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Priyam: How has COVID impacted the gaming industry?

Ashwin: The lockdown has benefitted the entire gaming industry by leaps and bounds.

→ People are getting more time to experiment with different gaming platforms and switch from free gaming to real money play.

→ There is a big upsurge in the consumer base for the Adda52 platform as well.

→ People are flowing in through all sorts of channels and are even switching between different gaming platforms frequently.

Priyam: How does the user engagement aspect work for a free gamer at Adda52?

Ashwin: We use WebEngage journeys to onboard a new user who is opting to play free chip rolls. We nudge him after a few wins with a deposit code to allow him to enter the real money gameplay.

→ Since it’s a skill-based gaming platform, we are highly cautious in running all the required onboarding journeys teaching the new users about the nitty-gritty and strategies of the game.

→ We don’t want new users to lose their money in the initial learning phase, so we run plenty of responsible gaming campaigns including a 30-day onboarding campaign.

Priyam: What are your views on the right communication strategies during a pandemic?

Ashwin: Instead of over-communicating, marketers should focus on story-driven campaigns. It’s more effective to engage your users by carving a story out of the journeys you’re running.

→ A platform like ours has a lot of serious and responsible gamers in comparison to the casual ones. We focus on delivering the right communication campaigns at the right times.

→ The main agenda of our communication strategy is to build loyalty among the users and restrict them to jump to other gaming platforms.

→ We are trying to humanize the messaging as much as we can and build a solid connection with the users making them our evangelists.

To gain more insights, check out the full episode on your favorite platforms!

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The post Episode 14: Rewriting the Marketing Playbook for 2020 & Beyond | Ashwin Shetty appeared first on Webengage.

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Priyam: How has COVID impacted you as a professional and the industry you work in?

Siddharth: Frankly speaking, I am looking at this sudden turn of events as an opportunity for myself. I and my team are keen to look for chances to move ahead of our competition.

→ I have seen job roles evolve. Professionals in my network are trying hard to be a jack of all trades, especially marketing and communications.

→ Talking about the industry I work in, it is suffering from the hardest hits it has ever seen. Being an advertising and media firm, we are the first victims of businesses cutting off their marketing spends.

→ However, there is an unusual pattern that we are seeing with the OTT and the EdTech clients. They have tremendously increased their engagement activities over this course of time.

Priyam: What changes have you noticed with respect to the marketing strategies of consumer brands?

Siddharth: The most significant change that I’ve seen among the marketers is the new approach of sympathetic communication. They cannot hard sell their products during this time as this might repel the customers permanently.

→ Marketers need to find out what problems their customers are facing and come up with solutions they can provide. This is required to build a connection.

→ Brands are opting to talk to consumers without any business interest in the place. It can be highly efficient to build a strong recall value among the customers.

→ You need to be creative with your content published on digital platforms so that it can go viral and you win the race of digital consumption.

Priyam: In terms of user-engagement, how important do you think empathy is?

Siddharth: It is highly critical to embed an empathetic tone of communication especially when the world is going through the biggest healthcare crisis of history.

→ I’ve seen how transactional and product-centric campaigns have backfired on companies making them lose their consumers almost permanently.

→ Empathy is here to stay for a long period of time. It rather is going to be the revolutionary point where consumers will have a higher bar set for the treatment they expect.

For more interesting insights, check out the full episode on your favorite platforms!

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The post Episode 13: Rewriting the Marketing Playbook for 2020 & Beyond | Siddharth Dwivedi appeared first on Webengage.

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Ashana: How has the lockdown affected your internal workflows?

Gaurav: We are an early-stage startup working hard to build the product with the small team we have.

→ The work from home scenario is challenging when we hire someone new. It is important to boost the morale of the person and have him get along the pace of the startup.

→ There is a need to do project planning and use different communication tools to execute our tasks smoothly.

Ashana: How do you think the marketing strategies have evolved overall?

Gaurav: There is a general shift in the budget allocation from an acquisition standpoint to the retention bracket.

→ The companies that are hard hit with the biggest downfall are trying to build organic strategies to retain their customers for the future.

Ashana: As you previously worked at Licious, can you comment on the impact of the pandemic specific to the food and beverage industry?

Gaurav: Licious has a stable product. It is an essential category and is not affected by the changing times.

→ The marketing budget was still reduced but for all the right reasons.

→ Procurement, however, is the biggest challenge for any business supplying essential goods these days.

→ Consumer behavior is evolving too. Customers are opting for food supply at their homes instead of risking their lives going to crowded places.

Ashana: How do you think marketers should communicate with their customers during such times?

Gaurav: This is an unprecedented time and rarely do people know how to react the right way. The only thing they can be cautious about is being sensitive to the situation. They cannot try to hard-sell things when their customers are facing a health crisis.

→ The brands which are not providing anything essential have the biggest challenge to mark their presence in the market and generate a recall value. Sympathetic and organic content can be useful.

→ There has to be a balance between radio silence and the overload of content delivery.

To gather more insights on the right marketing strategies, check out the full episode on your favorite platforms.

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The post Episode 12: Rewriting the Marketing Playbook for 2020 & Beyond | Gaurav Bhawnani appeared first on Webengage.

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Ashana: How is the work from home situation turning out for you?

Divya: Work from home sets up a completely different kind of challenge that we were never familiar with.

→ There is no physical demarcation between work-life and personal life.

→ It demands the sheer discipline to be productive and manage the household chores and family.

→ We are effectively managing the internal team setup and workflows to cater to the rising demand on our platform.

Ashana: How has COVID impacted the business and industry you’re working in?

Divya: There is a pragmatic shift in the mediums adopted to market our content.

→ All the physical means like posters, banners, newspapers, etc. have come to a long pause, while digital grounds have seen an inflow like never before.

→ All the segments of the target audience are approachable within the ceratin routes of digital media.

→ There is a momentous rise in the consumer base reaching 160% of the pre-COVID count. We are upscaling our libraries of content to manage the supply accordingly.

→ We are launching new shows with the new lockdown phases. We are lucky to have the shows already shot with us to continue releasing new content for a long time to come ahead.

Ashana: How has the communication strategy evolved for ALTBalaji?

Divya: We are very cognizant of the current situation that the world is facing and we don’t want to be ignorant in our communication. There is, fortunately, an uptick in the demand for us, but what the society is facing right now is extremely unfortunate.

→ We are holding back the call for celebrating the new records ALTBalaji is setting in terms of viewership.

→ However, we are trying to be true to the subscribers we have. We are announcing new shows and are vocal about our platform for those who are waiting for our content.

→ Transparency and empathy is the driving factor that will take us or any other brand leaps and bounds ahead.

Check out the full episode to learn more about Divya’s views on the do’s and don’ts amidst the pandemic.

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The post Episode 11: Rewriting the Marketing Playbook for 2020 & Beyond | Divya Dixit appeared first on Webengage.

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Priyam: How has COVID impacted you as a professional and the industry you operate in?

Damandeep: I consider myself both as an entrepreneur and as a marketer. And frankly speaking, both the roles have taken a huge hit.

→ Capital has remained a huge constraint. We are struggling hard to resource allocation and utilize the capital.

→ Funding has frozen up for the next few months and it is a strange time to survive in.

→ With supply and demand both getting affected, our marketing budget is getting drilled down.

→ ATL and BTL mediums are both proving to be highly ineffective. However, the digital grounds have shown some interesting insights with CPAs rising by 20-25%.

Priyam: Are there any outliers that are substantially profiting in the pandemic?

Damandeep: It is very obvious that the industries supplying non-essentials and catering to the physical world more are biting the dust.

→ However, those on the digital grounds are seeing an unexpected upsurge.

→ Digital Marketing Firms, Gaming Industries, OTT Platforms, all delivering on the digital mediums are flourishing progressively.

Priyam: What kind of economic revival time do you foresee post the pandemic?

Damandeep: It is pretty hard to depict the time when everything gets back to normal. It is going to take the whole of 2020 at least.

→ There is going to be a spike in demand soon after the lockdown ends pertaining to the pent up needs.

→ It is being experienced in China and South Korea as well, and it will have a similar impact here in India too.

→ People will fall for revenge buying a variety of luxury goods as well.

To gather more insights on the marketing strategies, check out the full episode!

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The post Episode 10: Rewriting the Marketing Playbook for 2020 & Beyond | Damandeep Singh Soni appeared first on Webengage.

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Priyam: How has the COVID impacted your business and industry overall?

Naman: We are into the business of providing invoicing and payment solutions to our customers.

→ We are an early-stage company and the customers were doubling every month pre-COVID. Suddenly the pandemic happened, and most of the industries got affected tremendously.

→ A huge proportion of our client base dropped off because they stopped getting regular work and they didn’t require our services eventually.

→ From the hiring standpoint, we were going aggressive to onboard young employees, although our onboarding process wasn’t mature. This proved a lot difficult for us, to directly manage the young hires in a ‘work from home’ scenario in the initial days of their job.

→ We are hopping onto the digital methods of internal communication. Even the client interactions are scheduled over a video call, and it has saved us from all the traveling required to attend important meetings.

Priyam: How have you changed your marketing strategies given the impact of the pandemic?

Naman: Our market has shrunk drastically over the past few months of lockdown.

→ Our efficiency in reaching out to the new users has seen a downward curve. Most of the clients have their businesses shut and therefore, they are of no value today.

→ We are adapting to enhanced content for reaching out to users on different channels. The open rates of the campaigns have increased. But it still hasn’t added much value because the target audience is running out of their business opportunities.

Priyam: What are you working on to increase demand in the future?

Naman: We are doubling down on our efforts to enhance our product.

→ The demand is low right now, and there is an ample amount of time for the engineers to carry out their plans for product revamping.

→ The demand is going to shoot up suddenly post lockdown, and if there is still an issue of supply or product shortfall, you don’t have any excuse to give.

Listen to the full episode on your favourite platforms.

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The post Episode 9: Rewriting the Marketing Playbook for 2020 & Beyond | Naman Sarawagi appeared first on Webengage.

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Ashana: How is the work from home situation going for you?

Dhananjay: Practically speaking, it is turning out to be a lot hectic than usual. The work time has extended and it is a challenge to manage time and develop efficiency altogether.

→ However, we are trying to adapt to this situation as it eventually is going to be a new normal for a long time to come ahead.

Ashana: How has COVID impacted the home improvement and real estate industry?

Dhananjay: It has impacted the industry big time. The market demand slowed down and the operational aspect of the work also saw bigger challenges.

→ We, at HomeLane, are trying hard to manage the flow of work efficiently though. We are adopting in-house tools to present the visual 3D designs for better understanding of our clients. There is rather a surge in the demand for us given the technological solutions we’ve built.

→ We’ve jumped on to virtual presentations instead of in-person meetings and that is working well for us.

Ashana: How have your marketing strategies changed as compared to the pre-COVID world?

Dhananjay: For us, the organic channels are the key focus areas now. Earlier, we were running after the SEM and other paid channels, which are not the right paths during this time.

→ We are working hard on building the SEO pipeline and productizing the website and any query that comes ahead.

→ WebEngage journeys are paving the way for retention led marketing that we are looking for. We have crafted a campaign to nudge the inactive leads to schedule virtual meetings with them and carry the funnel position ahead. The multichannel outreach ability of the tool has heightened the conversions to a great extent.

Ashana: Is there a different communication strategy that you’ve adopted now?

Dhananjay: It is very important for any business to be compassionate towards the consumers especially during this time.

→ We are adopting a more sympathetic tone in our communications and trying to be a helping figure for the users.
All the focus is on virtual channels, which is delivering the message of social distancing and moving live virtually ahead.

Listen to the full episode to understand how HomeLane has adopted new ways to engage and retain customers during the pandemic!

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The post Episode 8: Rewriting the Marketing Playbook for 2020 & Beyond | Dhananjay Yadav appeared first on Webengage.

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Priyam: How has COVID impacted your industry and you, as a professional?

Sindhu: Pocket Aces functioning solely on the digital platform has seen a spike in user base to a great extent. We are already overwhelmed with the astounding increase in the number of viewers.

→ In terms of my job role, there is not much effect on the amount of work that I do. However, the value of my work has seen a huge rise.

→ Job roles have tremendously enhanced for non-digital marketers. They all need to have a basic knowledge of marketing in the digital aspect, with a growth mindset.

→ There is a change in budget allocation for different marketing mediums pertaining to the background of new users flowing in.

Priyam: What changes in the marketing strategies would you like to bring post-COVID?

Sindhu:

→ On the Content Marketing front, we have adapted to the situation quite amazingly. We started a series called ‘Love in the Lockdown’, shot completely indoors. We managed to partner with ‘Bumble’ to release the series.

→ On the user targeting aspect, we are using various features of different platforms like Facebook which now allows us to segment users who are in ‘long-distance relationships’.

→ We haven’t pushed up our marketing budgets to an awfully huge figure. But the efficiency of the returns of expenditure has undoubtedly risen.

→ We are rather focussing more on the supply side of the business. The demand is increasing autonomously for us and we need to keep the new supplies active to meet the right balance.

Priyam: How are you looking after the user-retention goals for Pocket Aces?

Sindhu:

→ For user retention, the major avenue to master is the branding of your company. We have our highlighted brand positioning for Dice Media and Filter Copy and we are scrambling to create top content for the viewers to fulfill their set expectations.

→ We are trying to be sympathetic and humanize the messages we deliver to our consumers across channels.

Listen to the full episode to understand how Pocket Aces had adapted to the sudden upsurge in demand.

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The post Episode 7: Rewriting the Marketing Playbook for 2020 & Beyond | Sindhu Biswal appeared first on Webengage.

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Priyam: What is the impact of COVID on the EdTech industry?

Vibhu: EdTech is one of the few lucky verticals to rise at this time of the pandemic.

→ Students have no other choice but to adopt these online platforms.
→ It showed a tremendous boom in tier-2 & tier-3 cities where students witnessed high-quality teaching staff mostly for the first time in their lives.
→ The adoption numbers are going up, no doubt. We are trying to reset our targets for all the good metrics.

Priyam: Are there any changes that you are crafting in the product seeing such an upsurge in demand?

Vibhu: We have a large class model. When it comes to higher classes, the strength of the batch ranges from 700 to 1000.

→ The further increase in the number of students made us increase the number of batches for uniform user experience.

→ The product is showing more classes and courses to accommodate the augmented user-base.

Priyam: What are the changes in the marketing strategy you have adopted?

Vibhu: For us, the acquisition cost has gone down by 40%. It is way opposite to the other industries where cash constraint is the biggest challenge. So, we are doubling down on our marketing initiatives.

→ The main issue for us is the supply side of the business. We are trying hard to onboard more and more high-quality teachers and mentors. The demand is at its ultimate boom, and supply needs to cope up with it.

Priyam: How do you think the impact on the EdTech industry is going to change post-pandemic?

Vibhu: Earlier, there was merely a 2% share of the online education business in the education industry. And even if there comes a portion of students going back to the offline setup, it’ll still go up to 12% of the market share. This is still a significant impact compared to the situation that COVID didn’t happen at all.

Check out the full episode to gain actionable insights and learn strategies that Gradeup adopted to manage the incoming demand.

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The post Episode 6: Rewriting the Marketing Playbook for 2020 & Beyond | Vibhu Bhushan appeared first on Webengage.

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Priyam: How has COVID impacted you as a professional and the industry you work in?

Ramalingam: Initially, there was a lot of confusion regarding the validity of trading cryptocurrency. There was a lot of misleading information floating on the internet. But when the Supreme court gave us a green flag, we started seeing an upsurge until lockdown happened.

→ We are a company of young employees and saw a difficulty for us to cope with our lives during the lockdown. Hence, we did a dry run initially to prepare everyone to effectively function from a remote setting.

→ The physical touch-point for us is KYC. Somehow, the business is going slow and we are not able to get benefit from the green flag due to this sudden lockdown.

→ As per my job role, I am more focussed to reassess the strategies and return to the basics of the role irrespective of the mediums available.

Priyam: What marketing strategy have you adopted to survive in this phase?

Ramalingam: Our budget hasn’t dried up completely. Rather there is an extra budget in certain favorable avenues that might arise during this lockdown.

→ We are a strong community-driven company. Social media is not the go-to platform for us. The community and the product is the key.

→ The main focus is towards the awareness and the utility stand-point instead of being fully sales driven.

Priyam: What changes in consumer behavior have you witnessed at CoinDCX?

Ramalingam: People are holding money right now. But they are also figuring out the new ways to invest and experiment with different platforms.

→ There are more accounts registered to us but with a lesser amount. They are trying to understand the system and trying hard to crack it.

Catch every pointer on how the cryptocurrency world is functioning during this lockdown. Listen to the full episode on your favorite platforms!

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The post Episode 5: Rewriting the Marketing Playbook for 2020 & Beyond | Ramalingam Subramanian appeared first on Webengage.