How To Create An Effective Marketing Strategy & Plan | Avi Arya | Neha Kulwal |

For creating a marketing strategy it is very important to know a market overview, every brand or a business. It is very important to know that your product can be substituted by any other brand. Once you know about your market share you really, really important for you to know your existing competitors.

Hi, my name is ABHI Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, hotelier then marketer and founder of Internet mob.

What up Internet logos.

Neha, quickly can you introduce yourself before you start with your presentation?

So everyone, my name is Neha Kulwal. I'm the country manager for Admitak. It's a global IT company and I handle five business units. One is an affiliate network, white label Converge Social which is an influencer platform and also we do work on monetized technologies. We also have acquired one company called Tapafrate which is a tracking platform for managing affiliate programs worldwide and talking about me, I'm a mother, I'm a wife, I have a son, three and a half years old and I'm a very passionate person and a goal oriented. I'm in the performance industry and upfront industry. From past 12 years I have built Admitad from the scratch India. I was one of the founding member and started this particular industry in India and I'm in this upfront industry from past 10 years. Live it have it in my genes now almost. So I'm really excited to talk about how I created a placement in a very competitive market which is an off rate industry in India. Even though I was there with a lot of companies in the past which were there in the same field. But when I created Plantmet ad in India or I launched them I devised a good marketing plan and did a marketing effort and then today I'm really really happy to share that information with everyone.

That's fantastic. That is fantastic. We are very excited to learn from you. So Neha you have a presentation format?

Yes I do.

Awesome. So you can start sharing and guys please do take notes and then we have, we have some. At the end we have some questions that the audience has asked. Once again really excited to learn from you and hear about your journey.

Okay, before I start this topic, an effective marketing strategy and plan I just like to tell about how this affiliate industry is it and how I placed Admit Ad India in this particular this thing. So an affiliate marketing industry is 12 to 13 years old in India. I started my journey with a company called Compare Infobase and I used to manage websites and I learned this concept when I was managing those website and created a revenue channel for Them through an affiliate base. So I used to talk to international networks like Commission Junction, Revenue, Rakuten and lot of other networks and I used to earn revenues on my website through that and there this E Com boom which was coming Flipkart launching snapdealaunching their websites and I thought that why affiliate marketing is not there in India. Then I went to this company called Optimized Media. It's a UK based affiliate network. I worked for almost five years strike from the affiliate manager. I became a director handling 1080 brands and then I launched Admit Ad India and we are a global network now catering to more than 4000 brands worldwide and almost 500 brands in India creating their marketing strategies so first of all a marketing strategy is different than a marketing plan because a marketing strategy is a foundation for creating a marketing plan. A lot of people do talk about marketing plan how to create a marketing plan, but the first and the foremost thing is to create a marketing strategy because a marketing strategy is a why behind your marketing efforts. It does describe your marketing goals and help you achieve your business goals. It is very important for you to know what are your business goals. So for example if your company has different business units, you need to have your business goals lined up and understand what are your business goals for each business unit and then create a marketing strategy on it. And then a marketing plan is like a roadmap or you can say plan which are executed on that strategy like I like it's mentioned in the presentation. It outlines what offering you will deliver, who you will deliver and how you deliver it, how your competitors are. It is very important when you create a marketing strategy to know your competitors, to know your objectives of your business and you also need to measure the results. So for example whenever we have business goals we say that okay this is my objective, this is my key results and these are my timelines. Same works with marketing strategy. You need to have your business goals, then you need to plan, have a marketing plan and then you have to look at your results also how effective your results are. Whereas a marketing plan it outlines what you will do, where you will do it, whether in social media, where is your brand is placed, how you're going to promote it, whether it's a paid media or an offline marketing or online marketing and then you drag success of it. A marketing plan does support your strategy and is the action plan that you will use to implement your marketing efforts. Like I said business goals in operation plan it is very important to know the clear vision of the business teams. For example A goal could be that I would want to reach out to X number of clients. So you create a goal, then you create a marketing plan around it that okay, I want to have five or six clients in this space. Then you strategize it and then you make a plan at how to do it and then you see the results and the timelines of it. For creating a marketing strategy, it is very important to know a market overview. So for example I'm in affiliate space, very important for me to read the industry reports. What is the digital ad spend is going on, how much is the affiliate spend of that digital spend. Being a global company, we do have different industry reports where we look at how many, how much, how much ad spends are happening, how much affiliate spends are happening. Then we create a marketing size around it at how much market size is there in the particular country. Then we know what is our market share and what is our goal regarding that market share to increase. Then you see on the lot of industry overview and you do self analysis. There are different methods of doing industry overview. You know your customer base, who are your customers, who are your target market. Then you see your market size, then you create, I mean you calculate your market share for example with a lot of industry reports we know that 10 to 15% of the marketing is an affiliate spend. For a whole digital spend we go back to our industry experts, we do some research reports, we do go to research companies to do those researches. Once we know that these are the spends, we know what is our business goal and where we are placed. At once you know about your market share, you really, really important for you to know your existing competitors, who are your competitors, are, what are your market, what are their market share and how are they going and delivering their products, how they are placed, what are their services, how they're different from you. For doing industry overview and self analysis. There are business different business and brands which are product based and services based. We are in service based company so we do follow a lot of analysis metrics. Not hard and fast to follow these metrics but we do have BCG metrics. Porter's five sources, SWOT analysis, perceptual mapping. I'll give you an example of a BCG matrix where you have a very low market share and a high market growth set. Whether you have you should invest more in that particular brand or product of yours whereby there are certain high profitable products where you have a high market growth and high relative market share which is like the most profitable and you can invest more. Then there's A Porter's five forces which I'll be explaining in detail in my next slide. Then you have spot analysis. You look at your strengths, your weaknesses, your opportunities and threats. Threats of new entrants, threats of competitors launching new products. Opportunities would be like for example Covid was an opportunity for a lot of online companies and D2C brands. There's so many transacting customers who are not transacting online. They came online and it actually helped and pushed India as an industry which would happen in next five years. Happened in those eight, nine months. Everyone came online, the digital payments are going up. Those are the opportunities on the environmental basis which you get. There are a lot of weaknesses about your product which you analyze that where you lacking where your competitors are doing better and you have to work on them. In my next slide I would like to talk about Porter's five competitive forces. When you have a brand or a business to run that you look at your new threat of the new entrants you look at. For example, for my company we look at the. How many international networks are working in India? Are there any networks who are launching? Because there are a lot of international networks like CJ Rakuten they are entering. What is their base? Is it just a global company or just India as a base? Whether the risk is a low medium or high medium and setting a lot of industry standards, what you can do is that you can be prepared for those new entrants coming. You can maintain relationship with your core business. You know what is your core business, how to create that entity with your brands and the customer base you're working. In my case, the customers are the advertisers I work with. So you do keep an eye on your existing business and you do keep an eye on your new entrants, how they are going to launch it. There's always a threat of substitutes with the technology coming in so much for every every brand or a business it is very important to know that your product can be substituted by any other any other brand. So for example, we are in a flight program industry. We do have substitutes. Like there are certain technologies coming which gives automatic in house programs to be created. Shopify has created lot of their tools which you can set up the affiliate program and then you work on those particular substitute. How you can create those technologies, how you can come up with your innovations and introducing new products or tech to create to actually subside those threats which you have for your products. It is really important to know your power of suppliers because it can be a threat Also we work with a lot of publishers, a lot of content sites, influencers. But there is a chance that they go direct they can work if we don't have any competitive advantage to give to them if client can work directly with them. So you need to understand how we have to create that competitive advantage and how to create that and then improve our support and services. Coming up with some technologies or services, there's a power of supply consumers as well. There could be short term partnerships with the brands. There could be risk of reducing payouts. In our case, whenever we give payout to our publishers and our advertisers, there's a chance that they reduce the payout. They they decide to not having any budgets like Amazon is creating this not giving any budgets on affiliate program. It becomes a power of their it is there on the power is on their side. They can decide one day and they can just shut. So you have to be prepared for such things that how to improve your performance and service levels, how you create those different traffic sources or different avenues of getting those revenues. And it is very important to present yourself as an industry leader so that a client or or any partner cannot avoid you. It is very important to know who are your competitors and what are their share of revenue. And you need to be really proactive with your presence in the business and native approaches. I am saying all these things is because whenever you have a marketing strategy in place, it is important to know your competition, your goals and then only you know what to do in that marketing plan. Until as you have a foundation. A marketing plan with no clear goal and objective won't work. Coming to a marketing plan, once you know your market share, you know your business goals, you know what you have to do, whom to deliver and you know what your competition is doing. You decide your marketing plan. For example, you decide on. Once you know your goals, you decide on a budget. For example, I know that I have to capture 100 e. Com clients in next three months and it has to be quantified. Every. Every objective has to be quantified and it has to be a with timeline and the people who are involved in it. So whenever you consider property proper marketing mix you need to know that which people are involved in that particular goal, how you're going to launch it in social media or paid media. Or it could be an organic SEO efforts different marketing mix can be there. It could be an event where you launch your product because you know those are the target market and then you place your brand accordingly. You do have to make an early and quarterly objectives and you have to track those objectives. For example, I want to capture five of these brands, but where are those brands? Where can I find them? Can I find them online? Can I find them on event? Or I can find them through my SEO efforts or doing something. So once you know your objective, you make a clear plan and then you track those results and then go back what happened with those results. Considering the analysis which you have done for your annual plan, you give out a brand message. For example, whenever we would like to launch a new project or a new business unit, we do our research whether we have who all are those competitors and what are their services and how exactly they are doing marketing of those products, who are their target markets. Then we decide on the competitive advantage there. That okay, if, if my competitor is doing like this, I have to create a marketing mix accordingly where my target market and niche is there. So depends on your objective. It could be that you don't have a. You don't. You don't want to create an edge, but you want to increase your market share. So an objective of increasing the market shares also lays down the foundation of your marketing plans which you're going to do. This is it. From my site hope I able to inform how you can create a marketing plan and create a marketing strategy. To summarize it, I really want everyone, we as a company always follow OKRs objectives, key objectives, key objectives and then results. And we really need to know what are our objectives, where are the key areas we need to work and what are the results and then track those results.

Thank you Neha. Thank you for sharing your experience, sharing your presentation.

Thank you so much. I'm so glad.

Awesome. Really appreciate you taking the time out.

Thank you so much. Thanks everyone. It.