B2B Marketing and our woes #1
When brand building and organic marketing take the back seat.
A psycho-babble first… rarely right and left brain functions balanced in a human, you could be one dominant for sure, from my psycho analysis, and it's a great sub-product of overthinking, I realise I am right-brained, so supposedly artistic or creative. Or more aptly as my friends would profess I am scrambled-brained.
In marketing too, there are these aspects of right or left-brainedness. The skill would be to find the right mix of both. There are many aspects that can be artistic and creative about digital marketing concepts… see you can convey a brand transition — Just by plain posting — Hylobiz is now VICCAS in India — bold and logical, and simple, and would be well understood too. But this can be represented by a Video/Podcast in a very informal colloquial and humorous language, which relates to the grassroots which we are serving too. And that is creative and isn't that logical too. You are trying to relate to the small and medium businesses that are less formal, far from the corporates we operate from. So the language which they use and understand would have a Yaar and Saala in it. The more you emulate that as your message to them, they tend to relate and start exploring the brand, which would take months for them to convert into a transacting customer. In the new order of marketing, just a lead created isn't a deciding factor of a campaign, but he the customer our god needs to be retained and nurtured too. And for heaven's sake, the customers aren't concerned about whether you call yourself Banana or Hylobiz or X or Z (Yes, puns intended), Mera kaam ho raha hai ki nahi? ( Is my job getting done?). That would be his only concern. These theatrics that we put up as organic marketing or content marketing are part of that effort to make us relatable as a brand. That could be termed as a more right-brained activity and the number crunchers could be a bit not in sync or never in sync, but put up with as something which can be paused anytime.
Now in a review of a business for sure, numbers are the core and foremost most of the time. What is the ROI on this? Inevitable I realise or we all agree. But when a brand is introduced, not all things can be number crunched. The effect or feel or experience you wanna create for a customer, in his discovery phase of the product, cannot be most of the times translated to numbers. So I have had the experience of business and tech coming to us and scoffing “What do you really do?” Do we really need to spend time and energy on such activities was a constant question which was battled. So to continue my efforts of brand building, had to keep the team low-key and paid less as well, but kept it going. As scrambled brain as can be, it's inevitable to start a discussion with numbers, because as they famously say….. grab their attention first, and maybe you can retain the same and convey your point as well.
