Is Email Marketing Dying or Thriving?

Quora Question: Is email marketing dead?

eMail Marketing

My Answer: Hands down thriving. In fact, it will ride the growth curve as an important digital marketing tool. (https://www.quora.com/Is-email-marketing-dead-1/answer/Rakhi-Sinha-16) [Forum Handling]

How to Develop Marketing Skills?

Quora Question: How do I develop skills in marketing? (Answer requested by Rupal Agarwal)

Marketing Skills to Succeed

My Answer: Hi Rupal,

Thanks for sending in your question to me.

Good Marketing Skills are about being exceptional in the:

1. Grasp of Market Space: keen understanding of your target market (competitive movement, consumer buying behavior, emerging trends, SWOT analysis, etc.),
2. Creativity: Devising innovative ways to ‘create’ needs/wants for your product & services. You need to think out of the box ways to promote. It applies to a mix of tools like advertising, events, marketing collateral (flyers, pamphlets, brochures, corporate gifts, etc.), promotional campaigns, to mention some.
3. Communication: Conveying your information crisply and impactfully on the right platform, without data loss. It ‘must’ engage your customer to generate targeted response.

Now, coming to your question on how to get there:

1. Know & Understand Marketing Basics: Marketing requires a very good understanding of human psychology, since by far the customers continue to be humans only! What clicks with them, when & how they react & why, what touches them emotionally & how far can they go for it, what triggers impulse buying, what influences a thought out buying decision, and so on. For this: a) do read books like Marketing Management by Pilip Kotler, Positioning by Al Ries & Jack Trout.Read autobiographies like Iacocca, Maverick by Ricardo Semler. These books are quite old, but they will give you ‘the’ ‘workable’ fundamentals of Marketing. They give you the ‘right’ start. b) join online courses on coursera or edu.org. Go for reputed universities, since they give you case studies, projects, quizzes, community forums, etc. which give you an all round skill development along with the assessment of how you are doing.
2. Learn Digital Marketing: Digital Marketing is almost a necessary evil now for most industries operating in B2C space, particularly. Learn about it through online courses, talks, videos, web content. You might want to join Google digital marketing course, since thats the search engine you will fight for your space at. It will really help to learn some graphic designing too.
3. See ads (print, electronic, internet) of varied companies: Observe how they are putting across their messages. See how the same MNC markets differently in different geographies & cultures. Analyze what you like in those ads, what you dislike, what would you want to change and how.
4. Do Case Studies: Pick up some successful marketing campaigns. Keep your mix inclined more to the recent times and some oldies. Read how they were conceived & shaped. All the grind and strategies behind them. It will help you gain the real picture.
5. Make your ad copies: Practice makes you perfect in case of any skill. Make ad copies, promotional campaigns for some companies for your own learning. More like an assignment. Take all sizes of companies - big, medium, small, micro. Keep into consideration the possible financial outlay and design your multiplatform marketing campaigns accordingly.

Following above can help you acquire the needed skills technically. But application will depend much on your instincts & creativity. And therefore, practical experience only is the winning formula. Marketing is all around in various formats. It starts with a child and goes on to elderly. Keep observing tirelessly. It goes down to even noticing a child on how he/she is able to make his/her parents yield to the demand. Scrutinize what led to the parents’ submission. Thats the kinds of emotional cords you have to catch hold of. Keep running your brain, keep practicing. Stay diligent. Marketing should become your second nature. You will know you are going all right when spontaneously you start coming up with ideas, you start building strategies for selling anything you lay your hand on, you begin a mental consulting about a promotional campaign. A stage comes when its pure skill of Marketing you enjoy, just like sketching, painting, dancing. It goes beyond brands, just like you paint any subject and dance on any song. I think you get the idea. These are enough to have you started. All the very best! (https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-develop-skills-in-marketing/answer/Rakhi-Sinha-16)

Scope of Digital Marketing in India

Quora Question: Does digital marketing have any scope? What is the salary for this?

Digital Marketing Scope in India

Our Answer: Yes, it does. In fact, its one profile, the businesses presently bank a lot on.

The salary depends on your experience, the organization, and the city you work in. Its an efforts intensive job requiring analytical skills and creativity too. So, your pay is also driven by your niche specialty: SEO, SMM, Adsense, Content Marketing, etc.

Since you have asked for a basic salary, so I am presuming you are a fresher. The salaries I am giving you an idea of are according to Metros, specifically Delhi NCR. A micro organization or a bootstrapped startup pays around 12-18k per month, while a medium sized company usually pays around 18–25k, and a large company pays anywhere between 25–30k.

Since the results of digital marketing are quite measurable, your performance can be well assessed and accordingly your market value varies. Good luck! (https://www.quora.com/Does-digital-marketing-have-any-scope-What-is-the-salary-for-this/answer/Rakhi-Sinha-16)

Top 5 Skills of a Digital Marketing Consultant

Quora Question: What skills do I need to be a digital marketing consultant?

Digital Marketing Consulting

My Answer:

1. Marketing Aptitude: It includes interest & ability to understand the market pulse and then applying your creativity to differentiate your sales pitch.
2. Digital Space: An understanding of how things work in online space. General understanding of audience behavior and organic reach.
3. Understanding & Apt Application of Digital Marketing Platforms & technicality: This involves knowing ins and outs of different advertising modes and specific platforms, including SEO. Obviously, the mix varies according to the products & services you offer. Time your mix right.
4. Effective Content: Convey your message irresistibly and as briefly as possible. Focus on engaging your customers. The gist of your message must be given right at the start. The audience is busy, barged with messaged, and so impatient, the space is cluttered, digital marketing competence is reaching newer level, so your content for promotion & campaigns cannot afford to be detailed.
5. Google Analytics: Digital space is dynamic and marketing here requires constant improvisation. Analytics are very helpful tool to know about the effectiveness of your campaigns vis-a-vis your target market and reach. A thorough knowledge and application thereof of analytics is the backbone of digital marketing.
If you are able to deliver optimally and simultaneously even on these 5 above, you are good to call yourself a Digital Marketing Consultant. Of course keep updating your skills. They go obsolete quite rapidly. (https://www.quora.com/What-skills-do-I-need-to-be-a-digital-marketing-consultant/answer/Rakhi-Sinha-16)

How To Make Money from YouTube?

Quora Question: How can I make money from YouTube and how does YouTube give money on 1,000 views?

You Tube Monetization

My Answer: To make money from YouTube, you will need to enable monetisation on your channel. 

Steps to monetise:

1. Click on your channel icon at top left.
2. From the drop down menu, select Creator Studio.
3. In the left panel now, click on Channel→Status and Features. In the body, you will see Monetisation as the second option. Follow the subsequent steps, which will also involve integrating your AdSense account.
4. You can enable monetisation at any time.

Requirement for consideration: Your channel should have at least 10,000 views for Youtube to consider. If approved, youtube will enroll you in the partner program.

Payment: You get paid on either Cost-Per-Click (CPC) or Cost-Per-View (CPV). That totally depends on the condition the advertiser has set. So, the viewer’s CTA (call to action) matters. Either they click on the ad link or, they watch the video for a minimum of 5 seconds to up to around 25–30 seconds. Usually, you will see, youtube has a lock in time of 5 seconds before you skip the video. It all depends on the customer engagement. Now, the ads too will be of 2 types: banner ads or video ads. The payment varies accordingly for each format too. So, there is no fixed amount you will lift per 1000 views. The dollar payments are adjusted according to the currency exchange rates of the respective country.

How you can drive more traffic for free:

1. Post ‘Useful’ content
2. Use relevant title
3. Use right tags for high searchability
4. Post regularly
5. Post the link on most platforms possible: FB, Twitter, Pintrest, Instagram, Tumblr, Blog, Website Articles, Google+, and wherever.
6. Repeat the link posts after a few days.
7. Create playlists

If money is not a problem, Adsense will get you targeted traffic.

Firm footing in digital arena presently, requires intense and regular work. Revenue generation takes quite long, depending upon the type of your content and the mode you adapt to proliferate your channel. Patience and diligence are the keys.

Hope this gives you some idea. Good luck! (https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-make-money-from-YouTube-and-how-does-YouTube-give-money-on-1-000-views)

How Content Marketing Services Help Get More Customers?

Quora Question: How can content marketing services help you get more customers?

Tools of Content Strategy

Content strategy is a field that goes far & wide in its type and reach. It depends on numerous factors and striking their right mix. Still, I will try to give you a broad overview. Content marketing is a long term strategy, focusing more on building brand awareness & loyalty through customer engagement and relationship building thereof. It dwells on conveying information ‘useful’ for the target market, while staying aligned to your business’ objectives. The effectiveness is further contingent on why, how, when, and where to convey it, in that order. The answers to these lie on your customer’s information accessing pattern, like time, type of info. browsed, medium (mobile/web), platform (blog, social media, etc), etc. Demographics help categorize the customers more specifically. Basically, to answer ‘how’ content marketing helps get more customers, so I reiterate, while benefiting your business goal, your content must ‘address’ some need of your customer, expressed or hinted for ideally within first 7 words, irrespective of the medium/vehicle involved. Thats round 1. The effectiveness of round 2 and further of content marketing depends on how well your product/services measure up to the promise the round 1 of your content made. (https://www.quora.com/How-can-content-marketing-services-help-you-get-more-customers/answer/Rakhi-Sinha-16)

How Visual Content Marketing is Better Than Text?

Quora Question: How is visual based content marketing taking over text based content marketing?

My Answer: Visual content is quick, interesting, and more impacting to convey a concept. The reason being brain responds better to graphics. Thats the reason for GUIs even. And now, videos have taken the visual marketing to an altogether different level. So, hands down, for customer engagement visuals are way more effective. But yeah as Subhashini has stated, the Google algorithm still aligns better with text. Therefore, putting a line or two as video/graphic description with hash tags helps, currently. (https://www.quora.com/How-is-visual-based-content-marketing-taking-over-text-based-content-marketing/answer/Rakhi-Sinha-16)