What Sumeet Singh teaches about B2B marketing

So one thing we've done very cautiously in the marketing team is that we will not do something just because it's a fad. So today from everything that you know you all are doing on video, how much of ROI or impact to begin with is it having? Because you have a very clear cut objective. So we've done, you know, like advertising works. The best mix is really 360. And very often when you do 360, it is very difficult to establish the effectiveness of each medium. So what we've done is, so while we've also followed a few attribution models, etc.

But as a company, we still believe more in last click, you know. And as marketers, we know that every form of advertising will definitely impact another form of advertising, right? When we're on TV, it impacts search, you know, our CTRs improve and so on. What we did was, and we continue to do that is, there are some markets where we go video only first and try and see, is it moving a metric or not? It might not move it as impactfully as maybe another, you know, another element in the mix would.

And you would just kind of expect that from different elements because it would not maybe move like a TV impact. But is the needle moving or not? Then the other way we look at it is also video enables you to actually serve different communication to people in different segments. So while you can now serve for the same product, different messages to different people, which I think itself is very, very effective, you know, because I can talk to people in different languages.

So for example, in Jeevan Sati, we've got a series of videos where, you know, we follow different videos for the brand funnel. So if you, if you want to create top of mind, it's a very different kind of a… Correct. The tonality is different. Correct. How have we learnt it? We've also learnt it through experimenting. When we started out on our journey six years ago, we did what a lot of marketers did. You're creating this for TV, you know, edit it and put it on YouTube or put it on another platform. I'm confessing to that.

You know, so, but we've learnt it, you know, through iterating. I won't say that we have big successes. We still have enough successes and we still continue to fail at some of them. But I think that's part of your learning curve, you know. So talking about video again, you know, you've been experimenting as a brand, immense learnings, etc. What has been your take on user-generated content? Has that helped you build brand advocacy? We haven't done too much in that area because it's not very, very easy to create UGC, right?

Because if I have to create UGC, then I'm creating it, right? It's not really UGC, right? It's not coming organically. So a lot of us, I think, in marketing have done activations, which we have beautifully edited, created bite-sized, you know, small videos and used it on various social platforms. Some of us might have put money behind it. Some of the stuff is such that it's actually shared, you know, got shared itself and therefore maybe not created a huge ripple, but got enough views and got shareability. I think it's the strength of the content.

Definitely with UGC, what comes is credibility, you know. And the moment I share it with my friends and they share it with their friends, you kind of get so much more credible viewership rather than viewership that you're forcing through a pre-roll or a micro-ad on a video format. How do you as a brand actually distinguish, you know, the kind of content you want to leverage across platforms today? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, you know, your own brand platforms. How do you kind of distinguish, create, customize? What is your approach to that?

So, one thing we've done very cautiously in the marketing team is that we will not do something just because it's a fad, you know. Fair enough. And therefore, we want to exploit the platform for what the ethos the platform derives. For example, if I'm on LinkedIn, then it's a little bit more. So, it's not just B2B content, but it's a little bit more serious content. We won't do a Hari Sadhu kind of content on LinkedIn and we are cautious of that. Do not create and broadcast to all the four social platforms. Create for each platform.

So, for Twitter, all we do generally on Twitter is a lot of, we actually have a lot of trend reports that come out. In Naukri, we have a monthly job speak index that actually talks and tracks about how jobs are growing in sectors, in cities across the country month on month, you know. And we've been coming out with that index for a couple of years now. It has a lot of credibility. So, every time we publish the index in media, we also do bite-sized tweets of it because it's content and people want to consume that there.

We share that in Facebook in a very different format, which is one upload of a report because Facebook audiences are in a different mindset. We use Facebook for the strength of the platform, which is the targeting that it gives us because not a lot of other platforms can give you that kind of targeting. There, then we use a lot of advertising that we feel will be best suited. It could be carousal ads. It could be a, you know, a video if required, you know, and we feel that, no, this will come best through a video. It could be a GIF ad.

Similarly, Instagram is something that we use extensively only in 99 Acres and in Jeevan Sathi. Because it's all to do with photos, etc. Very visual. Yeah, it's very visual. So, the two brands that a lot of visual content is there is actually properties, you know. And so, real estate and Jeevan Sathi is the place where we use Instagram. So, we are cautious that we will not use every platform on every brand just because it's good to use them, right. We will use them if we can put them to proper use.

So, in Nokri, if I just have to create an image and put it on Instagram, there's no point just getting those shares and likes and just create images and putting there. Unless I feel that this category really images and, you know, photos are going to really benefit people.