Sanjeev's Horse Sense

My daughter wrote on her Facebook wall this memoriam on the 2nd death anniversary of my father which is today. After reading such emotional note, I could not resist securing lovely peice of writting of her on my blog to share with larger audience.

Memoriam to Grandpa..

Last time I met you Grandpa, you were 75 and I was 19. But like a 2 years old kid I wished for you to stay a little longer with me, in spite of knowing you couldn’t have.

Dr. R. C. Singhai

You fought long and hard to be with me and see me growing. But there came the time when God and his Angels ended pain & sufferings, and took you with them. I will never forget nor love you any less, as time that we spent together, was nothing but the BEST…

Although now I can’t hear you anymore, calling me “Maau Betaa” in your typical melodious manner. I can’t share my Maggi and cold coffee with you. We can’t anymore hide icecream from Grandma and eat it together when she is not around. Can’t see you anymore making funny faces while looking at me and hiding from others. Can’t see smile which you wore all time and which could light up anyone.

But deep down in my heart, I know you haven’t left me. I know in singing of birds, in every sunray embracing me, every night falling by and every star coming out you surround me everyday. You watch over and protect me all the time. Not a day pass, where in you don’t cross my mind.

You will always hold a special loved treasured place in my heart.

You were really one in a million.

You were simply “The Best.”

I love you and miss you with all my heart. But as long as I have memories, WE WILL NEVER BE APART….

Maau (Nishi/ Noopur)

I have been pondering for a while on some of the setbacks we face every day at work situation – product which we recently launched, project we were working or even business which we are running somehow perform below expectation level and sometimes bring huge disappointment to self and to organisation.

Do you remember AltaVista or Netscape search engine? Today we see Yahoo struggling. Tata Nano which was at one point of time had global hype and traction from consumer could not do well. Ambassador and Fiat could not withstand in changed times. Do you remember Amitabh Bachchan’s ABCL? GroupOn losing its heat. Snap Deals (Indian version of GroupOn) already diverting from current deal business. Nokia could not sustain the leadership. Rumours are already on that Google and Facebook may not survive in next 5 year.

There are plenty of examples which come to my mind on product or services which failed to live up to expectations. Here are the few points to ponder for all in such situation:

1. Not appealing enough: This is the classic situation of being fascinated with your own product offering. We strongly believe that our product offering is good enough but our consumer (buyer) feel otherwise. They see our product or service utility very differently and our product offering doesn’t appeal them. In such case our buyer or client will not take the important purchase decision in our favour. Or even with changed time we fail to innovate our product offering. Or customer doesn’t find future relevance with our product offering.

2. Not so useful: Product or service is good but usefulness of it for buyer, is limited. In such case its important that we relook how we are positioning our product or explain clear advantage of our product offering to our buyer, which may be relevant for him/ her. We can make product relevant by adding extensions (customisation) and exceptions in our offer.

3. Value for Money: Sometimes we price product high and are not willing to compromise in our margins. Our customers like the product but they don’t find it worth the price asked and hence remain in switch off mode. Other case could be we under-price our product or lack the premium(ness) on product offering, which may again work against us.

4. Timing is wrong: Timing of introducing products in market is critical. Failure due to untimely launch of product usually happens with new or innovative or first to market product or you are too late to lauch a product in estabilished ctegory. When market is not prepared enough for the product offering, launching of product or service won’t find the right traction from buyer or vice-versa.

5. Insufficient efforts: This can be nightmare for any company especially when a good product/ service get rejected due to poor delivery or service channel. At times sales team find hard to scout for customers or fails in explaining product/ service USP to customers. Or product is sold but after sales service of customer is mishandled.

6. Poor Quality: Poor quality or faliure in product promised work as blockage. Also as popular saying is – One dissatisfy customer tells negative to 100 people. So maintaining quality is very important to keep delivering on product promise.

7. No competition: This might be good for the companies which operate in niche market and with practically no competition. Standing taller in the crowd is always difficult, similarly to make business successful as a singular player is a tough task. Competition allows exploring the potential and creating more opportunities for players.

Published on 12th April on MxMIndia.com under “The Anchor” section.

1) Advertising informs and educates: Advertising delivers news around the brand to consumer. explains how brand is the best fit around taste, value for money or lifestyle that the consumer is looking at, thus making it easy for consumer to make the purchase decision. It can also be used to explain complex product feature or clarify consumer doubts around the brand or raise awareness among consumers about the new variety or categories of products and services that the brand has to offer.

2) Advertising differentiates: With advertising, brands can rationally differentiate themselves by highlighting their unique selling points which makes it stand different from other brands, making it easier for a consumer to make a purchase decision. It also stimulates competition in the marketplace and allows space for the category to grow.

3) Advertising persuades to purchase: Advertising aims at persuading the potential customers, impacting their intention to purchase the product. Advertising attracts attention towards a product, and by sharing its unique features, advantage and benefits, creates desire to have the same and finally induces consumers to visit the market and purchase the same. Advertising has psychological impact on consumers. It influences the buying decisions of consumers.

4) Advertising drives sales: Advertising not only creates an emotional connect between consumer and the brand but can also be used to support the sales promotion efforts of the brand, allowing it to make positive contribution in sales promotion. Thus advertising help brand contribute to company’s growth and profitability.

5) Advertising creates demand (drives trial): Advertising spreads information and encourages consumers to ‘try’ new products. Such advertising leads to product trials, thereby leading to creation of new demand. Various promotions are offered to consumers in the initial period giving them an inertia to try the new product and generate positive response which helps in creating new demand from non-users and build a relationship with brands.

6) Advertising helps brand reinforcement: Advertising helps in reinforcing brand’s name and image to the public, which can be part of a long-term marketing strategy. For example, when Nestle produces an ad for Aata Maggie, it is not only telling the benefits of that product but is also keeping the Maggie brand live in the minds of consumers, which can also help the sales of its other products. Advertising help build brand image with distinct personality of the product. Advertising builds brand image and this develops consumer loyalty towards a specific brand.

All brands have migrated to newly introduces Timeline format of Facebook Page now. But this policy change came to many brand as huge drop in reach or views of their facebook pages.

The drop has maily come because new timeline has started counting the visitors differently. Earlier whenever any person was used to visit your Facebook page each visit was counted as UNIQUE visit. But with new timeline if a visitor visits hundred times your page in 12 hours its counted as 1 visit. This is the prime reason for sudden fall in traffic on Facebook page.

Brands are experiencing 30% to 50% drop in traffic reports of their Facebook page since they had shifted to new timeline of Facebook. This drop is mainly in weekly post views of every brand page on Facebook and drop in participation levels.

So if you are concerned with sudden drop in traffic, post views or negative reports here are tips for you to get back more visitors on your Facebook page and to regain positive traffic reports on your brand’s Facebook page:

1. No One Like to Scroll: the cover photo though gives good looks to page but eats away the big space on top of the page. So any visitor on page has to scroll down. Everyone wants to see more and more info on page without scrolling and don’t like to scroll. So first thing remove the big cover photo. Best option don’t use cover photo but if cover photo is must for you than upload a resized photo which is like a banner strip photo that occupies less space on the page.

2. Insertion of photos in post: Facebook gives page traffic reports based on the numbers of post seen on available screen space. So more are the numbers of posts shown on the screen you will get better traffic report. Avoid inserting photos in your post, as they take too much space on the screen. As you can see in Coke page image above that photos has taken more space and less content is shown. Minimise the photo size and post size. Click here to see how to optimise your page post.

3. Encourage to post Phots and Tag Friends: Also with new timeline if you encourage visitors to post photos and make them tag their friends than you can rebuild traffic back on your page. 1 visitors tags 5 friend is counted as 6 visits.

By implementing these two simple suggestions you will see significant increase in traffic on your facebook brand page.

Legendary Urdu poet and academician Prof Akhlaq Mohammad Khan ‘Shaharyar’ died on 13th Feb 2012 at his residence in Aligarh. Tributes.

जिन्दगी जैसी तमन्ना थी नहीं कुछ कम है
हर घडी होता है एहसास कहीं कुछ कम है

घर की तामीर तसवुर ही में हो सकती है
अपने नक्से के मुताबिक ये ज़मीं कुछ कम है

बेचारे लोगों से मुलाक़ात कभी फिर होगी
दिल में उम्मीद तो काफी है यकीन कुछ कम है

अब जिधर देखिये लगता है की इस दुनिया में
कहीं कुछ चीज ज्यादा है कहीं कुछ कम है

आज भी है तेरी दूरी ही उदासी का सबब
ये अलग बात की पहली सी नहीं कुछ कम है

शहरयार

Sanjeev's Horse Sense

Daughter remembering her Grandfather

Memoriam to Grandpa..

Reasons – why we fail to achieve what we want

6 reasons how brands benefit by specific ad solutions

Tribute to Shaharyar