The best marketers are the ones who constantly try to improve their craft, no matter how good they are at it already. If you are looking to read some offbeat, lesser-known marketing books that will help you in enhancing your marketing skills even more, here is a list of such books written by our very own Indian authors.
Written by digital marketing experts from Social Beat, this book deals with the various aspects of digital marketing and the methods marketers use to leverage the medium to grow their sales and revenue. Much like the annual spectacle of millions of wildebeest and zebras migrating from the parched savannahs, humankind too witnessed an even greater migration over the last two decades where 500+ million Indians ‘migrated’ to the internet. Over the last few years, this migration has led to a phenomenal growth of digital marketing. This book will help beginners wade through this digital wilderness and is packed with case studies and infallible insights. Decoding the Digital Jungle takes the readers on a safari of marketing concepts transitioning from the traditional to the digital age. You can get a glimpse of the expertise of the team on their YouTube Channel which has a knowledge series called Digital Bytes.
Written by Anisha Motwani, this book is a unique collection of contemporary, true stories about Indian businesses and brands that rewrote the norms of their respective industries. All the twenty stories are not only inspiring, but they will also bring in some remarkable change in your approach towards marketing and business management.
This quirkily titled book written by Ambi Parameswaran, an ad veteran, discusses the story of Indian advertising over the past 50 years. Over a hundred ads have been studied and examined in this book by the author. This book will let you know how advertisements take inspirations and influences from politics, culture, society, etc. Reading this book will give you in-depth knowledge about Indian advertising scenario.
Written by one of the gurus of Indian advertising, Piyush Pandey, Pandeymonium is not just biography but also a brief history of advertising and how its evolved. He has put in some amazing tidbits and experiences from his life at Ogilvy as well his love for cricket. He shares how he helped build brands like Fevicol, Vodafone & IPL amongst others. Most importantly he talks how he draws inspiration from people and things around his daily life.
How interesting would it be if there is a toolkit of new techniques that you can use to come up with new, innovative marketing strategies? Well, that's what the Marketing Unplugged book has in store for you. This book written by Suman Srivastava is a book full of scholarly yet delightful ideas for marketing.
From humble beginnings as a Bollywood film billboard painter to the National Creative Director of Leo Burnett India, KV Sridhar (or Pops as he is known as) has seen it all and today is widely respected as a creative leader in the Indian Ad-world. He’s credited with the emergence of Leo Burnett as a creative powerhouse in India so that makes this book even more interesting.
The book is unique because it brings together behind the scenes of every loved ad, right from the Doordarshan days to today’s YouTube; right from ‘Chal meri luna’ to ‘Airtel smartphone ads’. It covers interviews of creative heads and directors of all generations, right from vintage to new age. Pops has handpicked each ad based on their popularity among viewers and met its creators and talked to them about the entire process. He had left out the marketing jargons and advertising sham and just weaved stories using wonderful stories.
Satish Y. Deodhar has written a series of management books under the IIMA book series title. If you are looking to read the series, Why I Am Paying More is the right choice. This book explains the dynamics of pricing with respect to demand, supply, market structures, etc. Beautifully illustrated through various case studies and examples, this book is something that you can never put down.
Dheeraj Sinha’s book on Indian consumer market is something that every marketing professional should read. Some brands and businesses fail in the Indian market mainly because of their assumptions about the Indian consumers. This book tries to break all those myths and misconceptions. It gives a fresh, new, and a genuine perspective about the Indian consumer market.
Have you wondered why some startups become hugely famous while some just fade away? This book published by Notion Press and written by Yaagneshwaran Ganesh gives you an in-depth knowledge of the various marketing principles. While most marketing books talk about the macro concepts, this book speaks of the micro concepts of marketing as well; this is quite crucial for new-age marketers.
As we all know the sweet spot is the optimum combination of factors or qualities to achieve success. True to the name, this book brings to your notice the sweet spots that you can explore and utilise in the field of marketing. In other words, just like how sportspeople make hardest shots or tasks look easy because of the sweet spot, this book also allows you to make your business grow in an innovative, seemingly easy way.
Mainak Dhar has written a dozen of books in multiple genres. Considered to be one of the best-selling authors in India, Mainak Dhar primarily writes on science, marketing, and management. Brand Shastra is one of his latest books and is also listed under the Amazon’s list of Memorable Books of 2016 So Far. This book discusses the various aspects of marketing, ranging from primary promotions to B2B marketing. More than talking about the theories of marketing, this book explains the science and logic behind the various marketing tactics.
Don't forget to check out our video on 7 Best Marketing Books Every Indian Marketer Needs to Read for a few notable additons to the list.
We hope, by now, you have a handful of books to be added to your to-be-read list. What are the other books published by Indian authors, that you would suggest for marketers to read? Let us know in the comments.
Since our inception in 2012, we have posted more than 200 blog posts around digital marketing, which have received cumulative page views of over a million. In 2017, we have taken one more step towards sharing our knowledge and learnings and launched our first book titled ‘Digital Marketing Insights 2017’. As the name suggests, the book provides its readers with a close understanding of the tips and tricks involved in digital marketing, with deep insights on its diverse platforms.
‘Digital Marketing Insights 2017’ was launched during the second edition of the Facebook Digital Marketing Masterclass conducted in Mumbai. The workshop focused on how to approach digital marketing to build a brand and to acquire quality sales or leads. This insightful session was aptly concluded with the book launch as we presented the first copy to Meera Parthasarathy from Facebook.
The book deals with the various aspects of digital marketing and the methods marketers use to leverage the medium to grow their sales and revenue. It also provides readers with a better understanding of the digital marketing trends you must watch out for in 2017 and insights from key areas of digital marketing such as social media, content and SEO, video, digital advertising, mobile app marketing and user experience design. If you are unable to get the right business results via your digital marketing efforts, then this book can provide you insights on how to make the most of Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest. Insights in the book have been compiled with contributions from digital marketing experts from across India. Kudos to the team at NotionPress (India's largest self publishing company) for editing, designing, publishing and distributing the book in record time.
You can buy the e-book through Amazon. You can also find a hard copy at all leading online retail stores such as Amazon,Infibeam and Flipkart. We look forward to receiving your feedback on the book so please do share your comments below!
In Apr 2017, Social Beat in partnership with Facebook India conducted the second edition of the Digital Marketing Masterclass. With a packed audience of 50, we had an insightful session on how to approach digital marketing to build a brand and to acquire quality sales or leads.
The top three expectations, shared by the audience, that was elaborated during the session were:
So, if you are facing similar challenges, then read on!
From Facebook’s own research, users on average spent 3 hours on mobile per day that signifies that your consumer is on mobile for 3 hours and you have the opportunity of 3 hours to be in front of your consumer!
One thing we all need to understand is that Facebook is a discovering platform. Your brand personality has to stand out in the consumer’s mind and there need to be multiple touch points and impressions to make the connect. The Reach & Frequency category of campaigns can be useful in achieving this goal. Moreover, Facebook users are active throughout the day, unlike most other mediums (TV, print or radio) and in fact, 35%+ of Facebook Users are active at any given time.
Did you know that on average in a single day people check their Facebook feed 14 times? As many as 62% of the audience check their phones over 30 times a day. That means you are getting 14 times the opportunity to sell your product via Facebook. With over 184 million Facebook users in India, it gives brands a tremendous opportunity. Moreover, as per the report from NCCSAB, 210 million is the consuming population in India out of which, 142 million can be reached through Facebook.
As per the statistics, 33% of the users are from metros. So 67% of the Facebook universe belongs to the population from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities – which is contrary to popular perception. This is also going to give rise to content creation and consumption in regional languages.
Facebook is the platform to keep in touch with family and friends whereas Instagram is the platform where people look for inspiration, photos and brands to follow.
Top Interests on Instagram are:
Moreover, the Instagram user is a more evolved and engaged user with a premium lifestyle. For example, while only 5% of the population in India has mobile postpaid connections, 25% of Instagram users have postpaid connections – highlighting that a luxury or premium brand cannot be ignoring a platform like Instagram.
Facebook is 85% accurate and when further information like age and gender is included, the accuracy rate goes up to 90%.
The top reasons why Facebook is more effective is
This feature allows us to reach a precise audience based on four main targeting types:
For example: When targeting NRIs to sell your property - The audience which is core to Facebook is provided with age and gender information. Behaviour targeting will help us target people living in a joint family, who are frequent travellers internationally and nationally, who have travel apps and are newly married.
The custom audience is an excellent way to make use of CRM data. The CRM tool can also help in lead nurturing, which is critical to improving the final conversion of leads to home buyers. Research by Social Beat shows that there is a 60% better chance of converting if called within 2 hours.
Another medium we can customise our audience is with the use of Facebook Pixel, which creates a list of users who came to your website, converted into the site, visiting more than a certain number of times in the last 30 days etc.
The custom audience also helps in improving the quality of the leads. Users frequently visiting your website are more like to become home buyers and can be given more focus.
Lookalike audiences are a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because…
You’re telling Facebook that you want an audience created of people who are most like your email list, website visitors, people who have hit one of your conversion pixels, etc. Facebook will create an audience based off data points on a Facebook profile that would denote similarity.
You can also create an International Lookalike audience – because people are same everywhere! Eg: People have visited your luxury product landing page. You can create a lookalike of similar users internationally!
Facebook Brand awareness tracks people who look for sponsored content. If you plan to go ahead with lead ads in the first go, it will go to the people who have filled the leads in the past. You are missing out on the potential to reach a newer audience.
How does Brand awareness work?
Point to note: Investing in your brand awareness is similar to running ads on radio and television. You need to frequently appear on the wall of the people!
For Brand awareness videos, relevant content and E-books along with the below ideas can be tried
Sequencing of ads is also possible by using custom audiences after using Reach & Frequency ads and we have seen some tremendous results come through this.
There are numerous case studies that one can find on the Facebook Business Success page but we discussed a few in detail and you can read them up via the below links:
We have a more detailed blog on tracking ROI from digital marketing, which you may find useful.
There are some common mistakes marketers make, which should be avoided in order to improve conversions:
Its important to the have the below elements & approach to getting the best quality leads and conversion:
