nurturing the leads and content delivery. So,
a lot of it is about communication the difference between the emerging market and developed
economy would be largely in the kind of communication in a direct economy for example, you
would use paid media earned media and organic search, but an emerging economy the
communication channels would be a lot of them was; obviously, the firm initiated inbound
channel owned media and paid media.

But also a lot of them are market initiative for example, earned social media organic search and
they are seen as more credible they are seen as having providing lot more confidence to customers.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
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 MK211x – Digital Marketing Strategy

Prof. Shainesh G

Week 6

Finally, in terms of outcome there is not much of change, but outcomes in direct markets could
be more in terms of sales and customer acquisition whereas, sales outcome could be here differ
in terms of new sales because the market would have typically low penetration in this the product
or the company would have lose penetration in this and the market are still being developed.

So, in the emerging markets you will have as an outcome new sales much more important than
just sales from existing customers. Extending the difference between the developed and
developing markets or emerging markets there is this O-I-E-O framework in a B2B context which
is useful to understand a B2B firms what is called a digital echoverse like a universe.

So, O-I-E-O stands for owned inbound earned and organic search in a in the digital age customers
really follow a purchase consumption circular loop and they are; obviously, much more informed.
So, the firm initiated communication includes paid media, owned media and digital inbound
marketing. The market initiated digital communication includes earned social media likes, shares,
communities, posts on social on social media like Facebook and Instagram.

An organic search is through indexed search on Google for example, so the interaction between
them actually has leads to the outcome which is your customer acquisition new customers that
you acquire and new sales and that generates revenue for you. So, market development efforts are
completely can be supported even in emerging market using digital communication remember
that you are basically taking existing products to new market markets.

© All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Professor Shainesh G and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Marketing Strategy" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author.