Should Sales Dodge The Price Question Or Answer It Upfront?

In the sales cycle for a technology solution, a vendor typically demonstrates its product, lists its features and benefits and finally gets into price discussions. And a typical technology solution buyer goes along with this sequence of activities. However, there are prospects who want to know the price upfront. According to this report, they could … Read more

Aspect Ratio Is Not Rocket Science But So Many Brands Still Get It Wrong

A few years ago, images on websites and banner ads used to suck. Poor resolution, bleeding colors – these were the common problems in images used even by leading brands. That’s mostly history now. Image quality has improved significantly in recent times. I wish I could say the same about image sizes and aspect ratios. … Read more

3 Ways To Make Events Memorable

Retail industry analyst RSR Research notes in “The Lasting Effects Of Shoptalk” that the new event in Las Vegas differentiates itself from other events by featuring “Full-out breakfast, lunch and dinner” that were accompanied by “impressive spreads of snacks and beverages throughout the day.” And goes on to remark, “These may seem like trivial things, but for someone … Read more

Indian IT Industry Might Produce A Fortune 500 Corporation Next Year

The unthinkable has happened – the entry barrier of the FORTUNE GLOBAL 500 list has actually come down. Yes, the last company in the latest FORTUNE GLOBAL 500 list (published in Fortune magazine dated 1 August 2016) posted a revenue of US$ 20.923 billion compared to US$ 23.720 billion turned in by its counterpart last year. Expressed … Read more

Omnichannel Couponing Drives CEM Success – Part 2

In Part-1 of this blog post, I’d described my experience with PayTM’s CEM campaign on Nescafe’s instant coffee bottle. In this part, I’ll describe my experience with the sachet of the same product. If you’re wondering how packing types matter in a CEM campaign, trust me, bottle and sachet pose different challenges and provide different … Read more

Omnichannel Couponing Drives CEM Success – Part 1

Barring a few exceptions like Dollar Shave Club, consumer brands still don’t sell their products directly to people who use them. Instead, they use the traditional multi-tiered distribution channel comprising distributors, wholesalers and retailers. Ergo they don’t know their end consumers. How do brands overcome the “anonymity” challenge, reach out to end consumers and engage … Read more

Hardline Stance Works Against Ad-Blockers

With the rising use of ad-blockers by online readers, the blogosphere is full of advice on how online publishers should move away from advertising and find other ways to monetize their content. Some of the alternatives proposed by the digerati include: Micropayments Subscription Native Ads Harvest PII Remove Obtrusive Ads In this blog post, I’ll examine … Read more

Whose Customer Am I?

I read the following question on Quora recently: You buy a pen from a store. Then, are you a customer of that store or pen manufacturing company? Normally, my answers on Quora are rather short. After seeing this answer by Quora's founder @adamdangelo, I no longer worry about whether my replies are too terse. https://t.co/V6UqD1qinA … Read more

Perils Of Blind Retargeting

Since the time I published Retargeted Ads or Retarded Ads, I’ve come across many more retargeted ads exhibiting retarded behavior. Take for example the ones from Cleartrip. Well after I’d booked my tickets on its portal, I kept seeing its retargeted ads. I hinted to the OTA that it could try setting frequency caps on … Read more