Use And Misuse Of Personas In Marketing

Buyer persona is the bedrock of targeted marketing. HubSpot provides a succinct definition of the term: A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. Data includes not just demographics but behavior, emotions, wants, aspirations and other buyer attributes. A sample persona … Read more

How To Fight Surcharge And Take #CashlessIndia To Next Level

Take the following thread on Twitter. @s_ketharaman: Merchant A/c is reqd. for BharatQR, I wonder how many such merchants will qualify for it. Meanwhile, PayTM will race ahead:) @logic: After Banks figure this out and do something with eKYC, they will realize that people are not ready to pay MDR, want privacy @s_ketharaman: But Merchants … Read more

Indian IT: Turning Crisis Into Opportunity: Part 1

At the end of my blog post entitled Indian IT – Crisis Or No Crisis?, I reflected on the zeitgeist about the looming crisis faced by the Indian IT industry due to growing automation, digital challenges, H1B restrictions and Trumpism-driven Middle America outsourcing. Even if these challenges are real, there’s no need to panic. The industry … Read more

Uber Masters Abandoner Remarketing

Uber didn’t invent targeted offers but the “world’s largest taxi company” sets itself apart from other brands by the innovative ways with which it uses the new marketing tactic to deepen customer engagement, as I’d highlighted in Mastering Targeted Offers – The Uber Way. I recently saw Uber’s mastery of another “next gen” marketing tactic, … Read more

How Relevant Is “Crossing The Chasm” After 25 Years?

As the title of our website’s WHAT WE DO page proclaims, GTM360 helps growth-stage companies in technology-intensive industries to “cross the chasm” and break into the mainstream market. In a recent MEDIUM article titled 25 Years Later, ‘Crossing the Chasm’ Has Withstood the Test of Time, author Tiffani Bova has a fireside chat with Geoffrey Moore, … Read more

Indian IT – Crisis Or No Crisis?

Wipro lays off 600 employees due to poor performance. Cognizant fires 6000 employees consequent to its annual appraisal. So on and so forth. The media is full of bad news about the Indian IT Industry. Notwithstanding that, rumors of existential crisis for the industry are grossly exagerrated. Whether you use a bell curve or a … Read more

Can Chatbots Replace Humans?

If you think bots will never replace human agents, you’re amongst the lucky few who has been served by intelligent human agents. Let's stop pretending that the average Customer Service Rep has an IQ of 140 when we believe that chatbots are not intelligent enough to replace human agents. https://t.co/ErzpUfMmLP via @verge . #CustomerService pic.twitter.com/ujDj2l3593 … Read more

How To Win A Deal By “Sharing An RFP Template”

“Can you give us an RFP template to share with our client?”, asked one of our customers recently. “We can Google it but you can save us the trouble if you have something readymade”. Good they didn’t use Google. There’s lot more to sharing an RFP template than finding, downloading and handing over a standard … Read more

Why Gmail When Hosting Provider Gives Free Mail Boxes?

After trying out a half-dozen hosting providers, I settled on one that I’ll call ACME. Among other things, I selected ACME for its following two features: Hosting for virtually unlimited domains on a single hosting plan Free unlimited number of mail boxes, each with virtually unlimited storage (subject only to the overall storage limit under … Read more