 Hi everyone, this is Sonali. Thank you all for carving out some time for attending today's webinar on the episode 7 of BX Academy, Business Excellence Mentoring and Coaching. To all the attendees out there, please type in any questions you might have in the Q&A section and we'll try to answer as many as possible at the end of the session. I would now like to welcome our speaker, Mr. Gaurav Mariah, Chairman and Founder of the Franchise India Tool. A very warm welcome to you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Sonali. Thank you for hosting this series. This is the second series we've started in business sex. The first series were based on how to value, scale, find and exit and invest. This was, that was designed more for startups and mid-sized companies. And then we started business excellence series, again, designed for our larger community for Franchise India. Franchise India has the largest community of what I call startups, small-sized and mid-sized businesses. We have over 6 million people who are in part of our community, participating in different kind of initiatives by Franchise India. Franchise India helps people to get new businesses, business sex, which is a separate company that helps companies to get right valued and also find an exit at a certain stage. A lot of startups come to us for getting investments. So we have a fair amount of our large ecosystems, so we continue to engage our communities by doing these webinars. So today's discussion is around marketing excellence. One of the part of the larger business excellence is marketing. I've done about, this is a seven series, we've done about six different other topics that different excellence series are different, you know, verticals of your business and every vertical has to have its own importance and own direction. So today we want to talk about marketing. And sometimes marketing is, you know, seen as a lot more as a promotion or some kind of marketing communication. And I'm going to talk about various things which you don't really talk about in marketing. But more importantly, before we even get started, you need to really start asking a few questions to yourself. Do you think that your customer is there or is it already started seeing that it started shifting? You know, sometimes we don't notice and our businesses are normally outlines and bottom lines. We don't really go out and see how is the customer behaving? Is it intact or is shifting? Second, we also need to really check on, is the preference of a customer changing or do you think it could change? That's also a very important question to address that. Then third is the mediums that the customer was interacting with you or engaging with you, has that changed or you think is likely going to change? Are you spending more to get less? This happens a lot of times with companies when they start to push more marketing money in the marketing and they start getting lesser and lesser results. And then they would blame the mediums not working or something not working or my communication not working. This might be much larger reasons behind it. Another question is very important, is that do you identify your future customers? Who's your future customer three years from now, four years from now? What is going to be his needs? What kind of priorities they would come from? These are very important questions and I think as a business owner, almost every time you need to come out of this comfort zone and try to answer these questions. And these times sometimes are reality. A lot of times you know this is happening in your business but you don't really define it. I give the example of one of the companies at retailer I was working with. Retailer, we took the company from a five store business to about 110 stores. And I kept dividing the founder of the company. He was actually the second generation business and I said there's something going wrong. You started seeing a lot of your stores are not giving you sales and you're putting more effort and more marketing but the results are not really improving. It might be that your product is no more relevant or it might have started changing and you're not identifying that change. This was in early 2000 and he didn't agree and there was a time suddenly the stores start closing and today they don't have any single store which is available in the market. So sometimes in the rush of growth you're just trying to add more channel or more locations or more infrastructure and you might be getting the results of your top lines continue to grow but your customer is already started shifting it. So marketing is very, very dynamic. It's always changing. It's always changing and you need to really understand this is just not about small pieces of how you define your strategy, how do you define your marketing communication. It's actually also to go further and connect with your customer and understand what is it and that's what are the gaps which needs to be done. So if I have to define marketing, I will put into four different baskets. First I will work on what is the brand strategy, what is the brand strategy, what is the brand, what are the values of the brand, what is the offering of the brand that's very important. What is the customer pain point and expectation which this brand would really go out and deliver. Third is what is the market trend and competition. This is pretty much the brand strategy piece of it. Then I'll shift this to a marketing strategy and build this learnings from brand strategy and I bring it to my marketing strategy and understand what is my value proposition, what am I going to take to the market. What is the target audience which I'm looking at and third, what are the partners and collaborations I need to really look at and this would be even your mediums and structure. Then you go to the third part which is putting your marketing plan. That would mean what messaging and creative communication I need to really have. That's very important. What channels I'm going to use and what is my budget. First we start with the brand strategy, then go into our marketing strategy, then we go into our marketing plan and then we go into what values I'm able to deliver and I go and see a learning from the customer when they consume this impact. Then what kind of feedback or customer reaction release coming through. So we're going to talk about how today if you've been marketing excellence in your business, how it would be different from the traditional approach to the business. You need to also make sure that you clearly understand all your marketing efforts, whatever you try to do that has to end of the day deliver a value to the end customer. That's very, very important and you also need to also understand. Sometimes the feedback and understanding is also from your near environment, which is very clearly available with you. You really don't see what is your far sighted environment. What is your future customer is going to tell you. Always the feedback is coming from a very much from your current customer base and that's something which is important. So you need to systematically shift that you need to one continue to understand what your current customer is doing that's important but you also need to really focus on what is your future customer how you behave and what kind of expectation they would have from the business. So let's understand the let's divide into four action points and then go into each action point and try to see what traditionally we would have done and what if you put excellence what kind of structure we need to do. First, let's understand about your market understanding. That's very, very important and this is one of the areas which I think a lot of marketers go wrong. So marketers are very tool centering these days, you know, I'm a digital expert, I'm an ATL expert and something expert they're very clearly driven from the specialization they come from the roles they will do in the marketing piece, which is, I think, is more job work to me. This is not something which you have and most of the organization especially smaller media enterprises, I see they have a lot of job workers, they have people who would just come and execute something. So marketers are absolutely not connected to your customers, they have no understanding of your markets. This is one of the biggest problems. Most of the mid-sized companies will have what some of the companies are very practical they would hire marketers who would do essentially a job work, try to drive a particular piece in the marketing, and that's not good. You know, marketing is a very, very holistic approach to do that. So you need to really have some marketer in your team or a business owner would have to take his own challenge that you first start with understanding your market itself. What is the overall market understanding for you? So if you're a typical structure, you will take a lot of observations of individual trends, say a customer gave you a feedback or any other changes which you saw in the market that would come in. You will do a lot of comparison with your direct competitors. What is your competition doing? Most of the times we keep watching our competition and our strategies actually are driven from what competition they're doing. We look at what they're offering, what are the feature benefits they're doing. Pretty much similar feature benefits we try to bring in on a product. We'll also try to do a lot of competitive assessment of a market defined by the product, which means that how the product was taken, what STUs are moving, what STU are not moving. A lot of those figures would seem convenient. And similarly for your channel, how your channel is behaving, what is selling through more from which channel and what channel is giving you feedback on what product goes in. Most of the time companies have distribution of channel, their larger part of the reaction in their marketing feed is coming from what channel is selling. And most of the time the channel is telling them what is easily moving to the inject market for them or they have higher incentivization for what they want to really try. Both can be significantly wrong because this might not be addressing the target group your brand stands for. Because sometimes the channel is trying to really push a product which they are more incentivized to do that, but that doesn't mean that's a real feedback which is coming in. Also, you will all do subjective, you know, priorities looking at your own strength, weaknesses, and so on so forth. So if you have to do a little bit scientific way of doing it and if you want to really build marketing diligence, then you would step back and try to use what I call the slept, you know, analysis, which stands for what is the social structure going on what is legal, what is the factors going on, what is the political factors going on and what is the technological changes which is happening. So if you really see when I would look at social I will look at the larger demographics, how the demographics and what is the gender mix, which is reacting, what kind of a structure changes which is coming in people's priorities in terms of how they really would react like these days, health, hygiene, a lot of these priorities have become part of almost everything you consume, right. So these are very clearly social change which has started to happen. So if your product is not keeping those in mind would not work. Legal from where maybe some kind of an act is changed or something new has come in the Consumer Act or something like that. So economic you need to understand what is your larger, you know, macroeconomics or microeconomics telling you can be, you know, the affordability, it can be also from the inflation, it can be also from our perspective of say if your product has some kind of EMI options available, what are the interest rates available in that. So all that is very, very important. Then, if you are looking for a larger markets or international markets, then you'd also look at some political scenarios in those markets which need to do that, not so much in when you're doing domestic. And technology also is a very, very important is how technological impacts are changing. So try to see those kind of market conditions from step back and start looking at from that perspective. You also need to then start observing not only your immediate competition, but you will also do your indirect competition. Like for example, a lot of time when you were in the conventional retail, you always looked at the competition which was there, but when you never looked at a competition which was online, which was almost disrupting everything you consume. So similarly, a lot of times we don't look at your indirect competition. So whenever you're doing assessment of your competition, try to do both from immediate and also what I call indirect, so to say competition. Another thing which you need to really see is when you are delivering the product or anything, or is your customer need is been completely met or known. If you still feel that this is something missing, which is not meeting 100% satisfaction for your customer, this is most likely anytime you will get an option, the loyalty would break and they would shift. And most of the times the companies continue to survive because they have a very need to product, but it's not meeting 100% customer satisfaction, but because there was no choice on the shelf, they would continue to survive, but as you get a choice, the shift will happen. And a lot of other things you need to really continue to change in terms of how your channel is behaving, how your channel is reacting, what else the channel is selling. So all these pieces are very, very important. So first important aspect is tell your marketing team or yourself to do a better understanding of your market, how the market is shifting, how it is changing, what is going to happen. Then second point would be how do we make now right strategic choices that what should be our marketing approach in the business. So one thing which we have to very, very clear a lot of times we see, we try to tell, we address a larger piece of customer base and try to give very similar product to entire customer base. We are not very focused on who we really want target and what message we want to really give. And that's also a very big problem in the conventional structure, it's just about going and creating the same option for almost everybody in the market. If you want to change to excellence, you need to really define who's your target group, how this target group would be really reacting to your business or product or a service, and how you want to create separate choices for them. So if you are, say, traditional way of doing it, then you will always look at who are your top high users, which are the top users for you who are using your entire thing and most of the time they will dominate in terms of your product or a service design. You are focused only on the sales volume, what is your sales telling you, where is the sales more coming from, that also would define that would also mean, you know, if say a particular channel is doing more, whatever that channel is doing, your marketing strategies would continue to go there. But we really don't see that we might be missing out a lot of customers, which are currently not on now and now. So that's where excellence would come in, excellence would take a very different approach to the business. It doesn't take, if you really draw a nexus and put face value, you know, how a face value for business would be, you know, what is the customer telling you, and you do a little bit of a, you know, a not go by the face value and just read that what they are not telling you. That's something which is very, very important. And secondly, don't get too emotional about the product. A lot of people stick by what they've created, and they continue to repeat because they become emotional about. So if something was very successful at one point in time, you become emotional about that particular thing. And, and you're not taking a rational approach. So, I would say the reverse of that would be, don't take anything on a face value, and don't take an emotional approach to your product. Understand what is, say for example, if I was doing a traditional way I would see by what is making more money for me I continue to do that. But I, in the excellent side, I would do what would have more potential to make profit, which I'm not doing. So it continues to question, what are you not doing and so on. How you can change and be different in your position, how you can change to address different target groups and communicate very, very clearly. And finally, how do you play on your strength. That's very important part of it. So let's take into the third part, which means that if you have done these two right and then how do we deliver the last mile value and this is where absolute disconnect happens from the marketers to do the most of the marketers are not connected in the last mile value and that's is where the change happened. I'll give you an example. I worked on a project with the reliance a long time back they have these big stores, big format stores called reliance. You know, and these formats would have, if you go there you will have like hundreds of television being put on the walls you'll have 50 fridge displayed on that this is like a large big box consumer electronic store. And they challenged and they always started getting these issues that urban market because they don't get that kind of footprint. The idea was to bring small stores, small stores which can do that. Almost everybody would decline that everybody would say this will not work because we will not be able to put all our choices in that. People hired us and we had an opportunity to work with them. And then we realized and we checked on that that when people come there, they're not necessarily coming and seeing the sizes of the television in different shapes, they are intelligent enough to already know what size they want. They are coming for what they want to do with that. Right, so we made actually choices very clearly that there are four types of target group really comes. We found somebody who's coming to the store and looking for more entertainment at home. So they might be looking at entertainment solution which they're so it can be, you know, your home theater and things of that nature. So their priorities would change very differently somebody is coming, which has not so much of user but use it for for a, you know, gaming or something like that. So we divided the different type of user groups and created very clearly positioning for them so that when they come to even a small store in rather than giving them options of product being available there. We understand their users interest, what are they going to use this for. So it was a store design, which used to question people, why are you here, how you want to use this product and what else you want to do with this. So all these started questioning really changed the way the value was delivered. And this is one of the areas which needs to be done most of the time people just want to put the product on the shelf. They don't really want to interact with the customer customer wants to behave with that. And that's something which is now changing significantly most of the companies are working towards the last user experience like the Apple would have this genius in their stores. These people would come and interact and talk to you why use this product, what is the usage and so on for and that's why they insisting insisting and getting into exclusive stores because they know that if you go into conventional tenant which is already selling an apple is just passes the product. It just passes the product doesn't give you the full experience. So that's also one of the areas which you need to do that. The question is how do you really continue to get and monitor the value and the learning from every single customer. What is the customer telling you how you're monitoring that right in the traditional way, you will only monitor our marketing by the ROI which means that kind of spend I've done what kind of return I've done. So all this would really happen, or you will do measure by the response rate. I did this advertisement. I got so many leads and so many functions. These are kind of an outcome or maximum you will go out by outcome and say how much sales I achieved from this and that these are the kind of disabilities. Your marketer would have or you would have in the business. But when you are doing a little bit in excellence way you start going into much deeper why this channel worked for you better than the next channel. You know, sometimes it's not really about say you use two different mediums to reach out to your customer and one work better to you. And most of the time people would say this is a better ROI. But we will not question why the other didn't work. Maybe the communication which was used in this part was not appropriate or not right, which need to be changed. So sometimes you need to really you start accepting what is going on. It's a very old rule of test and measure. What is working just continue to do that. But actually now you have to question why this is working. A lot of time people come to me and say in my company and say, Oh, LinkedIn doesn't work or it's too expensive from ROI viewpoint. But maybe you don't know how how LinkedIn works, how you influence on that that medium. That's also very, very important. Sometimes you start questioning that. And how do you measure the entire implementation process and everything which can be financial non financial qualitative quantitative, all these pieces have to be be measured. Finally, you know, what are the five four things which are very important, which you would need to really set if you want to really revisit and do your marketing 2.0 and try to look at your business. First, you need to really criticize almost everything which is happening and try to see how you can make it absolutely different and new approach to it. Second, also try to integrate your marketing design that it is more linked to the market than just with the tools of what they're using. That's very, very important. So let's start with what are the few things which you need to do. First, make marketing as your primary function. That's commitment comes in very, very important. Most of the business owners I've found that they have this as a secondary function. They're more inclined on business development, sales and other functions. This is your main function. This is what would be very, very important. Second, learn and adapt all the important ideas which are coming in and not necessarily these would come from your industry or your immediate competition. That's not going to come from and rather if you follow your competition, you always will be second. These might come from other industries. Maybe some other industries were using like for example, there is a company we were working with and I was actually telling them this is a large pharmacy company we were advising for many years. And I kept telling them that look, you need to now focus on a direct to home business. And they would always tell me and say, oh no, no, in our industry, this would never happen. You always need a pharmacist in this. I think I said question that how this should not happen. This is essential. This would eventually go through while there is still currently no guidelines. Again, go back to the slept factor, which I told you social, legal, you know, economic and political and technology, all five factors. So in this, the political factor was very clearly telling or legal factor was telling that this is not right. This is never going to happen. Right, but there was a change, there was a larger change, there was a demand from a customer in a subtle way it was already happening. It was already happening because people were still getting medicine from their neighborhood pharmacy called up the same medicine being delivered. It was done in some manner we were ignoring that this is the fact this is the way it is already been also done in the most of the markets. And now you see it significantly changed and a lot of other players which are conventional pairs would not be able to cope up now because the time has left. And similarly direct to home is a now reality. So sometimes we don't see that this coming to your industry and we say oh this is not going to happen in my industry, but eventually it will come. So sometimes there are a lot of learnings which are happening around you, maybe in other consumer products, you need to really understand from that. Again, what I said, never make your competition as a benchmark if you make your competition as just a benchmark, you'll always be behind you need to play your game your own game, your own position. Be very, very honest about what your customer is telling you sometimes they are hard facts, which tell that you have a bad product or you don't have a good product. And customer doesn't have a way to really see that you will improve and come back and get a problem, they will start rejecting your brand at all. This also happens when sometimes we start living in past. You know, I did a mistake because I've been very heavy on a marketing used to be very, very strong with French isn't there you've seen that you have full page ads and a lot of these communications used to come. And we, at the point we started realizing that it's no more getting a result, but in the fear of losing that marketing call, we continue to do that. And that particular year I still remember in 2018, we went out and spend about 18 crores in print alone, which didn't give us any result. So, if you imagine that that 18 crore was a good money, if French isn't able to spend at that time on digital and transformation to that it would have created. Now people have shifted because the whole industry is collapsed and different structure has happened. And finally also believe in your product believe in your product. Sometimes people with a little bit of signals coming from marketing or something didn't work, try to change everything they try to change everything they quickly react to things that doesn't work sometimes you have to believe in your product If you've done research well, you understand your target group well, you understand your market you understand your channel, then you don't have to do that. So keep the five principles in the right order. First, do your strategic thinking. Then second, do your brand positioning what is your positioning of the brand. Prepare your plan, do your great brand plan, understand your marketing execution what the execution would require and analyze your performance. So if you do this five things in order, strategic thinking, brand positioning, understand and develop your detailed plan, go out and execute your marketing and analyze your performance. So this would make your performance work in marketing. So this was today's session. If you have any question for me quickly for one or two minutes I can take a few questions. Thank you so much for a wonderful session as always. We do have quite a few questions lined up with us and I'll just quickly take some of the important ones. The first question that we have is, we are trying to expand our products to global markets, starting with UAE and Singapore. Should the marketing structure be different than what we use in India? What is your opinion as a generalization of things that can be done with respect to marketing when going to a different market, be it Asian or Western? So again, very important question. So whenever you go to any international market, then use this whole what I call slept analysis. Look at the social structure of that market. UAE is very different, very different way of how they consume and then also further target groups would be very different. You have a ethnic audience there which is very similar to what we would see in India, how they purchase and so on and so forth while the channels would be very, very different. And then you have the locals, which will be very different to how they approach and fortunately, I have instances in both UAE and Singapore and I understand that it can be very, very different. So use the slept structure, social, legal, economic, political and technological. Like in Singapore, everything is very technology centered. So everybody is on apps, everybody orders and I think but not in UAE. UAE is a modern city, but it's very traditional in terms of a retail mindset. Singapore also has that in some parts on some product side, but it might be very two different market and approach. And I would say start small, do your first test market in a certain structure and then start growing from them. Sometimes going and doing over peace in those markets doesn't work and doesn't get you the kind of results. Like one of a big outdoor company like just example, this is a very big outdoor company in India, very large outdoor company. They actually got a contract from UAE for doing their bus shelters. The idea was that they would create air-conditioned bus shelters and they got a right and they agreed on a very big fee, understanding that bus shelter would be like India big holding spaces and so forth. And later they realized nobody really is traveling on buses and people who are traveling on buses is not the target group which people want to use for advertising. So the entire project really got clamped and they lost almost 100 crores in this project because they rightly not understood who they were trying to do because they thought that it is the same FMCG companies will target the same group which was very different to what happened in UAE. It was a big big disaster for an Indian company actually they are now fighting in London legally to get the damages done but they spend that money in that market so they can go drastically wrong in a particular market. Sure sir. The next question that I have is how to market with a very low budget, how to generate the initial excitement and acquire first 500 customers with very low acquisition cost. Again I need to understand the product what needs to be done but I would say influencer marketing. If I have to give you one answer influencer marketing is the best to get your first 500 customers in traditional terms we call opinion makers and opinion makers are people who believe in something which is new. They have always early adopters and things like that and today if you use any influencer who can really take your product and say why did this and it worked for me and it reaches out to people who say why always wanted this then it works best. So that's something which I would use because sometimes especially if it is a relatively new concept I would not use any kind of a broader marketing because even if you communicate what you are people don't know the product so they will not be able to read it. So marketing would have a different time of stages and different structure depending on where you are so if you are something which is just starting off there will be very different approach. And when you are already mature then you are actually more doing retention and then sometimes you need to really shift and re-excite your same target group. So that is different stages and you have to measure it and sometimes you are at peak you are at the top most level and that is a time really you have to change because it is like for example auto companies if you really see they have a cycle. When the model of their current model which is running at the top of their sales cycle they would change the model. And normally when they change the model it gets into a dip because somehow people are in love with that particular model and they've now got a new shape, new design and doesn't get that same sales but it gets into another trajectory later to go up in that structure. So you need to really see that sometime when you are at the top most invest and maybe that is the time you need the demand to change and approach it very differently. Absolutely sir. The last question that I would like to take up is offering special discounts or reduced prices a good marketing technique at this time. This is to show the customer that we understand the situation and care but at the same time it can be perceived as a desperate technique as well. What is your opinion? So this is a very very good question. This is a question which I did one series on this restaurant business because we have a restaurant site and I gave this advice to every restaurant owner that whoever in these times is stepping out to come in your restaurant to eat doesn't need your discount. So rather charge more, elevate the experience and don't discount it. So if you feel that people are, so again this cannot be generalized, sometimes certain products, there is a demand but there is a so to say liquidity issue. There can be some time affordably like auto, people have still a necessity especially an entry level, if I make it more accessible for them, I'll get more sales. But in some cases, if it is an aspirational product and you have decided to make a purchase decision just because it's now you're making it cheaper, it doesn't mean that people would go into buying that. Rather sometimes taking the price up also makes sense because you now have a reduced base, even in reduced base but this is a loyal base, this is anyway consumed. Even if you have an opportunity to take a little step up, especially for I would say services today, a lot of other things. If you take step up but bring in other validation in that just not by exploiting but I'm saying if you can give a little more validation. Like for example salons, when they reopen, rather than just saying I want to give you one haircut free, I need only one haircut, I don't want second haircut free. I would say, how do I really enhance the experience, how to bring more hygiene, how do I get even more than that and maybe charge a little more and that client would be appreciable. So it's difficult for me to really answer just, obviously, most of the boardrooms, if you really ask any kind of suggestion from any marketer and say, how do I double my sales is a reduced price. So that is no brainer, that's no brainer for any marketing company. So Apple wants to reduce the price by 20%, the sales would grow, yes it will grow. But do you want to do it? Would you kill your aspiration product and try to bring it down? Would you like to kill your margins? So all these are very important, sometimes just by addressing an immediate need, you cannot kill the market and I have seen a lot of industries have done that mistake. And that's also because you follow your immediate competition. If the competition was doing a mistake and you just try to copy that, you can also get into the same mistake. Absolutely sir. So with this, I would just quickly wrap up the Q&A session. Thank you so much Gaurav sir for a wonderful session and anything you would like to say in the end. And we also have a few questions from our audience asking about how to contact you so if you can let them know about the same as well. Sure. Thank you. Thank you for joining in and this is a regular series we continue to do and whatever my experience over the years and plus I think some kind of best practices we try to mix both of them and try to bring in these pieces. So share your feedback, anything which we can do with your business which means that you want to scale your business and you're looking for funding or you're looking to exit your business or you're looking to acquire a new business. All these are part of French as India offering. So please reach us and if you have any other questions for me where I can answer or give advice, especially the early stage businesses, you might have some questions which I will be more than happy to advise. I normally do it on Sundays when I have time so if you send me a question in detail. I will be more than happy to send your right this is my direct email ID GM at GauravMaria.com. Thank you so much Gaurav sir for a wonderful session. Thank you. Thank you to all our attendees we really hope you'll be able to add some value to your lives through this session, and we will see you next Saturday at 11am with another session in the BX Academy series. If you have any questions, any concerns or if you want the recording of the session, please feel free to reach out to me and I'll be very happy to help you. Thank you so much.