Digital Marketing

Are Digital Natives Losing Their Data Chops?

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According to the popular narrative, new age companies leverage data in virtually every facet of their business (as against traditional companies that run on intuition). To a large extent, this belief is right. Many digital natives owe their spectacular rise in the last decade or two to their prowess with data and analytics. A big … Read more

Two New Ways To Overcome The Twitter Identity Crisis

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It’s not easy to find someone on Twitter. This includes handles of individual tweeples as well as brands. This creates an identity crisis of sorts on Twitter. In a 2013 blog post entitled The Severe Identity Crisis On Twitter For Digital Marketers, I’d suggested the following tools to overcome the Twitter identity crisis: Twitter Search … Read more

Five Google Backdoors You Probably Didn’t Know

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Sometimes you can use Google to find information stored in a certain website or app that you can’t by using the website or app itself. I call these hacks “Google Backdoors”. Here are five Google Backdoors I use regularly. #1. BUSINESS FINDER A new restaurant opened in my neighborhood. Its owner said they delivered via … Read more

Demystifying The Ubiquitous Sample Size Of 2000

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Back in the day, we learned in statistics that you need a sample size of at least 2% of the size of population to make statistically significant inferences about the population. In common speak, the expression “statistically significant” means “valid”. Nevertheless, if you’re like me, you regularly come across surveys conducted on sample size of … Read more

Social Media Customer Service – Use It But Don’t Abuse It

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Frequent readers of this blog and people who otherwise know me would be aware that I’m a big fan of social media customer service. Many years ago, I wrote Customers Of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But The Call Center Hold Music to explain why I found the channel very effective for reaching out … Read more

How Do You Find Early Customers For A B2B SAAS Startup?

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This is a slightly edited version of my answer to the following question on Quora: This question reminds me of a Patek Philippe ad in which the luxury Swiss watchmaker says, “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation”. The tagline of the ad is “Begin your own … Read more

Winners Don’t Let Security Screw Up User Experience

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Like me, you may have come across people who appear obsessed with security but happily book cabs, send messages, order food, and even make payments without entering a single password / PIN on their smartphones. This is not as contradictory as it seems if you look at the end-to-end customer journey. For the uninitiated, Customer Journey can … Read more

Three Ways To Boost The Appeal Of Targeted Offers

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Targeted offers have become famous. That’s not to say they’ve become popular – brand managers report low conversion rates of offers made to offers redeemed. There are many reasons for this problem such as the ones I covered in Walking The Tightrope Between Driving Repeat Purchase And Rewarding Loyalty and How To Fulfill Targeted Offers To … Read more

Why Do People Trust Reviews Even Though Half Of Them Are Fake?

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On job sites like Fiverr and Upwork, you’ll find many job listings for writing fake reviews. Interestingly, on the same platforms, you’ll also find many job listings for removing fake reviews, like the following one: From personal experience and anecdotal evidence, many online reviews are fake. Regular readers of this blog know that I don’t … Read more

The End Of Google Search Is Not Nigh

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I go directly to the websites of my favorite brands whenever I shop online e.g. Amazon for products, Cleartrip for flight tickets and hotels, Housing for real estate, Play Store for mobile apps, Product Hunt for software and websites, StockImages for images, and so on. I can’t remember the last time I went to Google to … Read more