Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the podcast today, we have Vivek Nanda. Vivek, welcome.
Thank you, Thomas. I appreciate it. Glad to be here.
Glad to have you. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure, I am VP Marketing. We are an enterprise content platform used by technical documentation, knowledge management and content operations teams to build scalable and engaging digital experiences for customers and employees through content. A few other use cases that we cover our customer self-service support portals that you see internal knowledge basis, product documentation, learning and training content. The online academies support, chatbots and so on.
A good introduction but I don’t really have any idea what it means. So what does your day look like, say today, what does that look like for you?
Yeah, so I am managing a team of five people in total. We are headquartered in Rochester New York. However, everyone is working remote. I was actually a remote, tired completely. I worked for New York City and we are a global company. We have a second office in Poland in Europe. And the day is every day really, I always say like Monday is where we set the tone for the week. We go to our marketing team huddle and we basically answered three questions there. you know what we achieved last week, start with the winds, what are the obstacles for this week and then which is obviously impossible to the plan that we want to accomplish for them. And of course on weekly basis, we measure our KPI is where they’re going. So it’s pretty much I am the servant to the team.
My job is to make sure they are able to do what they need. And the first team does a fabulous job of taking, you know, basically my vision for women executing it. So, uh, yeah, that’s how kind of where the day works with. You’ve dumbed it down for me. Thank you, I appreciate that. What does the company do? Yeah, company is a is a software company and you know, when for example, if you are uh, let’s take an example, Apple and Apple has so many products, so many different versions and they serve so many different markets. So if you think about it from a customer experience, uh, how do you make sure Apple? Is putting a product manual out either in print or on the van in all these different, covering all these different complexities. A starting with the product now, starting with numerous versions of the product and then in different languages where there are people are, if it’s like Europe, you want in France, you want French and if you are in Italy you want Italian so all this on the back end, if you start building content, your, you will understand that the personalisation of the content is like goes a notch up, multiple up with each of these complexity.
So what our product does is it helps the technical documentation teams when they’re building documentation, they are building one thing, but you are able to publish into all different channels, print web in different languages, far different versions from just one source. So it’s gonna click of a button after writing on a word document. So that’s the simplified version of It sounds cool. Thanks. So the topic of discussion today or at least agreed was why branding is back in fashion. So it sounds like a good segue to say Vivek, why is branding back in fashion? Yeah, always start this discussion by telling this school Story to you know, to paint the picture, imagine that it is 1991 there is no Google, no Twitter, no Facebook.
And primary motive advertising is print tv radio billboards and in that era, companies who have the most money they were winning right? Because they would put all that money into all this and that’s what people saw and then when people saw it and when they needed it, they will go to companies website or call the numbers and that’s how you know, fails were happening, right? So if you understand that there was no measurable marketing to say so no attribution, but it was all who was on top of people said which is some people who said that was brand marketing and brand marketing was your acquisition that was before pre google. Right, So now fast forward to now 2000 and 2010 regard google, you got Facebook, you got Twitter, all these companies can came in down all these marketeers got new channels.
Now we started getting people from search and Facebook advertising, not Twitter advertisement and you name it right? So now in this area, what happened is now we started doing performance marketing. Everybody is so gung ho about, let’s go, let’s just put this money in this channel and let’s scale this channel and then we will get a lot of customers. That was the talk that was followed pretty aggressively. It was great in the beginning because in the beginning it was still more about people who were really ready to buy, they were converting. But then after 2010 what started happening is marketing tech started advancing even further. We got attribution, we’ve got cookies, we got retargeting. now we have legion, it’s the platform and surrounding to get people. So what is happening is from the marketing side we started quiet requiring even more leads right? Like people who are way behind in their buying journeys but he started acquiring them even though they might not convert as soon as you would like. But what is happening is the shift is happening that you’re getting people were really in your league final or sales funnel and you keep them nurture them and you keep doing that.
So but then we all know what happened last year is like once the pandemic hit things started switching back of it, you know, and you know everything started going back to events were gone and all these what do you say the webinars, everybody started doing a ton of webinars. Webinars is like everywhere you go, every word, your webinars, podcasts are growing. But all these things, those are growing up, what’s also happening now is as a consumer got intelligent consumer is also looking at it from a different lens. We are also teaching them how to behave in this world. Right? So now they can they got smarter. They, when you ask them for email on those ads, they put fake emails or enter emails to just enter, get to the pdf sometimes or created a different email to just get the PDF and never be on the phone. The reality is the buyer is now smelling from a distance that if they’re not ready, they’re not gonna buy.
But when they will buy is when they are really questioned by. But then at that moment they’re looking at what companies or brand that stood out in all these interactions they had at different levels and that is what is truly the experience that they had with the brand and that is what is driving everything, right? So the buying decision. So it’s a switch from performance marketing to brand affinity and this is happening because The virus getting educated how marketing has been done for the past 20 years. The performance marketing era and now with the pandemic and everything, everybody has taken a seat back and you see that you know it’s like those webinars and conferences and more it’s becoming more about brand definitely like where you start engaging with content which is interesting to you and you keep with it unless it’s valuable.
And that’s how you’re basically getting engaged with the brand and be ready when you’re ready to buy. You know, what are those brands that you trusted? You go to that. So this is why now all of a sudden companies are taking a note of test and realising that advertising on LinkedIn and running those demo ads is not that effective. Worse is running something a content which might be useful to the audience. And then that’s how you get them worse is pushing people on the Democrats. These of them were ads are gone. There was 2010, Now it’s more about giving value to people up front. And even if we are capturing people in different parts of their buyers journey. So that’s where I think that now more and more companies are going back to those things that how to build trust and how to provide that brand affinity where you understand that you know when you start putting money, that’s the biggest difference between performance marketing and brand affinity, performance marketing, you keep putting money, you keep getting it, and that’s the hope that that’s how it’s killing.
But on the switch happens when you turn off money on the performance side and you still keep getting people, that’s when you know that you have built a brand affinity, like like your podcast, for example, you’re building episodes after episodes. Now, we are living in this content that you’re delivering and if your content is valuable, irrespective of what you’re selling, I’m going to engage with your content week or read and wait for it as it comes. But what it’s also doing to me is I’m getting to, you know, you as the person behind the podcast and then I know what this guys that is doing and then I know oh I have this person which I can use for marketing, so this is kind of where it’s like moving and this is why brand, I keep saying that brand is like, getting more and more important, getting back in fashion. Again, it’s a really good summary. I really like how you, how you broke it down. A lot of people are talking about personal branding now.
So when I have, I have worked throughout the last few years on my LinkedIn network. That’s my favourite platform on social and I really built my connections there Now. I have close to, I don’t know, 14,000 people and over connected on LinkedIn. What that means is I am presenting myself as a personal brand, but it’s also always going to associate with where I am working, right? So even though the audience I built and I’m sharing my personal stories my experiences, but those are connected with the company is where I’m working for right? Or the results that I’m getting in my professional life. So sharing stories about my professional life and these are connected with the brands where I work at, right? So what is happening now is the amplification that A common person like me without putting any money is getting is every post that I post, I get 4000 plus I’ve used within you know eyeballs within 48 hours, right?
So that’s kind of where the power of distribution is changing because of social media and that is something pr in general has changed now. It’s not know more about distributing to reporters are distributing to media outlets now it is one too many and one too many as in through social networks, we have our networks and each person has connected their networks. So now what is happening is this money thing, money equation has gone out of equation and it is really what it is now. It’s social pr the biggest distribution you have is social pr So what that means is the building content is super easy. A logging from my cell phone, build it, keep it authentic, share it about myself and humanising. That’s the personal brand that I’m building with those stories, but at the same time because I’m going to share our personal life are no more different from you cannot separate them with your private lives anymore.
So what happens is all the stories are connected to my brand, the way I work and the stories that I’m telling is about my failures, network, got success at work or sometimes even sharing my teammates. So what’s happening is now the brand amplification is changing completely to a personal, it’s the human is coming two up front, tell the story rather than the product. I’m not ever if you see my LinkedIn page, LinkedIn feed, it’s like mostly about stories and I’m not sharing and pitching my products all the time. And because that’s that is where I’m trying to connect with, I’m finding my voice on certain topics with my connections and the stories that I like to talk about being authentic about it. But what is happening is creating the brand to, because I work for this company and VP of marketing with your sex or people know me as VP of marketing at yourself. So I think money is, is becoming secondary because social channels have given everyone to put simply a microphone and you can, if you’re building personalise authentic content with a voice that connects with your audience to especially with yourself as that’s when you’re telling the good stories and this is why personal brand is so important, but it’s no more separate from your professional brand.
It’s all connected now. This is how your personal brand is carrying your professional brand along with it and this is why companies don’t have to worry about money anymore. It can be achieved through social peer think of social channels and now imagine if everyone in the company is doing that, this is like a magnitude with each one’s, everyone’s network. So that’s kind of where I would explain this that this is cheaper, no more a barrier and there are new channels and personal brand is actually driving company’s brand employees can do a lot for the brand by being authentic and personal on social channels. That makes me think of a couple of things. So you’ve got, we’ve got two in a row where I’m asking you two questions instead of one. So sorry about that. But your answer touched upon one thing which is if employees are also doing social media, there’s possibility maybe for brand damage if you get the wrong employee and what your thoughts on that.
And then also I’ve seen one thing, at least with podcasting, which is like major, increased competition. So now, like if you go back a few years, there’s not that many people that had a podcast, but now, you know, everyone and their mom has a podcast. So what are your thoughts on the future of how that looks because of the increased competition? Yeah. So first of all I would say the first question, the brand getting damaged if somebody goes out, you know, and basically talk trash about you or your company. I would say one thing though. So first of all, I’ll take a step back a bit and I would say like we are there is this term I’ve used in the past, it’s called we’re living in the crisis of trust, right? So it’s like technology. We question like how much privacy and all that thing is happening there. What data is getting collected information is so much and there’s so much fake news what to trust would not address.
That’s the question. The third thing is really the people are losing trust in political systems, the government and its like always a question are these politicians really doing the things that they should be doing for the people. And then the fourth thing is you know, the pandemic has come in and there is a lot of misinformation about handling health situation and all that stuff to the health misinformation and health, health, health or wellness for everyone and that’s and that’s not just limited to the pandemic, but also all these negativity surrounds that gives us what you call the mental wellness is impacted. And somehow the negativity is so much right? So this is the crisis of trust, right? So the number one thing that is it’s like the the pillar of and I’m again taking the second question for us, I guess that’s the format we’re following here.
So well how do you distinguish yourself is I think the number one is how do you make sure that you’re outside the circle of crisis of trust, You’re not inside that, which means you’re delivering accurate information, like the fundamentals, you’re building trust with your audience, you’re being authentic, you’re being honest. and then you are also being one, they’re able to like, yeah, I’m not feeling mentally well today, my productivity has been terrible this week and telling these things the true stories, the authentic you is the number one thing and podcasts are for that matter, any media that you’re doing now and what is happening is people smell it, people can understand it, people can look at it because the thing is if you’re running podcast, you’re so much also focus on promoting it on all different channels and everywhere.
That means as much as you are trying to get in front of the people, the people more. People are also seeing you all over the place, right? And that that goes in hand in hand because you’re promoting the podcast in so many places. So what it means is people no more than just your podcast about you. And this means that it starts with good content, obviously it starts with making sure you’re out of that the crisis of trust circle outside of that being authentic. Being real sharing, making sure the honest trust is there, besides the value of the broadcast and that’s like the core of who you are, how you’re doing it and distinguishing yourself and the next part of that is where it comes to the productivity side of it, like meaning your speed is important. It’s almost become like they say it and start-ups like you know, not perfect answer.
Today is better than a perfect answer. Two weeks from now and that’s how podcast production is becoming. You don’t try to perfect it. But what you’re trying to perfect is the content, the value that you’re delivering. Not really working on the gears and music as much and focusing on the stuff so and building a repeatability in your process, you’re creating that and you’re getting efficient in doing so like instead of putting five hours that you put probably on one episode one are weak and that’s how you’re winning. So under the more you become productive in your production, the better time you will have spending on the distribution, meaning then you will be start looking at how can I cut out clips from my video conversation of the podcast, promoted on social channels to bring more traffic there. Start building communities there or I start sub stack newsletter and where I’m just sending each week a summary of the podcast in retrospective sharing with my audience the guests who have come and inviting them to add more people to this newsletter.
So I think the focus is need to shift from keeping one and two points separate. You know, value and authenticity important. The production part, you need to get super productive in doing less ours making it and creating it and more time spent on distribution and think about creative ways of huh use letters building communities using social media. And even though it’s a podcast, how you make sure even if it’s an audio podcast, you can still run the audio video files on social media with the voices and the words and all these things need to be spent more are but there is a playbook for that, how you promote it. So that’s how you will distinguish and grow your podcast started. As far as the first question goes, employees damaging your friend. Well, I guess there are, I will always say this thing. Nobody is going to talk bad about their employer unless they really had a bad experience, right? So there is some part or there’s some truth to that, that if somebody is going on social and talking bad about it, they definitely had a bad experience with the company. So it might not be company’s fault or just need that employees perspective, but I’m pretty sure provide context then because yeah, I think what you’re saying is completely sensible. But the context behind the question is let’s say you’ve got a particularly toxic individual in their personal life and their associated with your company. I’ve seen that a few times and the more people like that are associated with the brand, the more potential for damage. I was thinking thoughts on that. Yeah, again, you will always, you know, sometimes positive people can have that face where they’re going through the spare of negativity in their life and they would do things like this. But I think uh, one thing has happened. Uh, your social feeds or stuff, those are posted.
Everyone has a voice and you cannot stop them from sharing. Yes, you can have guidelines, right? Like as a company and you know, there is some expectation if you are representing a company or even if telling your personal stories, you have the right to share it. And in my opinion, nobody should stop you from sharing what you should want to share. But I think on the receiving end, uh, the social feeds or at least the employee talking are almost the same as online reviews now. So, I think the consumers on the other hand are expecting that Yeah, not everyone in the company will be happy. It’s like this, like any product pick any single the best product on amazon and I promise you will find One or two reviews that says like this did not work for me. There will be 99 people saying that this is an excellent product that’s working great for me. And you will find those one or two people saying that this is totally crap shoot like this. This doesn’t work for me, right?
And this is fine, right? Like we expect that we are living in this era to see what people see and we trust on. And that’s an information people also need. So I think it’s no more the way we are living in our psychology, especially on the consumer side, these employee rants. We’re not in 1990s that Oh my God, you just posted this, you you’re gonna get fired. Not first of all, employees are not scared to share that thing. That kind of era we are living and second people on the receiving end who are consuming those seeing that content they are taking it as Yeah, he’s probably does not like it. Or this helps them build more collect data points because everything is not rosy. That’s the fact like there are facts that not everything you can do right? As a company, right? You make mistakes and sometimes it’s an honest image of what your company consumer is thinking and getting. But I think people are not going to just not the Randolph just off one because like I said, the mentality of looking that on social is more like looking a product review on amazon now, that’s the biggest shift that has happened.
So your view is that as this happens more and more into the future. It those types of people will become less significant as a result of it. Is that a good summary? Yeah. And I would say like they’re already less significant. I think it’s more like, or everyone, all of us are now already trained to look in, you know, consume but also question it and see like, uh, you’re not gonna knock the Randolph just by reading, I guess the thing that you would do is you will read about this bag, whatever you read about the company and then you would also see what’s the company and then you will probably see some other good ones from other people also. And that’s how it’s becoming. Like, it’s again, it’s like it will start there. But again, this will be a trigger for you to invest more, understand more what’s happening. Nobody just wants to run, you know, just like nobody trusts information directly as it’s shown. Everybody wants to be their own detective and confirmed these days because that’s what we learned from the last few years. There’s so much, so much, you know, misinformation.
Generally speaking, I think what you’re saying is quite a positive thing, you know, a more informed consumer I think is a, is a good thing because that will help the businesses that do the best or provide the best product or service. So I think generally speaking, outlook from what you’re saying, it’s pretty positive. The, I think you touched on the point about trust, which is really a very good one. But at the same time, I have a, an interesting question regarding maybe people who are fake on social media. So some of these, you’ll probably know like the Instagram types where I don’t know, they glamorise their life and their Photoshop and everything like that. So there is this strange conundrum where everyone’s looking for authenticity and trust, but at the same time, some of the most popular people on social media almost seemed to be the most fake. So what do you think about that? Yeah, I guess there’s no better place to find that other than Instagram, right?
Like you go there and I’ll probably take talked to, it’s like the it’s the I guess they’re playing, I guess there are two things to it. One is that type of content. It’s certainly attracting an audience, There’s an audience for that, right? So, so I’m not saying that it’s not breaking it is working because people, when followership with those you know, those kind of image that they’re trying to project to the world and associating their businesses and success with what they’re doing, like how this is so glamorous, I’m doing this, this is really cool today, I’m in LA. Tomorrow, I’m in Chicago and whatever, right? So all those things are happening and the fact that there’s an audience for that and they get this what I always believe and tell anyone else and this is for the person who’s doing it is, and I haven’t seen any success stories there that somebody who started with this glamorising stuff and is able to sustain this into building an empire Five years down the line, 10 years old, you can work with this kind of system, It’s only going to be temporary.
You might get or get lucky with a Sprinkle of success following. But two things will happen over time you’re following. Start stepping because the real you can’t hide from you. It will show up and then on your side personally, the person who is projecting it that’s not sustainable for them, mentally, it’s living to life. You can’t be the whole point is the easiest life one person lives is being themselves, right, because there’s no effort. It’s effortless to be yourself. But to be someone you’re putting work every single day and uh, that’s too much work. Then what happens is it’s not just enable you suffer from different things like financially and your business starts going down, you run out of ideas and you lose you, which reflects on your content again and all those things happen. So quite honestly, I’ll be surprising for you share any, have you ever seen a person who build a sustainable business just by being something they’re not, I haven’t heard quite honestly.
So I don’t think that’s sustainable. Well, again, a very positive answer to it. Would you say you’re an optimist regarding, I don’t know online commerce. Yeah, I am mostly optimistic, I think, uh, I’ll tell you this and this is like unpopular opinion. Okay, so you know, as much as I hate, you know, people compromising on data and you had this Google, Facebook, Amazon are listening to you and seeing what you were saying and showing ads at you. There are some good points to that because I am looking for a black pair of jeans, skinny, nothing fits me. I am talking to my wife, my phone hair said start seeing ads. I’m going to see very targeted that about black jeans in New York City. And that is getting me and exposed to think that I need and got exposed to brands that I did not know if you think fundamentally it’s a great thing, right?
Like, wow, I mean I just said it’s like a genie in the box, I’m just telling them and there’s like a set of menu presented to be customised to me, right? And there’s a good side to that. But this comes to the cost of data and privacy and this is something I want to ask you to. But before I complete after I complete this question. So that gives me I think personalisation as we talk on the internet and personalisation of experience and information and digital age. this is happening because we are actually collecting data, right? There’s a ton of data getting collected on you. And so there’s a good side of that is like you get stuff that you’re looking for easily because you you’re you fed your basically what you’re looking for to those machines, right? And that’s my optimistic view of internet and I think there’s this bar game where you can exclude personal information that you don’t want to put but still give the information knowing that this will get me 30% discount from the brand if I give my phone number.
So that’s a choice conscious choice you’re making and I’m optimistic about it. I think we are still even if this previously thing is a problem are we still have control I think we can still control it if it’s being done from the brand slightly more transparency. You would like that where it’s not done without permission and not just like legally last into trump’s and conditions but it gives people like what it means if you share what will you get and that education will it’s I have I have an optimistic about that. But coming to my second question which I wanted to ask you, I mean you are obviously in your trade doing marketing for long. So obviously apple companies like apple google you know, they’re taking big initiatives in making sure privacy is important and google and now is going cookie less in there. You know, some of the some of the marketing change exchanges to their cookies. So that will change how you do re marketing to those people who saw your ads and Apple is making a big push, they’re actually creating this rift with Facebook where they’re showing the app is collecting information and letting people select no when people see Facebook app on their iPhone.
So all this is happening, right? So what’s your take? I mean, I obviously have a little optimistic view that of course with some fabrications to the way how companies work if they make it transparent and there is clear understanding of what this means. If you give your email and how this will benefit you, people just tell what it means. But I think people kind of benefits also like cross and counts on both sides. what’s your take? Like what do you think? How the marketing will change? And I think it’s a great topic with the branding as well because now if you can’t show track clicks and all that stuff, then again, brand becomes so important, right? Because then it’s so I’m really interested to hear your times. Well, I think you might like it more because I’m going to use you as inspiration for the answer. Okay, curious. People have become more informed about this particular topic and now they are much more aware that it’s a problem in the same way that you talked about, Let’s say response marketing and only a couple of days ago, I want to say there was a dragon’s den episode that was released on YouTube and Dragons Den for people that don’t know in different countries, like the equivalent of shark tank.
And there was a deal from someone who has, I think it’s an extension to a browser and what it allows people to do is either earn from their data so you can opt in Two and the quoted amount is like somewhere between five and £25 per month that you earn from providing your data or you can go into privacy mode. So, and that means that they flock anything out and the reason why I think that this will be a trend going forward is because it’s a solution to a problem that everyone is becoming now more aware of. And so companies like Google and Facebook are they’re either going to have to change with that trend or they will become, I don’t want to say obsolete because they’re gigantic companies but they will start to become their dominance, will start to become impacted by the fact that people are becoming more savvy and there are X solutions that are going to be provided.
So again, I would say that’s an optimistic answer. But what do you think about that? No, I like it. I think that’s I think there’s a lot of room for innovation especially on something in the segment where google is right? Like we’re just like, we’re very limited with very few choices there, but I like this extension and I think I think it’s more about giving the power of decision companies not pushing into making decisions for the people’s privacy, but people taking their own call on that, right? It’s like, do I do this or not? Right. Like that’s important. And that’s what is quite honestly, I could share my social number with anyone if I want. If I’m doing it, that’s fine with me, right? But if somebody steals it, that’s a different thing. That’s unethical. So this is exactly what it is. Like you’re giving power to the consumer with what clearly stating that what it means and you’re saying that, okay, this is the proposition for you here.
You give it to us or you remain opt out, what do you want to do? And it’s the choice is yours. And I think that’s a more better way of doing. And obviously optimistic. But I think this is where the ship is going to happen because this extension is doing this. But before this already there’s an extension which is doing those ad blockers right? Like 30% ads are getting blocked and these ads who knows where they are, showed most of the times. So the clicks are happening, but you don’t know where it happens. So stuff like that is already happening, right? So it’s their extension. People are already using it like 30% of them are close to 30% is like already using those extensions for blocking the ads. So I think this is a great segue to move into what would be giving control back to the consumer. And that’s what is the fact is we want our information to be succinct. We want because that creates our experiences more personalised, right? Like I if I am in New York City, I don’t want to see jobs in LA.
Right? Like that’s what I’m searching and that’s not possible without the machines knowing about me. Right? So, so that I think there are more that loss without it then again, so, the best compromises to understand what’s the proposition on the table and clearly giving us the power where we want to use it, where we don’t want to use it. And I think this is a great direction to go in. So I like your – I think that’s a very optimistic. I’ll come there. Yeah, I’m going in the right direction anyway, so if someone has listened to your position on branding and they’re like 100% on board. Thanks for telling me in advance. What do I do? What would you tell them if they if they kind of reliant on, let’s say direct response at the moment and knowing that the future is possibly going to be more reliant on branding, what would you tell them? Yeah. I think one bigger distinction is and I say this and you will hear me if you ever follow my social feed.
Two things are very important in today as well. It starts with the buyer experience. So marketing is uh, you know, a lot of time in the beginning, it was about just awareness and then trying to do everything I do attribution and performance. And now there is a holistic view you started to take, which is the buyer experience from interaction with the first piece of content to buying the product and then buying or renewing the product. This is whole is happening, this is all the buyers journey. So, good brands are doing really great job in making sure the buyer’s experience is taken into consideration, meaning you don’t have to push them on your website, the paid traffic and push them into book a demo for the first time what they’re seeing the ad or even retargeting rather you would want to think to where they are in their journeys and giving them options, meaning uh, you know, if they want to consume content and you understand what content they’re consuming and then pro exposed them to different formats, more content that they might find useful.
They weren’t asking them what would they like, right, and not pushing your product or demo calls up front on their faces, right? Especially it happens to me to be a lot. And by following that you start being considered of prior experience. So that’s one very important, the fire experiences, what is setting the tone for your brain. Every interaction is like in a gamified version, I almost think about almost like a Pacman consumers coming. Every coin is like your brand interaction. And you know, it’s like until you know, the Pacman is alive, you have the connection with the consumer. So keep feeding them with useful things that they want to eat, right? So, uh, and the second thing is we’re moving away from the era of lead or demand gen uh, can be to be, they said, I started saying that we are in the world of demand creation.
So what that means is, um, of course you’re considered of virus experience where they are in the journey and making sure, uh, you know, uh, understanding that you will never get all the leads that come and they’re not going to be democrats. So, so what is happening is, uh, you start breaking out your marketing more focused towards segmenting uh, your leads into high intent Lewington based on their buying journeys where they are and low intent leads, don’t push them into selling the product yet, still keep them with the content. They’re engaging solving their problem, educating them. It’s still top of the front of, whereas people on the high end and side once they’ve passed your first journey and once they’re ready they’re going to come and already convert on your website and ask for them. So what needs to happen is on the marketing side, stop treating these performance channels just for legion or dimension.
Start treating them as almost like you’re, what do you say? Educational content or engaging content to build, build affinity, use them as more as distribution versus just collecting a lead on LinkedIn itself regenerate because that’s not going to be useful at all. So, so that’s like the biggest shift I would say, understand the by experience, understand high intent, low intent leads, make sure you align your branding and stop treating performance marketing like performance marketing. Start treating it almost like this is an extension of your brand marketing and you’re nurturing them further. And that’s a shift. If you will have it, what you will see is maybe your lead volume will dip, But your pipeline will grow because you whatever lead that will come in that are going to be solid. So that’s what you want. Like, you know, it’s going back to 1990s people would only work on your website when they truly want other than that they just 16 billboards.
Right? So yeah, in to sense it’s just like tech is going forward. But that’s the shift I would say if you want to make today and switch it up, stop thinking or start thinking every marketing is brand marketing and that’s the most important thing. Start thinking like Pacman. Yes, yes. Stop thinking you’re a consumer, like the fact that you make sure you’re feeling any food. I really enjoyed the conversation. So thanks for the information that you provided. I did want to touch on what your goals are. So what you trying to achieve at the moment, Long term, short term, Yeah. Right now I am at again, it’s an early stage startup where I am. So and I think it’s a very niche product. So I’m really looking to grow this into hopefully recognisable new category and grow the company to the potential that it has.
So that’s my really short term, midterm plan to really go after doing this. simultaneously on the personal side, I’m really focused on sharing my learnings with places like your podcast and I run and I I am planning to build, I was doing my podcast, stopped it before pandemic things changed For me personally in my life we had a baby and everything and now I want to get back to giving way. So personal goal is somehow just have this number in my life That I need to impact one million people And at least one million people in next two years’ time, to reading my content or providing some value. So that’s what I’m going for personally. So, and hopefully in the long term that would mean that those one million people will educate another set of millions and that’s how this will start. So that’s my contribution to sharing my learning and impacting, you know, what I learned.
Well, hopefully we can contribute to that at least. Yeah, I hope to do. I think it would help amplify – your podcast will help me to find a message. So yeah, exactly. Vivek Nanda, where is the best place for people to find you?
Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn and, of course, VP Marketing at Georgia Tech. And on Twitter my handle is @vickks and you can follow me there on Twitter, but mostly I would prefer LinkedIn. So check me out there.
I’ll look for the content. Thank you very much for your time.
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.