Talks about: #customerengagement #digitaltransformation #hybridworkmodel #webtool #marketing
Tuhin Banik, CEO at ThatWare
Rapid Fire Round with
Tuhin Banik
How to determine your buyer persona and increase customer engagement?
Customer engagement
With 8 masters degrees across multiple domains like technology, marketing, digital, data science, AI, and many more, what was your key driving force for such a motivation? What tips would you give to today’s marketers and entrepreneurs that would help them to break through the clutter and increase customer engagement in today’s globalised business ecosystem?
With 8 masters degrees across multiple domains like technology, marketing, digital, data science, AI, and many more, what was your key driving force for such a motivation? What tips would you give to today’s marketers and entrepreneurs that would help them to break through the clutter and increase customer engagement in today’s globalised business ecosystem?
I have been a passionate digital marketer for almost 8 years now. What happened is like during my entire journey I always felt like the entire ecosystem of digital marketing should be well driven with the help of cutting edge technologies. When I first started I didn’t realize that technology includes AI or data science but I wanted to be levelled up strategies, proactive methods by which the entire digital market team technicalities can be well managed. This is when I came up with my own, one of my own innovations where I planned to take ahead the semantic engineering which really means how you can really understand the intent of the entire users and then combine their goals with synchronization for achieving the desired value for the digital marketing. That being said me and my team after almost 5 years of developing our own strategies we have made a lot of code structures, funnels, technical revolutions. We are the first in the world to come out with a one and only strategy by which we can blend digital marketing with the help of AI. And then we also have combined all of our efforts and invested a lot to build our own product also named Web Tool. and that product is also now been patented by us. And this is one of the first natural language-based patents from India. Because there is a lot of patents that happened in AI but not from India.
Coming back to the question now I see a good connection with AI, data science, ML and if I stretch more than there is neural network deep learning and what I feel that digital marketing should not be treated like a cookie cutting strategy rather people should take the utilization of all these techniques and technicalities. Technologists should really strive for making such a thing that people use it easily and can measure also can feel the difference from the traditional method. And as everyone knows that AI is the future of technology worldwide in combing both fields together so that one powerful product can be produced. This is our vision is to revolutionise the entire industry of digital marketing with the help of AI, data science. And this is how we came out with our protocols and there are a lot of studies associated with that because AI comprises a lot of things like semantic search, semantic engineering, reverse intent optimization, information retrieval. We have worked for the past 8 years to come up with the best innovation possible and it is not only about the innovation but mostly it is about the mindset we want to change the mindset of the entire nation so that people don't think of digital marketing as the layman strategy which use to be rather thinking that this field can bring a revolutionary change in the future which is the main thing.
What is digital transformation & how to plan a roadmap for adopting digital transformation for an organization?
Digital Transformation
Yourself being a seasoned entrepreneur, you have seen multiple transformations in the business space in the past few years. How do you see the digital transformation impacting your organisation at its core? What primary factors one should focus on while planning their organisation’s road map for digital transformation?
Yourself being a seasoned entrepreneur, you have seen multiple transformations in the business space in the past few years. How do you see the digital transformation impacting your organisation at its core? What primary factors one should focus on while planning their organisation’s road map for digital transformation?
Interesting question because this is a hot topic for every business owner and entrepreneur whether they should take their business into the digital phase or whether they still want to go for the D2C approach and supply chain marketing. What is my vision is that everyone should scale their business to digital because firstly if people take any of the business models to the digital platform they could enjoy five benefits starting with first that it eradicates business faces from the offline sector, secondly people can track down the metrics and key performers indicators like how many users are really coming, how many are actually viable, how many products and customers are selling through their audiences. These all data become readily available for the business owner. And I personally believe that for any business owner having this kind of data is very important for running a successful business model. The third most important thing is people can do A/B testing, people can understand what is working and what is not working in the sense that everything is trackable. The fourth point is there is a possibility of running the activities in the automation format while keeping strict control on the quality process with minimal efforts, manpower, resource expenditure things can be upscale. The scalability factor remains a bit higher in terms of the digital mode and the most interesting part and last but not the least factor is that if something chooses a digital mode of operations then the chances of getting or reaching out to audiences is enormous.
It is incomparable if someone follows offline targeting and if it is compared to the digital mode of content creation the level of difference becomes 500 times more like you can control your audience, define your audience, can change your audience at your own will. For say if you want to change your users in a fraction of a second you can do that with the help of digital marketing in offline mode you need to undergo a lot of meetings and that might take a few quarters and still not relevant to your need. This is why I think digital transformation is crucial to upscale. And to conclude business can three major benefits out of it. They can have exposure for scalability, secondly, they can have their flexibility and third but most interesting is that they can control the entire workflow at their fingertips. So, these are the main three things that should opt for digital transformation. A good example I can share, in the time of pandemic since 2022 everyone has started to establish their business online whether it is a school, banks real estate, healthcare digital transformation have played a very important role in upscaling business during the pandemic. And I think this is one of the good example that digital phase is inevitable to any kind of traditional marketing method.
How to smoothly transit into hybrid working model?
Hybrid work model
Since the pandemic, the hybrid workplace is becoming a trend and many people consider it as the future work model. However, there are still concerns about having a low level of cyber security and increasing employee isolation. How was your journey of implementing a hybrid workplace model for your organisation and how did you tackle these issues? And what were the key areas of the technologies that supported you to achieve your goals? Also, we would like to hear some of your expert views on how to achieve a smooth transition into hybrid work mode.
Since the pandemic, the hybrid workplace is becoming a trend and many people consider it as the future work model. However, there are still concerns about having a low level of cyber security and increasing employee isolation. How was your journey of implementing a hybrid workplace model for your organisation and how did you tackle these issues? And what were the key areas of the technologies that supported you to achieve your goals? Also, we would like to hear some of your expert views on how to achieve a smooth transition into hybrid work mode.
So, I think even just two-three years back people just used to think that service can be a physical server or there are Cisco dealings and there are even many more services which I'm not naming. But nowadays service can be cloud, even ups can be in the cloud model. So data storage can be in the cloud and cloud storage. Cloud maintenance of the servers are really good because this is where even some of the bigger companies such as Apple invest their technology, Google invests their technology and all of the data remains quite safe and all of the data are fully protected with seven to eight layers of encryption which makes it nearly impossible for any kind of data breach. And even this becomes and even I think this eradicates a lot of the hassle for any kind of data leakages or misutilization of the data or even stealing of the data or something because the data is only connected end to end. Whoever needs the data need to have a permission key by which they can access the data and once they have access the same data can be reused at some other time with the help of some authentication and even if it is not used. Data can be deleted once again with the help of an authentication. So it just works like a handshaking model where everything remains end to end, encrypted and things do not go there. And there the third most important point and one of the main purposes of this discussion would be the cyber security setup. So I think this is one of the main baselines for the entire journey to keep online threats away from affecting businesses, specifically small businesses. Now, small business owners might think that cybersecurity is a very expensive thing.
This might be beyond their budget, beyond any kind of goal. As a person, like on an expert opinion, what I can tell you is that cybersecurity is definitely not expensive because for any SMBs they can simply invest in some of the common techniques for preventing their rights. That is, the first one is they can use the CDN or a content delivery network by which their entire business model can remain protected from any kind of malware or threats or viruses or even any kind of hackers. The second most important thing, which can be for SMBs to mid-level sectors because it's a bit expensive, sometimes startups might not be able to afford. So that is the firewall so people can use WAF like web application firewall for protecting their online threat, which can reduce a lot of chances for hackers to hack, stealing any kind of data. And last but not least corporates can definitely hire some cyber security experts to make sure that their entry points of every single aspect are fully protected. I think these three steps can really help every business owner, whether they are from the startups or the SMB, to make sure that the hybrid model can work in place. And since did they say that? Yes, I agree with this would be the future of every workstation or every workplace. So I think business owners should start investing now in baby steps towards these three things. And business owners should identify themselves with what they require. If they're they have a small business, then they just need to invest in products. And if they have a good business, then they need to act adequately. So this is how I think a hybrid model can be well protected.
Which are the most promising marketing channels and one should focus on for 2022? and What is the future of marketing?
Future Of Marketing
With Facebook being meta and aggressively pushing AI, ML, and metaverse into the day-to-day life of a general tech user, what do you think the future of marketing looks like and which are the most promising channel you would suggest one should focus on in the year 2022?
With Facebook being meta and aggressively pushing AI, ML, and metaverse into the day-to-day life of a general tech user, what do you think the future of marketing looks like and which are the most promising channel you would suggest one should focus on in the year 2022?
I can tell you that Metaverse is itself a part of the online world. Metaverse is not a different thing because this is itself the integrity of an entirely digital asset. Because if digital assets exist then Metaverse exists. If not, then it doesn't. I think the first answer is if Metaverse becomes more famous in near future, then the chances of digital marketing would even grow quadruple because both things are equally synchronized. Now coming down to your question like how marketing can be about yes, in Metaverse there can be few new techniques that are only possible in Metaverse such as AR, augmented reality, virtual reality. Many of our users might have faced like iPhone 13 have lighter scanners. That is itself a small part of the Metaverse. Or if someone plays games like there is a lot of Metaverse games where people built their own Kingdom and people play their own games, make their own Castle or something. In short with the help of metaverse the marketing can reach up to the next level because people can take the help of augmented reality, virtual reality, they can take the user like the utilization of a lot of sensing abilities by which they can speed up the marketing features. One example I can put forward. You are optimizing your business for augmented reality. Now you have your business in a good location. Now if people use some metaverse activities or metaverse software such as Google Lens or Apple Lens or even Google 3D Maps, then suppose you have 1000 visitors passes by your store, local store.
Then people can easily check your billboards, people can easily check your store and they can get relevant information about your business. I think this speeds up a lot of the marketing abilities, one of the smartest marketing abilities. Metaverse is still very far from its current standpoint. Maybe ten years down the line we can look at the things on how this goes. Still, there is a lot of learning segment for marketers like me as well. I think even for AI executives like many as of me because this is now in a learning curve. It's on a learning curve where we have endless opportunities and there is so much to learn from there. Lastly coming down to which platform people can use and I think the best answer would be it depends upon the business. So if someone has an entertainment niche then they can easily do it on social media like Facebook or because Facebook is very good at promoting entertainment or brand jewellery garments and things like that. If someone is having some business with regards to technology, in that case, they can do on LinkedIn or Twitter something like that. If someone is having from the design segment they can do it on Pinterest on Instagram. It really depends upon the niche of the marketers or the niche of the business owners. There is no restricted thing. I think metaverse can well align with any of the things. Facebook is famous because Facebook has taken the metaverse initiative. But for me, I think even two years down the line every single social media would take on the matters like projects. So this would be a new thing. Just like in 1985 the first time search engines came out or the internet came out people had little knowledge on where this will go. I think Metaverse is the same thing, maybe 50 years down the line or not even 50, but maybe 30 years down the line. Metaverse would be having an endless opportunity. It's like the new internet era which our next generation can really take it up. But for now, it does have the opportunity as I told AR VR and some of like some stimulus generated objects which can be utilized by marketers for enhanced marketing activity. So this is my opinion.
Strategies for B2B, B2C & D2C marketing at scale
B2B, B2C & D2C
As a senior experienced marketer, what challenges do you still face with your B2B, B2C & D2C marketing initiatives?
As a senior experienced marketer, what challenges do you still face with your B2B, B2C & D2C marketing initiatives?
In my opinion, first of, B2B and B2C are both different. Now some of the common challenges I would label right now. So I'll start with B2C because B2C is like the opportunity of B2C is quite fast. So the first challenge I normally see is four challenges on B2C. The first challenge on what I see is like I purchased personally believe that for understanding B2C people should have adequate knowledge of understanding the audience. Now if someone is limited to its knowledge if someone does not understand how to Bank. If someone even has a lesser ability to segregate the audience. In that case, this would be a problem for the targeting. The second thing for B2C is like B2C have a lot of opportunities but at the same time, I think B2C would require business owners to invest a lot of money for paid activities because in B2C without any paid promotions I think things won't go very long or further because by utilizing SEO this might take some months, maybe six months to eight months. And I think specifically for SMBs, waiting and investing for eight months without a return is a big challenge. This is one of the challenges I personally feel for B2C and I think this is one of the harshest challenges. What I see as the third most important challenge for B2C is like in B2C, sometimes what happens is sometimes you cannot really control the audience even if you do have the technology but you might be limited on resources because in B2C there are a lot of tools and trackers on the markets which is quite expensive and people once again might not be adequately informative or they might not be having the knowledge to operate those they need to hire someone. Once again the cost is utilized and I think this becomes a lot hectic. And last but not the least, I think the fourth most important point for B2C is that this is still unexplored. There are a lot more opportunities out there but people are still following the usual methods like email marketing, social media or SEO.
Yes, there are some revolutionary people out there trying to make a change but the amount is still small because the figures aren't billions and the people who are really trying to make a change are in just a few thousand. So I think the gap is quite huge so people cannot really make a connection with the thing. Now coming to the B2B. For B2B. I think B2 B is really a good performer for digital marketing. I can see just two challenges out here. The first challenge once again from the SEO perspective, even though that is one of the most powerful methods of marketing but still at the same time for SMBs this would be a challenge because they need to wait for several months for seeing a return so they cannot start seeing a return from overnight. For that to happen, the next challenge is investing money in paid marketing and I think in a digital platform, the digital platform does not segregate the competition for them. If someone is bidding from a billion-dollar company and if someone is bidding from a start-up, the digital asset streets, both of them the same. Whoever has the money power they can win. I think this is a monopoly in digital marketing. Like whoever has the money power they can win over the bids or win over the paid marketing rather than struggling for what they have. But I think in coming days these all things would be sorted out because technologies are developed, there are revolutionary people who are trying to make a change and the main challenge is every day more than 100,000 websites are getting lived and the amount of people who are really working for digital marketing is very low. So this is the main gap. But I think in the coming days with the help of AI or machine learning or data science, these all things can be well managed. Maybe in the next two or three years. This is the ultimate outcome.
