Pinklemonade issue 3

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The Whys and Hows of Social Selling on LinkedIn WhatsApp Business: It's Everything Your Brand Needs Tricks to Market Your Business at Trade Shows Influencers for the Win

THE MAXIMUS STORY

THE IN AND OUT OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATION An interview with

Abhinav Rahul Products and Channel Marketing, Max Life Insurance, Gurugram

For private circulation only February 2018 | Marketing Maximus Magazine | 1

In the News: The Latest Industry Bites, Served Fresh

WhatsApp Business: It's Everything Your Brand Needs

The Maximus Story: The In and Out of Internal Communication

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Amplifying Marketing Possibilities Intelligently

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18 Internal Communication: The Backbone of any Organization

Marketing Megatrends in 2018

What's Inside Website Performance: How Fast is Fast Enough?

The Whys and Hows of Social Selling on LinkedIn

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Apples or Oranges?

Find Out if Content or Copy is the Right Fruit to Grow Your Business

Breaking Boundaries with GE Healthcare's Champions Premier League

Influencers for the Win

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Artificial Intelligence:

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30 Tricks to Market Your Business at Trade Shows

February 2018 | Marketing Maximus Magazine | 3

In the News The latest industry bites, served fresh.

Network18 emerges as the most viewed and visited news network on YouTube in India

Amazon plots digital ad push with the launch of ad tech to help publishers make more money online

Jaypee University’s Kshitiz Gupta won AdAge India’s marketing pitch competition ﹘ Pitchathon

Super Bowl advertisers to face challenges in 2018 as NFL is dealing with multiple protests

After working with BCCL and Network18, Alok Nair joins Sahara Media Group as the new CMO

Discovery Communications’ new channel, Discovery Jeet, signs Netflix as the global video streaming platform

Berger Paints launches TVC to match up to the perspective of its Malayali target group

Ad spends in India to increase by 12.5% in 2018, says Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN)

Viacom buys Influencer marketing firm ﹘ WhoSay YouTube to create new super-safe tier for their advertisers by cleaning up their site

Zee Anmol dominates the Hindi General Entertainment Channel (GEC) market 4 | Marketing Maximus Magazine | February 2018

Alibaba achieved recordbreaking sales by using the FashionAI technology

Facebook’s ‘Watch’, social media’s new video hub, to stream footballer Tom Brady’s documentary series

Vodafone’s pug is back to showcase its strong 4G network February 2018 | Marketing Maximus Magazine | 5

CONTEXT REPLACING ADVERTISING Traditional advertising is dying a certain death. The proof?

Over 600 million consumers worldwide are using ad-blocking technology today. Consumers today want something better than the ‘one-way’ communication of advertising.

‘Context’ is slowly but surely replacing advertising. Tesla spent as little as $6 per car in advertising, less than 1/190th of the ad cost of its closest competitor, and outsold them by three times.

While Mercedes Benz was busy persuading the world to buy their cars, Tesla was having a direct conversation with its consumers about living fossil-fuel free.

By Madhuri Keta

As 2018 begins after a much deserved holiday downtime, there’s this curiosity to know what possibilities, challenges, and opportunities the year holds for the marketing industry. Here’s a look at the marketing megatrends in 2018 that we believe are here to redefine the space for good.

PURPOSE BEFORE PROFIT

 Ethically sourced coffee  Community service  Climate change initiative

According to a research conducted by The Economist Group, 79% of users prefer to buy from a company that functions with a social purpose. The same research showed that 83% of junior staff prefers to work for an organization that operates for a social purpose.

If your brand purpose makes a positive impact, people are more likely to buy your products or services. For instance, Starbucks has been striving towards 100% ethically sourced coffee and participating in community service besides launching a climate change strategy.

Purpose-driven brands such as 3M, Google, and Chobani have proven that the best way to make money is by putting ‘purpose before profit’ and supporting the interests of all stakeholders. To be successful and sustain that success, it is imperative to have a ‘brand purpose’ because it reveals the ‘why’ of your business and tells your customers what makes you unique.

If your brand purpose is honest and resonates with the customers, you could well be their hero! For example, Heineken’s ‘Moderate Drinkers Wanted’ marketing campaign deals with some serious issues related to alcohol consumption and prods both the consumers and the industry to promote ‘responsible drinking’.

Similarly, short-term rental site Airbnb sent its messages to Craiglist users looking for a room and solved the problems of its users in a timely manner and in a way acceptable to them. The engagement was honest, native, personal, and purposeful. To put things in a perspective, Airbnb’s target is to book over 100 million stays in 2017 within an ad budget of $23.5 million, while Hilton Hotels is looking to book over 140 million stays on an advertising spend of $188 million.

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MARKETING AUTOMATION 2.0 ON THE RISE According to 2016 ‘State of Marketing – Salesforce Research’, the best-inclass marketing organizations deploy as many as 14 tools on an average.

The report also found that a cohesive customer experience is possible only through integration and automation across tens of data sets, channels, and applications. The new era of marketing requires us to focus on automations across such hyper-connected networks.

The future of marketing is not about messages; it’s about creating contextual experiences. Given the variances in data structure, tools, and workflows in the industry today, only an Automation 2.0 framework can support this future.

According to Digital Ocean, 85% of high-performing teams implementing loT-based marketing, rate their results as ‘effective to very-effective’ at helping them create cohesive customer journey (Source: LinkedIn).

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CHATBOTS TO BE A FAVORITE AMONG CONSUMERS According to a recent MycleverTM study, about 70% of consumers prefer engaging via a chatbot rather than an app. The study also revealed that consumers consider chatbots to be the fastest way to find answers to their queries.

Forbes writer, Blake Morgan, believes chatbots are the future of ‘customer experience’ and have the power to replace search windows and many apps in the not-so-distant future. The case in point is AdRoll that has been using chatbots to empower its Sales Development Rep (SDR) team to increase the number of calls by 13%. What’s more, the SDR team now sets up almost 50% of all appointments via chatbot.

CHATBOTS GAINING CUSTOMER INSIGHTS “Not only does this make the chatbot better equipped to answer future questions and upsell additional products, it gives you a better understanding of what your customers need to know to close the deal.”

- Sujan Patel, Forbes Chatbots are going to be an irresistible temptation for marketers in 2018. They are gaining customer insights, using AI to get smarter, learning to negotiate, and getting more affordable!

Marketing consultant and bestselling author, Jay Baer, has begun using a chatbot to communicate with his audience and has been seeing almost ten-fold increase in open rates and a five-fold increase in click-throughs.

PR TO BECOME PARTICIPATORY Publishers no longer control the narrative of propaganda and PR today. Instead, a collective engagement of both the publisher and the consumer makes for a powerful and engaging narrative setting. Users today have as much content generation ability as the brands they interact with, thanks to the multitude of apps, technology, and tools at their disposal.

The power of ‘participation’ was evident by the 2016 US presidential election. When searching for ‘Election Results’ users were directed to a fake news story that stated that Donald Trump had won the popular vote. With over 325 backlinks, 45,000 shares on Facebook, and hundreds of comments, this article beat CNN hands down. Agree the fake news site was probably a bottom rung publication, yet it was able to change the narrative through ‘participatory propaganda’.

THE FINAL WORD It is clear that marketing in 2018 is going to be hyper focused on purpose, context, participation, and technology. To succeed, business organizations must ensure that they are listening to their customers, and relating to them through relevant, timely, and engaging content.

WhatsApp FOR Business It’s everything your brand needs

By Marian D'Souza

First, it revolutionized text messaging with an innovative cross-platform instant messaging service, completely changing the way we communicate. Now it’s all set to transform the way we interact with brands.

Right from the day WhatsApp made its way into our phones, brands everywhere have been looking at various avenues to leverage WhatsApp’s massive user base. Since its $22 Billion acquisition by Facebook in 2014, clouds of monetization have been looming thick over the app.

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum’s stance on traditional advertising not withstanding, many thought the app would in some way begin to integrate display ads. This was further reinforced in 2016 when WhatsApp waived its $1 annual subscription fee.

With over 1.3 billion monthly users, WhatsApp is now at a stage where it can easily generate revenue with some light advertising. WhatsApp Status has over 250 million daily users and can easily present ads between stories; similar to what Instagram does. That’s not all, the instant messaging service could also go the traditional way by simply

sending an ad directly to your inbox like Facebook’s Messenger.

Thanks to Koum’s vision and WhatsApp’s new Chief Operating Officer, Matt Idema’s (former Head

of Product Marketing ﹘ Facebook worldwide) expertise in product marketing, WhatsApp is well on its way to monetize the app without hampering the user experience.

The Dawn Of Whatsapp Business The first hints of WhatsApp Business appeared at the start of 2017, when some app developers decided to check its source code from the new version. Buried deep within the source code were a few lines that hinted at a handful of additional features for businesses. Although the news soon surfaced on various blogs and the media ran with it, WhatsApp remained tight-lipped, but not for long.

Finally on September 5, 2017 WhatsApp revealed on its blog ﹘ ‘Building For People, and Now Businesses’ ﹘ new features built around verifying businesses.

The piece also speaks of a paid enterprise app for large businesses and a free business app for smaller ones. While WhatsApp invited businesses to test the new app in a closed pilot program, the rest of the world is still waiting to learn more about its complete set of offerings for brands.

In an interview with the Economic Times, Idema spoke of their approach to monetize WhatsApp. He said, “We are trying to make interactions easier with businesses. WhatsApp Business is designed for small businesses and addresses the three challenges of lack of a business profile, managing messages at scale, and managing customers at one place.” While this gives us a fair understanding of WhatsApp’s vision for the app, we’re yet to receive a complete picture about its features and pricing strategy.

The LUCKY FEW Although any business is allowed to sign up for the Beta test, only a handful of businesses have been verified so far. You too can try your luck here and get in on the action. From our learnings, WhatsApp has been primarily targeting businesses in locations that generate a greater revenue; India being one of them. As of now, four major Indian brands have been verified by WhatsApp and are actively using the service.

Online ticketing platform

Online bus booking platform

Online food search engine

Online pharmacy

These businesses get to try out WhatsApp’s enterprise tools before the rest of the world.

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A PEAK UNDER THE HOOD BookMyShow was the first Indian brand to be part of WhatsApp’s pilot program. It was also the first to reveal what goes on behind WhatsApp’s enterprise tools.

BookMyShow made WhatsApp services available to a limited set of customers early in November, 2017. Currently about 25% of the brand’s user base receives WhatsApp notifications. In fact, the online ticketing giant has revealed their plan to make WhatsApp their default ticket confirmation channel in the near future. Their product management team has also reported that they currently have access to two Application Program Interfaces (APIs) of WhatsApp, which include:

SEND

RECEIVE

These help the booking giant send confirmation messages to its customers by automatically detecting if the number used to book tickets uses WhatsApp. If the number is not registered with WhatsApp or is not reachable, the confirmation is sent via SMS. The business is also able to track and closely monitor the WhatsApp messages through a dashboard integrated with these APIs. Currently BookMyShow is not responding to any queries or customer support requests via WhatsApp due to lack of personnel, but plans on implementing this service in the near future.

It also reports that currently all WhatsApp’s enterprise features are provided to the company free of cost, and WhatsApp has not yet shared how they plan on charging for this service after the beta test.

HOW CAN YOU USE WHATSAPP BUSINESS? WhatsApp Business is all about connecting brands with people. In fact, many business owners have already started integrating WhatsApp in their everyday operations.

BBC accepts news tips in London via their official WhatsApp number

Local restaurants in Hong Kong are accepting table bookings via WhatsApp

1mg is using the platform to obtain customers’ prescription copies

Russsh, a concierge service in Mumbai, has built its business solely on WhatsApp

Government services in India, including Police and Transport departments, have started addressing grievances and providing updates

Family doctors have started offering consultation through WhatsApp

Companies are using it to drive internal communications

Retailers are using the messaging app to inform their customers about offers, discounts, and arrival of fresh stock

While WhatsApp’s standalone app has opened up a plethora of opportunities for organizations worldwide, they plan to take things up a notch with their new targeted APIs. With BookMyShow’s sneak preview, WhatsApp’s blogs, and a healthy bit of speculation, we can suggest that the app is poised to streamline communication between businesses and their customers.

bots on WhatsApp ﹘ potentially increasing the volume of customers a business can service via the messaging app.

WhatsApp is also working with National Payments Corporation of India to allow users to send and receive payments via Unified Payment Interface (UPI). This will allow businesses to charge their customers for services directly through the app. In addition, there are talks about building automated

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Sources: http://www.businessinsider.in/WhatsApp-says-it-will-chargebusinesses-to-message-customers/articleshow/60380566.cms https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/general/26000067 https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WhatsAppBusiness https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/05/whatsapp-business-app/

https://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/mobile/ whatsapp-debuts-business-app-for-small-companiesenterprises/60381671 http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/whatsappruns-pilots-in-india-to-make-money-by-charging-firms-forservices-117090600445_1.html

Everything that we’ve heard about WhatsApp Business looks like it is surely going to break the market. But without a release date all we can do at the moment is gear up for the launch by:

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Signing up for the beta test Getting your business a unique number Interacting with your existing users on WhatsApp

Buckle up, a world of new possibilities awaits you!

February 2018 | Marketing Maximus Magazine | 11

THE IN AND OUT Q OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATION An interview with

Abhinav Rahul Products and Channel Marketing, Max Life Insurance, Gurugram

Nowadays, the importance of good internal communication cannot be understated. However, do you think Indian companies are catching on to this maxim fast enough?

Many Indian corporates are catching on a new trend called Employees First. As the name suggests, it’s about engaging employees to ensure more delighted customers. As this change is a significant one, it will be a while before such a mindset takes firm root in businesses. With many Indian corporates growing in size and stature, internal communication is assuming greater importance with each passing day.

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What do you think is the biggest challenge in internal communication today?

The challenges crop up when internal communication is not tied to the organization’s bigger picture or the targets that need to be achieved. Most other challenges are operational in nature that are easy to resolve. Through effective

that improves our internal interactivity.

And with more features being added over time, eCube will be the nerve center of our organization.

Do you think emails are becoming obsolete for company communication in the face of integrated platforms such as Slack and Hipchat? What are the trends you’re seeing right now?

Our ambition is that eCube should become the singular source of information, interaction, and knowledge sharing for all our employees. Many of our business units have shown keen interest in promoting their communication campaigns, sales contests, policies, and promotions across the organization using eCube.

Although there is a growing preference for this platform, it will be awhile before it becomes an integral part of every employee’s life.

The role of emails will undergo a significant change in the coming years.

While it will continue to play a role in official transactional communication, its usage will get limited for engagement communication. Social media has changed the information consumption and sharing habits of the new generation, making people more open and ready to share information about themselves and their work. Every ‘like’ is an appreciation or recognition for them. Unfortunately, emails fail to serve that purpose.

But the process is still underway and businesses are yet to become a regular topic of discussion in management meetings. With internal communication, brands can now align their communication with company objectives, keep employees informed, and engage with them frequently. In addition to reduced attrition rates, this will increase loyalty and advocacy too. So far, top management is only looking at internal communication to streamline operations, but not as a tool that solves business problems. What’s more, businesses have realized that internal communication is the best way to stay connected with employees as it provides them with an interactive platform like no other.

By Nikita Shroff

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Q

internal communication, businesses can create that ‘pull’ by offering solutions that meet employees requirements.

Organizations are also becoming more informal in the way they are structured and how people communicate with each other. However, they do need to adopt tools that offer employees the flexibility to create groups, manage projects, and share information with ease. Integrated platforms, which allow seamless shift from one tool to another without any loss of information, is the need of future.

Q

On a related note, Max Life’s eCube platform has been active since 2016. How has it improved your internal communication, and what have your employees’ reactions been to it? eCube is not just our internal communication platform. It also hosts an extensive knowledge management facility

Q

The presence of smartphones in India is at an all-time high right now. How does this affect organizations?

No doubt technology integration is the ask of the employees — and our IT teams are working towards it. However, the risk of misplacing internal data and customer information need to be resolved adequately. While these data security issues are being addressed, mobile solutions can very well be used for employee engagement.

Q

How do digital platforms encourage employee engagement?

Social media is the new social reality. In such a scenario, adopting digital tools for internal communication is important. Digital platforms provide opportunity to interact with more people where geographical distance no more remains relevant. In fact, digital platforms can help blur the lines between work and life so that the friends at work can continue to be friends beyond work.

February 2018 | Marketing Maximus Magazine | 13

INTERNAL COMMUNICATION: The Backbone of any Organization

Internal communication is to an organization what sandwiches are to Joey Tribbiani — absolutely essential! While utmost importance is given to smooth communication between a business and its clients, equal weightage must be given to communication within the organization as well.

Clear, concise, and quick delivery of messages to the intended audience is the backbone of any successful organization, big or small. For example, a company implements a new leave policy, but fails to communicate the same clearly to its employees, can you imagine the chaos?

A solid internal communication strategy is crucial in preventing such misunderstandings.

It also makes sure that: DEPARTMENTS WORK IN TANDEM

By Shamolie Oberoi

EMPLOYEES ARE MOTIVATED

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS PROBLEM-FREE

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Every organization has different departments that take care of various aspects of their work. However, they are all part of a cohesive whole, working towards the organization’s objectives. For this to translate, the role of each department must be clarified. Once their duties have been communicated to them internally, each department realizes it’s role in the cohesive whole. Activities like forming a book club allow all employees to express themselves creatively, making it a fun team building exercise.

Picture this: you just got a new job. You’re excited about what you can learn and achieve. You start working, only to realize you don’t know what exactly you’re supposed to be doing. No one’s guiding you or holding you accountable for your work. You’re bound to feel low, right? You’ll feel like no one gives your role importance — instantly, your morale plummets. Efficient internal communication prevents just this — it makes sure your employees know what they’re doing, and how they’re contributing, which in turn keeps their spirits high and increases productivity.

How many times have you called a help desk, only to find that the executive on the line doesn’t have the answer to your query? Too many times to count, surely. Clear communication that reaches all levels of an organization ensures that everyone — from the CEO to the customer service executive — can answer every query, no matter how small. Thus, efficient internal communication equals happy, loyal customers and clients!

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Having an effective internal communications strategy can make or break your organization.

But, planning this strategy can be a challenge — which is why we bring you six simple steps you can follow:

1 ASSESS YOUR CURRENT STRATEGY Do you find that often some of your employees are unaware of policy changes or directives?

This could be something as basic as toilet etiquette or a change in appraisal policies.

If yes, then you’re doing something wrong. Ask yourself: what are you saying, and to whom? Are you implementing a top-down strategy? This could turn the delivery of messages into a game of Chinese Whispers — perhaps it’s time to change. How you’re delivering the message is important. Are your messages full of jargons, or words not everyone would be able to understand? Take an objective, hard look at your strategy and work from there.

2 DEFINE WHAT YOU’RE WORKING TOWARDS Set Goals. While planning a strategy, ask yourself: why am I doing this? What should this strategy achieve? Are you only looking to fix existing issues, or does your communication strategy have a larger goal?

Are you looking to increase productivity? Raise employee morale? Answer these questions and you’re well on your way to building a strategy that others would want to follow. Ensure your goals are measurable and attainable, then move on to the next step.

3 IDENTIFY YOUR NEW TARGET AUDIENCE Not every message needs to go to every department in the organization. For example, changes in hiring policy can only be communicated to the senior management. However, changes in HR policies, or the creation of a sexual harassment committee, must be communicated to all the employees. So, figure out what you need to say and to whom. For messages that need to be disseminated organization-wide, make sure it’s made understandable to each employee, from top to bottom.

4 FOLLOWING FROM THIS, DETERMINE YOUR BEST CHANNEL Don’t assume every employee has access to, say, email, at all times. Take for example an NGO engaged in field work. If there’s an urgent message that needs to go out to the field workers, how would you do it? Shooting an email or a Facebook message is probably not an option. Plan ahead for such possibilities.

Identify what works best for your organization. If it’s an organization with several hundred employees, common platforms like Yammer or Hipchat might be best. For small organizations with say 50 or less employees, emails and WhatsApp may be the most convenient option.

Understand the scale and functions of your workplace, and then decide on the communication channels accordingly.

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KEEP THINGS SIMPLE

REASSESS REGULARLY

You’ve identified problems, your audience, and your preferred channels. Now, to the most obvious — don’t complicate things. You’re not writing a literature assignment that requires flowery language, so use simple words, ensure your spellings are correct, and keep your messages short. No one has time to read an email that goes on and on for pages, or even paragraphs. Steer clear of language that is overly casual or extremely complex — it’s about striking that fine balance. Hold workshops and short trainings on effective communication, and it’ll be worth it in the long run.

You now have a new plan in place, but the work doesn’t stop here.

You need to make sure your plan is compatible with the changing needs of your organization. Create an assessment outline. Every year, year and a half, revisit your communication strategy, base your assessment on predefined metrics. Has your organization expanded greatly over a couple of years? Have departments been added or eliminated? Might be time to rework your internal communication plan accordingly.

According to research conducted

by Mckinsey Global Institute, productivity increases by 20-25% in organizations with connected employees. So there you have it — internal communication is like the proverbial apple a day.

It’s good for your organization’s overall health!

Happy employees equal happy clients — invest in an effective internal communication strategy today. Your employees will thank you for it.

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February 2018 | Marketing Maximus Magazine | 17

WHERE CAN AI BE USED IN MARKETING AND ADVERTISING

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

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Amplifying Marketing possibilities Intelligently 2

By Gayathri Vaidyanathan

Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) is an important application of AI in display advertising. Reaching the right audience with the right creative is a marketers dream. The myriad inputs for arriving at the perfect creative that is customer specific is the result of a long, tedious, and hitherto manual process.

DCO helps churn out ads on the fly based on behavior and purchase data, machinelearning algorithms, and also automates the testing of various permutations and combinations of creatives before arriving at the ‘right’ solution.

Smart Content Content has always been king, and will remain so! Customers are increasingly looking for meaningful online experiences and most effective content managements systems use content that is right for the

Persado, a cognitive content marketing tool that can generate smart personalised content

customer at the right time. The power of AI is to deliver personalized content to every user across various digital media based on deep learning from his/her interaction with a business. Some examples include

BoomTrain for a unified view of customers with predictive intelligence

Narrative Science to generate ideas in natural language from data

By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.

- Eliezer Yudkowsky Picture yourself picking up your favorite chocolate bar from a retail store and in real time the marketer gets to know the demographics of who is standing in front of their store display and whether you liked the offering or not from your facial expressions. That is AI powered ‘ShelfPoint’ from tech vendor Cloverleaf for you and this is just the tip of the iceberg! Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been the buzzwords for the last couple of years thanks to Google throwing its weight behind these new game changers — especially for every industry that has gone digital. Can marketing and advertising be far behind ?

Like they say — Forewarned is forearmed.

Understanding what AI technology means for the industry with its promise and perils helps ride the wave and reap results. Read on for some suggestions on how AI can make a marketer/advertiser’s life easy.

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Let’s begin with a look at the cornerstones of an AI system: Data and Algorithms.

Data – AI trains its algorithms based on data, naturally then the quality of the output depends on the accuracy of data — Garbage In, Garbage out (GIGO).

A case in point — Microsoft’s Chatbot — Tay which had to be pulled down for learning from and mirroring racist conversations! Big data analytics is now de facto in most businesses and has been a catalyst in the AI revolution. A shocking 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are being created worldwide with 90% of existing data created only in the last two years.

Algorithms – This is the crux that churns insights from all the data, and the algorithm is as good as the brain behind it. This piece of black box, which is far from transparent, decides the ‘intelligence’ of the system.

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Chatbots AI-powered Chatbots are passé, at times it’s hard for customers to identify if they are communicating with a human or a Chatbot. The advantages of Chatbots are that they are always online, with almost no wait time, and more importantly offer a frictionless human experience.

Surprisingly these bots help businesses build a relationship with the customer.

Beauty retailer Sephora has taken the AI agent a step further by using them as advisors for end users to help them choose cosmetic products and get a look and feel of the product before making a purchase. Just upload your pic and the AI-powered Virtual artist will handhold you through a makeup session, and help you with choice of shades and makeup techniques.

While there are other areas like automated image recognition, AI-powered customer

behavioral insights, predicting customer disengagement, website personalizations where AI can be used we’ll save these for another day!

OUR CLOSING THOUGHTS - AI might not be the elixir to every marketing woe, but it definitely can be a magic wand in the hands of an insightful strategist who carefully uses it to augment the human touch of an online business! Just like any technology AI has its pitfalls. Deploying it for marketing and advertising calls for careful evaluation of the technology stack to suit specific needs and investments in hardware, software, and talent to use these systems effectively.

However AI holds a lot of promise in the marketing world and we’re on the cusp of quantum leap!

Website Performance:

During peak traffic, more than 75% of online consumers move on to a competitor’s site rather than suffer delays, half of them never return, and a good percentage of them go on to negatively review the website.

How fast is fast enough ?

While it’s critical to rank well in the Google SRPs, it is also essential to retain the viewer with a highly responsive page. Now that we have highlighted the issue, it’s only fair to give you some easy win tips to make improvements to the website performance:

1 Choose the right Website Hosting Service: Assessing how fast is your web hosting should be your first port of call. Striking the right equilibrium between budget and hosting package will go a long way in making the site agile. Especially, if the site is loading slowly because of multiple user access at the same time.

By Gayathri Vaidyanathan

2 Minimize HTTP requests: A leaner website is a faster one. A good 80% of time is spent in downloading the elements needed when a page loads — more the elements, more the HTTP requests. Hence, it’s a no-brainer that reducing the number of HTTP requests needed to make the page render translates to a nimbler site.

Only in stories the tortoise finishes first, in reality everyone wants the websites to be Duracell bunnies!

Why should a marketer understand the nitty-gritties of website performance? Simple, the KPIs for a good digital marketing strategy are directly or indirectly dependent on the business web page. It’s no rocket science to infer that faster websites mean better conversions and more revenue. Google’s love for

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Second

7%

Delay in page load time

Loss in conversions

your web page is directly proportional to your pageload speed because: • •

47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less 57% of visitors will abandon a page that takes 3 seconds or more to load

11% Fewer page view

In dollar terms, this means that if your site typically earns $100,000 a day, this year you could lose $2.5million in sales.

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16% Decrease in customer satisfaction

3 Minify resources like HTML, CSS, and Javascripts: Your website has to load a lot of files, including your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These are written with formats like white spaces, new line, tabs to improve readability and maintainability. The computers do not need a readable code to execute!

A quick way to speed up your code is to ‘minify’ it.

As the name justifies, Minify, is a programming term which means to remove any characters that are not required for the execution.

4 Prioritize above-the-fold content: Above-the-fold (ATF) is simply the first screen's worth — anything you can see without scrolling. It’s critical to get users an eyeful within the first few seconds. This means restructuring the HTML to load ATF content first and deferring anything that is not critical.

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Reduce Server response time: Google recommends server response time to be lesser than 200 ms. How robust a server is depends on two things: •

How effectively the existing resources are used and

•

Upgrading resources that are bottlenecks to performance. Typical scenarios would be fine tuning the database queries, configuring the server software to best suit the business needs.

6 Optimize images : Large images are bandwidth guzzlers. The three most important aspects of an image are — the source attribute, format, and size. Find the right size for your images before uploading them, use a JPEG format preferably and do not forget to always include a valid URL with the source attribute. Improving the image will yield the biggest bandwidth savings. Using Sprites and serving scaled images are some of the ways to optimize.

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Install Google PageSpeed on your server: Since all websites want to rank up on SPRs, it helps to use their performance analysis tools for evaluating and suggesting improvements.

Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network): CDNs improve the response time of servers by hosting your files across a large network of servers around the world. When a page is requested for, the server closest to the client responds to it.

This cuts down the bandwidth by more than half and helps in distributing the load across servers, ensuring service is up and running at all times.

10 Add an Expires header: Configuring the browser with an expires header tells whether it should request a specific file from the server or grab it from the cache. The boost in responsiveness is achieved by reducing —

8 Host your static files in the cloud that uses a CDN: More than 75% of end-user response time is spent downloading images, CSS files, and scripts which are the static components in a web page. Your application's load will be reduced by offloading serving static assets to Cloud Storage. Popular cloud offerings from Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google are easy on the pocket and offer best-in-class reliability and performance for file storage services.

Store these as buckets and make them available for the websites to use.

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• •

The list is never-ending and with the availability of new tools and analytics with every passing day, there is no end to tweaking the performance for better results. Case studies by Amazon and Walmart, have reported an increase in conversions

The need for users to download the same files from the web server twice The RTT by cutting down on HTTP requests

for every second of improvement to their business.

In an ‘instant world’, where people are perpetually impatient, improving site speed is one of the easiest things to do to see instant improvement in revenue and customer gratification!

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Apples or Oranges?

By Varun Vibhakar

Find Out if Content or Copy is the

Right Fruit to Grow Your Business

The Fruit Basket In the marketing world, we often hear people use the terms ‘content’ and ‘copy’ interchangeably. In their perspective, these words mean the same – anything written with the purpose of representing a brand and its products. And while this is partially true, there is a world of difference between the purpose of writing content or copy, and the objectives they achieve. To paraphrase the idiom, they are as different as apples and oranges – both fruit but very different fruits.

The Apple To simplify it to its core, content is a lot like an apple. It is packed with nutrient-like information about the brand, its offerings, and any latest news from the company – information aimed at educating us. In order to achieve this purpose and to be successfully engaging, long-form content depends heavily on structure, personality, authenticity, and credibility. These requirements are a throwback to content’s earliest forms – product brochures, newspaper editorials, and magazine articles. Today, you find content in lengthy write-ups such as blogs, press releases, aboutus pages on websites, and DIY articles.

Features such as these can be a tad bland and boring, just like the apple.

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The Orange Citric, juicy, and sure to elicit a reaction, the zesty copy is anything but bland and unexciting.

Unlike content, copy is written with a sole purpose in mind – to sell! This objective includes engaging online and offline customers, pitching brand perception, and most importantly, impacting sales on-the-ground. In order to achieve this, copy goes all out. Jazzy headlines, witty turns-of-phrase, bold one-liners, and persuasive callsto-action are molded by some very clever editing to make us open our hearts and wallets to the brand and their products. While it hasn’t necessarily evolved since its conception, today, copy can be found across article headlines, Tweets and Facebook posts, corporate taglines, and more than the occasional slogans. The refreshing tang of these items attract attention to a brand and its products, making it hard to forget – not different from the taste of a ripe, succulent orange.

Which Fruit is Right for Your Business?

To know if your business would benefit more from publishing content or copy, we will have to consider what your appetite is in the mood for. After all, apart from them representing very different ends of the fruit basket of writing, content and copy also achieve very different purposes. For instance, informative, well-worded content fulfils the goals associated with the bottom of the sales funnel -- those which build trust in the brand and engage with prospective customers at a personal level. On the other hand, sharp, crisp copy piques readers’ interest and entices customers to buy products, fulfilling objectives on the top of the sales funnel. To boil them down to their essence, content educates, while copy sells and it is up to the brand to decide if these fruits need to be served separately or paired together.

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Mention your accomplishments (keep it crisp and impressive) in your role description. This helps build trust and provides basic information that can be avoided through email enquiries.

The Whys and Hows of Social Selling on

If social selling is the Batman of the marketing world today, LinkedIn is the Batmobile!

In addition to just driving your social media image, the platform is also capable of boosting brand appeal by showcasing its strengths and connecting with prospective clients.

So how is it different from the other social media platforms? Well, while Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram set the stage to pursue a lead by providing insights, LinkedIn empowers you with a direct connect to that very lead. And if you’re smart about your marketing efforts, arming yourself with this opportunity is a must. Here’s how.

Let your profile speak for itself

“Personal branding is distinctively marketing your uniqueness.”

- Bernard Kelvin Clive, Personal Branding Coach

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Create a brand image that will lead you to prospective clients, and also guide them to you. The most effective and least obvious way to do this is by highlighting your past successes. Here are a few tips to hone your brand image on LinkedIn:

Your profile picture is key. When you are being evaluated for a future business, your picture brings a certain level of trust and helps save you from being classified as spam.

- Koka Sexton, Social Selling Leader

Make the most of the platform Effective social selling, as explained by Koka Sexton, is offered by LinkedIn through a simple, plausible, two-step process.

By Aishwarya Menon

"Leverage social selling to build relationships with your buyers early-on; create trust and value before you have a dialogue about price."

‘Listen’ socially, and identify your clientele

1

Social listening does not mean just tracking specific words about your brand via an analytics tool or answering brand-related queries. It is also the use of features to recommend leads that fit your client profile. LinkedIn’s LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides the algorithm to do just that!

This standalone tool and its powerful set of search capabilities gives better visibility into your network of prospects, and helps find secondary and tertiary clientele.

2

Approach your clientele effectively

Before you make your first move with a potential client, share relevant industry content to come across as a thought leader in your space. LinkedIn makes this process easy.

And if sharing written content wasn’t good enough, LinkedIn Video is now a great way to broaden your reach.

You can then focus on the needs of prospective clients based on your research, and make initial contact via this dynamic social platform. The next step would be to take the conversation offline, before diverting to your brand or initiating business.

HEADLINE Keep your headline crisp. You are ‘x’, and you help ‘y’ using strategy ‘z’. That’s your first impression, and it sticks.

Give your evaluators an overview of the kind of work that you do and the passion with which you do it in your (short) summary. They want to know you, but may not have the time to read something too detailed.

Top off your efforts with insights Want to take it to the next level? Start by assessing whether social selling has worked for you. LinkedIn brings you SSI — a tool that checks your LinkedIn activities and scores you on a scale of 0-100. You are marked based on your social media image, your focus on approaching clientele, and the business relationships built.

LinkedIn does not merely broaden your search for business, but helps your brand reach the right kind of audience. Gone are the days when it was a platform to exchange resumes. Its wide visibility and reach make it one the most efficient social networking sites of today.

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Influencers for the

They understand your consumers better than you do Considering social media influencers’ livelihoods depend on keeping their audiences engaged, they are unsaid veterans of consumer behavior and preferences.

When they claim a certain campaign won’t work for you, it’s in your best interest to take their word for it.

With the world having come a full circle, we’re back to the word-of-mouth era.

This is precisely why social media influencers are relevant, sprawling, and successful.

By Isha Garg These professionals are experts in a certain field, and create content to engage, entertain, inspire, and influence their followers. They take to social media as a full-time job, and are essentially a brand in themselves. As an additional source of income, they also endorse and promote certain brands that might resonate with their audience ﹘ and this is where the potential growth of your business lies.

Let’s face it. Even the most well thought-out ads tend to get overlooked, or worse ﹘ ad blocked. So how can you make your way to your target audience?

Easy. Make social media influencers your best friends. Besides giving you exposure to a newer and larger audience, they are your business’ saving grace, and here’s why.

They’ll get you better returns for your money Influencers don’t just have a large audience base; thanks to the freedom of choosing the content we see, this audience is one that chose to be there. Invest in the right influencer, and you’re sure to garner attention from a vast, and very convertible target audience.

Because the posts they see aren’t forced on them, they’re genuinely interested in giving your product

They are more credible to your audience When people scroll through their social media feeds, they expect (and prefer) to see content they’ve actually opted for. This is where social media marketing faces a drawback as compared to influencer marketing.

An influencer’s follower base is, without question, more likely to take his/her word at face value as compared to any ad imposed on them. In fact, influencer endorsements work better than a celebrity’s as they’re more real and relatable. Besides, they are

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Influencers don’t just preach to their audience ﹘ they build relationships. Since they know exactly how to communicate with the audience and sell to their followers, it’s essentially zeroeffort from your end! All you need to do is give them your product and let them weave their magic.

of the Matter YouTube influencer Jack Douglass knew that the best way to market Lynda.com was to challenge his audience to learn something from the site and showcase it. Sure

enough, engagement numbers went through the roof, with due credit to Jack’s idea and his large follower-base.

a look and are more open to buying it. So, find an influencer that targets the same set of people as you, and watch your consumer base grow!

of the Matter The cosmetic brand NYX, for instance, grew into a multimillion dollar industry, all thanks to influencer marketing. Since influencers focus on quality over brand-name, they promote small

and big companies alike if they’re fleshing out great products.

experts in their field and know what they’re talking about, which gives your product/service the validation it needs.

of the Matter A good example would be how PewDiePie, a popular YouTuber, effectively helped grow Loot Crate’s business by seamlessly weaving it into his everyday content. The brand’s fun, laid-back culture resonated perfectly with PewDiePie’s subscribers, making it better accepted among a larger number of people.

So, shift your focus to capturing a super convertible audience base with social media influencers ﹘ and watch your business boom like never before!

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Tricks to

market your business at trade shows

PRE-SHOW MARKETING What?

Plan ahead “Plan your work and work your plan”

Why?

How?

In-depth research and strategic planning

Perfect business opportunity to:

Define and gather information on competitors

Gain valuable intel and insight into your competitors’ strategies to know what works and what doesn’t

Attend similar trade shows to identify the layout and demonstration strategy used by competitors

Select interactive, confident booth hosts who know your brand inside out

Network with incoming customers and clients for better leads generation

Pick from your best, most knowledgeable team members to be the face of your brand

Begin marketing three months prior to the trade show to get the buzz going

Significantly increases the conversion of booth visitors into qualified leads

Online and offline promotions (mailers, social media posts, posters, flyers, etc)

• Interact with customers and competitors • Identify suppliers • Network • Generate publicity

• Pick the right show • Set clear objectives with inputs from the sales team • Prepare a contact and mailing list

By Nikita Shroff

It’s no secret that trade shows are the big ticket to be heard and seen in the market. In fact, many companies allocate a major chunk of their annual marketing expenditure, not to mention time and effort, to these shows.

While this may sound like a child’s play for marketers, it does require a lot of patience and perseverance for the results to show.

To help you become the master of the trade (shows), we’ve compiled an extensive flowchart to show you how.

Map out your competition “Competitors push you to achieve more”

Assemble a team “Teamwork makes the dream work”

Get marketing “Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart”

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POST-SHOW MARKETING

AT-SHOW MARKETING What?

Display products & services

Showcase your brand’s best products and services

“People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic”

Visual demo / VR experience “The brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text”

Promotional giveaways “What makes brands stick and tick is the ability to make it memorable"

Host contests “Content is King, but engagement is Queen and the lady rules the house!”

Why?

Give customers the chance to experience products and services first hand

How?

Opt for unique and interactive collaterals to drive more engagement and interaction • Textured business cards • Touch-based product displays • Velvet cover books • Brochures • Flyers

Provide your customers with demos and samples that give them the look and feel of your product

Visual formats appeal far more than any other format (Such as a flyer or poster)

Carry the material you wish to display or even get a prototype along for greater effect

Branded promotional giveaways such as stationery, badges, cups, and electronic gadgets among other things

Make your brand both likeable and memorable

Distribute your brand’s merchandise to visitors who stop by your booth

Have prize wheels and trivia with cash prizes and mystery gift box giveaways

Drive the the public to your booth, give them the chance to win branded merchandise

In-booth contests and games

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What?

Follow-up strategy “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all”

Draft personalized follow-up messages for the people you meet

Why?

Keep track of customers and prospective leads, giving them little to no opportunity to forget the brand

How?

Make a master list of the people you meet at the show and get in touch with them shortly after via phone calls and emails

So, there you have it – a flowchart that is going to change the face of your next trade show appearance. After all, great execution is the ultimate differentiator.

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GEHC CPL Poster While we kept things simple and straight forward for its founding year, we decided to take things up a notch for its second year. Based on the theme of ‘Galli Cricket’, the campaign was spread across eight weeks with 15 participating teams. Each of them were given a set target to achieve, with spot awards and winners announced every week. What’s more, the campaign was promoted across multiple channels through posters, flyers, mailers, videos, scoreboards, and even a customized anthem!

Breaking boundaries with GE Healthcare’s Champions Premier League

And the big prize?

Tickets to the IPL, signed memorables, merchandise, live screenings, outdoor experiences, and much more! With so much to win, who wouldn’t want to put their best foot forward and knock those sixes out the stadium?

By Nikita Shroff Back at GE Healthcare, the campaign saw remarkable results with teams enthusiastically participating and reaching record-breaking targets.

When Henry Ford said that nothing happens until someone sells something — we reckon he wasn’t joking. But motivating any sales team to constantly push themselves to achieve higher targets in shorter time spans isn’t an easy task. However, businesses have finally cracked this code by making employees an offer they can’t refuse: competitions and incentives!

But here’s the tricky part. For many individuals, competition and incentives may not necessarily drive performance and results.

That’s why, GE Healthcare approached us to conceptualize a campaign that would motivate their sales team to perform better, reach higher targets, and win big at every step!

GEHC CPL Mailer

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No matter what the ask, internal communication campaigns are becoming more and more relevant with each passing day. Companies are recognizing the need to keep their employees interested and invested at all times — and a 360° campaign is as good as it gets.

If your organization is in search of a similar strategy — one that can drive profit as well as participation — reach out to us at +91 8030412990 or mail us at reachus@pinklemonade.in.

GEHC CPL Standee

After days of stepping into the shoes of sales representatives, seeing the world through their eyes, and walking their talk — we zeroed down on a campaign we called, Champions Premier League.

Largely influenced by the Indian Premier League, this campaign successfully ran for its second consecutive year in 2017 — albeit with a twist.

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Marketing Maximus Magazine is an initiative of Pink Lemonade to help professionals stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends and techniques.

Pink Lemonade is a creative agency that specializes in visual and written communication across multiple platforms — be it digital, social, or good ol’ print.

Want to give your brand the Pink Lemonade edge and up your marketing quotient? Then write to us at reachus@pinklemonade.in and we will get in touch with you shortly.

Marketing Maximus Magazine is a property of

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