ad:tech 2019 started on a high note with a spirited session from David Freeman, the Executive Vice President of Star India, who spoke about the importance of emotional stakes in the marketing strategies of today. This point was illustrated in an innovative manner when he directed the audience to shake the hand of a person they didn’t know and talk about a unique aspect of their life. This abstract yet enlightening exercise helped put a unique point into context – human beings are capable of something that no other species is capable of; storytelling. It’s the dawn of mankind that has brought about the age of storytelling as we know it, and it’s through these stories that various feelings and emotions are elicited within people. However, storytelling is not a limited aspect. If anything, it’s a broad aspect that can be utilised in a manner that’s become quite popular in the commercial space – marketing. With digital marketing quickly becoming the norm, it’s important to understand that attention spans are dwindling more and more. Therefore, to ensure that little to no problems come in the way of a brand’s marketing initiatives, storytelling should be integrated throughout a particular campaign to maximise engagement and accrue substantial results. We say this because – as discussed above – storytelling is a medium that invokes emotions. Using this strategy in a marketing initiative and induce the appropriate feelings can go a long way in ensuring the runaway success of any marketing campaign. In the simplest terms, stories should provide desirable experiences that make consumers crave a particular product or service. A great way to illustrate this point would be to talk about the success story of Dollar Shave Club. At a glance, the products of a shaving company might not seem all that interesting. This was a challenge for the company – how exactly could they tell a story with something so seemingly pedestrian like male grooming products. Well, here’s how they met this challenge. The company’s offerings itself communicate two crucial messages:

• The name Dollar Shave Club should be enough to hint towards the fact that the products are economical, therefore removing any financial barriers to entry.
• Since these products are delivered to your doorstep with little to no effort, there’s also a level of convenience attached to these offerings.

This messaging is further augmented through their quirky marketing campaign that conveyed the following:

• Everyone relates to comedy, and Dollar Shave Club managed to accomplish precisely that with a marketing campaign kept humour at the forefront of its messaging.
• A brand that’s portrays itself as rebellious will be more appealing to young men – a demographic that Dollar Shave Club targets.
• Michael Dubin – the founder of Dollar Shave Club – portrayed himself as a warm and friendly individual, further helping consumers relate to the brand at large.

Dollar Shave Club is not the only brand that has adopted a story-heavy marketing approach – Nike also took the bold decision of using Colin Kaepernick as a figurehead to carry out a personalised marketing campaign. What does all of this illustrate? It shows that empathy is essential for a brand. Without this aspect, all brands are doing is selling the same-old product or service that won’t resonate with the consumer. It’s only when consumers can attach a sense of emotion to these offerings through a story-driven marketing campaign that brands can improve the results they accrue through these strategies.

PR, just like nearly every function of promotion, has had multiple faces since its inception. It is a field which has evolved into new forms multiple times and will continue to do so in the near future. Nowadays, PR is heavily linked with other functions, specifically in new-age marketing, such as content marketing, SEO, and even facets such as design. As the field expands, so do the ways in which brands and agencies approach journalists and publications in this contemporary world of PR.

Evolution of Public Relations

Traditional PR and traditional advertising went hand-in-hand. Back in the days, advertisers often swore by the ‘spray and pray’ approach - the notion of promoting your offerings anywhere and everywhere and praying that your target audience views it. Simultaneously, PR professionals were hired to ‘smile and dial’ - cold calling with the hope of securing leads. These concepts often boded well with the way the general public interacted with media (television, print, radio). With these forms of media, it was impossible to filter through content as per your convenience. With promotions being a key feature of all these mediums - you had no choice but to sit through all television ads, nor did you ever want to risk skipping a few pages in the newspaper. Today, the way the general public accesses and consumes content is evolving with each passing day, which has brought along a shift in the media industry as well. A clear element driving this change is technology - in the form of new-age content, and concepts like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. New-age technology offers brands an ability to increase revenue and reduce costs through more intelligent automation and machine-powered predictions. The future of Media will also see pitches that have new-age content formats like images, infographics, mixed media, data visualizations, and videos, as the preferred formats by journalists, since it holds and engrosses them with the ideas shared in the pitch.  However, while digital PR has gained immense popularity as online media is rapidly overtaking traditional print media, you must understand that there is still a place for traditional PR strategies. You must regularly scrutinise the differences between traditional vs. digital PR to ensure you’re utilising each to their full capacity.

A Shift Towards Inbound PR

Creating Customer-Centric Narratives The first step towards an inbound PR strategy is creating a narrative your consumers care about. While it is critical to impress the journalists, forgetting about your consumer is a blunder you cannot afford to make. Instead of crafting releases or blog posts with the sole purpose of pleasing the journalists, ensure they resonate with your buyer persona. Thinking Outside The Box For businesses big and small, huge product announcements are not the only purposes of a press release. Think out of the box, analyse your business from top-to-bottom and ask yourself - What are we doing that is truly remarkable? Not every story has to be apt for Forbes, but it can be enough to keep your loyal followers intrigued and fascinated. For starters, here are a few ideas to kickstart conversations and leverage your company as a thought leader - 

• Use new-age content formats and creativity to your advantage
• Instead of emailing journalists telling them the leaders of your brands are experts on a given topic, have them publish a blog on the topic first and then pitch, so they know their take is relevant. 
• Map the sentiments towards the brand via discussions happening on social media and weighing it with your brand’s ideas and thoughts. 

Create Content that Counts We often forget that journalists are humans, and 99.9% humans prefer quirky, interesting, and dynamic content over the usual ‘who, what, where, when, why’ - which is often bland. When drafting a release, feel free to focus on what is unique, different and narrative-driven rather than stick to the set traditional template. 

The Role of PR in Marketing 

Ideating your own content through a website blog is not only a great way to build identity, but also drive traffic. A great alternative to traditional pitching is to craft high-quality guest posts for industry blogs in your space.  Search engines value quality over quantity as well now, so invest the time and energy to develop thoughtful guest posts for consideration on blogs in your space. This will result in the benefits of SEO as well as potential media coverage. In terms of ROI, utilising cost-per-click data to estimate the equivalent advertising value is a key factor. No matter where you choose to put your marketing efforts, your CPC efforts will have a large impact on how much you spend on those efforts. Evaluating this data can give you an accurate estimate of how your organic PR is performing. If you are receiving a click-through organic search as opposed to advertising, then you can conclude this click can be attributed to your PR efforts. 

Marketing Meets Journalism 

In the volatile and viral world of social media today, time is scarce when it comes to journalism, which is why it is essential to help journalists operate at a lightning-fast speed by ensuring they have access to all information at their fingertips at the right time.  Decoding About Us Page A lot of people write their ‘About Us’ pages with ambiguous language. Make sure the description of your brand is crystal clear to the journalists. It is important to invest time and effort in perfecting such sections of your website. Adding Social Sharing Icons Embedding Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn sharing icons on your press page and each press release will help ignite social media discussions about conversations you wish to drive. Offering Helpful Industry Data Offering industry data and information that relates to topics journalists might be interested in helps you stand out and catch their attention since it provides a context to the release. This increases the likelihood of your brand sticking in their memory.

Building Relationships With Media

The first and foremost step towards building and maintaining relationships with the media is to respect them and their job. A journalist’s job is not to promote your product/service/idea. It is to tell an intriguing story or capture fascinating news that is relevant to their outlet. By respecting their role and craft, not only will you drive better results for yourself, but also hone long-lasting and fruitful relationships. The next step towards building a list of media relations is to do your basic homework. Collating the journalist’s information such as links to recent coverage, context from his/her twitter bio, social media handles, and contact information is a good starting point. You can even leverage social media to facilitate seamless communication with your media friends and find out what keeps them engaged on a daily basis, and use this information to ideate future content considerations. For example, If you see reporters constantly discussing a particular industry occurrence, consider creating a blog post directed at it and send them the link instead of waiting for them to reach out to you. Lastly, media communication should be a two-way street. Find ways to add value to your reporter’s daily lives as well. You can share and promote their content even when it’s not related to you, offer genuine and honest feedback/inputs, or even potentially provide them opportunities to explore your business, your approach, or meet with your team. It is important to understand how technological innovations and automation have transformed the media industry. These concepts must be embraced to elevate your PR strategies - such as a systematic focus on Inbound PR or the synergy between PR and marketing. As you familiarise yourself with these concepts, the key is to integrate them with the traditional role and responsibilities of journalists and not discount the importance of fruitful and genuine interaction in the process. Download the PDF version

Companies constantly need to update skilling programs for their employess to remain relevant and cutting edge.The Indian start-ups space is evolving exponentially. The growth has been largely contributed by newly arrived technology cycle which has brought new requirements and hence rapidly changes the existing skills in the labor market. A specialized or diverse skill set is expected out of employees to be relevant in this rapidly changing digital environment. The advancement of technology and automation has brought us to the brink of an unanticipated catastrophe when it comes to manpower employability. The fast-paced technological progress is giving way to new developments; however, reskilling has become the most essential ingredient to create the workforce of the future.

Re-skilling, by definition, means �teach� (a person, especially an unemployed person) new skills. In the current scenario, there is a strange skepticism on the ability to cater to the change in technology by the present skill sets of employees. It arises from the fact that the workforce is not equipped enough to adapt to the rapidly changing technological advances. The world has moved almost overnight to new forms of technologies involving blockchain, AI, Machine learning technology which is forecasted to make lot of workforce redundant. Banking has seen a dash of technological change through use of blockchain and automation of analytics by AI and Machine learning augmentation. Industrial automation has seen a surge on manufacturing sector organizations moving to low human resource intensive processes. Automobile companies saves almost 90% cost of manual testing efforts by implementing industrial design, robust governance, and strong process flow through automation of processes. In the light of almost a renaissance happening in the technology world, it has become vital to �re-skill� to stay on pace with the automation of processes. In the ever-changing landscape currently, by the time companies manage to set up a full-fledged team, the technology becomes obsolete. Therefore, it is very important to equip the native employees with resources and provide a congenial agile work framework for quick adoption. Re-skilling is critical in a startup or a digital marketing space because it gives a competitive advantage in the long run and is much better than hiring skilled workers. Invest in people you already have and build on their strengths. Average age of the employees is another factor which gives reskilling an encouragement in mid-size businesses. A major chunk of today�s workforce starts from 20 and ranges till 35 which makes it easier for companies to reskill them. They are flexible and carry an open mind to change and adopt new roles and opportunities coming their way. There is an efficient way to build and gear a team to campaign their way to the top of the chain, and that�s by empowering employees with reskilling. Re-skilling is critical in a startup or a digital marketing space because it gives a competitive advantage in the long run and is much better than hiring skilled workers. Invest in people you already have and build on their strengths. Average age of the employees is another factor which gives reskilling an encouragement in mid-size businesses. A major chunk of today�s workforce starts from 20 and ranges till 35 which makes it easier for companies to reskill them. They are flexible and carry an open mind to change and adopt new roles and opportunities coming their way. There is an efficient way to build and gear a team to campaign their way to the top of the chain, and that�s by empowering employees with reskilling. Employees need to combine excellent digital specialist skills with deep functional business knowledge. They should be comfortable with short delivery cycles and be able to operate across silos and within cross-functional teams. Today, the ability to collect and analyze data to derive insights about a business or about the domain is the differentiating factor that separates companies at the top of the business from their competition. This is where the concept of �reskilling� comes into place � where companies constantly need to update skilling programs for their employees to remain relevant and cutting-edge. We often see that those companies who are at the top of their game, highly prioritize learning and development goals for their employees.

Processes are changing and getting upgraded continuously, hence concrete steps need to be taken in this context. There are some pointers that needs to be considered while upskilling employees �

1. Regular training programme

Engaging employees in multiple training programs by inviting experts to the organization to share their learning and experiences can always help the workforce gain knowledge. Listening and learning from the masters of the field gives a sense of trust to the employees that upskilling is an option to a better future. This further encourages employees to learn and reskill themselves. This is possible only if they get access to Flexi-learning, allowing them to learn at their own pace alongside their busy work commitments.

2. Easy access to training material

Employees should have access to learning. They need to be able to study anywhere anytime at their own convenience. Technology allows for easy access of study material across any device through flexible Learning Management Systems, even while on the go. The online courses are typical of shorter durations allowing the students to upskill quickly within a short period of time.

3. What company leaders can do

Assess the skills and capabilities of the current workforce against the capabilities one will want in the future, not what is needed currently. The goal is to identify gaps so that the leaders can help individuals focus on specific areas to reskill or upskill. Create a real-time system that helps monitor progress over time.

4. Taking ownership

For any organization to be successful, it�s important that its employees succeed and adopt a continuous learning mindset. A proactive engagement to learn new skill set will help them succeed in future. As LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman says, �embrace a start-up of your mentality��which means adopting a more entrepreneurial approach and carving your own path through the new world of work. Majority of workers appear to understand this already. According to a survey, 74 percent say they believe it�s their own responsibility to update their skills rather than relying on any employer. We can take the case of American multinational conglomerate AT&T Inc. which choose to rapidly re-skill more than a hundred thousand of its current employees. AT&T has been strong in its conviction to give its employees�those who have built the brand over the past decades�the opportunity to ensure the continued marketability of their skills through wholesale reskilling. Re-skilling builds an atmosphere where people can pay attention to jobs of the different kind that demands thinking and creativity which helps an individual grow. The procedure may sound intimidating, but this is the only way to survive in this technologically evolving space. Help can be taken from academic institutions to help revise curriculums and create opportunities for lifelong learning. At the same time, individuals within themselves have to develop that zeal for learning, take the charge of reskilling oneself rather than relying on some third party.

Together companies and employees can prepare the manpower for tomorrow.

Originally published at https://bit.ly/2pi61eA on September 16, 2018.

As technology evolves with each passing day, it becomes more and more integrated into our daily lives. With each innovation that takes place in technology, the lines between our online and real lives become increasingly blurred.  Needless to say, this has led to a significant change in the way we consume content. Today, we are dependent on multiple gadgets and interact with many different digital devices on a daily basis. This shift in consumer behaviour has opened many doors for marketers and has given way to a need to consider and pursue a more holistic approach to digital marketing. This holistic approach is what has come to be known as the omnichannel approach to marketing.  In a nutshell, an omnichannel approach to marketing allows marketers to account for each channel a consumer uses to interact with content and allows them to enhance their marketing efforts.  In today’s times, omnichannel marketing can be an incredibly valuable tool in the arsenal of marketers. Let’s discuss this in more detail. Leads To Better Brand Recognition And Sales Millennial shoppers have shown a preference for brands that have an omnichannel presence.  An omnichannel marketing strategy implies that the consumers get a consistent and cohesive experience each time they experience your brand and are urged to pass each step of the sales funnel without any hiccups.  Omnichannel Marketing is also excellent for brand recognition as it helps brands reach out to different audiences and establish a presence in the minds of consumers of all demographics. Different kinds of users use different kinds of platforms, by being present on all these platforms you can easily increase your reach. These strategies are exceptionally useful for startups as well, who are in the beginning stages of understanding their target audience and can benefit from having a more universal presence.  OTT platforms displace cable TV  The advent of OTT platforms changed the landscape for all the involved stakeholders, including marketers. As Netflix and other streaming services became popular, they redefined the way people “watched TV” and made it inevitable for marketers to shift to an omnichannel approach to retain their engagement with these consumers.  It’s not surprising that today, four out of five smartphone owners in India subscribe to at least one of these OTT platforms. This is in addition to the free UGC platforms like Youtube. Now, as more and more viewers become accustomed to these new-age digital streaming services, TV commercials are no longer as promising as they used to be. In fact, as per a report by KPMG, many Indians will soon consider cutting-off their cable TV subscription since their entertainment needs are being met by these platforms.  Marketers need to look past conventional TV and enhance their media budgets to leverage these upcoming OTT channels with more prominent audience segmentation and measurement capacities. Moving to an omnichannel approach will empower them to gain a more significant ROI and guarantee that target customers are not missed as their TV watching propensities change. The best part about OTT platforms is its potential to allow omnichannel video marketing. Consumers today watch video content over different gadgets throughout the day. What this implies for marketers is the chance to draw viewers all the more adequately over various direct, on-request and live streaming gadgets. Customer Segmentation At Your Fingertips Today, the market has become so swarmed, that mass marketing alone doesn't work with regards to drawing in and retaining customers. Additionally, spoiled for choice, customers have become all the more demanding and expect increasingly customised marketing messages. This is why it gets imperative to segment customers and give applicable and personalised information to win and retain them.  Omnichannel marketing works on segmenting and personalisation of messages. Segmenting the audience into categories makes it simpler to deliver the right message to them. Categorisation can be done based on the audience profile (demographics, age, gender, area, and so forth), engagement levels (how much a particular person interacts with the channels), and shopping intent.  Automation can also be set up to send relevant messages to the correct audience at the right time and through proper channels. New-age strategies like location-specific mobile advertising could also be applied to get ideal results. Soaring Engagements  Omnichannel marketing enables marketers to orchestrate moments that refine the customer experience with the brand leading to better engagement. With an omnichannel approach brands can maintain a presence across channels and connect with customers in a more robust fashion.  Brands can also make use of a multi-channel sales approach to provide customers with an integrated shopping experience and make it easier for consumers to pass through the sales funnel.  Brands are also using omnichannel platforms to provide real-time solutions and create a positive brand image. In fact, marketers using an omnichannel approach to marketing, enjoy an engagement rate that is up to 250% higher than single-channel campaigns.  Brands have also been using AI bots to interact with customers through their mobile devices acting as a shop assistant, hence improving customer experience. Let’s recap all the benefits of leveraging an omnichannel marketing strategy. 

• Leads To Better Brand Recognition
• The shift to OTT platforms has made it increasingly crucial for brands to leverage Omnichannel marketing to avoid missing out on prospective customers
• Customer segmentation becomes incredibly convenient with Omnichannel marketing
• Omnichannel marketing strategies have shown to generate better AOV

 Your guide to omnichannel strategies  Now, these are the kind of benefits that we can not afford to ignore. So what are the things that we should keep in mind while designing our omnichannel marketing strategy? Here are a few recommendations that can help.  Get In Your Customer’s Shoes:   Regularly audit the experience your clients go through to research, buy, and interact with your campaign. Test the experience by placing orders, interacting with every accessible channel. If possible, these tests should be performed by both external and internal analysers. Measure The Performance Measuring the performance of your omnichannel campaign is incredibly important as it lets you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your efforts.  Focus On Customer Centricity  In the current scenario, your omnichannel campaign must be based on the client experience. Start by making sense of your clients' most favoured channels. If you don't have an idea about where they spend their time, how might you hope to serve them? Develop a Uniform Brand Presence  It’s important to help your customers become familiar with your brand. After all, familiarity creates trust.  Leverage The Right Tools Organizations that need to offer their clients a start to finish customer experience across all channels face a couple of technical difficulties. Although these difficulties can easily be countered with the help of the right tools. Closing Note  With new-age consumers now consuming content across a wide array of devices in numerous situations, the only way a marketer can win is by offering a cohesive experience to customers. That’s the only way to stay relevant in the current scenario.  Download the PDF version

The year 2020 has brought along a fresh wave of changes across a diverse range of spectrums of our lifestyle, be it the way we work, how we communicate, how we shop, or even how we consume entertainment.  The influence and impact of the pandemic on these basic elements of our lives have been under the spotlight for the past few months now, with this effect to remain for the foreseeable future. After a sustained period of adaptation and on-the-fly decision making, organizations/brands across the globe have slowly come to terms with the ‘new normal’ with evolved strategies and thinking. Most of the conversation revolving around digital transformation was dominated by terms such as ‘Artificial Intelligence’, ‘Machine Learning’, ‘Cloud Computing’, and even ‘The Internet of Things’. However, the second half of 2020 is all set to bring about a fresh set of trends. Ban of Tiktok Can Change The Way Forward A key factor driving the popularity of Tiktok as a platform for content consumption was entertainment. The app garnered a huge audience in India - a total of 611 million downloads - 30.3% of the global total. (source : deccan chronicle)  With such a wide and diverse audience, it's no surprise that brands were quick to target leading content creators on the platform. The recent ban will force past Tik-tok content creators to hone and evolve their content for the bigger influencer platforms like Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook. For example, Instagram has been quick to reveal a new feature - Reels. This feature is extremely similar to the model of Tiktok and essentially inculcates the essence of it onto the Instagram app as well. Facebook, which had found a clout among the tier-2 and tier-3 cities, was having to share its audience with Tiktok. This ban can be incredibly beneficial for this social media platform and can see an increase in the time people spend on Facebook. Aside from this, new-age platforms like Funimate, Roposo, and Sharechat are slowly gaining popularity and benefiting from the ban of Tiktok.  Content Webification Will Become Inevitable Offline content is not just outdated and out of style, it is quite lifeless in this innovation-driven world of today. Marketers must strive to continuously create eye-catching user interface (UI) and user experiences (UX) along with informative yet quirky content to attract attention.  Ancient PDFs and powerpoints simply do not make the cut anymore. A prominent example of content webification in recent times is the transformation of the content of a PPT/PDF into a dynamic website/microsite.  This helps curate experiences that grab your buyer’s attention and actually require them to engage. Content Webification also helps brands track and observe user patterns as opposed to traditional offline content. Ads Will Be Different In recent times, paid advertisements on social media & entertainment platforms along with search engines have been much more specific and directed towards the user’s actual needs.  Brands are keen to take advantage of these paid ads to highlight how their solutions and business/service offerings can be put to good use especially during the plight of the pandemic and the situation it has led to.  Having said that, in the current situation, brands are being very careful in creating the content for their ads. Right now, words that would, in any other event, be perfectly appropriate to use, maybe perceived differently.  Google recommends being careful with terms like “checkup” or “protection” as they can be deemed to be inappropriate in the current scenario.  Google also suggests that brands evaluate their assets thoroughly. For example, brands need to check the suitability of images and videos depicting social gatherings of people.  (source: google ads help)  A few industries that have especially performed exceptionally well in the COVID era when it comes to search ads, and are expected to keep up this performance are - 

• Nonprofits and Charities 
• Health and Medical 
• Business management 
• Finance
• Beauty and Personal Care
• Online Gifting 

Rebirth of Email Marketing Brands, e-commerce platforms, organizations, educational institutions - all have adopted Email Marketing as a reliable communication platform to reach their audiences in these uncertain times.  This has, in turn, led to individuals accessing and using their email IDs much more compared to earlier. Average opens are up across the board for March and April, despite the marked rise in send volume between February and March (email sends were up by 19% from February 2020 to March 2020). (Source: Campaign Monitor)  A reason why brands are putting emails on the frontlines of their communication strategy in times of crisis is that people tend to trust the information received through email more than they trust other channels. Aside from this, the emails are also observed to sound more helpful and supportive.  However, in order to make the emails more effective and relatable, brands are making sure that their messages express an appropriate sentiment.  Another thing that is being widely observed and will probably become the norm in H2 is asking for subscriber feedback. Needless to say, we are currently in the midst of an incredibly new experience and in such a situation, it never hurts to get feedback. Many emails are now coming with a closing note, asking people to share their opinion on whether or not they would like to hear more about the subject.  Agile Marketing Will Become More Important Than Ever If there’s anything that we have learned from this crisis situation is that it is incredibly critical to be agile in adapting to change. This brought one thing to the forefront - the current one-size-fits-all outlook to digital marketing is not feasible.  This is where Mar-Tech will be significant in leading the way for the future of digital marketing. New-age marketers are adapting to more real-time marketing technologies where data-driven, dynamic techniques allow immediate changes to the content being pushed out to all marketing channels. The post – COVID era will definitely be driven by online experiences and the marketeers need to be agile in leveraging this beforehand and accommodate the shift in consumer behaviors. Marketers will rely more on AI-driven models that will help generate the targeted ROI for the spends on Media. These trends make one thing clear, now marketers will have to rethink their strategies and get ready to embrace a whole new world of digital transformation. 

The global pandemic has brought a plethora of changes in basic day-to-day activities and functions, be it the way we work, shop, communicate, or even entertain ourselves. This shift in lifestyle has led to a clear transformation of consumer behaviour and patterns. It is quite clear individuals are spending more of their time online, with various facets of digital platforms becoming widely popular. Brands must leverage this opportunity to come up with engaging and impactful content to leave lasting impressions on their consumers through digital channels. Through the power of words and visuals, content can be used to connect with audiences and build a community of like-minded people.

Creators, Culture & Content

A digital channel and its wide array of functions is a great way to help cultivate brand image and awareness through content. You can position your brand by talking about what really matters to the consumers through relevant content. If your brand is strongly involved with positive causes or initiatives for the betterment of society, do not hesitate in to stand up for a cause that’s integral to the brand’s purpose. It is quite likely that this sentiment would resonate with your target audience, and in turn, build a sense of community and belongingness. Now is the time to drive engagement and active participation of your audiences. You must build on ideas (campaigns, competitions) that help energize social communities as well as bring people together on one common platform.

Creative Playbook 

Building brand identity & persona through communication design is an easy yet effective way to help create an online presence. Design capabilities are at an all-time high, with no signs of slowing down in the near future, so building consistent visual language with colour & typography is a great way to start. Branded content creators have been around for a while now, across nearly all social media and content platforms. Brands can further enhance their content creativity by investing even more time and resources in these specialised content creators and further exploring remote production. Social media platforms evolve at a rapid pace and missing out in these developments designed to augment your content is quite risky. For example, Facebook playable ads are a jump from the ordinary - a quirky and engaging way to advertise to users. 

Ad(ding) Value 

Winning the social media game revolves all-around maximising a users experience when they open their app & adding some value to their time spent browsing. This will help you stand out from the plethora of content a single user consumes in one session. As already explained, Facebook playable ads are a unique form of advertising online and help give users a chance to interact and participate with the brand. Playable ads can also be leveraged keeping in mind the recent shift towards online mobile gaming. Like playable ads, there are a variety of different social media elements that can be utilised to add value to user experience, including native content such as Instagram feed ads.

Feel It, Reel It

The importance of staying up-to-date with the latest elements of social media, and using them to enhance your content curation capabilities, simply cannot be stated enough. Instagram Reels is here to add an entirely new dimension to the platform. The feature follows a 15-second video format with its own set of creative editing tools like a countdown timer, speed adjustment & more. Unlike stories, Reels can be shared in the explore section & viewed by everyone on the platform. It is even possible for multiple reels to be recorded at once & different effects can be added to each clip. The feature also includes some quirky and innovative AR effects to help users add a unique touch to their videos.  With the recent ban of Tiktok, it is no surprise to see Instagram leverage this new feature to capture that entire user segment. While prior to the bane, Tiktok content creators strictly restricted themselves to that platform, now we will see a much wider and diverse segment using Instagram.  Simply due to the wide functions and capabilities of digital mediums now, the chances to engage and connect with users through innovative content are on the rise. Accurate targeting functions allow you the option to engage with relevant consumers, while new-age data insights and analysis give you a clear picture of how your content is resonating with users.

Imagine a world without content. A world that is so abstract that it becomes a self-negating proposition in itself. One that cannot be addressed using words that set the context and induces the imagination in the first place. But, for a moment, let's give it a try. What would it mean if nothing were written, if the pronouncement "I give you my word" was sufficient as a contract? If all languages would be spoken text, except that "text" would not exist. Suppose we would have been texting with our friends but only with images but not text. If there would be products but without any expiry date or how to use instructions written on it? Living without content would have been impossible 500 years ago and it still stands true. We all connect with content daily, be it from a magazine, song lyrics, Instagram caption, banners, labels on beauty products, and much more. Even different industry players are leveraging content in the form of content marketing to gain brand recognition & position. They are building a strong brand voice that captures their audience's attention and helps them differentiate from competitors.  The power of the content has never been greater than it is today. As Content marketing has now become one of the most effective methods of growing audience engagement, developing the brand presence, and driving sales, modern businesses must work to ensure they are creating valuable, high-quality content that supports and improves the customer journey. 3C's Of Content Marketing: Content Creation  When it comes to content marketing, the first and foremost step is creating content. With more and more consumers demanding a personalized experience, brands should aim to create interactive content since it is the perfect way to grab the consumer's attention & increase engagement. Curate Brands should not just create content to gain clicks, shares, or page views but to create something that the audience finds truly useful. To create something useful, brands should know their target audience. After knowing the audience, one will be able to create content according to the interests of the target audience. Rather than just telling themselves about the brand, the focus should be more on how the brand's products and services can solve the audience's problems. Circulate Brands must spend 20% of their time in content creation, and the rest of it in content promotion. It is time to focus on content promotion & distribution through collaborations, cross-publishing, repurposing content, etc. Brandbuilders & storytellers These days brands are continually looking out for innovative ways to engage their target audiences to achieve their goals. The success and popularity of influencer marketing have made brands move towards a model that celebrates this and enables them to make a mark to establish  Relevance To add credibility to the content by collaborating with an influencer who creates relevant content matching the brand's tonality. Reach By not jumping into the influencer marketing trend haphazardly and taking time to find an influencer that matches the brand. This way, they are able to deliver an authentic message to the specific target group that the brand is trying to reach, and be upfront about it. Resonance An influencer is known for its unbiased and authentic opinions. The fact that posts from an influencer don't appear as advertisement is one of the most significant benefits of influencer generated content. To resonate with the audience effectively, The brand should boost engagement in the influencer marketing campaign through user-generated & customized content. Connecting creativity with content Creativity is critical when it comes to standing out among the noises that distract the target audience daily. To start somewhere, here are a few ideas to kickstart conversations and improve overall brand recognition:

• Brands can take the help of blog posts as they are a cornerstone of B2B content creation due to their SEO benefits & help in the process of primary content distribution.
• Another way is to use gated content that can help generate leads as it requires users to fill in their details to receive access.
• As Robert Gerrish rightly said, "You just need one person to listen, get your message and pass it on to someone else. And, you've doubled your audience", podcasts are one of the best ways brands can talk to their audience. 

Funneling Content Finding the right content to answer the customer's questions, nurture their opinion of and relationship with the brand, and ultimately convert leads into paying customers is hard. So hard that most brands and marketers are lost when it comes to choosing the right kind of content. Every brand should keep these three stages in mind as to provide the right content at the right time to their audience: Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU)/Awareness Stage At this stage, brands capture their audience's attention by providing solutions to the target audience's most pressing needs through relevant content. This must be offered without asking anything in return.  Middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU)/Evaluation Stage Once people have been introduced to a brand and have received some degree of free value from them, it's time to convert them to an actual lead. Brands should help prospective buyers make the right decision by providing case studies, product demos & in-depth research reports. Bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU)/Decision Stage It's time to present customers with an offer that naturally transitions them into a paying customer. Send out offer reminders through drip email campaigns, free trials, discounts & consultations. On Top with SEO Yeah, creating top-quality content should be the priority, but it should be optimized for search engines. Brands should:

• Foster authority & trust by using high-quality links that pass value from one site to the other.
• Optimize their blog posts for featured snippets to give quick wins and drive traffic from the SERPs.
• Create content that focuses on the target audience with the right keywords & generate high-quality links back to their website.

Grow socially High-quality content has the best effect when it gets distributed over social media. It's no wonder that many marketers say that social media and content marketing go together like wine and cheese.

• If the content offered by brands is not meaningful or engaging, it can be tiresome, frustrating, and push the audience elsewhere. Creating share-worthy content in social media is the modern-day word of mouth.
• Establish a relationship with the audience by creating authentic content, such as personifying communication tonality to humanize the brand. This shows that the brand is interested in connecting with the audience and committed to building meaningful relationships with them.
• Focus on adding value to the customer's lifestyle, which helps to build a brand's reputation & establishing authority in the industry.
• Social media should not be used as a stopgap. Initiate direct communication with the audience. But do not bombard them with everything. Play with new ways to connect with the audience. For instance, one day, post a series of Instagram Stories to give customers a behind-the-scenes tour. Next, host a quick Q&A session via Facebook Live video streaming. 

At the end of the day, content is what really matters the most. Nobody will engage if the information is not right and useful to them. Consumers want to find topics and companies that they can relate to or aspire to. The content and conversations must be true to the brand's personality, motto, customers, and business."

Believe it or not, people have always been great listeners. From traditional storytelling predating the written words to more modern means of communication starting with tape recorders and now, using some of the most advanced 21st-century digital technologies.

No matter what one is consuming- music, news, talk shows, audiobooks, gripping podcasts, people are perpetually consuming information with their ears. Furthermore, audio-streaming is a clutter-free environment, which means consumers are less likely to get distracted. 

Think Stats 

A country like ours has always had a rich history with audio content. From the tales of Panchatantra to stories by Indian writers to music, our country has consumed content such as cricket commentary, Premchand ki Kahaniya, Shayari by Ghalib, and so much more across different platforms. The podcast market growing in India is just rediscovering its love for audio content.

Hence, it is of no surprise that India stands as the world's third-largest podcast listening market, and by 2023, the number of listeners might rise to 17.61 crores! One should keep in mind that in our country, there are over a billion phone connections; however, only 35% of them are smart. That means audio content can reach devices where video fails.

Attention Please!

Video content consists of extensive research and execution; however, the sound still accounts for 60% of an ad; it’s an area that creative agencies/marketers need to take advantage of. In a world that's becoming increasingly voice-controlled, this is the time for brands to build their sonic identity. 

Choose the right format

Interview: A panel-discussion or roundtable format, with a host who leads the conversation. It is a classic in the world of podcast/audio storytelling, features a consistent host, and a new guest every episode. This gives the audience a chance to learn something new every time they tune-in and be introduced to a lot of interesting people within a niche and learn from their expertise.

Monologue: The commentary-style podcast is built around one personality, which gives the show one voice or a single point of view. This is where the podcasters connect with the audience in an intimate manner and with people all around the world. Some of the best podcasters' not only offer their listeners entertainment/education but also serve up a slice of their heart: their passion, likes and dislikes, and soul. 

Multiple hosts: The podcast is divided between several people, or two or more co-hosts leading the show. This is the kind of format that involves two people having a conversation and generally have great chemistry. This is unlike an interview podcast; both are hosts. In a case like such, both of them will play a specific role in the conversation. For instance, one might talk about the idea/service/products, and the other will provide commentary or comedy.

Narrative: This storytelling style of the podcast focuses on how the content is presented. Many narrative podcasts have a decidedly linear quality, and generally, one might not see a shift in topic or segment. They are usually story-driven shows, as opposed to interviews and rely heavily on editing to splice together the right story, pulling from recordings, sounds, music, and other interviews.

Mixed/Hybrid: This hybrid format uses various elements of the other four content types & may repurpose content from other mediums, such as radio. For instance, the show starts with a discussion between two hosts and ends with an interview? Maybe one is a solo presenter, and for part of the episode, one dishes out expertise and then includes an appearance from one of the listeners? There are no rules in this one, and one can mix and match depending on what suits the show.

Think on your fingertips

Keep your podcast focused & narrowed to a single topic

As one progresses in podcasts, the fun also increases, and so does the comfort. But one thing that holds paramount of importance is to make sure that one doesn't become so relaxed that the conversation consistently strays off the topic. To keep oneself on track, follow scripts or notes, at least loosely. 

If one feels like that they are going down the wrong path, reign conversation back to the initial plan. That being said, not all tangents are bad, but make sure that one is not eroding the value of the episode.

Create fictionalized models of ideal customers & devise audio content based on that.

When producing content, it is very helpful to think about the kind of audience one wants to attract and try reaching out to them with the help of the podcast. Several marketers set up buyer personas that are fictionalised models of ideal customers. One can create such models as it will help craft the content.

Convert podcasts into articles & publish on content seeding platforms with a CTA to the original podcast.

One might feel like once they have posted their podcast, their job is done for the day. However, it is imperative that one convert their podcasts into long-format articles and publish them on content seeding platforms that have a CTA to the original podcast, as this will bring more traffic to the podcast.

Add good intro & outro music to the audio podcast to captivate consumers' attention.

Add music but do not infringe on copyrights. One can also add music in between the podcast that denotes segue to another topic or segment.

Effective promotion

Utilise platforms like Anchor, which help distribution audio content across various platforms.

Platforms like Anchor give one the freedom to record from anywhere. It helps capture audio straight from one's phone, iPad, desktop computer, all one has to do is use the Anchor's recording tools, and it is also compatible with most external microphones.

Leverage email marketing by sending monthly or bi-weekly recap of the latest podcast episodes to encourage subscribers to engage.

Make it personal. No matter how many emails you send out, try to make it personal and include some snippets from the podcast. Another thing one can incorporate is- send a note the day the podcast goes live and include a series of shareable media such as images, pull quotes, and links.

Urge subscribers to share reviews as positive reviews can help the podcast rank higher in searches.

Make a list of the subscribers and urge them to leave a review as it can help the podcast rank higher in searches. Make sure to reply to the reviews as well, and this will show how much one cares about the content they are publishing and also adds a personal touch.

Include a transcription with the podcast as it makes content more accessible for the audience & helps improve SEO rankings.

Many highly successful podcasts offer a full transcript of the entire podcast as it has great SEO benefits. Furthermore, it improves the discoverability of the episode by focusing on keywords, content structure, and topics. Not just that, but a transcript has the potential to make the podcast more accessible to people and can even split the topics that are mentioned in time brackets to help everyone find them easily in the podcast.

Closing Notes 

Research and statistics continue to prove that podcasting has revolutionised the audio landscape, as we witness listening numbers reach millions. And, to imagine that 20 years ago, podcasting or audio storytelling wasn't even in the dictionary, while now it plays a crucial part in the audio landscape. Moreover, with new-age consumers currently consuming content through various platforms and sources, the only way to stay relevant is by exploring every aspect.

Gone are the days when artificial intelligence (AI), voice search engine optimization (VSEO) and data-driven marketing were considered absurdly ambitious concepts. In present times, business leaders are greatly prioritizing implementation of these digital marketing trends to drive business growth and thrive in 2020. 

In the time ahead of us, we will see out-of-touch marketing strategies gradually become extinct. This is because personalized content, video, AI-based automation, transparency and brand values have become influential concepts for organizations' survival and success. 

Quick Takeaways:

- Marketing has gone past the traditional forms, i.e. branding and advertising. Hence, marketers must collaborate across departments and focus on building customer experiences while engaging them for lasting relationships. 

- Content visualization can be seen dominating the next year, as 64% of Internet users are more likely to purchase a product online after watching a video. And marketers can observe a 49% boost in business ROI with dynamic video retargeting. 

- Infographics will be an ideal content form to reach to audiences whose attention spans are less. The collection of imagery, minimal text, and relevant charts; infographics are 3 times more likely to be shared than other forms of content. 

- Statistics indicate that content marketing holds the potential to get 3x more leads than paid advertising. 55% of marketers are prioritizing to create content for blogs as a part of their marketing strategy. And 72% of marketers are improving their engagement through content marketing.

- According to research by Statista, there are around 3.9 billion email users in the world, and the number is expected to grow to 4.48 billion users by 2024. Furthermore, 122% is the average return on investment from email marketing. Witnessing the obvious growth of the medium; email marketing, business leaders should focus on prevailing and upcoming innovations in email marketing.

Customer experience will continue to reign. 

Each year, business owners spend a majority of their time driving customer engagement and serving for seamless customer experience. However, the average time that a human being can pay attention is 8 seconds, which brings a challenge for marketers to implement strategies effectively. 

Today's customer is mostly on-the-go; hence, seamlessness plays a vital role in customer engagement. Moreover, they are impatient, and the 'quick nature' of infographics and mobile marketing provides them with the information they want at their fingertips. This results in quick buying decisions, and as a result, marketers can witness increased conversion rates, which serves as a reason for mobile marketing to dominate the digital landscape. 

Artificial intelligence has changed in the wave in the marketing sphere. The hype around AI is growing with each day. Two of the significant transformative customer experience trends; personalization and chatbots are supported by AI technology. 38% of businesses are using forms of AI technology for better customer experience (CX). And the figure is projected to reach 62% by the end of the year. 

Management experts at Bain and Company indicated that a mere 5 per cent boost in customer retention increases profit by 25 per cent. Hence, businesses need to align CX with each aspect of their marketing strategy to provide greater experience, retain customers and attract new ones. 

Immersive technologies paving the way for innovation 

The sister technologies, Augmented reality (AR) and Virtual reality (VR) offer a more personalized and immersive experience. It helps customers make informed buying decisions. Moreover, Augmented reality saw a record-breaking growth last year. With big names like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google making serious commitments to AR technology, experts are expecting 2020 to be a year for fast-paced industry growth. 

Consumers already lean on map services, but the use of AR in the navigation will provide detailed directions through the 3D rendering of places with precise instructions.

A BRP report exhibited that around 48% of consumers are likely to buy from retailers that provide AR experiences. Hence, brands can leverage AR-assisted shopping apps to enhance the customer experience, benefit the distributors & the manufacturers and most importantly observe increased sales. 

The future of design resides with AR and VR technologies. Brands can produce products with improved and innovative design with AR by showing an immersive, realistic experience of the product being designed.

Get caught in the web-trends for improved user experience.

When it comes to UX and UI, it's important to be cohesive and ensure web accessibility. The terms are much more than an industry buzzword; they facilitate conversions and help marketers increase sales of products. 

Once a quote by Edward Tufte, American professor and statistician, "Confusion and clutter are the failure of design, not the attributes of information" has now turned into a fact. This stays true to user experience as well. One of the best ways to stand out and stay ahead of the competition curve is to stay accessible to the target audience. Hence, brands must focus on neat minimal UI/UX for a seamless customer journey. 

The loading speed will be a crucial element to drive success through SEO efforts and an essential factor in overall user experience. Fast loading websites result in improved search rankings on Google. With the help of Google's speed update algorithm, brands can diminish page load time for their websites. 

Design accents and movements on the screen, having a water-like feel for web design will explode in popularity for the year 2020. Marketers can incorporate the new trend of liquid animation on websites to improve the user interface to ensure users stay and come back for the experience. 

Devise improved rankings for SEO efforts

Today, 50.5% of the population speaks daily to smart speakers or mobile devices to well-known attendees, Siri, Alexa or Cortana. Voice searches have emerged as the new norm, and as predicted by ComScore, nearly half of the searches in the year will be voice searches. Hence, with the use of voice search technology in the SEO strategy by optimizing content & syncing it with search intent such as location-based searches, organizations and marketers can observe increased rankings. 

Schema, structured markup is a continuously evolving concept in the SEO sphere. It helps define the context of a search query and further simplify page content for search engines to easily understand what that page is about. Once added to a webpage, it creates rich snippets in search. These snippets will result in enhanced listings which are more attractive to users. 

Google releases hundreds of algorithm updates every year and this year will be dedicated to Google's new SEO algorithm, BERT. Marketing professionals can utilize it to target relevant, accurate content, especially with mobile users.

The number of zero-click searches has increased over the last few years. Today, zero-click searches have quite an impact. According to the SparkToro report, the previous year witnessed 50.33% of all Google searches ending without a click on both organic and paid search results. By optimizing zero-click searches with the implementation of structured data on the website, a boost in online presence can be noticed. 

Ad(d) value to bring more conversions

Segmentation serves as a key element to detect and define target markets. Companies will witness improved returns on ads and attract more B2B customers by targeting niche websites.

Utilizing Microsoft audience network or Google Display Network (GDN) based on the target profiling will allow running ads targeting users' demographic, professional placements for improved campaign and performance management. 

In-app advertising will be a useful strategy for target marketing. Studies indicate that people spend 90% of their browsing time using mobile apps. So, it wouldn't be surprising to say that at times, advertising brands through apps rather than websites will ensure higher click through rates. 

Organizations can run native ads with top-performing content & create complementary display campaigns using remarketing techniques. Interestingly, as many as 96% of people who visit the brand's website aren't ready to buy. Hence, the method of remarketing can be credited as a powerful way to draw those prospects back into your conversion funnel. 

Closing Notes  

Change is an integral part of the digital marketing sphere. For anyone operating a business, it is crucial to know about prevailing marketing trends. Hence, one must keep looking out to thrive and strive to embrace upcoming technologies to stay ahead of the competition curve. 

Digital for SMEs

The small and medium businesses (SMEs) in India comprise of 63.4 million units and accounts for approximately 1/3rd of India’s GDP, offering employment opportunities to an approximate figure of 460 million people. Similarly, in terms of exports, the SMEs contribution is estimated at about 45% of the total exports.  Despite the SME sector contributing to a sizable chunk of the country’s economy, traditional and out-dated business strategies and the low rate of technology influx has started to hinder these industries in enabling them to achieve their full potential. A primary barrier has been technology adoption, and this is where SME’s must strive to understand and adopt new-age digital channels to help amplify their businesses.  New Mantra’s for SME’s  With evolving habits and behaviour patterns, SME’s must stay up-to-date with ways in which they can understand their target audience and how to maximise their satisfaction. 

• CRM tools are a great way to increase customer retention - you can only think about approaching new customers once your current ones are happy enough. 
• Similarly, to attain an even more detailed understanding of their customers, You can consider carrying out a ‘KYC’. A KYC is a detailed onboarding process where businesses can collect and store detailed information as per their requirements. A KYC process can be made mandatory and helps promote transparency along with in-depth analysis of the buyer persona.

Tools Kit The benefits of exploring a diverse range of tools are multifold. Exploring tools across multiple functions ranging from social media to sales or even email can result in an array of benefits. If you’re looking to scale your business, an in-depth understanding of digital tools is a must.

• While social media has many uses, one of the primary benefits is the influence they have in maintaining reputations of brands. This is precisely why exploring ORM (online relationship management) tools to help customer interactions is a smart move.
• Similarly, by adopting an automated email marketing tool, you can build and hone strategies to target a large number of stakeholders. These tools can help in creating highly personalized messaging in emails and elevate the impact of your existing email marketing strategy.
• Lastly, exploring a Whatsapp Business API is another innovative way to build relations with both new and existing customers by offering them digital support and assistance. This offers a highly personalized experience and helps give your brand an identity - rather than an SMS - where a string of digits do not leave the same effect. 

‘E Route’ For SME’s  E-commerce is a strategic game-changer, particularly in recent months with the focus on offline selling at an all-time low. If as an SME you are yet to explore online channels for sales, it is never too late to start. E-commerce provides you an opportunity to break free from the limitations of physical commerce-enabling you to market yourself to a larger audience. With lower barriers to trade, and lower expenses without any rent and inventory costs, e-commerce is a no-brainer. Here are some tips to optimize your e-commerce strategies -

• Consider price, features, support, ease of use and performance while choosing an e-commerce builder.

• • Augment your e-commerce platform with the help of insightful product descriptions, video content, and quirky blogs. This helps keep visitors engaged and helps offer them an insight into your brand rather than just serve as a transactional platform.
  • Tinker around with diverse sale strategies and promotional offers to help understand your audience even better, and evaluate how these strategies affect your sales and revenue.
  • There are plenty of e-commerce platforms which are offering free assistance to businesses affected by the pandemic that are worth exploring.

• Evaluate whether you need an on-premises or cloud hosting environment to run an efficient e-commerce platform. 

S for Social, SME’s & Success Along with the standard features offered, social media platforms have taken distinct measures by launching innovative offerings specifically aimed to help SME’s. These offerings have been launched in light of the coronavirus pandemic which has brought a huge burden on the shoulders of SME’s while they faced problems staying afloat. Social media become the norm for marketing strategies, so these platforms went a step further to help out SME’s - 

• Utilize Facebook’s ‘Business Resource Hub’ that includes a ‘resilience toolkit’, helping businesses prevent disruptions. The Small Business Resiliency Toolkit holds a framework for small businesses that lack the time or resources to create an extensive plan to recover from business interruptions. The Toolkit is based on best practices and is designed to educate you on basic business resilience activities and approaches.

These resources will guide your company toward addressing preparedness issues while building the flexibility to handle potential business disruptions. The Toolkit is designed to lead any business, even one with no disaster experience or knowledge, towards greater resiliency.

• Leverage Instagram’s ‘Support SME Sticker’ - a feature that allows brand users to easily show their love for businesses through stories. They can tag businesses directly in the sticker to give their followers an overlook of the account. This feature is a great way to promote local businesses and help them thrive on social media.

• Similarly, on LinkedIn, SME’s can make use of the ‘Open For Business’ feature. This feature allows freelancers and small business owners to add their services to their LinkedIn profiles, which helps make them discoverable on the LinkedIn search engine.

SME’s form a substantial chunk of the economy in our country - and often face difficulties adapting to dynamic technological innovations that spring up on a consistent basis. In the digital world we live in today, it is imperative to embrace these new innovations to fully thrive and sustain business.