Where do you think Marketing is headed?
Diffusion of its boundaries. Marketing will get increasingly integrated and interweaved with other parts of the business and organization.
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Marketing will get integrated with Analytics to gain insights about consumer behaviour and purchase process and to measure every way the customer is responding to marketing.
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Marketing will get integrated with sales fronts to bear the responsibility of revenues and end-results, and thus influence the business goals more comprehensively.
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Marketing will get interweaved with product and customer care to create an omni-channel seamlessness of how the customers are being listened to, spoken to and how their voice is being incorporated as feedback for the product and the organization.
What makes a good marketer?
A good marketer is a little bit of a Psychologist, an Artist, a Storyteller, an Analyst and an Altruist. She understand her consumer minds, their needs and their aspirations. She has a comprehensive analytical understanding of the business needs and market forces. She is the connecter and interpreter between the organization and the consumer – she is the organization’s storyteller for the consumer and represents the voice of the society and the consumer within the organization.
3 things you do to prepare for a meeting?
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It is important that I know or communicate the agenda before hand. Not everyone is comfortable with providing feedback ad-hoc, hence we need to give sufficient notice for background thinking or analysis before the meeting.
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If it’s a first sales pitch meeting, we should research as much as possible to understand the context in which we’re going to talk.
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If it’s a meeting with people or teams that I don’t know personally, I make a small aerial map of room in my notebook and note down names and their seating position. Something like. Left Side 1. Amit 2. Prashant 3. Nidhi 4. Mithila…Right Side 1. Vidhi 2. Prasad 3. Divya 4. Qaid. It’s important to me that I don’t mess up the names later in the meeting.
3 things you look for when you hire a person?
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Work Ethic. I am rigorous about filtering in people with strong sense of initiative and ownership, and filtering out the “politicians”.
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Eagerness to learn – Someone who understands there is always much to learn.
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Their Personal Bar. I don’t judge them on what they say they’re good at. But if they say, they’re good at something, they better bereally good at that thing.
What would you say to someone who aspires to be in marketing?
To keenly observe the world around them. Understand how people behave and decide. Observe how businesses try to communicate and influence people. Read a lot. Have empathy with and understanding of a wide range of human thoughts and contexts.
What are a few activities you do at your leisure?
I travel, with a keen interest of experiencing places through their food. I read a lot of science. And sometimes I produce some art.
Do you love/ hate data?
I totally love data. I have been taking care of both marketing and analytics functions in my work experience. And I don’t think the two of them can survive separately in an organization. Increasingly, business are having access to a large amount of data and with that large volume of data comes the responsibility and potential to use it for benefit of the business and the consumer, hopefully both at the same time.
One app that you cannot do without?
Kindle.
Profile: Vivek Singh has led omni-channel marketing and analytics for online and offline classifieds, content and commerce businesses during his time with with FirstCry.com and with HT Media’s internet businesses. As one of the pioneers of digital marketing in the country, Vivek has set up and run programs across Search, Social Media, Display, Affiliates, Emailing, Mobile, CRM, Offline and more, and has studied their interplay toward impacting business outcomes. Vivek has also worked on data-quality controls, traffic quality, repeat behavior, customer segmentation, product improvements, conversion flows, ARPU and has tackled a host of business problems through data and web analytics. He is a graduate from IIT(BHU) Varanasi and a postgraduate from IIM Lucknow.
