Career Chit Chat for Digital Marketers

1. Be a Marketer:Gone are the days when digital initiatives was considered to be a part of IT team. Once the spend increases you would be required to link it with business objectives. I would suggest you to learn basics of marketing,a B-School degree or certification from an institute of repute would certainly going to help you in your career.

2. Know the Jargons:I have seen many digital marketer's career stagnating because of scarcity of right words and right sentences to explain their work. It becomes more important when you are in a leadership position or running your own business. Keep yourself abreast with industry jargons like CTR,Server Laod etc.

3. Online Presence Management:Participate in right forum .Be present in right forum and create buzz at right time.

4. Jack of All but Master of Some:If you are eying digital consulting as a career you should project yourself as solution provider. B logging on complex and technical issue in Digital marketing is a good idea. For more information check my blog: www.vinaytosh.com

5. Attend Industry Meet ups and Conferences:You get real contact and business after meeting real& like minded people.

6. Keep a Pulse on the News:Keep your self update with industry and marketing news. It will help you in managing different products and campaigns.

7. Get Technical:You have to handle technical guys like designer and back end developers. In order to understand their language and problem ,you should have at least superficial knowledge of web 2.0 technologies.

8. Perfect Your Resume: Perfect your professional presence at Linked In and other important forums.

9. Let Curiosity and Passion Drive You:Always be receptive and early adopter of changes coming towards you. It will help you in differentiating yourself in crowd. I will name it as "Creating Blue Ocean" for your career.

10. Living with Internet:More time you spend on INTERNET, more you will be aware of trends and patterns. Reports can never replace observations,MIND IT.

Online Shopping :Are We Ready ?

I still remember my childhood days when we used to stand in queue for hours to get a railway reservation. Now people hardly visit station to book a railway ticket. Online shopping is an easy and comfortable way of shopping for a large range of products.

There is a survey conducted by The Nielsen Company, which suggests that around 85% has already used to make a purchase online which shows an improvement in the online shopping trends. Another claim is that around 50% of the people using Internet around the world, are active online shoppers. 


A survey conducted about two years ago, about number of online shoppers, suggested the number to be around 627 million which has risen to about 875 million as of now. People from countries like Korea, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan and United States of America, are very fond of online shopping. Many manufacturing companies are aggressively marketing their products considering the change in the online shopping trends using E-commerce web hosting to attract more and more customers.

Facts in favor of online shopping:

1.      You save a lot of time & Transportation cost. You need not personally go to the retail shop for shopping.

2.      With advent of new technologies information assimilation has become easier and catalogs are making personal visit irrelevant.

3.      With penetration of Internet /Mobile, online shopping is in reach of millions of Indians. There is lot of opportunity untapped.

Strategy for Indian Consumer:

1.      Indians are adopter of technologies, when it becomes affordable and reliable.  

2.      The association with government provides Indian a sense of security and It was reason behind success of IRCTC online ticketing system.But the things are changing fast with transparency and proper guidelines.

3.      Indians go for deal! There should be incentive for using online channels.

4.      The benefits for online shopping should be immediate and if possible “reduced price”.

Greatest Friend is Biggest Enemy

Sometime a friend do a lot of favor to you, whenever you ask for anything he always gets it done for you .You considered him best friend of yours and he was happy for importance he was getting. One given morning you came to know about a genie which was open to offer you all those services at very nominal price .You thought: why unnecessary bug my friend? Let it outsource and concentrate on end result only. You were able to concentrate more on your work and your results improved. Then you witnessed sudden change in your friend's behavior, he started complaining about your attitude and quality of outsourced services. In this story, read your tech team as your best friend and “outsourced service/open source” as genie.   

During last eight years ,I have interacted with many tech teams of all size & might and some of them being top notch companies in their domain. I was representing business in almost every case and my objective was to make sure that technology does not eclipse end user’s comfort and experience. To become advocate of end user you need to think like him/her and accept the hard truth that technology is only enabler and business of business is to keep client happy and hence business profitable.

During my interaction with tech teams, I am always adamant that “for end user web 2.0 technologies is not about    knowing PHP, .Net, Ruby on Rail or Pearl” it is about “effective use of applications and platforms developed with use of that technology”. Following table lists some Web2.0 technologies and categories it.

Image Source: Mckinsey Report on Web2.0 Technologies

I know that I am inviting ire of technology experts .But I want to make one thing clear ,I am grateful to you for creating such platforms(read wiki,Blog,RSS  etc) using which we can achieve our business objectives. Let's these tools remain technologies for us and make them as simple as possible.

I would highly recommend a Digital Marketing Team, which can effectively utilize technology to make web2.0 experience as pleasant as possible and is not engrossed with technology.