E-Commerce Product Photographers & Studios in Mumbai
According to recent statistics, more than 800 million people from Asia are expected to buy products online, and the number of digital buyers in India is estimated to reach more than 112 million, so online sellers are increasing rapidly in numbers. One of the biggest challenges that the retailers face is, “how to convince their potential buyers through captivating product images?”
To satisfy their customers, the sellers must find a perfect way to showcase their products. That’s why e-commerce product photographers play a vital role in selling a product. Here is the list of top photographers who will help in capturing your e-commerce products to perfection.
Radiance Vision offers bountiful services to their clients. They have their e-commerce photography studio with experienced photographers and editors. They also provide photographer and videographer services for other stuff like events, TV commercials, corporate films, animation film, etc.
Faisal Miya Photuwale is a Mumbai-based fashion photographer, who has an experience of 5+ years in the field of photography. The studio has a team of 19 photographers, and they have done more than 350 photo shoots that include fashion catalogs, portfolios, product shoots, glamor, wedding photography, and wedding videos.
He likes experimenting new concepts in different genres and has won many accolades. He has worked with various well-known actors, models, and designers like Rohit Verma, Karan Malhotra, etc.
When Amit Desai was a kid, he loved to paint, play music, create art & read literature. Once he grew up, he completed his Bachelors in Commerce (Honors) and Masters in Finance from Mumbai University. He is passionate about photography; thus, he made his passion his profession.
He is one of finest photographers when it comes to candid photo journalistic wedding photography. He says, “I love the thrill and the excitement of capturing ‘the moment’ in my frame.” His knowledge about colors, lights, and tones helps him to give better outputs that satisfy his clients.
Pashminu Mansukhani is a Mumbai-based photographer, who specializes in industrial and corporate photography. Pashminu always had a great passion towards photography. Understanding his passion, he fine-tuned his talents to become a professional photographer. He has done photography in diverse genres like events, real estate projects, and industrial site projects, etc.
Pashminu has worked with more than 100 major clients like Sony India Pvt. Ltd, NELCO Ltd, Godrej & Boyce Ltd, Castrol India Ltd, Aditya Birla Group Ltd, Indiamart Intermesh Ltd, Hitachi Lifts India Ltd, Calyx Chemicals & Pharma Ltd, etc.
As the name suggests, photographers of True shades photography will observe and retain the lights and shades of subjects. Arshid Bhimji is the founder of True shades photography. He started his career as a compositor in the VFX industry. Gradually, he began his career in wedding photography. Right now, he is primarily doing wedding, fashion, and product photography.
True shades have a team of 16 specialists, and they have completed about 210 projects with 196 clients. Almost all of their customers are delighted with True shades photography.
Are you looking for a photographer who clicks creative and attention-grabbing product photos? If yes, Pixelmania photography should be your ultimate choice. They are doing photography services for more than 12 years. They provide high-quality product photography at affordable prices. They also provide other value added services like catalog design and printing, ad design, all web based designs, and website development.
Contact them at +91 99209 66691.
Are you looking for photographers from other cities? Check the top e-Commerce product photographers in Bengaluru and Chennai.
Below is the gist of the panel discussion on Making Content Marketing work for your Brand at the Digital Leadership Summit In Chennai In August 2016. We had two panellists moderated by Mr Prem Kumar Sivakumaran from The Smart CEO Magazine: Ms D Vijayalakhmi – Murugappa Group and Mr Rajasekar KS – matrimony.com.
Summary of the Pannel Discussion
Content marketing needs to be more about content and less about marketing
Target the right platform that connects with all your key audience
Make it lesser about the brand and more about the reader
Connect with your audience with emotional stories
Video is an effective marketing tool that will continue to grow
Viji from Murugappa Group highlighted that content should be something that is interesting to all readers. Content that makes the reader feel good, look good and do good is a successful content marketing campaign. It should be lesser about the brand and more about the audience. For more detailed steps on creating high quality content check out our blog on 10 Ways To Create 10x Content.
Rajasekar expressed that content marketing is more about content and less about marketing. While most brands believe that it is about amplification, Raj said that it’s more about understanding the customer and their problems. He also said that when a company starts talking about customers problem, its business starts and when it starts talking about its business, its problems start. Content should engage the customers; then it can be a successful one.
Content marketing strategy
At Murugappa Group, it is predominantly about the brand itself. Viji spoke about how at Murugappa, they also think of fun and meaningful stories and try and connect with the target audience, even when it is about the B2B brands.
Raj spoke about their initiatives at happymarriages.com, a content marketing initiative set up by BharathMatrimony. He talked about how it was initially tough to create content around it because people were unwilling to talk about their expectations from marriage. So his team set about trying to understand what issues couple would face. After three months of research, they arrived at 500 themes and worked with authors, senior writers and an internal team to write engaging content that the audience could relate to.
While talking about strategies, one of the members of the audience asked an interesting question about with so much content out there, how do to stand out? The panellists agreed that crowdsourcing high-quality content is the answer. They also spoke about examples of organisations such as Amercian Express Bank, GE initiative that has done a great job in standing out. Prem also highlighted using a platform such as curata.com, a platform that curates content, which also enables marketers to scale content marketing to grow leads and revenue.
How do you measure success?
The panelists both agreed that although you can look at shares and likes, the success can be measured only when you get customer feedback. If a content piece has solved the customer’s pain points, then you have succeeded. They also urged any company using content marketing to use this as a metric.
Video is an effective marketing tool
The panellists spoke about how video is the most captivating of all channels, and each of them highlighted how they leveraged video in their organisations. Raj explained how his team went to five cities and interviewed 36 couples. They chatted with customers about relationships and aired these on national TV.
Viji talked about the Murugappa Madras Song. She highlighted how the company found a connect and used that to create a video that went viral. The video was so powerful that even a city-based league team requested the conglomerate to make an anthem for them as well.
The panellists also urged marketers to resist making a viral video for the sake of making one and asked marketers to keep their ears tuned to the customer.
Whatever be the industry, there is always a way create stories. The key is to understand the audience. Viji mentioned the farmer video that the Murugappa Group made. They asked a simple question, “What is the most important job in the word?” This emotional video stuck a cord with the public and was shared far and wide not only on social media but also on WhatsApp.
Integrating PR and content marketing
The panellists advised startups to leverage PR and stated examples of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and how they used their social media campaign to not only gain visibility but also get a lot of PR coverage as well.
Raj also spoke about Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Airlines jumping off a ten storeyed building and how the media wrote about it. He also asked marketers only to do these crazy stunts if it suits their personality and the brand. PR is the biggest pipe to the audience, and it can get customers. So whatever campaign a marketer does, it is important to leverage PR.
Content marketing is a must-do for all brands, and more brands are willing to spend money on it. Raj also spoke about how any marketing initiative is ultimately boiling down to content and about how marketing cannot exist without content. Content is the only pipe you can sell any product.
Prem also added that the first ever content market initiative was done in the early 1900s by John Deere, the tractor company when they created a magazine ‘Furrow.’ So the concept is not new only the term Content Marketing is.
When we conducted our Indian Industry Digital Marketing Survey we found that many brands were facing challenges in measuring the return that their digital marketing and social media marketing efforts were giving. Hence, we included an eclectic panel discussion on “Measuring ROI of Digital Marketing” at our Digital Leadership Summit.
We had four panelists moderated by Suneil from Social Beat: Mr. Vijay Anand – Sulekha.com, Mr. Arasu Shankar – Eshakti.com, Ms. Lavanya Hariharan – Zapluk and Mr. Shriram Sanjeevi – Oyethere.com.
Summary of the Panel Discussion
Channels that provide higher ROI will depend on product and customer segment
Google & Facebook continue to dominate as primary digital channels for most businesses
For products/services wherein search volume is lower – then social would be a better channel to start with
Facebook, Instagram & Pinterest allow for better product showcase and for visual products these would be interesting channels
Influencer marketing is a very strong channel for ROI and also gets higher trust from consumers
Instagram, Snapchat, Emailers are other ways to build ROI depending on the business.
Life Time Value (LTV) is an important metric as marketing spend cannot be attributed to just the first transaction
Tools like Google Analytics & Improvely can help in measuring ROI
Perspective on ROI from the Panelists
Suneil started off by asking the audience as to how many of them believed you could get ROI from digital marketing; it was a pleasant surprise to see that over 60% of the audience believed it could. We as a digital agency couldn’t agree more. The panel started with a discussion on what each of them feels about the results from digital marketing. We also have had a Digital Chai Pe Charcha on ROI of Digital Marketing, and you can read it here.
Lavanya from Zapluk highlighted that they got a lot of organic growth once they started using the digital medium and in fact got 80% increase in customer base in just a month. As she rightly pointed out, it was a combination of brand building and lead generation activities.
Vijay from Sulekha.com candidly shared that they were one of the highest spenders in the city on Google and that digital is critical to their survival. He shared that Sulekha gets around 250 million visitors via organic search and another 20-30 million via paid search in a year, and it’s their strongest channel for new user acquisition.
Arasu from eShakti highlighted that the only channel they use is digital along with a bit of PR but not much offline marketing. They do get sales via SEO and referrals, but the growth of new customers is driven by digital advertising and marketing. They keep trying new features and functionalities on advertising channels like Facebook, allowing higher ROI. Over time, like Carat Lane they have built their digital score card on what matters to them – measuring and analytics are clearer now.
Shriram from OyeThere.com said they use a 360-degree approach with a mix of digital and offline marketing based on his two decades of retail experience. He rightly pointed out that it’s a myth that digital gives immediate returns. Startups need to focus on building a brand, building the consumer trust and scaling up the service – then results come over time.
Which digital channels are scaleable and to what extent?
The entire panel did agree that the choice of the channel varies with the services/products and the consumer segment. It’s also very important to be smart as you scale adverting, as Arasu pointed out. It’s essential to be clear on what is the message you want to give about your brand.
Vijay continued to be a strong propagator of Google Organic and Google Adwords and said it’s the most scalable as SEO efforts now start showing results in a few days, for existing/older sites. Since they focus on services with low engagement from end consumers they, tend to focus less on social media channels. They did spend 15 crores on their TVC campaign earlier this year it only gives 5000 incremental visitors a day which is minuscule for them as they get about 6-7 lakh visitors a day. Vijay added that for brand building to show results, you need to be at it all the time.
On the other hand, Lavanya, Arasu & Shriram all spoke on how social media and in specific Facebook Marketing has worked extremely well for their businesses to get scaleable results. Lavanya highlighted that for a service wherein the consumer still doesn’t know it exists, the search volume on Google is extremely low hence Facebook & Twitter were the driving growth as they were able to achieve leads along with building the brand and engagement around it.
Arasu & Lavanya also touched upon the importance of building the trust factor with consumers regarding answering their questions and doubts and also in terms of showcasing the products/service in a more holistic way. As Arasu rightly pointed out that Facebook allows for better product showcase via the carousel ads, videos, etc. Even brand awareness and the brand story is better executed via channels like Facebook and Instagram. Talking about the social trust that’s built out, Arasu added that they now see existing customers answering queries raised by potential clients and that it’s a game changer for them.
Shriram added that the approach they take depends on the message, the channel also changes. For example, when they ran a huge campaign around Kabali by selling t-shirts, giving away movie tickets and more; Facebook worked very well for that as it’s a mass channel.
Influencer Marketing & Platforms other than Google & Facebook
We couldn’t agree more with Arasu when he said that “Channel will depend on product and customer segment.” For example, if you are looking to target millennials then Snapchat would be an ideal platform. If your product or service is visual and you are targeting a sub 40-year-old audience, then Instagram would be an excellent channel but there is indeed a demographic difference across channels. eShakti also focusses a lot on Pinterest as it’s relevant to many a fashion brand.
Emailer Marketing still works if it’s with your own audience. Vijay of Sulekha spoke about how emailer marketing is an important channel and delivers results when done smartly with smart targeting, in spite of Gmail pushing a lot of emails to the Promotions tab. Of course, once a user is acquired it’s up to the brand to retain them and emailers is a great way to do that.
Influencer Marketing was another channel that works very well and eShakti uses it extensively. Arasu shared that they work with 1000s of bloggers and they have built their network over a period. They calculate the ROI of influencers via direct referral traffic as well as transactions driven by the unique referral code given to each influencer. He also gave an interesting insight that there is higher trust from a consumer that comes via an influencer, so the 5-10% off that they give is covered up there.
There was an interesting question from the audience – Dr. Manoj from Dr. Smilez Group of Dental Centers asked about how they got very low engagement low on social as customers were not very keen on sharing their dental experiences. Lavanya shared her similar experiences as not a lot of women would like to share they got a beauty service or a wax treatment as it’s a personal service. The way Zapluk approaches it is to given them an offer or incentive but in the long run, content marketing is the key. Shriram added saying that ROI cannot always be attributed to direct sales – brand building and marketing is also to be measured
Importance of Life Time Value (LTV) of the Customer in calculating ROI
Everyone on the panel agreed that the return on marketing spend is not immediate; hence Life Time Value is an important metric to help scale up business and understand whether it’s moving towards profitability.
The LTV depends on different businesses, and we got varied perspective from the panel. Arasu spoke about phenomenal ROI wherein it just takes them 1.2 transactions to recover marketing cost as they have high-value transactions and very high repeat purchase. For Zapluk and Pamperazi it was three transactions to get the back marketing cost. Whereas for a brand like Sulekha, the end consumer was not paying anything, so it’s difficult to ascertain LTV.
Arasu mentioned that they look at the time taken to recover the marketing cost of acquiring the customer and for them, it’s usually the first 1-2 months whereas it is 3-4 months for Zapluk. Key metrics remain around customer acquisition, retention and finally on how to make them spend more and more often. It of courses varies by cohort, seasonality’s (for example, summer is a strong season for eshakti), types of customers, depends on the marketing channel and the marketing campaign that you run.
Shriram again had a very different perspective and said that “The word LTV is over done. Companies that boasted of High LTvs have shut down in the last couple of months because LTV was more of a myth.” He gave an example of Chennai’s leading retail chain Viveks wherein in many cases three generations have been shopping there and apparently they are also grappling with LTV. He also questioned how come Flipkart only had 32% growth in spite of the perceivable high LTV.
Tools to Calculate ROI
One of the participants had a very relevant question – Sejal from Zoho asked what are the tools use for calculating ROI. In most cases, Google Analytics along with data from Google Adwords, FB Ads, Instagram Analytics and other social media analytics tools would suffice. Suneil added that Improvely could be a great tool to understand muti-touch attribution as consumers often interact with the brand multiple times before the sale is closed. This tool allows you to see the history of the person and how they interacted with your brand. Read more about Improvely and other similar analytics tools here.
Suneil also added that there is sometimes a time lag between generating a lead to sale and ROI can be improved if you can figure out how to leverage that time frame to communicate about the brand and the offerings.
Vijay spoke about Google Analytics Premium (GAP) which is more relevant for larger organisations as its costs around USD 90,000 a year. He talked about Google Analytics data being heavily sampled; wherein GAP has unsampled data which can also be downloaded. GAP has only around 15 clients in India but Vijay recommends it’s to e-commerce and digital businesses as repeat customers are harder to track in free analytics tools and attribution is not always clear.
The concept of shared work spaces and business centres is getting extremely popular these days. With Business Centres offering ready-to-move-in workspaces, it saves established companies and startups an easy way to setup operations. With significant cost saving potential and opportunity to network, many start-ups and businesses are moving towards shared workspaces and business centres. Convinced you should try this out? Here is a list of best business centres in Chennai.
The Executive Centre
With cutting edge infrastructure, The Executive Centre provides office spaces that are perfect for start-up and small businesses. Their office spaces have high-speed internet, meeting and conference facilities, making it extremely convenient for businesses. Apart from serviced offices, they also offer virtual offices, co-working space, and instant offices. The Executive Centre is also present in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore as well. Location: Tamarai Tech Park Level 5, Thiru Vi Ka Industrial Estate, Inner Ring Road, Guindy, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600032
DBS Business Centre
Located at the heart of the city, DBS Business Centre has an entire range of world class business facilities combined with personalized service. With facilities such as secretarial services, meeting rooms, pantry services and safe deposit lockers, DBS is ideal for any business.
Location: DBS House 31A, Cathedral Garden Road, Chennai -600 034
MLS Business Centres
MLS Business Centres are fully furnished offices that are equipped with professional telephone answering, secretarial support services and meeting and conferencing facilities. Apart from Chennai, MLS Business Centre is also present in Pune. Location: 148, 6th Floor, Dr.Radhakrishnan Salai, Mylapore, Chennai – 600 004
Regus
With flexible options and World-class IT and telecoms infrastructure, Regus provides office spaces for one person or a whole team, for a day, week, month or as many years as needed. Regus has modern office furniture, professional business environment and on-demand access to meeting rooms by the hour. Apart from Chennai, Regus is also present in other cities in India including Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Bangalore, etc. Location: Chennai Citi Centre 10/11, Dr. Radhakrishnan Salai, Level 6, Chennai, TN 600004
Vatika Business Centre
Vatika Business Centre provides high quality, fully furnished office spaces designed for all kinds of small, medium sized to large corporations. With modern amenities and state-of-the-art business environment, Vatika Business Centre is also affordable. Besides Chennai, they are present in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Gurgaon and Pune. Location: Prestige Polygon, 3rd Floor, 471 Anna Salai, Teynampet, Mount Road, Chennai – 600035
Discovery is going to be driven by digital, consumption will remain omnichannel depending on the product/service
Consumers often make the decision online, but still, like to see the product in high-value purchases
Omni-channel is the approach towards profitability and Carat Lane has seen that with their Delhi centre, which contributes to 38% revenue and is a profitable city for them.
Extremely data driven approach with 4000 data points being tracked every month
Even spends on TV are tracked diligently
Key metrics to track: Cost per lead, Cost per conversion and Cost per visitor/traffic
Early days for digital transformation with more to see in the coming years
Mithun started off by highlighting that Chennai as the choice for Carat Lane did not come from the fact that he was based here but based on research that Chennai has the fastest clearing airport in the country. He goes on to talk about how opening the first Jaipur Gems store was challenging. Their biggest learning over the initial years was getting a clear understanding of the top/key customers since they used to get only about three walk-ins a day when they started out. They soon realized that making customers discover the store and new products is key. So when they opened their next store in Coimbatore, they were able to combine their learnings to ensure that 500 key customers walked into the store just on day 1.
How did they get into e-commerce?
They realised that discovery of products is a problem because of the limited walk-ins in retail as well as the limited scope to discover products before walking into the store. E-Commerce fundamentally changes the discovery process.
Today consumers make a choice before entering the retail store – the decision is usually made online. This is why global e-commerce started with books so that the discovery & shopping can happen online. For other products discovery is still lead by digital, but consumption is happening across e-commerce, offline retail, kiosks, etc.
In 2011, Carat Lane opened its first retail store – but they got it wrong in many ways. Firstly, they did not put much jewellery over there, though in hindsight they understood that consumers come in to try out the product. In Mithun’s words “We assumed customers were as obsessed with technology, as we were”. This changed when they opened their future stores. Moreover, their Perfect Look app allows you try out jewellery real time, and this was a big hit amongst consumers.
Why do consumers have distrust amongst e-commerce companies?
Mithun highlights on e-commerce evolution in India and candidly pointed out that between 2000 to 2009 there were early adopters who did not focus on last mile delivery and consumer experience – players like Indiatimes, Rediff, infibeam. This mostly led to distrust from consumers because they went through such bad experiences from these brands. This, of course, changed when the new age e-commerce companies started, including Carat Lane in 2008.
In 2012 when the company evaluated its results, it realized that cost of acquisition was so high; it would take three transactions to make the customer profitable but an Indian consumer shop for jewellery twice a year so there was something wrong in the approach.
Their retail stores were a game changer because the process of discovery started falling in place. Consumers now started coming to the store with the product photograph wanting to try the product. It became evident that conversions will happen where they have an omnichannel presence. Two years ago they opened six stores in Delhi and now 38% of their revenue comes from Delhi and is the only profitable city of operation at the moment.
Is it an analytics business or a jewellery business?
Carat Lane is an extremely metric driven business, as Mithun pointed out. They track 4000 data points every month, but the critical ones are
Cost per lead
Cost per conversion
Cost per visitor/traffic
Mithun aptly put it “There is never too little data”. Data helps bring clarity, and while it took Carat Lane 6 years to figure it out, it finally made sense. In the early days, the cost of consumer acquisition was never in focus. You need to know how much you are willing to pay for each of the above actions, as the business profitability depends on that. Each company needs to create its own attribution model – based on customer type. Google Analytics is a good starting point.
Mithun spoke at length about the advanced analysis that is done on TV ad spends. They used tools to find out in which tv program & which ad break & which ad slot had the highest visitors and highest brand search of Carat Lane. As per Mithun, searches & traffic ultimately reflect in conversions & sales assuming you have a great product + great UX. Of course, it’s not a perfect model. You can have assumptions and capture the ROI, in case there are two ads at the same time
On Startups, Funding & more
Speaking on how they used the funding they got, Mithun admits “Money is like oxygen, the human body is like iron – money can corrupt you”. They have learnt it the hard way and now moving towards profitability with a data-driven approach.
Talking about his investor, Lee Fixel, he mentioned an interesting quote. Apparently, Lee said, “My Fund has ten lives. You as an entrepreneur has 2-3 lives. Carat Lane has one life. If you think omnichannel is the right approach, then let’s do it.”
The sixth edition of the Digital Chai Pe Charcha was held at our office on 27th August 2016. It received an excellent response with about 15 participants including entrepreneurs, professionals, digital marketers and social media influencers taking an active part. The topic of discussion was the secret to a successful Influencer marketing campaign.
Here’s a quick summary of the key takeaways from the session:
What is Influencer Marketing?
Word of Mouth – Digitally
Brand Ambassador
Key/Celebrity Influencers, Social Influencers and Peer Influencers
Word-of-mouth advertising has always been the most powerful tool, and influencer marketing is WOM Advertising 2.0. In simple terms, it means shaping the opinions about your brand using the most influential people amidst your potential customers. If you are a brand, you make friends with the most influential people at a place where you want to sell. Now, they talk about your brand and recommend you to their followers (potential customers).
Why use Influencer marketing?
The main reason that brands are looking at influencer marketing are:
Ad Blockers
Neutral + Engaging – Not an Ad
SEO + Organic Growth
Given that word of mouth, marketing generates more sales than paid advertising; more brands are beginning to think about influencer marketing as part of their branding strategy. In the last 12-16 months, we have seen many interesting influencer marketing campaigns in India run by the likes of Cadbury, Allen Solly, Ford & much more.
How to identify right influencer?
For any influencer campaign, selecting the right influencer and partnering with them is crucial. Checking the influencer’s reach is the first thing you would need to do. This can be measured in terms of the number of followers/fans or the number of visitors to their blog/posts. Always remember to choose quality over quantity.
The following are the parameters you should be using while choosing the right influencer.
Moz Domain Authority– This is a score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines.
Reach in Social channels– This will include page likes on Facebook, followers on Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.
Estimated traffic from similar web – This tool provides user engagement statistics for websites.
Blog Alexa Ranking – This tool provides commercial web traffic data and analytics.
Challenges in Influencer Marketing
Inability to attribute to ROI
Getting the right influencers and Lack of large quality influencers
Focusing on wrong goals/metrics – e.g. Twitter Hashtag
