Official Blog of GTM360 Marketing Solutions
I exhibit cult loyalty for Amazon among a few other brands. As I wrote in What Drives Cult Loyalty?, I’ve been shopping on Amazon for over 15 years in Germany, UK, USA and, finally, India, during which period I must’ve bought at least 100 items from it. Knock on wood, Amazon hasn’t even bungled a … Read more
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
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
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
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
There’s lot of data in the public domain. Buyer 2.0 is Internet-savvy. So they will help themselves to all that information and find solutions to their pain areas by themselves. Ergo salespersons should stop trying to sell solutions to potential customers. This is the sum of essence of one prevailing school of thought in B2B … Read more
Following Chipotle’s e-coli scare late last year, the burrito chain’s stock has been on a free fall. From a peak of ~$750 in October 2015, the stock price plummeted to ~$400 at the height of the crisis last month. At the time, it was rumored that the company might be forced to file for bankruptcy. … Read more
You generally give standing ovations to speeches, concerts and other live events. On one occasion, I literally stood up and clapped after reading a book (it was “Gods of Guilt” by Michael Connelly if you wish to know). But it’s unheard of to compliment magazine articles with a standing ovation. But that’s what I did when I … Read more
Buyer power in online marketplaces is obvious. Choice of platforms, sales returns, seller rating and venting on social media are among the many ways in which buyer is king in online marketplaces. Platform power is also fairly obvious: Blacklisting errant sellers and withholding payments to them are some of the tools available to the platform to flex its … Read more
Cult loyalty is the highest tier of loyalty. Consumers at this level patronize the brand forever, recommend it to everyone around them, and, most importantly, talk about the brand well outside the context of the product, as though the brand is a part of themselves. What drives cult loyalty? Is it the product? Is it … Read more