Thursday 12 November 2015

Why Startups Need Twitter?

Twitter as we know is the world's 2nd largest social network existing. Hordes of enterprises ranging from startups to big established MNCs all around the world have been harnessing the power of 300 million active users.

Yet, many entrepreneurs particularly from developing countries like India are reluctant to jump into the realm of twitter and not making their presence felt. 

I'll give an intermediate twitter guide and will help your firms to harness power of this Social Network.

Why Twitter?

  • Uniqueness - Low cost, useful brand tools and potentially unlimited followers.
  • Free - Need not spend a single buck if you can harness the power organically by sharing relevant and useful content with appropriate #hastags and use it the right way. 
  • Open Interaction - If the hashtags are used in a smart way, anyone searching for some keywords can identify if we had made that word hashtagged. Potentially, it allows us to jump into the conversation even if no one follows them.
  • Reaching Wider Audience - If we take a look at any social media, our reach will be limited with our followers alone. But here, we can share our content to those who follow, and if they find it worthy enough, they will further retweet it to their followers and thus will result in waves of reach throughout the entire twitter sphere.
  • Build Followers -  As I said before, when we reach a wide audience, we will be constantly getting followers and hence we can build our virtual real-time community for our brands.
  • Create a Strong Brand Reputation - As we start building a strong follower base for our brand, it helps in improving the reputation of our brand as it can showcase our products or services to many people at a time and also portray us with great social appeal and tech savvy credentials.
  • Simple - Since it is restricted with just 140 characters, it won't be much complicated like other social networks which requires lots of work to do. It also encourages us to be witty, creative, and most importantly providing a level playing field as we need not invest millions of bucks on advertisements like bigger brands do in other networks.
  • Mobile - Twitter says that about 80% of its monthly active users are mobile users and hence we can connect with them on the go and provide them with continuous and rich experience with our brands.
Strategy for Twitter:
  • Pareto's principle applies here as well. There will always be 20% of consumers who are loyal to our brand and help us in promoting our brand. We should identify them, encourage them, and nurture them through regular engagements. They will in turn retweet and help in reaching our brands far and wide.
  • Influencers - They are the most important people on the network in our field. So we should follow them, retweet their tweets so that in turn they'll do for us. This will give us good publicity and authenticity for our brand. It will thus result in 1000s of followers.
  • Trends - We should always track for recent trends and should jump on it. We should take part in the discussion along with others, and slowly introduce our brand to them. 
  • Think Community - Even though twitter's 300 million followers are reachable, much of the action will happen in informal communities only who use hashtags, talk about brands etc with their own closed network. Trying to connect with such community by putting crucial and important questions with hashtags and wait for the feedback to roll in.
  • Voting - Twitter has introduced voting option for us where we can put up many different ideas or topics to vote and sense the pulse of our consumers or audience.
  • Stay Human - People don't like to engage with those who talk business language. We should talk passionately about our brand, should share our achievements, mistakes and disasters. People love when we talk to them as we would talk to our friends.
  • Engage Your Critics - Critics are the best guides we can get and that too for free. We can learn a lot from them and improve our brands well.
  • Use Images and Videos - Since its just 140 characters, the images and short videos especially gifs help us go beyond and convey our message very effectively. The statistics released by twitter says that pictures were retweeted 35% more and a video 28% more than a simple text tweet. 
  • Timing - Timing is very important and we shoukd make sure that our tweets are posted at peak timings such as at lunch time from 1-3pm, Mondays to Thursdays. Tweets tends to drop at evenings, weekends and friday afternoons. Multiple tweets on a topic can help reach global audience and it can be scheduled using apps like buffer.
Bottom line:
  1. Twitter helps the brand reach far and wide
  2. Can develop good brand identity and reputation.
  3. It helps to showcase our credentials to the world for free 
  4. It provides a level playing field.
  5. Since its mobile, provide us with 24/7 on the go rich experience for consumers
  6. Should connect with influencers and engage with them.
  7. Stay human
  8. Track and tap twitter trends
  9. Increase engagements through pictures and videos.
  10. Tweet at better timings and schedule to reach worldwide audience.

Strategy Behind Amazon India’s Treasure Hunt


As we can see from the above picture, Amazon India had a contest called APP Treasure Hunt. This was followed immediately after they had “The Great Indian Festival Sale” which was held between 10th and 16th October as we can see the below picture.

Soon after they had this big one-week sale, they intended to wind up. But what did their competitors do? They came up relentlessly with many such sales for example Snapdeal had Monday blockbuster sale on every Mondays and Flipkart almost every week has different kinds of sale offers leading up to Diwali festival.

Amazon didn’t want to miss out of any opportunity and they wanted to be the top E-commerce player in the country. Hence they came up with the “APP TREASURE HUNT”. It was started immediately after the Diwali Dhamaka Week got over. For every hour, a clue was given and we had to find what type of product it is and by visiting the product page, we could get it for just 1Re which is equivalent to 0.015 US Dollar.

The deal was absolutely crazy. Everyone started visiting the app every hour and every day hoping to get hold of things at dream prize which is like almost like a free giveaway. Just like everybody else. I also decided to jump into it and see what I could grab.

I happen to solve a puzzle and the product was Rubix’s cube. I was searching for the product page like a mad fellow, as getting at unrealistic price is often an enticing one. Finally found the product where the lightening deal with 1 Re was mentioned. But it was disabled stating that it has been booked and even wait list got filled. 

  • I was shocked because I solved it under a minute.
  • This is really a bait strategy adopted by Amazon.
  • First they lure us and make us check every hour.
  • Indulge us to participate and spend time with them.
  • Later at the end of every hour, they post attractive products discovered and tempt us to seriously try with them and make us visit them again and again.
  • They were creating a habit to visit their app more than any of their competitors.

Many would have seen the lightening deals. It's not that great discounts offered and not always on most popular products. It's mostly for the products which was not sold for longer periods and the ones require awareness and publicity.

Then I was watching it and was wondering how long and why are they adopting such a bait strategy. Then came this another Diwali Sale.

On 26th I visited their app at 00:00 hours. To my surprise, the Treasure hunt is nowhere to be seen. As I suspected, it was a bogus and cheap bait tactics adopted by the so called World’s best E-commerce company. After their sale on 28th, I again visited on 29th and again it was not there at all.

From this what can we understand guys?

The reason for their daily deals is to make us visit them again and again and make us habituated with them. They're training us to be their customers and not of their competitors through these strategies.

I hope people don't fall for such tricks and buy products only if it's absolutely required for them.


Tuesday 3 November 2015

Strategy behind flash sales

Let’s say that you’re hungry and you’re going to a restaurant. You’ll look at the menu and will order only the things you know mostly and will have.

Then one day, the restaurant is advertising that there is going to be “Chef’s spl food” for the season. Some xyz will be food prepared and served only between 7-10pm, on a specific date. They’ll tell it’s surprising, delicious, organic etc characteristics.. 

It will have limited slots and hence, advance booking will be required and it might open in couple of days from the day it is advertised. 

By seeing the advertisement, you’ll be tempted to know what’s so spl in it and why is it available only in limited quantities and only at a specific time alone. 

You’ll get the urge that you should definitely know why and want to try out somehow. You’ll try to go but it would have got over or you couldn’t get it reserved. The curiosity and urge will increase. 

They’ll again do for the next season. This time you’ll be determined to somehow try it out. Then there are chances where you could have missed it again. The cycle will continue and by chance,  somehow you manage to get booked and taste it..

When it happens, you’ll be like you got something which others tried and couldn’t get it.. So you’ll be proud and happy about it. You’ll start boasting about it and this acts as word of mouth publicity for them. Its very powerful and nothing can beat it.

Now let’s consider the current situation. E-Commerce business is booming, Traffic is increasing day by day.. Who are these buyers? Tech savvy and educated customers.. 

When they publish flash sales with good specifications etc, at lower price (Chinese products). That too advanced registration and limited stock, you’ll try to get it.. But wantedly they won’t sell more units. 

From the registrations, they’ll try to estimate the demand for their products and ship but less than that. They artificially create a hype that so many products sold in a minute or so and stocks are no longer available. 

Those who didn’t get will be disappointed and will try to buy from next flash sales. Word of mouth will spread.. Newspapers will advertise.. Create a greater hype.. 

These products are mostly targeted at the youths.. Particularly college students.. They need cheap and good specs.. They create this irresistible feeling and subliminal perception towards their products.. They’ll create an artificial necessity for it.. 

Thus ppl fall for it and the company gets good publicity while making huge profits. It’s latest marketing gimmicks played by their Marketing department!!! 

Saturday 24 October 2015

Why Do Online Retailers Offer Heavy Discounts?



It’s really surprising isn’t it? Giving 70%+ discounts which we’ve not heard of in the past that too for branded products. What’s the real mystery behind it?
Worldwide investors are pouring in billions of dollars into companies such as AmazonFlipkartSnapdealPaytm etc. Hence what these companies do is that they subsidize the items sold in their website by absorbing the discounts they offer. In this way seller will not get affected at all as he’s getting entire cost plus profit mark-up money. And the customers would be benefited due to cheaper available of goods from these E-tailers
Now one may ask.. Why these firms are indulging in loss making activity and despite making loses, why these investors are pouring billions of dollars into such businesses? 
The Answer would be hope of getting profit in future. Hope of consolidating the invested businesses in a very good position and be a leader in the market. What may be such compelling reasons for being so optimistic? I’ll elaborate one by one below: 
Low Cost:
Basically compared to brick and mortar stores, having an online store is cheaper due to integration and streamlining business processes such as  supply chain management, billing, shipping, procurement etc. In this way the firm need not stock up the products in bulk quantities and adopts the Just In Time (JIT) method of management. For any businesses, this will translate into huge profit margins.
Having an online store means the business just went global! The boundaries or borders have shrunken and the entire globe is available for the firm to cater to. On the other hand, in case of retail format, the firm has to open shops wherever it wants to operate putting it in greater risk and financial constraints.  The firm can’t open stores throughout the country just like that.
Potential buyers can be anyone from any part of the country or world. If the firm operates in retail format, then it has to wait for the customers to come to their premises and purchase from them. Hence the entire stocks has to get depleted before ordering for new one. Sometime it’ll take very long time or goods won’t be sold at all!!! 
Ultimately it’s a loss for the seller. He’ll be at a disadvantageous position of not being able to bring in new stock or latest products on time for new season particularly for fashion industry and the business will never grow!!

Hence the best bet would be to capture worldwide market and sell at a lesser margin in bulk quantities so that profit margins are not affected..
Blue Ocean Strategy
For starters, it means uncontested market space with huge profit potential. It similar to ocean where it provides enormous opportunities where firms have no idea how to do and what strategy is best. All they know is unlimited potential for growth and earnings.
One may argue that here are lots of e-commerce sites mushrooming. But one must know that no company has found ways to capture global market and leverage it to the fullest. For everyone who enters, opportunities are there. Continuous innovation and disruption is happening and this online commerce is still in it’s nascent stage. 
24/7 Business
The ordinary brick and mortar stores have time limit and are not doing their business in efficient and effective way. As the market in now global, sales can happen at anytime at any location in the world. Hence it provides the firm with unparalleled superior advantage.
By armed with resources and internet, to handle customer requests and provide information round the clock, businesses can provide support efficiently and effectively thus resulting in increased customer satisfaction.
Now Comes Major Reason: Inducing Online Shopping Addiction
How to tap the enormous potential this field holds? By making the consumers aware of their website, how good, easy, reliable, cost-effective and safe it is for the consumers to shop. Then providing various options compared to brick and mortar stores. 
Their target is millennials who are the ones who spend most of the time in the internet and are addicted to it. They’re trying to give a taste of E-shopping such as offering latest style dresses from around the world at discounted prices.
Consciously and subconsciously they’re trying to get the consumers to get used to e-shopping experience and are trying to create a positive attitude towards it. There’s something called knowledge or cognitive function in consumer attitude which is the “know how”.
They’re trying to fulfill the cognitive need of the consumers by using various inbound tactics and providing all the information they need so that ultimately they’ll come to those who did it. Why they’re coming to them? Because the customers consider them genuine and authentic.
Then by prompt delivery, good packaging, customer support, returns etc., the firm can develop a very good positive attitude towards them and this would result in attaining competitive advantage. By constantly giving heavy discounts, they can get all these and more things done. As the market grows, brand image gets positioned well, tapping and increasing the market segment, they’ll slowly reduce all big discounts and offers.
If they make or train you to be lazy, you’ll become lazy, won’t spend time going for shopping. Whatever you want will be available online. On the other hand, the offline format requires you to travel in heavy traffic, go to one shop after another until the one you like will be available, etc.

So to avoid all this you’ll start shopping online. That’s why to give you taste, get market share etc. It may not be profitable at the moment, but it’s really a great investment with future in mind. When the offline channels die out and with continuous investment through funding, the best will sustain and the rest will perish. Later it will become survival of the fittest.
For this reason the investors are pumping in billions of dollars. 
Hope I have explained well and this helps everyone to understand about the strategy behind heavy discounts.
Future Strategy?
Slowly the E-commerce biggies will stop offering huge discounts because they can’t continue to burn their pockets. People have aleady started getting addicted to online shopping and the sales won’t be affected by the curbing of discounts as the number of vendors and product categories has risen as more Indians take to online shopping. They will look to earn margins and start going towards profitable journey.