Our day starts with Alexa’s news updates and ends with Saavn’s suggested music in our ears. The technological pillars of the fourth industrial revolution has already made a home in our daily lifestyle. Circumventing interaction with gadgets and software in the 21st century, is next to impossible.
It is important to analyse and explore the effects of AI on the Indian economy. The media often overlooks the potential impact of AI on the economic sector, it focuses mainly on the part where technological advances can wreak havoc. How to reap benefits from this amazing field should be the question of the moment.
Opportunities in AI are on a growing graph in India and is already ahead some major milestones in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Despite being a newbie, India secured a rank of 13 out of 200 countries with respect to the development of AI. Indian IT companies have already made a name globally, as the top solution providers, addition of AI into the field can fuel up India to become a superpower.
Analysts at GMF say that the AI sector in India has achieved a growth by $150 million over the past five years (as of 2018). The expenditure on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in India marked an increase of 109.6% during 2018 to sit at US$ 665 million. The private investments swayed from $44 million in 2016 to $73 million in 2017 to help the development.
The Southern region occupies a major share in the overall India’s Artificial Intelligence market. Also, the government’s kindled interest is to lead spending in research and development of AI based technological advancements. This would boost up market growth over the coming years.
The economic impacts of harnessing AI are humongous. NASSCOM estimates that AI could contribute $957 billion to India’s economy by 2035, benefitting sectors like agriculture, education, healthcare and infrastructure. This is equivalent to 15% of India’s current gross value in 2035. A CAGR of 39% midst the forecast period (2019-2025).
4% of the country’s GDP in 2017 was credited to leaps made by digital products and services made possible using AI and IoT. The number can rocket upto 60% by 2021, according to Microsoft India. A mixture of technology, data and talent that make intelligent systems in equal proportions can drive extraordinary growth in the AI investment.
Artificial Intelligence has invaded every aspect of our life, the kind of scope it has globally as well as in India cannot be expressed judicially using words. Infrastructure, traffic, education, healthcare are just a few names from the top of the pile to name the sectors affected by AI.
Opportunities are endless for IT companies and businesses, AI can boost growth and profitability bringing transformation. For example, manufacturing, the sector could mark a profit increase of 39% due to AI-powered systems whose ability to learn, adapt and evolve over time can replace faulty machines and idle equipment.
For entrepreneurs and businesses, AI can sharpen their analysis of data, improve decision making thus helping the profits.
For society as a whole, AI can improve public safety and even save lives. Implementation of AI managed traffic systems, AI in healthcare, monitoring of the climatic changes using super accurate AI systems are a few applications.
Stepping into the innovation of AI in social sector can be really beneficial for India as it is being overlooked globally. The establishment of government think-tank NITI Aayog, titled National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence shows the kind of commitment India has. Despite the employment of just a little under 50% population the agriculture sector contributes only around 18% to the GDP.
Harnessing AI in this sector can increase the contribution significantly. Healthcare is another section that needs improvement. India’s life expectancy is among the lowest for BRICS nations, the conditions in the hospitals is known by everyone, a KPMG report said last year. AI can accelerate the treatment process, improving accuracy and quality of medial assistance.
There are theories which state that we might be underestimating AI and it can get out of hand without even our realisation. It should be taken into account that pillars for AI like machine learning, pattern recognition, neural networks have been around for a while and humans have mastered them. The fact of the matter is that AI has been an underdog and now we realise its true potential more clearly.
Importance of Artificial intelligence
Growth and Future of Artificial Intelligence
According to report by NITI Aayog in June 2018, Artificial Intelligence was among the domains that witnessed the fastest adoption among different industry sectors. As of 2019, more than 400 startups are working on AI and domains like Machine learning.
An investment of about $150 million has been pitched in by private players and the number has been increasing since 2016. Despite the leaps, India does not lead the US and China of the terminology of investment.
India should sail on its AI voyage as it will probably enrich the quality of lives of people and enhance the economic development.
The global business value created by AI by 2022, will touch a stunning $3.9 trillion, with the spending on AI systems reaching $79.2 billion. AI technologies are predicted to set its foot in every software product next year, revenues growing upto 118.6 billion by 2025.
In India, the adoption is even more.An industry expert associates the Indian Enterprise Market for AI to be estimated to be $100 million, growing at 200-250% CAGR.
Conclusion
There are no boundaries to the growth of AI and India can start to build its foundation to put the efforts in fruition over the coming years. For a country, where proper sanitation is still a blessing, AI might still seem a dream too big. And yet the time is in India’s favour to take its place on the AI frontier. The necessary groundwork has already been laid. Missing the opportunity is not an option anymore.
There are many people who fantasize about having their own business from home, and while some have made it a success, many more have failed in their quest for this ultimate freedom. The reality is a business based from your home is a tremendous undertaking and that means you must do a few things that you may take for granted in an actual workplace. However, the goal is making sure that you can have success in this endeavor. Doing so means you need to have a massive amount of discipline and the willingness to do unpleasant things in order to make your dream of working from home exactly that – a dream and not a nightmare.
There are several tips that can be applied, but one of the first things that you should think about is your e-mail handle. The truth is your e-mail handle is the first thing your clients and potential clients will see of you. If your e-mail handle is unprofessional, you will dissuade potential clients from patronizing your business. When you decide to work from home, the first thing you should do is set up a professional e-mail address. Your online web presence demands this. A professional e-mail address can be as simple as yourname@yourbusiness.com. This is a simple way to make yourself look professional – clients worth your business won’t trust someone with a Gmail or Yahoo e-mail address, though your e-mail could be powered by Gmail or Outlook. As long as the e-mail handle is a variation of the example above, you will have no problems making the case that your business is a professional enterprise.
Here are five tips that will help you turn your home-based business into the success that will fulfill your dreams of working independently.
Stick to Your Schedule
The first thing you will notice when working from home is that you can set your own hours. For many, this is the main reason why they like the idea of working from home. That said, you need to have hard and fast hours because it will instill the discipline to get the job done. This is something that is non-negotiable. There are a few reasons for this adherence to a schedule. The first is that when you adhere to a schedule, you are creating work time and private time. You don’t want work to bleed into private time and vice versa. This is essential for maintaining a healthy work-life balance. The second is you condition your clients that you will be responding within a certain timeframe. Doing so will help you make sure that clients have reasonable expectations and feel the scarcity of your time, and that will cause them to pay more for the time you are available, and thus increase profitability.
Create a Space in Your Home that’s Professional
In today’s world, you are most likely not going to be spending time seeing clients face to face, unless you are doing much video chatting. That said, the last thing that you want is to video chat from an area that looks as if you are in the middle of a frat house. Set up part of your home – at least the area that clients can see – as something professional. Furthermore, this dedicated office space will help you get in work mode when you are present within it while going into puttering around the house mode when you are not in the office. Setting a workspace keeps you on task, so stay away from TVs and other distractions in that workspace.
Maintain Professionalism at All Times
You never know who is going to be a client, so when you are in public you should be armed with two things – your business cards and your professionalism. When you conduct yourself like a consummate professional in all areas, you are promoting your business by promoting its best asset – you. The key to making this work is always having professional written communication. Don’t end e-mails with closing salutations like “Cheers”, for example. Also, make sure that you are always delineating what you are doing and keeping client expectations realistic. Underpromising and overdelivering is the key method for displaying your professionalism when interacting with clients. Language and actions will carry the day.
Use Social Media for Marketing
Regardless of what your business is, you should use social media for marketing because it is free and it has the largest reach, especially if you are correctly targeting your social media marketing strategy. The best part is you don’t have to work too hard to learn about social media marketing and effectively deploy it. Hubspot is a great resource to learn about social media marketing. Another great strategy is tagging satisfied clients on your posts and showing pictures of your work, if applicable. At the end of the day, what you will do is build the same word of mouth reputation that all businesses covet, but thanks to social media you’ll have a larger reach. This is essential for success and if you use social media marketing the entry cost is low and the return on investment is quite high.
Remain Persistent
The hardest thing about running a business from home is you can get discouraged easily when things don’t go your way. At an office, you may have a boss or a colleague that picks you up when you don’t make a sale or something similar. The reality is you’re the biggest cheerleader you have at home. You need to constantly pick yourself up off the floor when things don’t go your way – and at first, they won’t. Stay dogged and stick to your plan. Tweak it as needed, but don’t scrap your plan wholesale after a bad month. Persistence is the key to success in any endeavor, and in a business that is based from your home, this is doubly true. So, hang tight in the tough times and when the clouds break, you will enjoy the fruits of your labor from the comfort of your home.
Entrepreneurs around the world are an example of how well the economy is, how liberating the society is and how all the commerce and trade activities uplift an innovative individual. India being the largest democracy in the world has done a lot for the betterment of entrepreneurs and businessmen present here. The impact of globalization has led to a tremendous rate of growth in all the sectors of the economy. In this article, we will take a look at some of the most successful entrepreneurs in India. Who not only set a benchmark for other aspiring individuals but also motivate and inspire them to do more.
Dhirubhai Ambani
1932 – 2002
Company – Reliance Industries
The story of Dhirubhai Ambani’s life is quite the “rugs-to-riches” one. He was born in a Gujarati family and founded the Reliance Commercial Corporation with the amount of Rs. 15,000 only.
He first started his textile mill and then later diversified into petrochemical and sectors like Telecommunication, IT, Energy, Power, Textile, Retail, Logistics and Capital Market. He was one of the most successful and wealthiest businessman in the world. He always made it to the Forbes billionaires list and was worth $6 billion upon his death on July 6th 2002.
Reliance is one the most profitable companies in India, it was the first Indian company to feature in Forbes 500 list and the 2nd largest publicly traded company in India by market capitalization – which is all his creation. The company ranked 148th on the Fortune Global 500 list of the World’s Biggest Corporations 2018 with a revenue of $62.3 billion. It contributes for approximately 25% of India’s total exports.
Dhirubhai Ambani was named the Indian Entrepreneur of the 20th Century by FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry). Reliance Industries has a current net income of over $5.7 billion and assets amounting to a whopping $140 billion.
Dhirubhai Ambani won Padma Vibhushan award in 2016.
Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata (1904 – 1993)
JRD Tata
Popularly known as JRD Tata, was a French born Indian aviator and chairman of Tata Group – his family business. He made Tata Group one of the most valuable and prestigious industrial groups in India, he had a vision ahead of his times. He began his career as an unpaid apprentice in Tata & Sons and with years rose to the position of becoming a Chairman to the company. He became the first person to obtain the first ever issued pilot license in India and later on went to establish India’s first commercial airline – Tata Airlines (later it became Air India). Over the years of his business life, he expanded the Tata Empire – Tata Telecommunications, Tata Tea, Titan Industries, Voltas, Tata Motors, and many more.
In 1992, JRD Tata was honored with the United Nations Population Award for his incessant endeavors towards initiating and prosperously implementing the Family Planning Movement in our country India. The Tata industries currently employ about more than 702,000 people and generates the revenue of $110.7 billion.
Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata won Bharat Ratna in 1992, Padma Vibhushan in 1957.
K.C. Mahindra was born in 1894 in Punjab. He was the second of nine children. At Cambridge, he earned Honours, played hockey, and took a keen interest in rowing.
After graduating, he joined Messrs Martin & Company, where he edited the monthly magazine INDIA and, briefly, the Hindustan Review. In the 1940s, he went into the energy business and helped develop the nation’s coal policy by implementing the latest methods of coal mining.
In 1946, he moved to Bombay to found Mahindra & Mohammed, which became an industrial powerhouse for many sectors of the economy. One of the founders was his elder brother Jagdish Chandra Mahindra and the other one was his close friend Ghulam Mohammad. But after India’s partition, Ghulam Muhammad went to Pakistan and the company was renamed as Mahindra and Mahindra.
He was also director of RBI, Air India, Hindustan Steel, and Chairman of the Indian Aluminium Company. If J.C Mahindra was the dreamer then K.C Mahindra was the implementer. K.C Mahindra was known for his micro-approach to everything and was a great executor.
Govindram Seksaria was born on October 19, 1888 in Nawalgarh in present-day Rajasthan. Govindram Seksaria was a famous Indian businessman of the Seksaria family. He is famously known as the Cotton King of India. He was among the most successful businessmen of pre-independence India.
When he moved from Nawalgarh to Mumbai (then Bombay) in the early 1900s, India was under the British Raj at the time, and every major industry was either owned or managed by foreign firms that had the full support of the government. For Indian firms and businessmen, survival and growth was difficult and risky under a government that was both unsupportive and unencouraging. It was in such a hostile environment that Govindram Seksaria started his career as an operator on the Bombay Cotton Exchange. Within a few years, the Cotton Contract Board accepted his membership. Later, he became one of the original members of the East India Cotton Association, going on to become a very famous name in the cotton market.
After his success in the cotton market, Govindram diversified and began trading in bullion and other commodities. Under Govindram Brothers Pvt. Ltd., he started a vegetable oil business and soon diversified into sugar, textile, minerals, banking, printing and motion pictures. He also entered into real estate by establishing Estate Investment Co. Ltd. to manage his vast real estate holdings. In banking he founded the Bank of Rajasthan. He also helped in Indian motion picture development through his close association with the Bombay Talkies studio. Seksaria was also a principal donor in the establishment of Bombay Hospital.
Considering the hostile environment for Indians at the time of British Raj; Govindram is nothing short of a pearl in the ocean.
Bhai Mohan Singh was born at Rawalpindi on the 30th of December in the year 1917. Bhai Mohan Singh is a pioneering figure in India’s pharmaceutical industry.
Bhai Mohan Singh began his business career during the Second World War with a construction business. After the partition of India and Pakistan he settled down in New Delhi. After independence, Singh entered into the money lending business. Ranbaxy was started by his cousins, Ranjit Singh and Gurbax Singh. Bhai Mohan Singh gave loan to the company and bought it when Ranbaxy failed to repay loan. Once Singh took over, he partnered with an Italian pharmaceutical company Lapetit Spa, which he later purchased.
In the 1960s, Singh launched an Indian version of valium called Calmpose and went on to release a series of blockbuster drugs. In early 1970s, he established an R&D facility at Mohali. In 1999, Singh was replaced by his eldest son in a boardroom coup. He along with another son, Analjeet laid the foundation of a new company Max. Singh died in 2006.
Bhai Mohan Singh won the Padma Shri for his civic contributions.
Ghanshyam Das Birla was born on 10 April 1894 at Pilani village in Jhunjhunu district. Ghanshyam Das Birla, also known as GD Birla, was one of the most prominent Indian businessmen from his decade which was during the time of India’s struggle to Independence from British Empire. He was a very close associate of Mahatma Gandhi and used to advise him on economic matters. He laid the foundations of the Birla Empire and was also the founder of the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
He started a Birla Jute Mills in Calcutta and got success during World War I, which was impossible for an Indian businessman to achieve in those harsh times. In 1919, his business also included significant paper and sugar production. He expanded his empire into manufacturing, tea business, banking, chemical, cement, and more. It was the reason behind the huge success of Birla Empire.
Along with his business activities, G.D. Birla is remembered for founding several educational institutions including the Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences (BITS), Pilani, which ranks in the forefront of engineering institutions in the country.
Birla won the Padma Vibhushan in 1957 by the Government of India.
Jamsetji Tata is the founder of the Tata Group, India’s largest conglomerate which employs more than four lakh people and enjoys the revenue of over $83 billion. Tata is regarded as the legendary “Father of Indian Industry”.
Tata, who in his early life was a merchant, went on to change the business world of India through his many ventures within the cotton and pig iron industry, and is known as one of the most important builders of the modern Indian economy. Out of his many achievement, Tata is notable for the Tata Iron and Steel Works company in Jamshedpur.
He is the founder of the Taj Mahal hotel, near the Gateway of India close to the Mumbai shoreline. According to legend, he wanted to build a world-class hotel because he was denied entry to a luxury hotel when he was visiting another country. Now, the Taj Mahal hotel is one of the most renowned in the world.
Dr. Verghese Kurien was born on November 26, 1921 to an affluent Syrian Christian family in Calicut (now Kozhikode), Kerala. Verghese Kurien used his entrepreneurial skills to enrich not only himself but also all of India. The “Father of the White Revolution,” Kurien planned and implemented Operation Flood, the world’s largest agricultural development program, which turned India into the world’s largest milk producer. He helped make dairy farming a self-sufficient and sustaining industry. Dr. Kurien always regarded himself as an employee of the farmers who would do anything to bring prosperity in their favor.
Kurien is also the founder of the Amul brand of dairy products, which invented milk powder processed from buffalo milk rather than cow milk. One of the world’s strongest proponents of cooperative movements, his work has lifted millions of Indians out of poverty. Under his inspiring leadership many important institutions were established namely the GCMMF (Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd) and NDDB (National Dairy Development board which played a significant role in shaping the Dairy Cooperative movement across the country and led the replication of Anand model of cooperative dairy practiced all over the country.
His birth anniversary is now celebrated as National Milk Day in respect of his great achievements. Verghese Kurien won Padma Shri (1965), Padma Bhushan (1966), Krishi Ratna Award (1986), World Food prize (1989), Padma Vibhushan (1999).
Walchand Hirachand didn’t belong to a wealthy family. His father was a small-time money lender but he had set his ambition on something bigger. He dreamt big and made that happen.
Simple living and big thinking were Walchand’s foremost traits.
Indian industrialist and the founder of the Walchand group, he established India’s first modern shipyard, first aircraft factory and first car factory; he also established construction companies, sugarcane plantations, sugar factories, confectioneries, engineering companies and many other businesses.
The original firm found it difficult to get large projects because of its small size so he decided it to merge with the Tata group. Walchand directed and oversaw some of the biggest construction projects of the pre-independence era. The construction company he founded was later named Premier Construction, with a major stake owned by Tata.
In his later years, he went on to start a shipping company, the Scindia Steam Navigation Company which went on to grab 21% of the Indian coastal traffic. He then went on to found the first Indian aircraft company, the Hindustan Aircraft, first modern shipyard, known as Hindustan Shipyard Limited, and finally, the first car manufacturing plant, Premier Automobiles.
Walchand along with Annie Besant and M. R. Jayakar together were the first sponsors of pioneering national news agency, the Free Press of India founded in 1927.
Aedeshir Burjorji Sorabji Godrej was an Indian businessman and co-founder of the Godrej Group. The Gootherajee’s were a wealthy Parsi-Zoroastrian family of Bombay (now Mumbai), and Ardeshir’s father Burjorji and grandfather Sorabji dealt in real estate. In January 1871, his father had the family name changed to Godrej. He laid the foundation of a billion dollar empire that was made in India in the colonial times.
With 3,000 Rupees ($1500 US in 1895) from Cama, Ardeshir began manufacturing scalpels, forceps, pincers, scissors and the other implements of a surgeon’s trade. Then, he started his lock-making venture in 1897 and then expanded to vegetable based soaps and then went on to become one of the most valuable companies in India. His efforts towards the process improvement led the progress and growth of the Godrej Group.
The Godrej Family now controls the $4.5 billion revenue generating group which is a 121 year old consumer goods giant.
Some entrepreneurs on the above list are especially inspiring because they managed to make their fortune during British rule when the environment was not so friendly for Indian business. The ones who succeeded in that environment went the extra mile to succeed. This list will give you a broad outline of the amazing journey of some of these tycoons.
Most of the time it becomes challenging for startups to define a starting point due to the financial constraints involved. The business always reaches a point where you need a venture capital. Sometimes, people indulge in the wrong avenue which to some extent is a waste of time and have a negative impact on their ideas. The following are some of the key highlights to bear in mind while raising funds for startup.
10 Keynote to take before raising funds for startup
1. Type of business
Some business ideas can form a sort of investment but these are not worth venture investment. Business potentials do vary and capital that leads to investing also varies. Some business might require bank loans when compared to the business returns. Understand the market size before raising funds for startup.
“I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what some writers think” – Leo Burnett, founder of Leo Burnett Company
Nobody would want to lose money. Before committing funds for investment, progress must be tangible. Venture investors will have several meetings so as to reduce the risks in the transaction. The risks are always minimal if you have ever worked with them before as they would know you. Of course, not all people you partner with are equal, but they assess mutual benefits in the deal before investing funds for startup.
Understand the dynamics involved in each funding aspect. Different venture firms have different processes and procedures for releasing funds. Approval of funds varies but mostly through meetings with partners. Cash requested will determine the number of meetings a venture will hold. Your presence sometimes is needed before funds get approved for your startup.
Venturing into a business with self-funding is very common. This gives a positive impression to the investors of your capability and seriousness to manage the business. People trust your ideas and are also willing to take risks. With self-funding, you get to take full control of the business unlike when you get venture capital where they are the ones who have managed it. This always develops a negative effect on your business which decreases potential sometimes.
“You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some places to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case” – Ken Kessy, American novelist
Family and friends are people who know you and your strengths better. They chip-in to support your startup, although, with pros and cons attached. They might believe in your abilities but lack experience to bring on board. They might not be willing to lose money and relationships with them might become haphazard. Choose wisely who to go for support especially those who have knowledge about business as they understand the risks.
Be clear about your business aspirations otherwise you can fail terribly. Understand what you really want (are you a small or big business entrepreneur) or become a boss on your own.
“Sometimes you make the right decision, sometimes you make the decision right” – Phil McGraw, American television personality
When investors are interested and convinced, they offer the startup with the term sheet. This outlines the terms and conditions of the investment. This defines the company’s valuation and rights of the investor. All the terms accompanying the business are highlighted. This process will help them understand who you are. Startups should understand well what they are getting into.
If you want to succeed you must work hard. Doing business should be fun. Challenges are there but how you handle them is what matters. Sometimes we fail and learn from our mistakes.
“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” – Denis Waitley, American motivational speaker
Develop a relationship with other entrepreneurs. Be part of their discussions even if you don’t contribute anything. Even if you lack experience don’t develop any fear. You will get something positive to help your startup. Expose yourself, attend their conferences and practice what you learn.
For your startup to function effectively, you must bring a lot of focus to your team. Most startups fail because of lack of reliable and up to the mark people. An organized and well-planned team functions efficiently.
Conclusion
In any startup, a key player is a mentor. They have enough experience to share, train and give relevant advise beneficial to the business.
One ought to wonder why someone working at a prestigious company, with an excellent remuneration and an experience worth mentioning, would QUIT all of it for a job at a startup. Well, there often comes a time when a high pay and prestige no longer grant the satisfaction that one yearns for. It happens when dreams and aspirations buried deep within the soul can no longer remain subdued.
Neeraj Sinha shares his transition from a Service Delivery Manager to becoming the CTO of ScoutMyTrip.
The Journey
“After working for around 14 years with the same organisation, at a big position with a good fat paycheck, why did I decide to quit my job to work with ScoutMyTrip? Was it midlife crisis, identity crisis, 7 year itch (or the double of it!)? I often questioned myself as to what the reason was for me to quit a lucrative career and jump the bandwagon of Startups. There were enough and more reasons, but in heart of hearts I knew that travel meant more to me than anyone ever understood” – Neeraj
Neeraj Sinha, CTO ScoutMyTrip
Being the youngest kid of a railway officer, travelling, courtesy of his dad’s nature of work, was an integral aspect of his childhood and teenage. It meant spending 3-4 days of hopping in and out of trains to reach somewhere in Southern India every year for 15-20 days. The only thing he remembers vividly from his early years is getting bashed up by his father at a bus stand in Mysore for he was leaning towards the road on the railing.
He further adds, “While everyone in the family opted for a Government Job as per the convention, this was where I couldn’t agree with everyone and chose a different path altogether. Dad being an honest man with whatever he does, I’ve seen the financial struggle. Even though he used to get an official car to travel to work, he was hardly left with money during mid-month to replace those torn shoes. This made me realize that a private sector would at least appreciate my hard work and pay for what I do than not give me my due! And thus began my journey.”
That first stint
While he started working in 1997 with odd jobs like EDP Operator (those days, it used to be a big thing), he also pursued his MCA from IGNOU. Distance education meant no campus access. This coupled with the great economic slow-down at the time meant that securing a good job was no less than an obstacle. There was light at the end of the tunnel in the form of building a skill set that was hard to ignore. The experience from working as a freelancer along with stints at small companies complemented his skills and fetched him the job which was a dream for him at the time. He joined Sopra Steria, then known as Xansa, as a software engineer in 2002.
Neeraj says, “Work was good, and I kept up with the habit of toiling thrice the usual, always asking for work and volunteering for responsibilities of senior roles. Within 6 years, I ended up with a role in Delivery Management (formal designation followed) and by 2009, I was handling a department independently, looking after delivery, forecasts, P&L etc. The number of teams and designations kept growing and by the time I realized, I had already spent over 13 years in the same organisation!”
Life in a cubicle
As the typical IT guy in India, his day to day routine in office was not so uncommon. This is what his day typically looked like:
That feeling of wanting to punch the boss early in the morning.
Taking note of current activities.
Number crunching sessions the seniors had asked for.
Meeting/talking to clients.
Ad-hoc reports preparation.
Power-point presentation.
Toiling through the minimum working hours before he could head home.
Wanting to punch the boss once more.
Chit-chat with team members and other colleagues (this he enjoyed the most).
Planning for the next set of tasks
The thrill of weaving magic through writing code, creating applications used by the masses attracted him towards the IT sector in the first place. But the euphoria soon waned away and travel was the only way to seek respite. People in his organisation knew about his passion for travelling and exploring.
The hidden explorer
“Travel has been my passion and association with Devil On Wheels has further boosted it like anything. Technology is the only thing I know to make a living now. I had always dreamt of living a quaint life, away from all the hullabaloo of the cities and the 9-5 jobs. Since the time I had read the book ‘One Straw Revolution’ by Masanobu Fukuoka (1913-2008), I had this urge of getting into farming and trying out methodologies that can ease the way people indulge in farming practices, reducing the labour and costs involved and thereby reducing the prices.”
Neeraj wasn’t exactly born in a family of Zamindars (though his ancestors at some point were influential land owners). So, the only way for him to get into farming was to purchase land on his own. Now with a job such as his, no matter how plum the salary you receive, building a treasure chest for indulging beyond your necessities requires sacrifice and time. That was the case with Neeraj. When Dheeraj Sharma (a very close friend and the brain behind Devil On Wheels) pinged him to see if he was interested in a startup in the travel niche to work on technology, he did not think twice. It was a win-win situation; he loved technology and travel . In addition, it was the opportunity to build that ever-elusive wealth and fulfill his intention of purchasing land.
One fine day he just put in his papers, served the notice period, and immediately left for Ladakh by car after his last working day with Sopra Steria. Leaving the NCR region after spending about 20 years there and moving to a new location for working full time with ScoutMyTrip – The Ultimate Road Trip Planner was the beginning of a new journey. In about 3 years, ScoutMyTrip has raced ahead in the right direction, growing at an unprecedented pace. From being bootstrapped to becoming profitable and moving towards the vision it started with, ‘Whenever you think of Travel, think of ScoutMyTrip – the one stop solution for everything travel’ the venture has come a long way. A lot of recognition has also followed! From being chosen as one of the top 20 Travel-Tech Startups by FICCI in 2017, to being selected as the Only Travel Startup by Maharashtra Government as part of #MahaStartupWeek 2019, this is just a preview of the laurels it has received with many more to come!
Life has changed a lot since then. Neeraj thoroughly enjoys his workplace, gleefully wading through the challenges that a startup faces.
Let us look at the changes that followed in Neeraj’s words:
No more boss, so no more punching in the face feeling (not even punching the mirror feeling!) 😉
More work/life balance. Yes, I can always attend my daughter’s “all important” PTM and go to office at 1500 hrs in the day, and no one cribs to clock a certain number of hours.
Even being present in office is not necessary as long as things are going as per the plan – and I swear, things are ahead of plan.
No non-sense mindless data crunching. With lot of transparency introduced in the way we work, there is no need to create hypothetical projections and forecasts. Information is available for everyone in the organisation to see.
Getting to meet successful people, understanding their thought process and getting inspired is a daily process now.
Mindless spends and impulsive buying behaviour is now controlled. Initial days of course are financially stressful, but they teach you a lot of life-lessons!
Travel is now a perk of working!
I get to code! 🙂
He concludes saying, “All’s well, that ends well” and swells with pride as he looks back at the decision of joining ScoutMyTrip.
When you have successfully started up your own business, or have engaged in one, the responsibilities and tasks hung upon your shoulders are huge – especially when it comes to the marketing aspect. Marketing is that part of the business activity that deals with the management of exchange relationships. It is the business process of creating relationships with satisfying customers that leads to increasing sales and increase in profits as well. And advertising comprises of a larger part of marketing. Though, they are sometimes interchangeably used terms, the terminologies go hand in hand in most part of the business decisions.
A new and upcoming way to advertise your brand or product or services is to do it on the digital platform – i.e. on the internet.
“It’s hard to find things that won’t sell online.” – Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon
It is called Digital Marketing. Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies and includes use of mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium. And these mediums are often called the channels of digital advertising. Internet provides a startup personnel a vast wealth of opportunities. Hence, it is very important for your brand to establish and maintain a strong and evident online presence to be competitive enough to reach out to targeted audiences.
Now, the internet provides various marketing tools that are lucrative and worthy enough to focus on while they bring you steps closer to your business targets – but the problem of choice will depend upon an analysis and correct study of these options. Not all of these digital marketing tools are going to be applicable or work for your business.
In this article, we will share the types of channels that are available on the internet for you to advertise on and help you in identifying the best tool available to market you brand or product.
Social media is a very big platform for brands and companies to advertise about their product on. The shopaholic demographic is generally found on social media the most and hence it becomes attractive for both seller and buyer to interact and get gains from. Customers are actively seeking out brands and deals they like or are interested in and increasing numbers of users take the medium of social media as making their buying decisions.
The creative examples of social media marketing can be – promoting your brand or deal on stories that are sponsored (on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc.), on sponsored posts, or on promoted deals especially on Facebook, and many more. Social Media influencers also help the brand a lot, for instance a person with a significant amount of followers or subscribers on any social media platform will bring a lot of attention and customers on site that are desiring to buy your product or service. And through the use of “cookie”, the companies and brands are able to target and focus on building relationships on people who are genuinely interested in your product and will be willing to make the final purchase.
By choosing the right platform that benefits your specific business the most should be given priority. And expansion or withdrawals can be managed thereafter.
If you want to build a direct relationship that benefits both the parties E-mail Marketing is the most effective tool. The users (or say potential customers) have shown interest in your website, app or online ad, and have opted to hear from you by giving you the personal information i.e. their e-mail address. So they are more willing to open those messages to learn and be aware about your products (or new ones), sales and how to benefit from them. You can make it as personalized as possible. By the way of triggered autoresponders and segmentation practices you can make the emails as immediately relevant to the receivers as possible. This significantly increases the chance of immediate conversion and also long-term open rates too.
The email should preferably be short to read and easy to scan. Give the users reason to click by giving an attractive subject line. You should, again, keep it short but try to offer value, incite urgency, or both in order to increase traffic.
Pay-per-click is an internet advertising method that is used to drive traffic to websites in which an advertiser pays the publisher when the ad is clicked. They typically include search engines, website owners, or a network or websites. There are also many other paid advertising channels like Pay-Per-Click advertising that deliver highly targeted traffic of potential customers within very short period of time. This method requires the most beneficial placing of the ad – i.e. the ad placements. As the revenue invested in advertisement should profitably correlate to the acquisition of customer per unit.
You can choose to run you PPC ads on the basis of a day, a week or a month depending upon the budget. The effectiveness of a PPC will depend upon how well you choose your keywords that are attractive and grab customer’s attention, as well as optimizing the visual and contextual information of your ads.
Content lies at the very core of every digital marketing campaign and is one the most important element that works in the advertising field. If your website has good, high-quality, and relevant content, your website will generate significant amount of inbound traffic from all he potential audiences.
The content so created includes text, graphics, videos, and other related effects people are looking for and are interested in. It should be catchy and informative at the same time. Make sure the so published content is enough to make a potential customer gain trust in your brand and be impressed enough to make the final purchase as well.
Generally, the management hires content marketers for the same task and job. They provide the company or brand with the relevant experience and work in favor of the enterprise, which is an effective strategy to go for.
Display advertising is the type of online advertising that comes in various form such as banner ads, rich media and more. Display advertising relies on elements such as images, audio, visuals, videos, animations and logos to communicate an advertising message. Display advertisers frequently target the users with particular traits to increase the ads’ effect. It can be done through the ways of using “cookies” – which can track whether a user a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user previously visited.
Display advertising normally works more on the principle of placing display ads on various websites, blogs, forums, and so on. It helps in promoting new products or offers and increase online presence and reach out to customers to help drive leads and increase brand awareness. This method can track everything from numbers reached, clicks, action and conversion ratios and hence it is easy to manage with the given budgets.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the thriving, most effective and efficient digital marketing tool. It involves several activities to boost rankings and includes usage of keyword research. It also makes use of both on-page and off-page optimization, linkable asset creation, organic links building and more.
“We want to know what consumers are looking for, what their values are, and how can we meet their needs. It’s not just about Big Data; it’s about translating that into the truth.” – Gayle Fuguitt, Marketing veteran
Optimizing SEO in your content will significantly improve your search rank and make it much easier for potential customers to find your website. You can include the keywords from your article and strategically place your title, hashtags, headings and the main content.
The aforementioned digital marketing channels will work dramatically well if you have a good digital marketing strategy in place for your brand or business. Each method can be evaluated and gives relevant consideration in the working of final marketing mix. It should be kept aligned with the business objectives and long term goals. Once the marketing channel is chosen, it should be periodically monitored also. The effectiveness in workings of the channels so selected should be altered as per the changing digital trends and business goals.
The SaaS market is booming right now, and competition is getting heavy. Spending on SaaS reached $8 billion in 2015. The growth and competition aren’t going to slow down, with spending expected to reach as high as $55 billion by 2026. It’s going to take some unconventional marketing strategies and clever growth hacking to stand out as the competition increases.
Here are some tactics that will give your SaaS an edge over the growing competition.
Marketing Plan
You need to have your marketing plans right to attract the right customers and stay in the competition. To do so, you can take help of apps to advertise about your company. But, you should follow some strategies to create an app:
You have to get your marketing right or massive distribution of your message won’t help and could actually hurt by attracting the wrong audience.
You need a good call to action (CTA), and the ability to capitalize on that CTA on the back-end
Where possible, get to know the people behind the directories and see if there are ways to make your app stand-out from the noise.
This is not a replacement for a marketing strategy of any kind.
But, while this isn’t a complete marketing strategy, why not make sure you’re in every horizontal App directory and recommendation engine as well as going after more specific promotional opportunities within your market.
Sites where you can list your App
Once you’ve done all of that, then you need to go figure out where the real money is, and that is where people aren’t just looking for “Apps” in a horizontal directory somewhere, but where they’re looking for immediate solutions to their very real and specific business problems! Below are some basic listing sites, and some places you might not have thought about. Or, if you have a LinkedIn or CrunchBase profile, consider whether it is used to its fullest.
Basic listing sites
Setup a “local” listing for your physical location or mailing address even if you’re a ‘virtual’ company; more data in the search engines can’t be a bad thing!
Highlight your Product on B2B Software Review Platforms
B2B products can offer you three content types that will help their readers assess your product: an in-house review, user-generated reviews, and paid listing. Although the first two types are usually beyond your reach, you can control the third type.
A paid listing highlights your software or gives it a priority in a specific category listing and in-site search results. Furthermore, many reviews platforms include valuable add-ons in their marketing packages. For instance, Finances Online has a marketing package that includes an in-site article about your product, a press release campaign and a verified quality certificate awarded to your product. They also provide very efficient lead generation campaigns for SaaS vendors.
Finances online
Software review platforms are becoming a major lead channel for SaaS marketers as prospects use review sites as their first base to product discovery. What other users say on review sites influences prospects’ opinions, and by the time your sales team get in touch with these prospects, they already have an opinion about your software. Likewise, B2B software review sites are becoming a necessity in software purchase. A company’s buying unit–an ad hoc team composed of the CMO, executives, managers and end-users–can easily get bogged down by a deluge of options and information on hundreds of solutions. Review sites are resolving this dilemma. They help companies focus on the key aspects to compare and shortlist at once the top choices.
Things can move fast because the buying unit has clear visibility on product options, essential features, pricing terms and call-to-actions. That’s why you need to have a solid presence in these review sites, which is ground zero for product research.
An ad network company works like a conventional ad agency. It identifies ad placements and sells these digital locations to advertisers. There are two main types of these: either your ad shows in search results or it shows in content on a website. For both types you can set a target based on keywords, location, IP address, and demographics. Your target is then matched with search results or a website’s content. You can select text ads, rich media, or a mixture of both. There are two popular ad models: pay-per-click (PPC) and cost-per-mile (CPM). Ad networks also use a bid process, where advertisers set a price per click (PPC) or per thousand views (CPM). The ad which bids higher is selected first for display.
When targeting your ad, you should have a clear picture of your audience. Utilize keywords that these prospects use while searching for content or a product. Do not limit yourself to a niche when ad targeting. For example, an accounting software product can also be promoted in other business aspects such as online business, small business, project management, marketing, etc.
Best display ad networks
The top ad networks for B2B and SaaS are likely to be preferred by publishers and they can leverage your reach and content scope. Some of the best display ad networks for publishers includes: Google AdSense, Clicksor, Adblade, Conversant, BuySellAds, and Media.net. You can also explore other ad networks and compare the main factors outlined above.
Sponsored Social Media for B2B Marketing
Most Important Social Media Platforms for B2B Marketers (2017)
Source: 2017 Social Media Marketing Industry Report
Facebook advertising takes your business beyond your followers. Moreover, you get to qualify your audience down to details. The social network has demographic-specific options, such as, based on the user’s listed job; employees of specific companies; and a life event like a new job. Most B2B marketers use Facebook for brand awareness, lead nurturing and reach out to the personal accounts of the client’s decision-makers. Interestingly, since most Facebook users have their email address for user account, you mailing list is likely to be a treasure of Facebook accounts and the social network permits you to leverage this bonus. Go to Custom Audiences then Campaigns and select Custom List. Your mailing list, which should be in CSV, can now be uploaded and included in your Facebook ad campaign.
On the other hand, LinkedIn is always an excellent channel for B2B promotions, where users are mostly professionals and where your software ad can be more focused. You can target ads by professional titles, positions, and company; thus, niching your target down to the core users of your B2B software. Moreover, people on LinkedIn are more conducive to B2B relationships, where they network to further their career. As a SaaS vendor or marketer, you can be seen as an important connector or expert in your software category.
These networks promote content instead of ads, and therefore they are ideal for marketing articles, case studies and webinar topics. They focus on engaging prospects with topics of interest rather than with product pitches. In fact, the “ads” look like they are part of the publisher’s content, usually as a bottom filler with subheadings like, “You Might Also Like” or “Stories Across the Web”. Paid content can complement your ad network placements as these content networks create a top-of-funnel traffic that can provide conversion at a much later date.
Taboola, Outbrain, and nRelate are three popular paid content distribution networks utilized by high-ranking publishers such as USA Today, ESPN, CNN, The Huffington Post, and Time. These networks use different algorithms to match your content ads with the publishers’ content to engage readers’ interest.
Show how it Works
When you really want to grab attention, it pays to put your platform to work and show them how it’s done. That’s what Promoter.io did when it launched its service. As a way to tap into current events, the site developed a tool that used its technology (Net Promoter Score measurement) in an unconventional way – predicting the presidential election.
With just a few months under its belt, Promoter.io has been featured in a number of publications with more than 12,000 votes driven by its platform as leads roll in daily. Showcasing the features and benefits of a system is a great way to connect your audience with your value proposition.
Examples of Promoter.io and SumoMe
Engage with Reddit
Marketing on Reddit has the potential to generate a lot of traffic. The community is segmented into hyper-focused subreddits that put your target audience in one place. Unfortunately, Reddit has some pretty strong guidelines about self-promotion.
SumoMe understood the need to provide value in the Reddit community. It created high-value long-form content within the subreddit, rather than Spam content links. It then sent information and links via private message to Redditors who requested more information. According to Wilson Hung of App Sumo, the efforts generated a lot of up votes and discussion with up to 1,000 unique visits per Reddit post.
Create urgency through exclusivity
Creating an exclusive gated or invite-only platform is a great way to generate buzz, because people tend to want what they can’t have. Targeting a younger audience, specifically college students, Tinder mobilizes local reps on college campuses across the U.S. to host exclusive parties for people between the ages of 18-24, which make up about 68% of its audience base. The company has been using this same tactic to grow since it first launched. If you wanted in, you had to download the Tinder app on your smartphone.
Facebook deployed this same kind of exclusivity as far back as 2004 when an edu email address was required in order to target and attract a very specific demographic – college students. That exclusivity lasted more than two years before Facebook finally opened the platform to the public.
For standard press releases you have a slew of paid and free PR distribution services, each one with its pros and cons. Free press release sites often do not let you post images or videos, greatly diminishing the impact of your announcement. The advantage of course is there’s no cost involved. On the other hand, paid PR can include a service that distributes your content or tweets it to a press group, but for a cost.
Although press releases are written to announce something, they’re mostly used for SEO, either to gain an extra backlink to your website or get a search boost by riding on the press release site’s PageRank. Likewise, even as your competitors focus on social media and content marketing, that leaves your brand alone in the PR site space, which is a significant advantage worth your attention. Free press releases are also often included in premium marketing packages on B2B review sites.
Make it All About the customer
With so many companies focused on growth hacking, gaming the search engines, leveraging optimization, and pushing the best services, you have to wonder when people are going to start caring about the customer. If your goal is to grow your customer base, then you should stop focusing on tricks to get their attention. Be direct. Ask them, quite literally, what they want from you.
Help Scout gets it, as it developed a help desk platform designed to create a delightful customer experience. Yes, it’s a SaaS product, but it’s customer-focused. The site has built and marketed its platform in a way that helps companies provide a human touch.
Conclusion
Paid channels can be the difference to your organic campaign especially when readers today are being overwhelmed by re-purposed content churned out by companies. When planning your SaaS ad campaign, make sure to cover a wide ground by including the basic but essential paid streams we’ve talked about.
Let us know in the comments section about the different advertising strategies that you applied to bring your SaaS in limelight.
Debt can easily destroy your career or life goals. Furthermore, it may be useless earning from your work only for all your salary to be cut for debt repayment. That is why it is necessary to dump those credit cards you have and start working on other credits you have amassed. Believe it or not, it only gets harder when you grow and start having more responsibilities.
The truth is that getting out of debt with no money to pay it back is possible for any person. It all starts with a positive attitude and hard work. When you can get your credit card bills under control, then start making the necessary changes that will help you pay off your debt. There are ways that you can get a fast start by lowering your monthly payments and starting to build up your debt as quickly as possible.
If you don’t get your finances in line, your obligations will only pile up as time goes by. Below are tips on how you can do away with debts instantly.
Dump your credit cards
Continued use of credit cards contributes to the soaring of debts. You are opening doors to high-interest rates. Therefore, every time you swipe that card, you are increasing the rates that started accumulating from when you first swiped. Moreover, there will be instances where you will be forced to use the card once in a while. If you do, avoid using a cash advance pack. They are worse for they may be problematic paying.
Spend less
Free up some cash by reviewing your expenses. Cut all costs that you can do without. Come up with a budget tool that shall help you to track where your revenue goes. After that, check on those bills that you are incurring but can do without. If you spot them, cancel them to save a few coins to add in your debt repayment account. For example, you can save on your daily coffees, snacks, or takeaway foods from the food vendors. Buying your groceries to prepare food from home as well as coffee saves you more money than you could have realized. Use this cash to settle your debts.
Increase your monthly payments
If you can afford to pay a few more bucks on top of the monthly instalments, consider doing so. This enables you to finish up paying your debt earlier than scheduled. Furthermore, you may earn a bonus from the lender. You can also be able to afford to get extra funds to commit to your debts by applying for another job. Moreover, you can consider making a freelance career. One which will pay you that extra coin you need badly.
Commit extra cash on debt repayment
Getting a bonus at your place of work may tempt you to throw a celebration party with the same bonus check. There are far many beneficial things you can use that check on other than parties. If you got tax refunds or company bonuses, then you can commit these windfalls on payment of credit. As it is, it is difficult to earn extra money which will get its way to something constructive. After finishing your debt, you can juggle around what purpose you will use the funds for.
Strategize what debts to take care of first
The general rule about dealing with debts is that you have to pay those debts with lower balances first so that you can mount a momentum going up. However, it makes sense repaying those debts with higher rates of interest first. Leaving them for last will accrue too much money in interest that you may struggle to honor the contract. Besides, the main objective here is to pay your debts, the means you use should not really matter. As long as you honor your dates of the loan payment, everything should be fine.
Implement gradual changes
You will expect that loan repayment will be a little intense forcing you to do a complete overhaul in your life. This does not imply that you will starve yourself or affect your mental peace. Such sudden unplanned and strategized events usually lead to depression for the party involved. To prevent such predicaments, you will consider altering the changes slowly so that you ease into them. You will likely face a lot of challenges, after actualizing your debt. You can now return to your lifestyle even though it should be the one that almost plunged you into a cycle of debts.
Negotiate your credit rates
With high rates of credit, you will only be paying just to be dragged back by hefty rates. You can visit your lender and renegotiate for lower rates. Usually, low interest is affected on loans with long periods. This is what you might want to suggest to give you a reprieve.
Alternatively, you can suggest that you are going to start paying in large lump sums. This will make your lender effect change on those rates of interest. Also, you can argue that because of the many discounts available in the market, the lender should lower your rates or you consider elsewhere to take the business. It may be easier if you have been working with them for long as a client.
Consider refinancing
Credit refinancing is taking out a loan to consolidate all debts with high rates of credit and aligning them as one with a longer-term and a lower rate. Mostly, people consider taking out personal loans to consolidate credit card balances. Taking out a loan while you are in the process of clearing them may never make sense to you. However, it is a case to consider, especially if you are carrying around multiple credit cards with hefty balances. Since their rates are comparatively higher, you will take some time before you clear these balances. By then, you would have incurred a lot more; something you could circumvent and prevent.
The bottom line
Once you have a budget that includes everything in your household expenses, such as food, utilities, car payments, credit cards, and the like, figure out how much you need to pay each month. Add that to your list every month just the payment amount. Start slowly and work up to what you can afford each month. If you continue to work diligently at reducing your debt monthly, you will find that the goal will be reached sooner than you thought possible.
To be able to say bye to debts needs you to sacrifice a few luxuries temporarily. Also, you will be required to consider another job to increase your income; hence being able to repay your debt without struggling. You can increase your earning by freelancing or taking another job.
Nevertheless, debt consolidation is also in the picture. And, for all of these, measures, you need to have created a budget plan to guide your expenditure over this period.
Recently, businesses have needed to shift up their business model to adapt to the changing landscape. For many, this has meant moving to delivery-based service. Whether food, cosmetics, flowers, or something else, delivery allows businesses to reach their customers even if those clients can’t or don’t want to leave their house.
Although presenting many opportunities and having the potential to greatly increase your profits, transitioning your business to a delivery-based model does present some challenges. Here’s what you should know when transitioning your business to deliveries.
1. Make a Plan
When starting up deliveries in your business, it can be tempting to jump straight in and send out packages straight away. However, coming up with a strategy first ensures that you take the right approach and give yourself the greatest chance of success in your endeavors.
In developing a plan, start with your goals and work backwards to establish a strategy that will allow you to achieve these objectives. What are you looking to achieve through deliveries? This could be increasing your profits, expanding your customer base, or simply surviving at a time when people cannot come to you.
Next, plan how you will roll out deliveries. What systems and equipment will you need to make this work well? Can you use your existing staff to make the deliveries or will you need to contract new staff or additional service providers. As with any new plan, you should also plan an exit strategy in case things don’t work out.
2. Upgrade Your Systems
Luckily, you do not have to try to implement a whole new delivery process with your existing systems. There are a variety of tools available to businesses that make delivery more efficient and make your business more productive.
Firstly, consider upgrading your POS system. There are a number of powerful POS tools available to businesses, and some have specific functions to support delivery. If your existing system does not, it is time to upgrade to one that can flawlessly handle delivery options, online ordering, operational control, and order tracking.
3. Consider a Delivery Service Provider
If you’re delivering products, you can send these with the postal service or a courier. However, for businesses delivering food, the situation is a bit more complicated. Food needs to be rapidly delivered as soon as it is prepared in order to arrive fresh and the correct temperature.
In order to do this, you have two main options. You can either make deliveries yourself by using your own staff, or by using a dedicated food delivery service designed for food, such as Deliveroo, UberEats, Grubhub, and Menulog. It is important to weigh up the costs and benefits of each: arranging deliveries in-house involves staffing and vehicle costs, whereas third party delivery costs take a percentage of your sales. Depending on the volume of sales you have, one or the other may be more cost effective.
4. Promote your Business by Branding your Deliveries
Every business needs to promote their products and build brand awareness in order to get more customers, more sales, and therefore more profits. When you are sending your products out by delivery, this presents another opportunity to promote your business.
Branded packaging is a great way to do this – your packaging is a perfect platform to display your logo and business name to potential customers and reinforce your branding to existing customers. Put clear logo stickers on your packaging to have an impact without having to commission custom packaging. If you will be handling your own deliveries, your vehicle is also a perfect space to promote your brand and you should make sure your delivery vehicle is branded with decals or signage.
5. Maintain Food Quality
Another important consideration when arranging delivery of food is food quality. As soon as you need to package and transport your food elsewhere, many things that you need to think about to make sure that you customer receives the same quality product as you produced originally. As well as keeping hot foods warm and cold foods cool, you also have to prevent foods cross-mingling, drinks from spilling, and food losing its texture or integrity.
Make sure you have appropriate packaging to maintain temperatures as well as possible, and avoid spillage and cross-mingling. You should also ensure that timing between food production and delivery is as short as possible. In order to maintain food quality, you may even need to reassess your menu. Certain menu items may not be suitable for delivery, and will need to be swapped out for other delivery-friendly ones.
6. Remember your Customers
One of the most important things in implementing any new process for your business is to remember your customers. A shift to deliveries is no exception: your customers are core to everything you do, so you must ensure that your delivery systems work for them. Make sure you communicate clearly with your clients regarding delivery times, and effectively manage their expectations.
An email drip campaign is a series of messages that are sent, or “dripped,” in a predefined order at a predefined interval. Drip campaigns are commonly used to communicate to new subscribers or someone who made a purchase but didn’t join your email list yet, but you can use them at any time. Email drip campaigns are intimidating. They’re complicated, requiring you to create a bunch of content, write a bunch of emails, and then stitch it all together somehow.
Drip Email Campaign
Now that we know what is drip email campaign, how do you actually map out a successful automated drip campaign? Turns out, it’s not as hard as it seems.
Here are eight steps to keep in mind to create your first drip campaign — plus examples of how to target your audience, write your emails, tweak for best results and so on.
Set up your objectives.
You need to define your objectives to achieve your expected results. These objectives must be SMART, which is an abbreviation for the words — specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. Let’s break them down below:
SMART objectives
Specific: Be clear about what you want. Do you want to promote your products? Or, do you want to educate consumers with actionable advice? It’s time to plan and decide.
Measurable: Create success metrics for your drip campaign. What is the click-through rate you want to achieve? How will you measure your conversions? By introducing target numbers in your objective, you can clearly define the level of success you want.
Attainable: Are these objectives achievable for everyone in the team?
Realistic: Nothing is impossible, but you have to be a bit realistic when it comes to your time and your resources. Are your objectives attainable based on the number of your subscribers, and the amount of time in your hands? Is the amount of work required for the campaign reasonable based on the number of marketers and designers in your team? While it’s great to be ambitious, you also need to be a bit realistic about your objectives.
Timely: Set a time frame and schedule to make sure that your drip campaigns will stay on track.
Your objectives should be based on your end goals. Do you feel that your leads only try the free trial and none of them end up buying a subscription? Try an email sequence that contains product tutorials to highlights its value and show users how they can benefit from it. Don’t forget to create SMART objectives. A lot of people set big goals only to fall short, because they don’t have a concrete plan to achieve what they want. So, it’s important to clearly define your goals from the start.
Identify Your Target Audience
Drip campaigns are all about breaking your subscriber list into subsections, and targeting information to niches of customers. So, the most important piece here is determining which triggers and groups you’re going to use for your drip campaign strategy. But how do you segment your customers? Here are some ways you can get started.
Segmentation of audience
Demographics Demographics contain basic information like age, gender, location and job. It’s pretty obvious, but failure to use this data may lead to disastrous emails. For instance, let’s say you’re in the business of selling shoes. Without segmenting your emails based on genders, you may send emails promoting high heels to males. This is a disaster and a complete turn-off to customers. No one wants to receive a message that’s obviously not meant for them. The good news is that by segmenting customers based on demographics, you never have to face this dilemma. In addition, you also send messages that are tailored to the needs of each customer.
Actions You can also segment customers based on their behavior such as purchase, visit frequency, length of subscription and content. With the use of triggers, marketers can send emails based on products bought or the content users interacted with. For example:
A user subscribes to your company newsletter, and you send them a welcome email via your drip campaign
A user makes a purchase, and you automatically send them a receipt with shipping information (plus a few up-sells)
A user downloads the trial version of your app, and you send them a series of six instructional emails over the course of the trial, which offer helpful tips on making the most of your app.
Visualize your end goal
Step back and think about what action you want qualified leads to take. Ultimately, we want to get on the phone with these top-tier leads to not only try to make a sale, but to also explore possible partnerships and discuss their current challenges. Your action might be a purchase, a download, or a demo; regardless, make sure the desired action is clear. By the time users reach the end of the drip campaign, they should have a clear picture of their unique problems, how you can help them solve them, and how exactly you can work together. Ideally, when our customers are ready to buy, they have a good understanding of content marketing and its long-term commitment. Eliminate as many surprises beforehand by working backward from your end goal.
Determine Frequency of Your Drip Campaign
Next, think about the frequency of your emails. Let’s say, your drip campaigns is about a course on a specific skill. You can space these emails out for two to three days each — rather than 7 or 14 days apart. This way, your viewers will easily recall what the email is about. The rules of how often you should send an email isn’t set in stone. So, if you’re in doubt, test your results or ask your customers. Let’s say, you have an educational drip campaign about your product tutorials. Try to find out your open rates if you send tutorials every two days, five days and so on. Are customers more likely to open your email, if the previous one is still fresh from their minds? Check your analytics to find out.
Determine Your Email Sequence
Next, it’s time to determine your email sequence. The sequence of your email campaign should be in sync with your objectives. What do you want your users to achieve by the end of the drip campaign? Will these emails help them achieve it? The emails you send should serve as a customer’s path to achieving your objective. As for how many emails you’ll send, you can go with as low as five emails and a maximum of ten emails, but there’s really no limit. Just don’t go overboard! Simply send enough emails to get your message across.
Create Irresistible Subject Lines
How do you write an email that gets read? It all begins with an irresistible subject line. Here are some tips:
Keep It Short
Add a Personal Touch
Be witty
Use a Call-to-Action
Select your content and create the campaigns.
Now that you know whom you’re targeting, you need to generate a message that’s helpful and grabs their attention. What do you want the user to do? Or, what do you want the user to learn? When it comes to selecting content, it all goes back to where your lead’s focus currently resides and how close he/she is to making a decision. For those who aren’t purchase-ready, include blog posts and other content covering a variety of questions and concerns. These readers aren’t ready to jump on a call about budgeting, targeting, and possible solutions — they’re just testing the water, and it might be too cold. Based on your answer, write copy that’s clear, actionable, and attractive. Maintain the voice that you’ve built for you brand, but make sure that your message is clear. To move qualified leads closer to a buying decision, focus on content that digs deep. Think whitepapers, case studies, and demos that clearly highlight your understanding of their problems — and how you can be the solution.
Here are some phrases you can use to create an actionable email:
Shop now, Share, Get social, Spread the word
Combine this with phrases related with time to create a sense of urgency:
Only [number] days left, today only, Limited-time, offer ends at [time], Sale ends at [time]
Automate your emails.
Once you’ve decided on a strategy, start sending. To do this, you can either implement your own custom drip software or buy an off-the-shelf product that’ll have you up and running in minutes. Once your content is ready, it’s time to let your marketing automation solution take care of the heavy lifting. The content you’ve selected — blog posts, external articles, whitepapers, case studies, etc. — that covers the basics should be delivered at a routine pace.
Drip Email Tools
For those leads at the bottom of the funnel, we utilize content to address questions and objections that might slow down a potential sale. These emails are best delivered via triggers, like link clicks, open rates, or lead qualification. As leads approach the decision-making part of the process, they’ll need answers quicker; match that pace, or you’ll lose their interest. Ultimately, developing a drip campaign isn’t a plug-and-play method to maximize sales. Rather, it’s a powerful tool to create prepared customers. Put in the work, and your drip campaign will result in a flood of new business.
Evaluate and Adjust
Just because your drip campaign is automated doesn’t mean you can let it run unsupervised. You spent a bunch of time researching user segments, and it’s important to readjust those segments and your strategy based on the results.
Evaluate, adjust and repeat
If you aren’t getting as many clickthroughs as you want, try rewriting your calls to action; if you aren’t meeting your conversion rate goals with your sale-closing email, try more educational communications before asking any user to pull the trigger. Evaluate, adjust, repeat.
Conclusion
Drip email campaigns are of great help when it comes to getting users and popularizing your idea/product. Though, different strategies may work for different companies and products, we have given some basic steps that anyone can follow to create a successful drip campaign. Just follow the steps and tweak the details according to your needs. If you have some other tips, please let us know in the comments section.
