Saurabh Mathur graduated from IIT Delhi with a degree in computer science in 2005. Post that he completed his Masters in computer science from Columbia University and went on to join Google in Mountain View. At Google, he worked on several different products like iGoogle, Google Plus and in areas like analytics and Big data. In 2011, he moved back to India and have since been exploring the startup world here. He is currently working on a product called Connecto which helps marketers to improve their marketing efforts.
Digital Vidya: How did you get into Digital Marketing?
Saurabh: Me and my partner Jagmal first started an eCommerce Venture. One thing we realized through that effort is, that no matter what your product is, you need to have a feasible marketing plan for a business idea to work. We tried many digital marketing techniques to reduce our customer acquisition cost. We realized that in the space we were operating in, it would be extremely difficult to be profitable but in the process we bumped onto many techniques which are quite effective online. Techies that we are, our natural GPS guided us into a Digital Marketing product that turned out to be useful for many verticals.
Digital Vidya: Why do you think it’s important for entrepreneurs, marketing professionals and students to learn Digital Marketing today?
Saurabh: I think we are witnessing a sea change in the world today. In US, computers became mainstream in the 80s and we saw a sea change. Similarly, internet became mainstream in the late 90s and today we are witnessing a sea change in marketing techniques where print media is starting to wane in its capabilities and online and inbound marketing is becoming increasingly relevant. In parallel, we are witnessing a mobile wave which will take digital marketing into everyone’s pocket. Be it a marketing professional or an entrepreneur, knowledge of digital marketing is almost a requirement today.
Digital Vidya: According to you, what are the top mistakes committed by organizations today in leveraging Digital Marketing?
Saurabh: I see two mistakes being committed very commonly across organizations. One is investing too much on the short term marketing efforts like SEM and too little in long term directions like Inbound marketing and organic search. The reason for this is that usually marketers have little or no incentive to plant seeds which will fruit over years.
The other mistake I see is that we marketers often overestimate what our visitors are willing to do online. This includes making difficult sign up flows or hiding lead forms on contact pages or requiring account creation to sign up for freebies. Simplifying these can double your leads. Digital marketers should make all business goals extremely easy for their visitors.
Digital Vidya: You led ‘Proactive Lead Generation’ Webinar for Digital Vidya’s community. How was your experience in leading the Webinar?
Surabh: It was great. I am very happy with the response we got from webinar and I hope, I was able to touch on topics which were insightful.
Digital Vidya: Please share top 5-7 takeaways from the Webinar you would like to share with our community.
Saurabh: First I will summarize the philosophical points that I wanted to stress upon
1. Make lead submission/sign ups as easy as you can. Easiness rides an exponential curve. If you make something twice as easy to do, your success rate will increase four times or so.
2. Understand your visitor’s behavior and only interrupt when its least likely to bother them. Be good to your customers and they will be good to you.
In specific, I would suggest the following techniques
1. Make your lead forms visible, I mean it should be impossible for a visitor to not to see it.
2. Use surveys or chat to strike a conversation with your visitor before you show them a lead form.
3. Try exit intent techniques to give yourself an extra chance to talk to your visitors.
Digital Vidya: Do you have any suggestions for us to further increase the value of our Digital Marketing Webinars for our community?
Saurabh: I think Digital Vidya is on a great path. I am glad to be associated with you and your community. I don’t have any specific suggestions but please keep up the good work. I would recommend trying to contact MOOCs to deliver some parts of your courses since a lot of people worldwide will get benefit from it and some of these platforms have extremely wide reach.
Digital Vidya: Would you like to share few words about the work we are doing at Digital Vidya?
Saurabh:
Like I said, you guys are doing a terrific job. I would recommend any entrepreneur or digital marketer to join your community as there is so much learning to have. I also think Digital Vidya is creating its own path which a lot of people will tread in the future.
Thanks Saurabh for your valuable contribution in helping our community, learn and leverage Digital Marketing. We appreciate your kind words about the work we are doing at Digital Vidya. We look forward to long term association with you.