Official Blog of GTM360 Marketing Solutions
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
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
Many people have reacted vehemently against the government’s move to regulate the creation, distribution and usage of Indian maps under the proposed Geospatial Information Regulation bill. Some have even insinuated that the move is a veiled threat to police Google Maps and amounts to “throwing out the baby with the bathwater”. I don’t know whether … Read more
In The IT Industry’s 95% Problem, Gartner Research VP Brian Prentice notes that an average user of a software uses only 5% of the product’s features. In other words, 95% of the features in a software create no value for the overall customer audience. While you could quibble about the exact percentages, no one will deny that … Read more
I’ve long believed that CX is a matter of mindset. Superior CX must be related to mindset, not size: Big guys justify poor CX citing too much volumes; small guys, citing too little resources. — GTM360 (@GTM360) March 25, 2014 I recently read about how some brands / companies go out of the way to … Read more
The typical tech startup’s backstory goes as follows: Founders observe a problem in the real world, find a way to use technology to solve the problem, and build a product around the technology. According to common wisdom, product management is the foundation of any startup. Sales, marketing, HR, finance and other functions can come in … Read more
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
I got my first credit card in the late ’80s. Since then, I’ve been a major fan of plastic. Rewards, deferred payment and a built-in line of defence from fraud – these are some of the reasons I pay with credit cards as far as possible. One more reason why I prefer credit card is … Read more
Whenever they’re asked to sweeten a deal, most vendors respond with a discount. They don’t have to. In Five Ways To Sweeten A Deal – Apart From Discount, we gave several alternative tactics for sweetening a deal without dropping the price. We illustrated some of them with our interactions with the following vendors: Acme Accounting: … Read more
They said cash is costly. It didn’t work with merchants. They launched one mobile wallet after the other to drive cashless behavior. It didn’t work with consumers. They scared people away from currency notes, claiming they contain all kinds of germs, bacteria and viruses. It didn’t work with anyone. Today: 85% of world’s transactions happen … Read more