Making SEO, PPC, SMM & Mobile Work Together by Mahesh Murthy (Pinstorm), Paritosh Sharma (OMLogic) at OMCAR 2009

Post tea, peppered with some avid networking, we gather for the next session, ‘Making SEO, PPC, SMM & Mobile Work Together’, presented by Mahesh Murthy, CEO Pinstorm and Paritosh Sharma, (SMM Evangelist, OMLogic). I am LIVE Blogging the session and I can’t help notice the excitement that has been generated in the room at the announcement of the session

Paritosh starts the session by explaining that he will be discussing his views about SMM and how business can benefit from SMM.

He starts by displaying a slide with a picture of a colorful grocery store with blue and red boxes. I specially like the story telling method by which he makes his point. He says that once he went to buy a product of his favorite brand and that brand was not available so he had to settle down for his second favorite brand. So inspite of being a brand loyalist he had to settle with his second choice.

SMM can be explained in two words - message and media.

Paritosh makes the session very lively by citing an example of advertising for a bicycle manufacturer. He quotes 3 example campaigns

1. A description of the specifics of the bicycle

2. A picture of the bicycle

3. A video of a woman riding a cycle showing how easy to ride

No need to mention the third method clicked. What really worked is the content, the message, and the media.

He cites another example of the inventor of sliced bread. The person patented it, advertised it still it didn’t catch up for 15 years. Another bread manufacturer came along and packaged the sliced bread in the right manner and it appealed to the user.

He rightly makes a point that there is no single rule for marketing. Advertising on SlideShare may work for a business and YouTube for another. It is important to understand the needs of the client and the client’s client.

He is explaining that the way to go about it is to create a message and target it to the right set of consumers.

He goes on to cite another example which triggers a lot of laughter - TataSky did an adult site, the moment anybody clicks on the site the questions like age and gender comes up which create the impression of the contents within. But the moment you click it it says ‘dude a paap hai’. The campaign sure has been done in a very witty manner which creates a huge recall value.

He also cites the example of jagore.com and the ‘pappu pass ho gaya’ campaigns about which we all are well aware of. Both the campaigns and the were huge successes and the radio campaign ‘dot is hot’ was a runaway success as well. Jagore.com was a purely online site, and the message ‘chai peke jaago’ was very intelligently done. Kudos to the tata guys!

Television is a passe. There was a time people bought advertising space. But now people are spending more time on the internet on Orkuts and FaceBooks.

The audience silently agrees to that.

Paritosh says that SMM is more about customizing, customizing according to the needs of the customers. He goes on to elaborate the four steps of creating a campaign.

The first step is to listen and learn. Even the customer is not clear about what he wants from SMM.

The second step is to audit and analyze the customer’s business model, whether SMM will be good or PPC.

The third step is to develop and test.

The fourth step is to execute and monitor. Metrics are difficult in SMM. But it is not that difficult if you understand the business perspective of the client. And till the time there is no metrics, one can always customize metrics for the clients.

He adds

Position your brand right. Do it with the right medium and to the relevant section of the audience online.And thats where the PPC and SEO’s come into action.

He is now telling us about Skittles where every page is a social media, on one page there is twitter, on another youtube and FaceBook on yet another. There is nothing good or bad it is about.

He then shares about Webchutney.com. On the home page, there are two tabs saying ‘I have 5 mins’ , and ‘I have plenty of time’, clicking on either takes the user to separate pages. He cites an example that if one sees a YouTube video of a bicycle gear that she likes and on clicking on it she is taken to the home page of the bicycle website, then one wouldn’t be too happy about it. The concept of separate landing works. I can’t help thinking that yes, that has happened to me many times!

He makes a point by reiterating that markets have evolved overtime and its time that one starts marketing to the innovators and early adopters. They are the ones which will take to your product and will do a much better viral campaign on the internet rather than the late adopters.

You have a great product…. You have identified the target market… and people are talking about u….. and before the fizz goes out, market it…

Paritosh wraps up the session saying

The riskiest thing that you can do for your brand is to be safe.

Even if anybody writes anything bad about your brand, one can be alerted by a google alert and can pacify them.

Thanks for the useful insights Paritosh, it was great listening to you.

Mahesh Murthy, starts by clarifying that he is not politically aligned and suggests an analysis of the BJP, Congress online campaign. It sure did trigger some muffled laughter among the audience.

He says that analysis shows that the composition of the BJP was in the age groups of above 60 or 18-20. The composition of Congress was mostly the working class population. The focus of the BJP message was always a strong and decisive campaign and most working class do not see the current government as indecisive and weak.

Mahesh says that he has worked with many media in his life. He says that one media does not necessarily kill another and that one should communicate with all the medias where consumers are listening. Interesting thought Mahesh!

He then rightly points out that pace of change is increasing.

He throws light upon the importance of integration of the media channels for advertising. He gives us the example of Coke which has a presence in over 20 countries and in all those 20 countries maybe there are 20 different media. Now, if there were specialized advertising agencies for each media and it would be very difficult for Coke to manage them. Rightly said Mahesh!

Mahesh says that every specialist becomes obsolete. Now however scary, this is a true. He says, TV became obsolete when internet came along and so on and so forth. So it is important not to stuck up in anything. He rightly points out that internet is a niche media and not a mass media but it sure does have the users with a purchasing power.

He goes on by saying that before devising a digital marketing strategy one has to answer a few basic questions

Where are my consumer? How many are on the digital medium and how much time do they spend on the digital medium. What is his behavior?

He says that there are 4 stages of marketing

- Creating awareness

- Generating interest

- Generating desire and

- Action

He goes on saying that it is important to understand how does digital medium fits in any advertising campaign. It is important that a mix of media is used.

He goes on sharing some great insights on the digital campaign

- For awareness - CPI and not CPM, Contextual, Social, SEO, ORM

- For generating interest - CPUV not CPC, Contextual, CPUV display, Mobile, ORM.

- On increasing Desire - landing pages, microsites, CPQL, social, review sites and mobile web.

- Action - CPLV/CPA, SMS, Call, Chat,Call centre, Analytics

Mahesh goes on to share a very interesting example on how they increased the conversion rate for Yatra. If anybody searched for a Nagpur - Mumbai flight and for every travel site the user is taken to the home page where the user again has to enter the details. For Yatra, they created 15000 landing page, a separate landing page for Nagpur - Mumbai, a separate for Mumbai - Nagpur and so on. And surprise! their conversion rates went up by 70%.

He gives another example of a bus service, Redbus - it increased sales many folds within 2 years ago. How did they do it - they advertised by integrating two medias - website and phone.

He is making a very important point by saying

Focus on the audience and the message and not on the media.

He shares a quick case when they had to sell a student travel package for Jet Airlines with some benefits such as 10 kg extra luggage. They advertised this package on sites for overseas education. And everytime anybody asked a question on those sites, they answered it with links. No need to mention that sales picked up.

Mahesh speaks about an occasion when they needed 2 interns, they twitterd about it and got 11 applications, without spending any money!

The session is now going into Q&A mode.

One of the most interesting sessions I have blogged. Thanks Paritosh and Mahesh.

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