Balasubbhramaniyam started his role as a Client Functional Consultant & progressed as a Sales Enablement Lead for various SaaS products for 6 years. While being in that role, what he enjoyed the most was talking with the customers and stakeholders on the value proposition on each product offered to and also found ways to improvise them at each stage.
That’s when he realized that there is a role specific to his interest which is called Product Marketing. Honestly, the role wasn’t anything different from what he was doing earlier and so he hopped on it till today.
Growing revenue and profits is a core objective of most companies, and it is the responsibility of every function to contribute to the pursuit of this goal. His role typical lives at the intersection of marketing and product development. In short, he needs to regularly check where does his company stand on the product – market fit axis. So, this makes digital marketing very crucial along with product development.
How did you get into Digital Marketing? What interested you in learning Digital Marketing?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami: I realized the importance of digital marketing when I was handling the sales enablement role in 2009. Every feature of the product needs to be highlighted and most importantly excite the users.
This happens only if communicated correctly. Digital Marketing was a boon at this need. We were able to use all the media channels to do it and it worked brilliantly well for me. That’s the point I understood the value and wanted to use the maximum out of it.
When I started digital marketing, I didn’t have any proper training or did any course for it, in fact, there wasn’t one available too. It was all learned while experimenting, researching and failing and we eventually understood how to get going with it until we found a winning formula.
What excited me the most is, this medium is constantly evolving and the only way to stay ahead is to keep experimenting with all the options regularly.
According to you, what are the advantages of conventional marketing over Digital Marketing? Do you think that Digital Marketing is a threat to the future of conventional marketing?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami: Fundamental habits of Human beings don’t change. Let’s go back 20 years, we used to consume news and ads through newspapers, radio, and television. Now today the same is still consumed and they are only replaced by News apps, podcasts, and other video streaming channels. It is more convenient than ever before.
TV, Radio and Newspaper ads are still expensive. The conventional truth is ‘It works’ but nobody is able to say how much exactly and which works the best at that time.
Digital marketing is built on the same base principle of conventional marketing. Now the only difference is that you can measure everything. What you can measure you can manage. I would always argue that conventional marketing has evolved into digital marketing and I see no threat here because we the consumers evolve along with it.
Share your favorite Digital Marketing case studies. What did you like most about them?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami: The SEO Proposal Story
When Mondovo was out of its beta in 2015 and was ready for marketers, there was one problem, nobody knew Mondovo. We tried various launch strategies but this strategy, in particular, stood out completely.
We had a limited budget for the launch. We knew if we spend them on Google/Social Media Ads, we would get the traction but surely lose the momentum when we end the campaigns. We wanted a permanent solution and the solution was to reach the potential audience organically. So here is what we did.
The solution was to create an epic content for all our potential audience on a topic which is in a shortage of supply and rank them on search engines quickly. The problem was, it was not that easy. Mondovo is a digital marketing toolset and there are dime and dozen content on this subject already and so was the challenge to find a unique content to rank and beat the competition.
For Mondovo, one of the Persona is a Small Digital Marketing Agency. When we interviewed some of then we found a common issue each and everyone faced. It is to create a proposal which is personalized, quick and convincing. The most challenging of all was to prepare an SEO proposal among other proposals.
Luckily the word “SEO Proposal” had a decent search volume with almost 1500+ searches happening every month. The cherry on top was, there was no one solid SEO proposal that can be used by these agencies in the Google search results. We decided to crack this.
We wrote an epic long article on SEO Proposal and gave them a template to download along with an SEO Calculator sheet where they can do their own math to the proposal. With some basic on-page and off-page optimization, we started ranking in the top positions in Google almost across the Globe.
This was a turning point. The proposal was carefully designed to a point where the agencies had to fill the proposal with some basic data from the Mondovo toolset. This data was easily made available if they sign-up for a free trial and generate a couple of reports. This changed everything. We gave our potential audience what they wanted and also introduced them to a new tool for them to explore.
What I love about this strategy is that it is been two years since we launched this article and it is still one of the best customer acquisition channels we have. Our CAC is just $3 here.
You can check my webinar where I explain in detail how much leads we generated with this one post.
According to you, what are the top 3 mistakes committed by organizations today in leveraging Digital Marketing?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami:
- Not investing in SEO at the early stage
- Relying heavily on just one acquisition channel
- Not building your owned media
Between Agency and In-house, which approach would you recommend for maximum value of Digital Marketing? Why?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami: As a Product Marketing Manager, I would highly recommend an In-House digital marketing approach for maximum value output. If you are selling a Saas Product or if you are in the E-Commerce business then there is a high-level co-ordination required between the UI/UX, Sales & Marketing team. There are various A/B testing done and some needs to be done quickly. I feel it is for best when all of them are sitting together.
Of course, it also depends on what product or service you are offering and for some agency model would work well too.
Which are your 3 favorite Digital Marketing Tools?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami:
- Mondovo
- Hotjar
- Click Funnels
Why do you think it’s important for entrepreneurs, marketing professionals and students to learn Digital Marketing today?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami:
- For Entrepreneurs: It is the quickest way to test and research the market. Why miss this great opportunity?
- For Marketing Professionals: The Quickest way to add value to your organization.
- For Students: If you master this, you will end up marketing yourself really well. You have the power to bring new opportunities to you. Use it well.
What are the top 3-5 skills you look for when hiring a candidate for Digital Marketing profile?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami:
- Positive attitude
- Basic understanding of Human Psychology / Behavior.
- A failed campaign and their learning from it.
- Ability to justify why any companies’ digital marketing campaign is best or worst.
What is your advice for newbies, who are looking at building a career in Digital Marketing industry?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami:
- Have a mentor.
- Create a simple website and test all the theories that you learn.
- Master is one area of digital marketing.
- Learn to position yourself in the market.
- Choose a company/product to work, not a job.
How do you stay updated on the latest trends in Digital Marketing? Which are the Digital Marketing resources (i.e. blogs/websites/apps) you visit regularly?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami: A bit strangely. I try analyzing all the ads that come to me. I admire the onboarding of all the products I sign-up. I read all the welcome emails and marketing emails and learn from them. I love books on human psychology. My favorite Podcast is ‘The Top’ by Nathan Latka. Mondovo.com does get a lot of guest bloggers to write, I read them all regularly.
Share the names of 3 people you respect when it comes to Digital Marketing.
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami:
- Gary Vaynerchuk
- Russell Brunson
- Brian Dean
You led the webinar ‘Open the Traffic Floodgates with this Perfect SEO Strategy’. How was your experience in leading the webinar?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami: I absolutely enjoyed it. We got some great questions at the end. Great audience!
Please share top 3-5 takeaways from the Webinar you led for our community.
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami: Here is a summary of the entire webinar. Google is looking for 3 things from you if they want to rank you on the top.
- Content Depth – Write long and in-depth articles.
- Content Breath – Write lots of articles in the same field/subject on your website, and
- Contextual Links – Build backlinks to your articles.
We call this the DBL strategy and it works for anyone and any industry.
Do you have any suggestions for us to further increase the values of our Digital Marketing Webinars?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami: The webinar was presented very well. Thank you.
How do you see Digital Media evolving in future? What are the top 3 trends that you foresee for 2019?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami:
- Say hello to voice search.
- Video Marketing is going to be even bigger.
- Digital Marketing spends will grow further.
Would you like to share few words about the work we are doing at Digital Vidya?
Balasubbhramaniyam Ayyaswaami: Digital Vidya does a great job in educating not just the students but the entire industry. Keep up the great work.
Are you inspired by the opportunity of Digital Marketing? Start your journey by attending our upcoming orientation session on Digital Marketing for Career & Business Growth. It’s online and Free :).
