The Tale of a Twitter

IPL chief Lalit Modi might have never known the rippling effect his ‘impromptu’ tweet would cause. While blogs and twitters have caused many a battle in Bollywood, this is possibly the first time that the religion of Indian sports lovers has been tarnished. Well, if the IPL falls in that league for you.

While Modi went about carelessly declaring sensitive details about the investments that went into IPL, his ally-turned-foe Shahi Tharoor was forced to resign as Minister of State for External Affairs. And Modi himself is well-prepared to face an onslaught from the Indian Cricket Board, which owns the IPL, when they meet at a meeting of the governing council of the league on Monday. While Modi has asked for some time before the meeting is scheduled, bets are laid that the chief of the scintillating Indian Premier League might have to bid adieu to his days of glory.

While the documents that Tharoor and Modi are fighting over, seem to be official and confidential, there was little likelihood that a twitter could be considered a statement worth the weight it has received. It’s like a superfluous sting operation that adds nothing to the facts but even so, manages to have detrimental effects on the primary concerns of the issue at hand.

In this case, for instance, the IPL seemed to be tasting success never seen in India before. Modi’s story was being reckoned as one of a 21^st century genius. The moolah was pouring in for the league and for the franchises. The advertisers were happy and all seemed impeccably glorious. It seems the big bubble burst. Modi’s twitter about the interest of a junior politician to own a franchise opened up a Pandora’s Box of questions regarding the money that went into it. Modi himself is now being seen as a mysterious investor as he is being charged of money laundering and corruption.

As so-far IPL chairman Lalit Modi plans to move to court against the league’s governing council meeting, media speculations reveal he might not be able to have his way this time. It’s a tweet that went horribly wrong. Words are really like arrows out of a bow. Their effect can never be reversed.

With both Modi and Tharoor out of their jobs, this seems to be the beginning on not only a new corporate governance but also a new social (media) governance that company’s or institution’s may start applying on their workforce.

How do Indians Respond to Mobile Marketing Campaigns?

Mobile marketing, as defined by Mobile Marketing Association, is a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network. In early 2000s, marketing on a mobile phone through SMS gained momentum and during the years that followed MMS and marketing through games, popularly known as mobile advergaming or Ad-funded mobile game, also joined the bandwagon. This popular mean of advertising stood ground even during the recession and in some cases even gave better profits.

Despite mobile marketing being an efficient and effective marketing tool, what is of more consequence is how customers respond to mobile marketing campaigns in India. There is good news on this front! Recent studies have shown a positive scenario by observing an impressive response rate for text message marketing in India. It has been observed that one in every three urban Indians has responded to such marketing campaigns. This is either done by forwarding the messages to friends or by calling the sender for more details.

Companies can continue to invest or even raise the budget allotted for mobile marketing as this medium not only has the potential to reach a wider client base at cost effective rates, but is also capable of generating the expected response from them. Indian customers have shown a liking for SMS-based value added services. Among the popular services that customers opt for are business/finance news, stock market tips, astrological advice, spiritual quotes, news alerts, job alerts, and sports updates.

A good number of urban Indians who have received promotional offers via SMS used the information given by the message to make a purchase. This shows customers have faith in these SMS services. It is surely an encouraging sign! It has also been observed that urban Indians enjoy participating in SMS-based contests too. All these facts go on to show that with a strong 300 million mobile subscriber base and almost over 100 million new additions every year in India, mobile advertising is here to stay.

There are various reasons for this promising trend among Indian mobile subscribers. For one, customers in India have the advantage of cheap data plans offered to them by mobile operators. This makes the customers more receptive to promotional offers via SMS. The rise in the number of mobile users is due to the fact that mobile operators are also becoming active in the rural areas of the country. This has boosted the number of mobile users in India and is increasingly going to add to the numbers for sure. A rise in the middle class section, who boost of better purchasing power, is another important factor. This is a result of the growing Indian economy, which has generated a section that has greater disposable income with them.

Many success stories with mobile marketing in India go on to show the scope of this medium of advertisement. Private banks, for instance, have changed the way we perceived banking. Their mobile banking services have made banking an anytime and anyplace thing. With targeted mobile marketing and responsive Indian customers, mobile marketing companies have a bright and enviable future in store.

3G-India Update

A week after the 3G spectrum auction began in India the country has seen a huge jump of 63% for pan-India licences. The bid has bumped up Rs. 5,710.36 crore (Rs 57.10 billion) over the base price. This implies total minimum revenue of Rs. 22,841 crore (Rs 228.41 billion). As the numbers roll in, Delhi is turning out to be the high-priced circle at a bid value of Rs 626.37 crore (Rs 6.26 billion), followed by Mumbai at a bid of Rs 598.59 crore (Rs 5.98 billion). Gujarat, which was ahead of Delhi in the initial rounds, now stands fourth at Rs 533.40 crore (Rs 5.33 billion). It is preceded by Tamil Nadu at a bid price of Rs 549.24 crore (Rs 5.49 billion). These are the figures at the end of 40 rounds. Six of these rounds were held on Sunday.

Major mobile operators have planned well for the 3G auction in India so they can outdo the others in this battle of bids for the spectrum. Three biggies of the Indian telecom industry have put in their applications for one of the three slots that are available for bids. All companies that had submitted applications to take part in April's 3G and broadband wireless access spectrum auctions have received approval from India's Department of Telecommunications.

After studying the pre-qualification data such as the size of the upfront deposit, the picture is becoming clearer as to who plans to bid for pan-India spectrum. This will mean bidding for spectrum across all of India's 22 mobile service areas or as it is technically called ‘circles’. Out of 9 companies that are bidding in the auction, 6 have placed their bid for a pan-India spectrum. Among the major players in race for spectrum in the 2.1GHz band are some major telecom operators of India. Apart from this, many other mobile operators are bidding for selective circles. Many of these companies will also be bidding for spectrum in the 2.3GHz band under broadband wireless access (BWA). All of them will be vying against each other to pick countrywide airwaves.

Unlike other countries, India took way too long to announce their date of auction, almost three years. This can be attributed to the slow decision-making, something we all are familiar with in India. Apart from the mobile operators, customers also lost out on many benefits due to the delay. The delay deprived them of the benefits of high-speed mobile data services used by many across the globe. Once 3G is rolled out, customers will get to enjoy bandwidth intensive services. 3G will enable high-speed data transfer for services such as live video streaming and other graphic formats. It is also hoped that rural India will also benefit from the coming of 3G. Areas such as telemedicine, virtual marketplace and e-learning will get a boost. As the day of 3G auction nears, we can only hope that all that 3G promises will finally be delivered, though a bit late.

The Social Media Landscape

Social Media - a magnetic force field that is attracting marketer from all across. Of course I too was attracted towards this paradigm of marketing, but was certainly fortunate to get acquainted at a much earlier stage of its emergence. However, having opined that, I have to admit to the fact that it’s changing or rather shifting dimensions at phenomenal pace than what I or my teachers at the time could have anticipated.

Social media space just like the emergence of Internet on the face of the earth has attracted recipients and consumer, but more importantly the conversion of consumer and producers of the content. It no more producers producing content and consumers consuming. It’s more like a mashup situation where consumers have turned its biggest producers.

Surly saying that it’s a world of its own may justify some power of social media. But as they say “With great powers, comes great responsibility”. This is were I have to admit that while marketers are willing to go on board as quickly as possible on the social media bandwagon, but are they responsible with it….…unfortunately most of the them comes under the unfortunate NO bracket. It’s not an element of your checklist of marketing do’s or putting “Share This” on your webpage. It’s surly something much larger than that. It’s an art that has or needs to be integrated into science. Well…..I hope you may acknowledge its importance with my little arts and science thingy….Nevertheless….

Why should you spend your ad dollars on social media? This is one question that Sean Carton had tired to answer in his recent article “A Social Media Strategy Checklist”, which I have to admit is a good articulation in recent times on this subject of Social Media. I completely buy and echo his worries on social media and the way its being currently embraced by marketers without clear objectives, goals or strategy. Specially a Para “Why should that worry me? Because I've only rarely encountered people with actual strategies behind their social media push. Sure, plenty of clients (and prospects) I've spoken to in the past year or so made vague noises about viral video or being on Facebook or tweeting, but when I've pressed them for why they want those things, few can give me an answer”. Wonderful…..

He further articulates 10-step of social media strategy checklist (A recommended read), which is certainly an example of true cognizant thought process. However I would like to add one additional element and probably accentuate one step mentioned in the article.

One element to add is the “management commitment” or buying in into the process. Unfortunately the associations or companies that I have witnessed with this paradigm (social media) has highest failure rate due to the simple reason that management did not believed in it. Of course at initial stage it will not receive any different response that what one may have received when venture into an uncharted territory, as per your management is concern, which of course Social Media offers – “An Uncharted Territorial Media”.

Hence to ensure the success of this activity or element or what ever word you may feel appropriate for social media that the management is in agreement into your venture with high level of patience. Yes, Patience is certainly an important element of social media so called ROI. Equally, as a marketer you need to ensure a high visibility, understanding and effectiveness of the program are well fed back to the management.

This leads me to an element that was surely mentioned in the article by Sean Carton however deserves little more amplification. Its ability to monitor or analyze. I love stating that Internet is most measurable medium in the history of marketing and the only thing which is left is to measure it. Social Media much like the digital space faces the same genetic disorder or at least the symptoms in some cases . Though we (marketers) go all out to say about the measurability aspect of the digital domain to sell our idea(s), but actually how many of us do it. With my experience of working with various organizations the answer is little discouraging, needless to say in some cases horrifying.

But then for every major disease there is a vaccination on the way. Equally, I have to advocate the necessity of integrated analysis, and decision making matrix based on the same. It’s imperative to rope the management and of course largely to learn the effectiveness of the social media through analyzing or rather integrated analysis of your digital properties. This certainly could be done through your understanding the data points served by your website tracking tools, of course great offerings by Omniture could enable you to do it, and similarly with the analysis of the social media space. Equally a name that comes first to my mind is of Radien6, an effective tool for real-time social media monitoring and analysis.

Having mentioned the tools, it’s equally imperative to merge or have an integrated view of the data points of information provided by the tools, converting it to knowledge. Thus, finally providing a knowledge based matrix that would enable an effective decision making backed by numbers and not merely by judgments, intuitions and so on. However, by stating this I would not like to discount the role of judgment, intuition and similar elements played or enable decision making.

The one greater challenge that I am certainly witnessing and/or foresee for the social media space, beside its competitiveness, is its ability to change the game or the landscape at a much steeper phase than expected, which would surly not be comforting to most of the marketers, of course including me.

Hence the discovery may require discovering more (or further educating) in the space we call Social Media……

Bye Bye China….Says Google

Google has had enough of authoritarian China… On 22^nd March, Google redirected its search engine, Google.cn, to a Hong Kong-based server called Google.com.hk. The company also announced that it has stopped censoring its search engine for the Chinese market. This step was a culmination of four months of tussle that had been going on between Google and the Chinese Government. The conflict began in January when Google made public the news of an unidentified hacker who tried to hack into Google’s servers. The scene became volatile when Google uncovered highly sophisticate cyber attacks from China that were aimed at the email accounts of Chinese human activists. Following this, the company threatened to shut its operations in China.

Google had ventured into the Chinese market on 19 July 2005 when they announced plans to open a research and development centre in China. The company launched its Chinese language search engine after agreeing with the Chinese government to censor websites for content banned under the Chinese law. But this arrangement did not go with Google’s vision of providing uncensored access to their services to as many people around the world as possible. This conflict in the company’s stand was causing friction in the higher management too. Finally, Google took the sensible decision of providing increased access to information for people in China through a legal route. Although, a blog post by one Google official indicated that the company was well aware of the fact that China may any time block access to their services.

People are speculating how this step will affect Google’s revenue. The company was just controlling about a third of China's search market due to the tough competition offered by entrenched search rivals such as Baidu. Google’s main source of revenue was from other businesses. Thus, considering the revenue implications, Google has decided to continue its wider business operations in China for now. These include ad sales business, its Android mobile phone operating system and its Chrome browser business. To let go such lucrative avenues is definitely not a wise thing to do for any company.

China stands by its assumption that this episode will not have any impact on the business environment for Western companies in China. On the contrary, many experts are of the view that in case Google completely moves out of China, the country will send wrong signals to other companies. China stands to suffer from public relations position. Another story doing rounds is that soon Dell Corporation may also shift to another area that offers a safer business environment. Is this episode going to lead way for other companies also? Will China benefit from staying away from western capitalists? Let’s wait and watch…

The IPL Fever…

The IPL fever has picked up in India yet another year. How could the mobile industry then be left behind? Mobile phone companies are tying up with the Indian Premier League and the teams to become a part of what has become one of the most exciting marketing events of the country. Bringing together Bollywood with the nation’s favourite sport, the IPL has a fantastic wide-reaching appeal for peddlers of lifestyle marketing.

The Indian premier league or the IPL has been in the limelight for all the right as well as the wrong reasons since its inception. In 2008 BCCI initiated IPL in the Twenty 20 format along with eight franchisees. Since India cannot have enough of cricket the IPL nudged the love we have for our respective states to make IPL an even bigger game than ever. Cricketers from around the world come together and play for Indian teams that represent eight states/cities in India. Fortunately for some, unfortunate for the cynics, the IPL carries an enormous amount of commercial weight on its high-held shoulders. The numbers are exciting! It is estimated that each match of the IPL churns an approximate Rs. 50 billion. That is no mean number. It’s a party everyone is enjoying.

Mobile phones have become a large-hearted player of these the game. They are pegging with the punters, creating mobile applications and multimedia games, and partaking of the timeout and playoff spaces. Some companies are offering mobile net for internet-enabled handsets, while others are picking up SMS and MMS deals with the Indian Premier League. The word cricket alone can soar the excitement in our country, and that’s exactly what IPL has been doing for the last two years. Just as anything new is accepted with slight hesitation in IPL’s case too it was not easily welcome by the old school of people who still swear by one day and test matches. The whole idea of only 20 over matches was just not real cricket for them. It still might not be but as long as it’s keeping the audiences engaged and money flowing in who’s complaining.

Here’s the one magical thing that the IPL has managed to do. The shortness of a 20-over match has made the game popular with the women too. So no more fights over the remote and advertisers can be rest assured that the real decisions makers are also targeted via their ads.

With all the hullabaloo over this exciting mix of sports and entertainment, social media had to be an active member of the game. Youtube and Twitter have marked their entry into the IPL social discussion space and how. According to The Nielsen Company, Twitter is the third most popular social media platform that discusses IPL. Using the Online BuzzMetrics technology, Nielsen also identified that Kolkata Knight Riders has been the most discussed IPL team of 2009 and 2010 on social networking websites, followed by Kings XI Punjab. Deccan Chargers is the third most widely-discussed IPL team in the social media. Simultaneously, Ricky Ponting is the most discussed IPL player, followed by Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni and Virendra Sehwag.

Youtube is broadcasting live matches with only a 5 minute delay in this season. Social networking sites have games to keep up with the IPL trend and Facebook has become a popular means of IPL discussions among its gazillion members. UFO screenings on cinema halls have also become a popular source of entertainment among big and small cities alike.

Alternately, IPL has also used mobile advertising to a great extent to spread the word and generate interest. Since the inception of the league, its promoters have engaged in SMS marketing and caller ring back tones as some unobtrusive means of promotion. Advertorials of the IPL were presented to SMS 2.0 users and live scorecards are provided for easy updates. These have added to the promotion of the IPL like none other. Love it or hate it, cricket is a sport no advertiser can ignore!

Ten Ways to Energize Your Product Configuration Strategies and Sell More

With the beginnings of an economic recovery on its way, now is the time to set goals around capturing greater market share.

Don’t overlook what you can accomplish by using your product configuration strategies to battle for more deals and win them.

Here are ten ideas to kickstart your product configuration strategies to gain greater sales :

• Move high maintenance products INTO your product configuration platform now – quit having them drain your channels of sales  time . One networks products manufacturer had to do this with their routers and switches, as the support drain was so significant that the demand for expertise was starting to outstrip the service organization’s ability to scale.

• Incite and encourage competition in your channels by actively ranking resellers by their quoting activity, accuracy, sales and profitability levels. Companies who get their channel partners competing on quoting accuracy often attach a first, second and third prize to the content as well.  Consider $100 AMEX Gift Certificates for each members of reseller teams who come in first,  and steak knives for those that come in second (from Glengarry Glen Ross but still, you get the idea).

• Consider adding in services bundling within your quoting systems and strategies to give resellers and direct sales teams a broader range of solutions to sell.

• Using your quoting system for win/loss analysis will give you entirely new insights into why certain configurations are winning sales over others.

• Automate special pricing request and provide resellers and direct sales teams with the flexibility requesting these on a 24/7 basis.

• If you haven’t already, integrate your lead qualification, quoting and CRM systems together to track how effective marketing campaigns are at driving quotes for build-to-order products. Integrating lead qualification to quoting will tell you how effective your marketing campaigns are very quickly.

• Give your product configuration interfaces an extreme make-over. From the companies I’ve spoken with lately many are doing this to also increase the performance of their applications as well.  Instead of relying on HTML which is painfully slow to develop on, many are embracing AJAX and completely re-doing their quoting systems in both appearance and performance as a result.  If your sales team have to go through more than two screens to complete a quote re-do the app now, which is too long.  The norm is two and there are some companies with a single page for their quoting system. Also consider letting your resellers put their own own design on the configuration and quoting screens, which has in some cases driven up adoption.

• Customer satisfaction scores for your quoting and product configuration systems – the headlights you need for the recovery. How satisfied are your resellers, channel partners and direct sales team with the product configurator?  It’s time to do an audit of their effectiveness and see how to improve how they are to work with.

• Take the next major revenue producing event (a product introduction for example) and model the new product, its options and services all within the product configurator. Go through a test run of the launch with key distributors, dealers and the inside sales force.  Link the quoting and product configuration systems back to order management and supply chain systems and see if you can get a demand-driven network running to alleviate stock-outs if your product’s sales take off above forecast.

• Look for new product taxonomies for your product catalogs that will make using the product configuration system even more efficient. Consider how a one electrical products manufacturer was working on a new series of distributors to sell to, and created a customized taxonomy just for this market.  When the demo of the new product configurator was ready the taxonomy had been fully populated and was invaluable to the manufacturer, and they won a distribution agreement as a result.

Bottom line: Re-energizing your quoting and product configuration systems is all about getting focused on how to be easier to do business with.  Knock down the barriers that separate your product configuration systems from serving customers and you can increase sales as a result.

Flick attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/extranoise/153341174/sizes/m/

Courtesy – Louis Columbus