Marketing Archives

10 Impressive SaaS Businesses Providing Powerful Attendance Tracking Software

Irrespective of your organisation’s size and industry, tricky issues regularly crop up regarding employee time-tracking.

Buddy punches. Late logins. Unexpected absences. Lack of visibility on billable hours.

Sounds familiar?

These are some of the reasons businesses demand attendance-tracking software.

SaaS businesses worldwide are actively developing intelligent, impressive and dependable solutions to help companies tackle time theft, generate payrolls, and maintain accountability.

In this piece, we celebrate ten SaaS businesses assisting diverse businesses in managing employee time-tracking.

Let’s dive in!

Ten Impressive SaaS Attendance Tracking Software

Here is our shortlist of the ten impressive SaaS businesses offering powerful attendance tracking software.

#1 – Sling

#2 – Timesheets.com

#3 – Dayforce

#4 – Calamari

#5 – MakeShift

#6 – TimeForge Labor

#7 – OnTheClock

#8 – Buddy Punch

#9 – Nowsta

#10 – Eddy

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

#1 – Sling

Sling is an organisational tool for companies of all industries and sizes. Their customers range from small single-location businesses to multi-location enterprise organisations. For example, call centres, nonprofits, lodging facilities, and more.

Key Features Offered by Sling as Attendance Tracking Software

Sling allows businesses to track employee hours and export timesheets to process payrolls efficiently.

Employees can clock in and out of shifts using their phones using mobile time tracking. Businesses can set limits to how early employees can clock in. Employees can be automatically clocked out if they forget to do it themselves. This helps to save labour costs and prevent time theft.

To ensure employees are in the right place while clocking in and out, Sling provides reliable geofencing tools.

Platforms

Sling offers multiple deployments. Customers can choose from Cloud, SaaS, and web-based implementations. Moreover, Sling is available as a desktop application on macOS and Windows. Additionally, Sling offers mobile applications on Android, iOS and iPadOS.

Demo

Check out Sling’s demo and walkthrough videos to learn more about getting the most out of the software.

Pricing

Sling’s pricing plans start from a free tier. Their “Premium” and “Business” plans cost $1.70 per user per month and $3.40 per user per month, billed annually.

#2 – Timesheets.com

Timesheets.com is a web-based time-tracking application with modern timesheets. Small businesses everywhere trust it as a recognised industry leader.

Key Features Offered by Timesheets.com as Attendance Tracking Software

Timesheets.com makes tracking time for payroll, billing, and job costing seamless. In addition, it is possible to grant allocation and handle electronic signatures and supervisor approvals.

It ensures accuracy while calculating overtime, time off, or bills. Businesses can also customise user settings on a per-employee basis. In addition, Timesheets.com’s GPS integration and IP locking can help eliminate time theft.

The tool offers granular reports that users can export to their accounting software for invoicing or download as PDFs or spreadsheets.

Platforms

Timesheets.com offers multiple deployments. Customers can choose from Cloud, SaaS, and web-based implementations. Moreover, Timesheets.com offers desktop applications on macOS, Windows, Linux, and even Chromebook. Additionally, Timesheets.com offers mobile applications on Android, iOS and iPadOS.

Demo

You can also schedule a demo if your organisation is interested in trying out Timesheets.com.

Pricing

Timesheets.com offers affordable pricing.

Their “Freelancer” pricing tier starts a $0/user. The “Nonprofit” tier charges $4.40/per user, and the “Standard” pricing option charges $5.50/per user.

Moreover, Timesheets.com offers a price calculator. You can customise the number of users, and payment cadence, apply for discounts, and more!

#3 – Dayforce

Dayforce is a cloud-based human capital management software designed to scale up or down for organisations with an employee count between 500 and 50,000 across all industries.

Key Features Offered by Dayforce as Attendance Tracking Software

Dayforce makes it easy to manage payroll with a single pay and time engine. It offers real-time calculations to help improve data accuracy.

Moreover, the software continuously calculates the pay during time capture. Therefore, businesses have more flexibility with payroll processes and less rework.

Dayforce makes it possible to use a single platform for compensation and time management. It helps reduce the risk of delayed or failed data imports.

Platforms

Dayforce offers multiple deployments. Customers can choose from Cloud, SaaS, and web-based implementations. Additionally, Dayforce offers mobile applications on Android, iOS and iPadOS.

Demo

If you are interested in using the software, you can watch a demo or contact the Dayforce sales team.

Pricing

Dayforce does not offer public pricing information. However, if your organisation wants to get started with Dayforce, you can visit the link.

#4 – Calamari

Calamari is a flexible HR software suitable for small teams, growing startups, and even big companies. It is a people management solution to help in time off tracking and attendance management.

Key Features Offered by Calamari as Attendance Tracking Software

Calamari is a simple and easy-to-use tool for businesses to track attendance with all kinds of breaks (billable and nonbillable). The software also notifies about late logins, unexpected absences, and other abuses.

Calamari makes it easy to understand how your employees’ working time is spent and helps optimise team performance and increase project profitability.

Moreover, the software works well with hybrid work as well. It allows businesses to track their employees’ work time and place.

Platforms

Calamari offers multiple deployments. Customers can choose from Cloud, SaaS, and web-based implementations. Moreover, Calamari offers desktop applications on macOS, Windows, Linux, and even Chromebook. Additionally, Calamari offers mobile applications on Android, iOS and iPadOS.

Demo

You can contact Calamari to resolve questions, pitch ideas, or discuss offers.

Pricing

Calamari offers three pricing options. “Leave management,” “Clock in / Clock out,” and “Core HR.”

The annual pricing for each starts at $1.7 per employee per month, $2 per employee per month, and $1.3 per employee per month. Moreover, you can try Calamari for free.

You can learn more about the plans on the Calamari pricing page.

#5 – MakeShift

MakeShift allows managers to track who’s working and when. As a result, it enables businesses to build employee schedules in considerably lesser time. The software is suitable for healthcare, hospitality, recreation, retail or any other fast-paced industry.

Key Features Offered by MakeShift as Attendance Tracking Software

MakeShift makes it easy for businesses to track employee time by allowing them to clock in and out from phones or an on-site device. Its geofencing feature ensures employees are on-site when clocking in and out for their shifts and breaks.

Additionally, users can efficiently manage employee timesheets based on the clock in and out entries.

Moreover, managers can quickly see who is on shift or on a break and easily adjust time entries.

Platforms

MakeShift offers multiple deployments. Customers can choose from Cloud, SaaS, and web-based implementations. Additionally, Calamari offers mobile applications on Android, iOS and iPadOS.

Demo

In case you need to ask further questions or receive a demo, contact MakeShift using the link.

Pricing

MakeShift offers the option to build a plan starting from $2.75/user/month. Moreover, you can try MakeShift for free.

Users can also avail of add-ons like “Time & Attendance,” “Connect,” and “Assisted Onboarding.”

#6 – TimeForge Labor

TimeForge Labor is an ideal solution for HR managers and operations personnel. In addition, it is a scalable solution for businesses of any size and is suitable for everything from independent stores to franchises and enterprise-level chains.

Key Features Offered by TimeForge Labor as Attendance Tracking Software

TimeForge Labor allows businesses to automatically track overtime with pay rules configured for the relevant city/state.

To protect against time theft, TimeForge Labor helps prevent buddy punches, long punches, and more.

Additionally, it offers multiple clock-in options, including biometric time clocks, mobile apps, and contactless login.

Platforms

TimeForge Labor offers multiple deployments. Customers can choose from Cloud, SaaS, and web-based implementations. Moreover, TimeForge Labor offers desktop applications on macOS, Windows, Linux, and even Chromebook. Additionally, TimeForge Labor provides mobile applications on Android, iOS and iPadOS.

Demo

It offers a free personalised demo if you want to learn how TimeForge Labor can help you seamlessly manage your workforce.

Pricing

TimeForge Labor does not offer public pricing information. Instead, they offer a custom pricing model which depends on factors such as your industry, the size of your business, and the features you need.

Moreover, TimeForge Labor never locks users into a contract (unless requested). Users can cancel their subscription with TimeForge Labor at any time.

You can email TimeForge Labor or reach out at +1-866-684-7191.

#7 – OnTheClock

OnTheClock offers easy time tracking for small businesses. It is an all-in-one platform adopted by more than 125,000 employees in over 15,000 companies.

Key Features Offered by OnTheClock as Attendance Tracking Software

OnTheClock allows teams to clock in on any device. Tracking time by job, project, or customer can be done with just a few clicks.

Businesses can see what’s happening instantly. The software allows seeing who’s on the clock in real-time. Users can use messaging and surveys to communicate quickly with their team.

OnTheClock protects against time theft with features such as device authorization and advanced GPS controls.

Platforms

OnTheClock offers multiple deployments. Customers can choose from Cloud, SaaS, and web-based implementations. Moreover, TimeForge Labor offers desktop applications on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Additionally, TimeForge Labor provides mobile applications on Android, iOS and iPadOS.

Demo

You can contact OnTheClock if you need to schedule a demo, get support, or instantly receive answers to your questions.

Additionally, to learn more about how the software works, you can watch OnTheClock’s support videos.

Pricing

OnTheClock offers simple, flexible pricing to help grow your business. You can learn more about the available features and cost breakdown by visiting OnTheClock’s pricing page. You can also try OnTheClock for free.

OnTheClock offers a free plan for accounts with fewer than two employees. Moreover, you can contact OnTheClock for discounts.

#8 – Buddy Punch

Buddy Punch’s users consider it “the Amazon of timekeeping systems.” Their online time clock makes it easy to stay on top of attendance, time off, and overtime in real-time. They primarily focus on serving businesses from 1 to 1,000 employees.

Key Features Offered by Buddy Punch as Attendance Tracking Software

Buddy Punch offers several incredible features. It makes it easy to create and assign job codes for your employees to punch in to. This allows seeing the amount of time spent on each job code reflected on your employees’ time cards and in your reports.

Organisations can choose from more than a dozen overtime types to ensure their OT calculations are correct.

Additionally, Buddy Punch’s webcam feature allows the software to automatically capture a picture of an employee when they punch in or out.

Platforms

Buddy Punch offers multiple deployments. Customers can choose from Cloud, SaaS, and web-based implementations. Moreover, TimeForge Labor offers desktop applications on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Additionally, TimeForge Labor provides mobile applications on Android, iOS and iPadOS.

Demo

Buddy Punch can help you learn how to save time. You can request a demo by clicking on the link.

Pricing

Buddy Punch offers three pricing plans. “Standard,” “Pro,” and “Enterprise.” The “Standard” and “Pro” plans cost $2.99, $3.99 per user/month billed annually. To learn more about their “Enterprise” plan, you contact Buddy Punch.

You can also avail of the Buddy Punch free trial. Users can sign up and use the system and its features for free.

#9 – Nowsta

Nowsta helps businesses of all sizes across various industries streamline workflow processes with shift management, payroll processing, time tracking, scheduling and more. In addition, it allows companies to hire, manage, and pay from one platform.

Key Features Offered by Nowsta as Attendance Tracking Software

Nowsta is “The Staff Management OS.”

It allows employers to manage their workforce through features such as real-time notifications, cross-platform messaging, and AI-powered scheduling.

Using Nowsta, employees can better manage their schedules, plan for the future, and deal with their finances, all from the comfort of their phones.

Scheduling, time tracking, and payroll integration are present under one system—thanks to Nowsta.

Platforms

Nowsta offers multiple deployments. Customers can choose from Cloud, SaaS, and web-based implementations. Additionally, Nowsta offers mobile applications on Android, iOS and iPadOS.

Demo

You can schedule a demo with Nowsta by providing relevant details, such as staff size, to learn how it can help your business.

Pricing

Nowsta offers three pricing plans. “Starter,” “Professional,” and “Enterprise.” The “Starter” and “Professional” plans cost $3, $4 per user/month billed annually. To learn more about their “Enterprise” plan, you can contact Nowsta.

#10 – Eddy

Eddy is an all-in-one HR Suite trusted by hundreds of local businesses. It helps simplify HR processes to hire reliable workers, retain them through better company culture, and minimise business risks and penalties.

Key Features Offered by Eddy as Attendance Tracking Software

Eddy’s time-tracking software saves businesses from wasted time and human error.

Employees can simply clock in and out from their accounts. This information appears in the time tracking portal for the employee’s manager’s approval.

Additionally, Eddy makes automatic calculations to create a pay period report that’s payroll ready.

Platforms

Eddy offers multiple deployments. Customers can choose from Cloud, SaaS, and web-based deployments. Moreover, TimeForge Labor offers desktop applications on macOS, Windows, Linux, and even Chromebook.

Demo

You can schedule a product demo with the team to see Eddy in action.

Pricing

Eddy does not offer public pricing information. Instead, they offer a custom pricing quote. Eddy starts at $8 per person per month. You can request a free price quote today to discuss your business’s needs.

Parting Thoughts

Several competing SaaS attendance tracking software are available for companies of all sizes. But the “best” attendance tracking software is the one that matches the size and the nuanced needs of your organisation.

We hope this piece helps you make an informed decision to choose the right SaaS for effectively managing your workforce.

About Us

We are a content marketing agency that brings business, not just website traffic. We curate well-researched and engaging content as per your company’s needs and ethos because we believe in the power of meaningful information.

Let’s connect over a short call if you want to elevate your SaaS business’s content marketing. Block our calendar today!

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Not Just A Contactless Menu But A Complete Marketing Machine | Slace Empowering Hans im Glück

This weekend we tried a German burger grill joint called Hans im Glück.

Two of my friends recommended the restaurant to me. One, because it’s the only place where her daughter, who’s allergic to dairy, gets to enjoy a delicious burger. Second, for the wholesome variety of vegetarian burgers.

~25 SGD for a combo set of 1 gourmet burger, delicious fries/ salad, and two drinks may sound exorbitant. Not unless you taste the burgers that are one of a kind. Besides, the drinks included beer as a choice as well. Believe me; it’s totally worth it!

The moment you enter the restaurant, you are amazed by the beautiful ambience – it’s like a fairytale forest with birch trees. You begin feeling even more hungry with the exotic aroma that fills the restaurant. You are in awe to see robots serving your food.

As a customer, I would rate the dining experience as a 10/10. Their spinach patty burger is out of this world. I loved their out-of-the-box variety of vegetarian sauces to accompany fries. The salad was yummy as well.

The Impressive Marketing Machine

As a marketer, I want to share that there is much more to the story. The restaurant is highly tech-driven. And the restaurant’s contactless menu is not just for ordering food; it’s a complete marketing machine.

Let me walk you through the complete workflow to see how!

When I scanned the QR code on the tabletop, the website asked me which medium I would like to interact with. There were two options – WhatsApp and Telegram. I picked WhatsApp as I am more comfortable using WhatsApp.

This is the message I received over WhatsApp. I was overwhelmed by the wide variety of vegetarian and vegan burgers, as these are rarely available in Singapore.

I quickly placed the order for a couple of combo burger meals. And in no time, a robot called Grettle came up with our drinks. Soon after, another robot named Hans came with our burgers.

I could request a table service or pay directly at the counter to make the payment.

I don’t know what triggered this message; maybe it was triggered after average eating time or manual intervention by a waiter.

Anyway, the actual marketing game started after I paid the bill. First, they introduced a stamp system to me. I need to accumulate five stamps, or points as they call it, to enjoy a free burger.

However, they should have also clarified in the message how the diners can earn points—something like Every visit = One point.

Anyway, soon after awarding me with the first point. They requested feedback on the food. Now, a couple of interesting things here:

First, due to reciprocity, as I just received the award, the chances of me giving positive feedback increased
Second, I loved the spirit of openness to both types of feedback – “Praise makes us happy, criticism makes us better.”
Third, I believe the kind of feedback changes the workflow here
- Positive feedback puts the diner on the path of referrals and rewards
- Negative feedback puts the diner on the path to sharing detailed feedback for improvement

I was a happy diner, so the app chose the rewards and referrals path for me. First, they sent me a short video from the managing director @Hans im Glück, Singapore – Marco Basile.

In the video, Marco expresses thanks for a visit and says happiness should be shared with friends and family. He says that the diners can refer friends and family who can enjoy a free burger at Hans im Glück using a link that would be shared next.

To let my friends enjoy the free burger, I clicked on the “Burger Happiness” link. It takes a couple of seconds to generate the link to generate. I believe it’s unique for every referral. And I have a solid reason to think so.

Every time one of my friends claimed that free burger voucher, I received a name-specific message, as shown below. For instance, this was claimed by my friend named Sarita. You can see her name in the message.

After seeing the message, I realised they awarded me a $10 voucher for every referral I made. Sounds like Uber’s customer acquisition strategy, nothing new. But the way they have implemented the whole thing is impressive.

Now, the referral awards have a tiny catch here. The offer is valid only for ten days. I think the best would be to go there with a group of friends, where all my friends enjoy a free burger, and I enjoy the discount coupon.

However, I feel the terms and conditions of redemption are unclear, which should have been mentioned. Clarity shall minimise friction in redemption.

Capturing Customers

The restaurant app captured my details when we interacted over WhatsApp. Yes, they shared the privacy policy before we entered the relationship.

They also captured the WhatsApp contact details of all the referrals I made. How effortlessly they are creating a customer database that they can nurture in future.

At the beginning of the article, I said that 25 SGD is totally worth the dining experience. as a marketer, I want to say that 25 SGD is worth even more for the business. The restaurant’s investment in real estate, dining experience, tech and marketing is fuel for growing the business. Hans im Glück is nailing it!

The Spy in Me

As a marketer, I was curious about which app enables the workflow. While it took some time to generate the referral link, I picked the name ‘Slace’ from the URL. When I Googled Slace, I found that it’s the one that’s empowering the restaurant’s marketing machine.

Kudos to team Slace and WhatsApp Business for empowering restaurants with such an incredible marketing machine.

Before We Meet Again

I am Aditi, a copywriter at Concurate – a boutique B2B content marketing agency that brings business, not just website traffic.

While I am writing this blog post, I am humming a song in my mind, it’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away 🙂

Well, besides heart, I feel words are powerful enough to grow a business.

Want to know more?

Let’s talk. Block our calendar now!

If you are reluctant to talk, no problem. Drop me a message on LinkedIn with one business goal you have in mind. I promise to get back with an excellent marketing idea to achieve that goal. No strings attached.

Happiness for me is seeing businesses grow!

5 Content Marketing Ideas to Get Users for SaaS Products Replacing Spreadsheets

The buyer journey is nothing more than a series of questions that must be answered.
IDC

Let’s address the uncomfortable truth.

Humans are creatures of habit and routine. We hate to change!

Your SaaS business has developed a fantastic alternative to spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel and Google Spreadsheets.

You believe it has boundless potential to unlock users’ productivity.

But how can you convince your target audience to ditch the old ways and switch to the new ones?

While doing content marketing for your SaaS product, you want to attract people who understand the pain point of using spreadsheet programs. Ideally, they are looking for tailor-made solutions to cumbersome problems, or they may want to switch from an existing SaaS solution.

At Concurate, we are firm believers in following a different strategy centred around pain points and high buying intent.

One of the benefits of pain-point-driven content marketing is you create the kind of content pieces and target keywords that better match the buyer’s intent as they pass through the buyer’s funnel. Therefore, pain-point-driven content marketing is an excellent approach to getting more users for your SaaS through affordable content marketing.

Previously, we discussed 20 SaaS products replacing Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets to benefit their target audience.

We endorse the fact that spreadsheet programs are quite versatile.

However, organisations prefer to use solutions tailored to their business needs.

So how do businesses that sell such SaaS alternatives effectively market their products and increase their paid user base?

This piece will share five actionable content marketing ideas to get more users for SaaS products replacing spreadsheet programs.

Let’s explore!

Content Marketing Ideas to Get Users for SaaS Alternatives

To help you attract the right customers, consider taking cues from ideas outlined in the piece and get cracking.

#1 – How-To Guides

#2 – Forms and Templates

#3 – Product Comparison

#4 – Acknowledge Silent Pain-Points

#5 – Leverage Industry-Relevant Communities

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

#1 – How-To Guides

Suppose your SaaS product’s target audience is either unaware of your offering or still undecided about switching. Your business will likely possess a laundry list of fixes to help them solve problems using their existing spreadsheet software.

This knowledge can be beneficial in creating how-to guides and presenting your SaaS product as an enticing alternative. For example, HubSpot has several content pieces for prospects using Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet software to track sales activities.

HubSpot’s free guides and templates help attract and nurture prospects not yet ready for a dedicated CRM software solution.

#2 – Forms and Templates

Across industries and work responsibilities, people look for downloadable resources such as forms, templates, checklists, and guides. Essentially, people want to get more work done without friction.

Consider providing similar resources to your target audience to solve their business problems better. These resources act as lead magnets and help your business attract qualified leads. In addition, the captured leads will be highly relevant to your business since they have provided strong signals in attempting to solve a specific problem.

Previously, we helped our client, Triangle IP, publish a free invention disclosure form (IDF) as a downloadable MS Word/Excel template. This resource helped prospects avoid a sticky pain point – filling and processing lengthy, complex invention disclosure forms.

This template justified its publication, allowing Triangle IP to double the number of leads in 16 months.

#3 – Product Comparison

SaaS businesses can utilise product comparison blog pieces to showcase the advantages of using their SaaS application versus traditional spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel and Google Spreadsheets.

The intent is not to showcase competition in a bad light. Rather, such content can help educate the target audience to switch to alternatives that can improve their business’s productivity, profitability, and growth prospects without encountering friction.

Our client, ScanWriter, a technology solution to help federal agencies like the United States Department of Justice carry out financial fraud investigation cases, published a similar blog piece. They showcased how their SaaS application can detect fraud with the click of a button without using cumbersome Microsoft Excel formulas.

#4 – Acknowledge Silent Pain-Points

We acknowledged this earlier; spreadsheet software is quite versatile.

However, it is crucial to understand that users should refrain from being dependent on them for everything. By counterproductively sticking to one solution, users can assemble an ill-assorted collection of parts to fulfil a particular purpose.

Your enterprise’s in-depth understanding of solving such pain points can be vital. Furthermore, by sharing such actual, relatable pain points, your content piece can establish a strong connection with the readers.

We helped our client, Triangle IP, to publish such content. For example, an article shared 7 reasons why managing intellectual property assets on Excel Spreadsheet is a bad idea.

The content piece acknowledged the target audience’s approach to bypassing a common pain point. Next, it highlighted how their improvised solutions put them at risk of losses. Finally, the article explained how they could better solve their pain point.

Moreover, consider sharing your client’s “internal chatter” – everyday business conversations within their company – which capture why they chose your SaaS product. It can tangibly increase the content piece’s relatability and help maximise conversions.

#5 – Leverage Industry-Relevant Communities

Acclaimed author, speaker, and marketer Andrew Davis rightly said, “Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.”

So how will your SaaS business create valuable content that establishes trust in your target audience? A neat way to achieve this is to distribute original, research-backed content in your industry’s popular hotspots.

Did your SaaS business uncover valuable findings that can help your audience swiftly/economically/efficiently achieve their goals? Creating and publishing these findings in a report or whitepaper is one promising approach.

The next step is discovering where your audience stays updated on the industry’s latest happenings and connects with colleagues.

Here is how one of our clients utilised this approach. ScanWriter, a SaaS solution used by the US federal government’s fraud investigators, published its free whitepaper on the industry’s leading publication.

Parting Thoughts

We hope these five content marketing ideas help increase your SaaS product’s user base. These ideas can help your business better showcase why prospective clients should consider switching to your SaaS product from spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel and Google Spreadsheets.

Finally, look at these two informative posts from our colleague, Nitesh.

Comparing your SaaS product against alternatives can bring you better and faster visibility (only when done correctly).

Next, being specific with your target keywords can increase your business’s chances of driving results from SEO.

About Us

We are a content marketing agency that brings business, not just website traffic. We curate well-researched and engaging content as per your company’s expectations and ethos because we believe in the power of meaningful information.

Let’s connect over a short call if you want to elevate your SaaS business’s content marketing. Block our calendar today!

If you wish to read more goodness, subscribe to our newsletter.

We send value to your inbox once every 15 days.

6 Marketing Lessons From Mark Cuban’s New Drug Company

This is a perfect example of a business being a force of good.

We all have our social media platform of choice to receive updates on the latest happenings around the world. Mine is Reddit. A few days ago, while I was browsing Reddit’s homepage, I came across this post in which resident shark and famous billionaire, Mark Cuban, shared how his new prescription drug company, the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company works.

A thirty-count supply of the asthma medication Montelukast, sold under the brand name Singulair, retails for around $169. The Cost Plus price is $6. A thirty-count supply of blood pressure medication Losartan, sold under the brand name Cozaar, averages around $40. The Cost Plus price is $4.50. These are a few of the astounding price differences customers can find from this pharmacy.

Mark Cuban’s new company is trying to combat pressing public health issues that plague the United States of America in today’s times. The business model is simple and may sound too good to be true. The company charges a 15% markup, a $3 handling fee, and $5 shipping. That’s it!

I was intrigued and blown away at the idea of one man from outside the system aiming to turn an opaque industry upside down. So then I did something which has become a default behaviour amongst American people, and I spread the word to my colleagues without expecting anything in return.

But my curiosity got the better, and I decided to dig deeper and seek to understand how this 8-month-old company is working to upend existing business practices; how it is aiming to sell expensive prescription drugs for pennies on the dollar to millions of everyday Americans. In this article, I will share six marketing lessons that we can learn from Mark Cuban’s drug company.

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

6 Marketing Lessons from the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company

#1 – Leveraging Virality

#2 – Utilising the Power of Community

#3 – Building Your Personal Brand

#4 – Spreading Customer Success Stories

#5 – Reaching the Right Target Audience

#6 – Conducting Speaking Engagements

#1 – Leveraging Virality

An intuitive yet unmissable ingredient to making your product or company go viral is to bring to reality a stellar product in its own right. So, for example, I observed that in the case of the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, regular folks can now purchase life-saving drugs without having to pay exorbitant prices because of huge markups and intermediaries, which is revolutionary.

Creating this business model has allowed the company to channel funds to growing an ever-expanding list of medications and work on distributorship and let the word spread organically.

#2 – Utilising the Power of Community

Mark Cuban’s Twitter account boasts a following of nearly 9 million followers. This following means that every communication carries a lot of weight and has the potential to cause big ripples on social media. Consider this tweet from about eight weeks ago:

The tweet has garnered more than 95,000 retweets and more than 240,000 likes on Twitter!

Moreover, Mark Cuban doesn’t need to give strong incentives to increase his tweet’s visibility. Users who’d like to add to their good karma and spread the word about the noble cause are more than willing to contribute.

#3 – Building Your Personal Brand

Mark Cuban has cultivated a solid personal brand over the years as a real-life ‘maverick’ billionaire. He is the famous owner of the NBA franchise, Dallas Mavericks, and an investor in many ventures. He is also a familiar face and a regular cast on ABC’s Shark Tank.

But building a personal brand isn’t a monumental task that you might make out to be inside your head. You don’t have to be a billionaire to have a personal brand. With baby steps, you can also cultivate one for yourself. You can share personal stories of business improvements and successes, conversations with colleagues and mentors, or your unique takes on the world around you.

#4 – Spreading Customer Success Stories

You’re likely to find it vital to have your target audience share their success stories and provide much-needed social proof.

When people give your business glowing reviews and spread the word about your company on their own accord, it helps you acquire new leads and potential customers at about zero cost!

#5 – Reaching the Right Target Audience

Another observation I have made is that the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company has been able to reach the right audience and hook them with just the right words and actions. Although I cannot confirm the exact sponsor of this study, it’s an excellent case-in-point signalling the credibility of your business venture.

Moreover, I see reports in radio shows and news programs that word around the company is not spreading unidirectionally. It’s not just doctors who are recommending switching to new prescriptions. With customers experiencing cost savings of hundreds of dollars, they’re reaching out to their doctors to recommend Cost Plus Drug Company prescriptions.

#6 – Conducting Speaking Engagements

As a founder, it is crucial to get out there and participate in speaking engagements. Mark Cuban, as the company’s co-founder and responsible for marketing and strategy, has tuned this aspect just fine. He has represented the company on news shows such as CBS Mornings and joined the CEO Alex Oshmyansky at reputed organisations such as the Mayo Clinic.

You should consider reaching out to your content marketing agency and setting up such opportunities for yourself and your company.

Parting Thoughts

I hope you found these examples actionable to scale your standout and exceptional business venture rapidly.

We are a content marketing agency that brings business, not just website traffic. We believe in creating valuable and meaningful content relevant to your target audience. This content helps your target audience find you instead of you chasing them.

If your organisation wants to explore content marketing to bring you more business, let’s connect over a short call. Block our calendar today!

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How To Capture Leads On Your Website | Learn From HubSpot

An analysis of 45000+ words, five-pillar articles, two how-to resource articles, and close to 60 lead magnets went into creating this piece.

If you’re working on lead generation for your SaaS business, one of the best ways to capture leads is by offering something valuable in exchange for contact information for website visitors. The “tool” used to capture the lead is a lead magnet. Lead magnets come in all forms – guides, eBooks, newsletters, infographics, etc.

An extension of this discussion is to ask:

Which lead magnets work best for a B2B audience?
Which lead magnets work best for a SaaS enterprise?

Key Findings | Lead Magnet Study

GetResponse conducted a study on lead magnets, from a pool of 790 marketers, between March and May 2020. It’s worth our effort to explore the finer details of the results.

#1 – Audience – B2B

26.6% selected B2B as their primary audience. This group of respondents considered written and video content the best lead magnets (Over 50%).

GetResponse Case Study on Lead Magnets - Audience Type B2B

#2 – Industry – SaaS, Software, Web App

Only about 5% of respondents represented SaaS, software, and Web App industries. Still, almost 65% of the respondents favoured written, visual and video content in this case.

GetResponse Case Study on Lead Magnets - Industries

#3 – Methodology

To maintain clarity, here is a detailed breakdown of what each category of lead magnet comprises:

GetResponse Case Study on Lead Magnets - Categories of Lead Magnets

Incorporating Lead Magnets

We have learned which lead magnets work best for a B2B audience and SaaS businesses. So let’s learn from the best on incorporating them on our landing pages and boosting our conversion rates..

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

HubSpot

HubSpot is “a CRM platform that brings everything scaling companies need to deliver a best-in-class customer experience into one place.” HubSpot helps companies attract leads, convert them into customers, and help retain those customers.

Analysis

As mentioned earlier, we analysed pillar articles and how-to resources on HubSpot’s blog page. Our findings indicate that HubSpot utilises ten different approaches to capture leads – let’s learn more from their pillar article.

#1 – Hover Action

While scrolling through HubSpot’s blog article, you may decide that the current piece is not for you. However, HubSpot doesn’t let you leave empty-handed. It detects your cursor’s movement and opens a CTA to ask you to subscribe to their resourceful newsletter. It even provides social proof to convince you.

Main Lead Magnet

HubSpot utilises four specific places to incorporate the titular/main lead magnet. Let’s find out how.

#2 – Header CTA

When you click to open the article, HubSpot provides you with an option to act on their lead magnet and download the relevant resource. The visuals showcase where and what actions a user needs to take in clear terms.

#3 – Pop-up Reminder

Suppose you want to explore the content piece further and haven’t yet decided to act on the lead magnet. Then, after you’ve scrolled through about 25% of the page, a pop-up emerges to ask you to download their free resource.

#4 – Gentle Nudge

In a situation where you might miss out on acting upon the pop-up reminder, HubSpot allows using the main lead magnet by giving a gentle reminder.

#5 – Closing CTA

HubSpot provides a clear call to action by presenting its main lead magnet at the close of the content piece. Of course, you can never go wrong by giving just another reminder!

Allied Resources Lead Magnets

These are free resources that are relevant to the main topic being discussed.

#6 – Interactive Content

In this case, HubSpot provides a lead magnet in the form of a helpful workbook relevant to the parent topic’s discussion.

#7 – How-to Resources

In this case, HubSpot has added resources such as how-to’s, cheatsheets, etc., that are relevant to sub-topics being discussed in the main content piece.

HubSpot website how-to resource lead magnet

#8 – Visual Content

Like HubSpot, consider incorporating written short-form or visual lead magnets regarding content pieces already published on your website – infographics in this case.

HubSpot website visual content lead magnet

#9 – Tools/Training Materials

Does your organisation offer training resources or free tools and calculators? Like HubSpot, consider adding them as lead magnets in your content pieces.

HubSpot website tools training material lead magnet

#10 – One Stop Shop

Go out of your way to provide valuable resources to your target audience. Then, like HubSpot over here, collate and distribute one giant repository of free resources!

HubSpot website giant repository lead magnet

Parting Thoughts

We hope this piece provides you with actionable insights on incorporating lead magnets for your enterprise. Talking from experience, the team at Concurate brainstormed and designed a lead magnet that doubled the number of leads for Triangle IP. We presented the results in this blog post. Read the piece for rich insights on approaching a similar problem for your SaaS business.

About Us

We are a content marketing agency that brings business, not just website traffic. We curate the best content as per your company’s requirements and philosophy because we believe in the power of meaningful information.

If your organisation wants a lead magnet brainstormed and designed by Concurate, let’s connect over a short call. Block our calendar today!

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Analysis of the Top 100 Company Slogans

A diamond is forever.
De Beers

The De Beers group – the world’s leading diamond company.

In the 1930s, it was undergoing a crisis. The norm of proposing for marriage with a diamond ring had not taken hold in those times. De Beers approached N.W. Ayer in 1938 to handle its advertising. N.W Ayer’s copywriter Frances Gerety created this 1947 ad campaign slogan. The phrasing perfectly linked the “foreverness” of a diamond with the “foreverness” of a marriage.

The tagline had a snowball effect on diamond sales. By 1951, a girl was not considered engaged if she wasn’t presented with a diamond engagement ring. A whopping 80% of engagement rings had diamonds on them by the end of the 20th century. The tagline was accorded the slogan of the 20th century by the Advertising Age. It’s estimated that some ninety percent of all Americans know about it.

If this doesn’t make a case for crafting a compelling brand tagline, then what does?

What Is A Tagline? Why Does A Brand Need One?

A tagline is a couple of words or a phrase about a brand shown at the end of an advertisement. It immediately gives the viewer a sense of what they can expect from the brand’s offerings. In addition, it provides the viewers an impression of how the consumer will utilise the brand’s product or service.

A tagline talks about an organisation’s greater mission and core values. Essentially, a memorable and catchy tagline helps differentiate a brand from the competition. It is supposed to be long-lasting and have a perpetual connection with your brand in the minds of your target audience.
A tagline is different from a slogan, however. As Indeed rightly remarks,

A slogan is more advertising focused, and a tagline is more public relations focused, meaning slogans are used to sell an item, and taglines raise awareness about the overall brand. Unlike slogans, taglines don’t tell customers what your company does.

Five Essentials To Write A Good Tagline

#1 – Communicate clear benefits

“Democracy dies in darkness.” – Washington Post.

In the tagline mentioned above, WashPost communicates its role as a newspaper to uphold its duty to inform the citizenry about the truth and keep democracy alive. Similarly, your organisation’s tagline should also communicate the mission that you’re trying to achieve.

#2 – Differentiate your brand

“I ♥ N.Y.,” created by Empire State Development Services, has had many me-too competitors crop up. Take care not to have your brand be associated with “We are the Google of …” and so on. Your tagline should help you stand out from the competition and not piggyback on their success.

#3 – Keep it short and simple

“Think Different.” Taglines can even be as short as two words such as this one by Apple. Keep your brand’s tagline concise as well. A good tagline can range from 2 words to around ten words. Keeping it short and straightforward helps build active recall in your target audience.

#4 – Position yourself

“The Best a Man Can Get” by Gillette is a superlative tagline that positions the brand as the best. “Betcha can’t eat just one” by Lay’s is an action-oriented tagline that challenges the target audience to resist eating its products. Finally, “Because you’re worth it” by L’oréal poses a choice to its target audience if they’re up for the task of changing their lives.

#5 – Make it memorable

“I’m Lovin’ It” by McDonald’s has transcended generations and is an excellent lead to follow on making your tagline memorable. A memorable tagline stands on the shoulders of the giants and can even stand apart from your brand.

Let’s now look at the best in the business.

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

Taglines of the Top 50 Companies of the World

Interbrand “has been the world’s leading brand consultancy for over 40 years – having pioneered iconic work and forged many of the brand-building tools that are now commonplace.” Interbrand’s Top 100 Best Global Brands is an authoritative destination to consider while narrowing down the world’s best brands based on brand equity.

In the following list, we’ll look at brands sorted by global brand value, tagline, and a short analysis.

Brand	Tagline	Analysis
Apple	Think Different	This captures Apple’s creative and out-of-the-box approach towards its goals.
Amazon	From A to Z	This aptly captures the sheer breadth of goods and services available on Amazon’s platform.
Microsoft	Be What’s Next	This is a communication of Microsoft’s mission of empowering every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more.
Google	Organise the World’s Information	Here, one can clearly understand Google’s work of acting as a search engine on the internet.
Samsung	Better Normal For All	This encapsulates Samsung’s mission of innovating and making the next frontier accessible to all.
Coca-Cola	Real Magic	This is a communication of Coca-Cola’s work to spread happiness.
Toyota	Let’s Go Places	This intuitive tagline is a snug fit with Toyota’s work – an automobile manufacturing company.
Mercedes-Benz	The Best or Nothing	This is a positioning by Mercedes-Benz in a superlative manner to regard itself as the best automobile manufacturer out there.
McDonald’s	I’m Lovin’ It	This clearly shows that customers love to eat at a McDonald’s restaurant.
Disney	The Happiest Place on Earth	Famously used in Disneyland theme parks, this tagline equates Disney with happiness.
Nike	Just Do It	This action-oriented tagline conveys Nike’s risk-taking and bold spirit.
BMW	Sheer Driving Pleasure	This is an aspirational tagline about the pleasure of driving a BMW automobile.
Louis Vuitton	Does not use a tagline	It appears to be an endeavour to keep it simple and classy.
Tesla	To accelerate the advent of sustainable transport and electric technology	This tagline is an embodiment of Tesla’s work to transform and democratise the use of sustainable renewable energy transportation.
Facebook	Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you	This tagline in conjunction with the call-to-action, “It’s quick and easy”, tells users that Facebook is a “social network” on the internet.
Cisco	Bridge to Possible	This is a representation of Cisco’s work to connect people, places, and ideas across its networks.
Intel	Look inside	This is a call-to-action for Intel’s world-famous campaign slogan “Intel inside”.
IBM	THINK	Developed by the founder, Thomas Watson Sr., this is a clarion call to use one’s head, not their feet.
Instagram	Capture and share the world’s moment	This immediately connects to what this visual medium app does globally – capturing moments.
SAP	The best run SAP	This is a testament to the fact that the best of businesses – of all shapes and sizes – work with and trust SAP.
Adobe	Together, we create change	This captures well that at the heart of creative change, Adobe is your trusted partner.
Chanel	To be irreplaceable, one must be different	This is an aspirational tagline for consumers to join forces with the fashion powerhouse.
Hermès	You dream it up, Hermès makes it happen	This superlative tagline allows consumers to imagine their dream fashion pieces and trust Hermès to bring them to life.
J.P. Morgan	The right relationship is everything	This tagline conveys that customer-centricity is what the bank is all about.
Honda	The Power of Dreams	This is in line with Honda’s products allowing people across communities to travel and achieve their dreams.
YouTube	Broadcast Yourself	This is an action-oriented tagline which conveys what the user-generated video sharing website is all about.
IKEA	Let’s Make Your Home Special	This conveys how IKEA as a home decor company helps customers to design their homes as per their vision.
Pepsi	That’s What I Like	This is a blanket statement that states that Pepsi is what its target consumers prefer.
UPS	Customer First, People Led, Innovation Driven	This allows consumers to know what the delivery giant values – its customers, people and innovations.
American Express	Don’t leave home without it	This captures the dependability of an AMEX covering your every need.
GE	Building a World That Works	This is an action-oriented statement which tells GE’s role in sculpting the future.
Accenture	High performance. Delivered	This statement addresses the core concerns of Accenture’s target audience in the domain of IT and consulting.
Gucci	Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten	This is an aspirational tagline for consumers to transact for high quality products produced by Gucci.
Allianz	Protects You From A-Z	In an inherently negative category of insurance, this statement communicates security and comfort.
Hyundai	New Thinking, New Possibilities	This is an aspirational tagline conveying Hyundai’s unique and innovative thinking in the world of automobiles.
Netflix	See What’s Next	This conveys the company’s entrepreneurial and pioneering spirit to always be at the forefront of what is new.
Budweiser	The king of beers	This superlative tagline positions Budweiser as the one and only choice of beer for its target audience.
Salesforce	We bring companies and customers together	This tagline positions the software giant as the natural bridge between companies and their customers across industries and sizes.
VISA	Trust, Security, Acceptance, and Inclusion	This tagline conveys VISA’s values and features of their product. They are literally secure, trustworthy and accepted worldwide.
Nescafé	It all starts with a Nescafé	This is an action-oriented tagline conveying that the start of every initiative begins with a cup of Nescafé coffee.
Sony	make. believe.	This conveys Sony’s core values of innovating and never giving up.
PayPal	We put people at the centre of everything we do	This conveys that PayPal’s customers can transact with confidence knowing that customer-centricity is the focus of the company.
H&M	Stay stylish and warm	This is an aspirational tagline coaxing the target consumers to be stylish only by wearing H&M clothing.
Pampers	Love, sleep & play	One can intuitively guess that the target audience Pampers caters to are babies.
Zara	Does not use a tagline	It appears to be an endeavour to keep it simple and classy.
Audi	Vorsprung durch Technik	The phrase translates to Audi’s overall mission: “Progress through technology”.
Volkswagen	Das Auto	The phrase literally translates to “The Car”, signifying the company to be the default representation of an automobile.
AXA	Know you can	This is a promise to the target customers of being confident to achieve their goals with AXA’s trusted support
adidas	Impossible Is Nothing	This action-oriented tagline sparks the fire in the target audience to be audacious and achieve their stretch goals.
Mastercard	There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else there’s Mastercard.	This is a superlative tagline conveying that if you can dream of paying for it, Mastercard has got you covered.

Interested in an analysis of the taglines of top 100 companies of the world? Download the list!

Analysis of the taglines and slogans of top 100 companies of the world

Takeaways

It helps to have a tagline that has a pin-pointed message. Here’s what you need to do while creating one for your brand:

Write down everything your brand is all about to zero down on the core
Craft an incisive copy to communicate the core
Shed light on your company’s overarching mission
Showcase how your brand is markedly different from the competition
Use an action-orientation, present a choice or use superlatives to position your brand

And if you need any help with the content marketing strategy, book a call here.

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Build Using These 9 Best Online Community Platforms

In a knowledge economy, a good business is a community with a purpose, not a piece of property.
Charles Handy

A community needs a “why” for invigorating its members to help it thrive, not just survive. Furthermore, it needs a “how” to attract itself to its target audience. Organisations of all shapes and sizes are utilising different platforms to develop their communities to assist in achieving their business goals. GoPro utilises Facebook to showcase exciting visuals captured using its versatile cameras; Marketing Mind makes use of Instagram to satisfy its members interest around all things marketing; Ryanair uses TikTok to establish a self-deprecating humorous image in the air travel industry.

Choosing the right platform is a crucial part of community building. Thriving communities aren’t built overnight. In order to build a community, the approach to having a plain vanilla presence on a platform, or the hot new app is not enough. It might be tempting to look at the numbers and adopt a me-too approach. But with the plethora of apps and platforms available for every conceivable purpose, it can be draining to choose the right ones and shine.

By choosing the right platform to host your online community, you are better able to learn and understand your target audience’s pain-points, needs, and aspirations. You are able to have enviable 1:1 access to them and receive valuable feedback on your product/services.

This piece attempts to assist you in vetting the options available to you, and choosing the right platform with community features relevant for your business’s use-case. We will be looking at the factors you need to consider while building a community for your business. Let’s dive right into it.

Factors For Choosing Your Community Platform

Goals

What is your aim of hosting a community? What does your ideal achievement look like? Are you looking to:

Discuss, educate and inspire your audience around your offering?
Sell products or services?
Gather insights on current and potential consumer trends?
Rally the community around a common cause such as philanthropy?
Connect with your community members to cultivate future business strategy?

Having a clear vision at the outset will help you choose the right platform for hosting your community, and potentially save you future hardships.

Target Persona

Ideate and visualise your target persona. This is an important step and requires deliberating around the following lines:

What are some things that my target audience resonate with?
What are the common themes along which my target audience shops?
What is the age-group of my target audience? According to current statistics, which platforms are they most likely to adopt?
What kind of content resonates more with the target audience – Text? Audio? Video?
How will my target audience benefit by being a part of this community?

Ownership

Starting out on building your own community, you first need to address the following question. Are you going to use a free platform or an owned platform? A free platform is essentially deploying one of the usual list of services – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. On the other hand, an owned platform is something you administer outrightly. Here are some of the key pros and cons of opting for either option:

Free Platform

Pros

You do not have to worry about onboarding new users
Your content’s distribution is handled by the platform
You do not have to work on maintenance of the platform’s security, stability, etc.

Cons

You do not own the “community” or the platform
You can be kicked out of the platform in case your activities clash with the policies
Your chosen platform can end up deserted if it does not adapt to evolving consumer trends

Paid Platform

Pros

You outrightly own the customer data
You can customise the platform as per your organisation and community’s use-case
You get to decide who stays on the platform and which users receive administrative and moderation rights

Cons

You will have to take care of bringing users to your platform. Maintaining strong positive network effects is your responsibility
You will have to understand the maintenance of IT, security and allied aspects of your platform
You will have to bear full responsibility for ensuring that your content is distributed to the target audience

Group Size

What is the ideal count of the audience that you are targeting?

Having a clear indication will help you in deciding whether to go for a free or owned platform, for instance. Suppose you decide to go for an owned platform. A clear idea on the number of community members will aid you in choosing the right tier while hosting.

Features

What are some of the must-have features that you’re looking for? Are you security conscious and looking for single sign-on? What are some nice-to-have features that you’re looking for? Think along the lines of the following:

User Interface – How easy is it to use the platform?
User Experience – How do you want the community members to interact with each other? How does the platform’s offering align with your vision?
Security – What grade of security does the platform offer in terms of securing user data, compatibility with in-house tools?
Administration – What is the comfort level for you and your team to administer and moderate the community? What analytics tools will you require?

Pricing

How much capital are you willing to allocate towards hosting your community? Price is a key component that will determine whether you opt for an owned or free platform. If you’re comfortable with shelling money to have your own paid platform, pricing will help you narrow down your options in terms of different tiers and their limitations.

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

Inspirational Example

A good example is Anne-Laure Le Cunff, the founder of Ness Labs. It’s a “community of curious humans who want to achieve more without sacrificing their mental health.” Members of the community are able to conduct meetups, workshops, and access special reports around neuroscience.

Key Takeaways

A community is a group of people who agree to grow together.
Simon Sinek

If you can assure growth for your target audience they would be happy to join your community.

Building a thriving community is hard. People want to be heard and be a part of something bigger than themselves. Nailing the key elements is a must in order to provide your target audience the right platform to express themselves and contribute to the community.

In this piece we learnt about the key factors that go into choosing the right platform for hosting your community such as:

Understanding the “why” of opting for the chosen platform
Building the right strategy and ensuing tactics to execute your vision
Vetting across different criteria such as group size, target persona, custom domain, pricing to narrow down your options

If you want some steal-worthy strategies to build a community that thrives together, be sure to watch this video:

We hope that you’ll benefit from using these principles to build the foundation of your own thriving community. And if you need any help with the content marketing strategy, book a call here.

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13 Marketing Movies Every Marketer in Your Team MUST Watch

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.”
Seth Godin

My heart sinks to even imagine the separation of two people madly in love with each other. I had tears rolling down my cheeks when I saw this old man trying to recollect memories of his dear wife, Loretta, who passed away in 2018. Pictures that capture the beautiful moments spent together help you relive them, right. So, our old man queries Google – “How to remember things?”. A solution that Google suggests is the Google Assistant.

The man then goes to Google Assistant and asks, “Hey Google! Show me some photos of Loretta and me!” Google Assistant took the old man down the memory lane. It showed the meals they shared, the places they visited, their hugs and kisses, their younger selves, their favorite movie, Loretta’s laughter, and many other beautiful memories. While going through these pictures, the man kept talking to the assistant, asking it to remember things about Loretta. Google Assistant kept making notes of all these beautiful times. In the end, Google Assistant even recapped the things it recorded.

By the way, everything I just described was happening in an ad by Google. Kudos to the marketing team who created such an emotional video and wisely portrayed the help their product can offer! How do people get such creative ideas? Well, inspirations can come from anywhere, including movies. So, we have pulled a list of 14 movies that every marketer on your team must watch! You would be amazed to see how these movies will stimulate the brains of your marketing team.

So, let the show begin.

The Social Dilemma
Emily in Paris
The Great Hack
The Founder
Steve Jobs
The Internship
Moneyball
The Social Network
Up in the Air
Mad Men
The Pursuit of Happyness
Kinky Boots
Thank You For Smoking

1. The Social Dilemma

Year of release	2020
Type	Documentary
IMDB Rating	7.6/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	85%
Link for watching	Netflix – The Social Dilemma

“People using social media are not your customers; they are the product.”

Sounds intriguing? Perhaps it is.

This movie indulges its viewers in a deep discussion of the creation of social media, its alarming impacts on human behavior, screen time patterns, and many more things. You can see tech experts who once worked with the companies – Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others.

These people talk about their experience of developing the digital powerhouse companies and the guilt they feel today for birthing such entities that influence society today. The guilt came from the misuse of the platform and its effect on the consumers.

You can also see the effect of social media and remarketing campaigns that help gain customers. For a marketer, the main takeaway from this masterpiece is – that the people using social media platforms are not your customers; they are the product. In layman’s language, this means when you sign up on any social network, you are looking to have your personal and demographic data shared with companies with the goal of commoditizing who you are as a person. The aim of developing the platform was to “sell you” to the companies looking to advertise placements.

2. Emily in Paris

Year of release	2020
Type	Series – Comedy – Drama
IMDB Rating	7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	63%
Link for watching	Netlix – Emily in Paris

Sexy or sexist? What do customers think? You care, or you give a damn? Watch the movie to see what this young and dynamic marketer – Emily did!

This Netflix series talks about Emily – a young marketer who gets transferred to Paris to bring an American touch to a French-based marketing company. It is very captivating to watch her ups and downs in this journey and the marketing strategies she comes up with as a marketer. She was indeed successful in bringing the American touch the company needed. By the way, the series has two seasons: our favorite is season 1.

The series gives the best example of marketing when a perfume brand collaborates with the company where Emily works. They use a naked girl for the advertisement and describe it as sexy, to which Emily raises a conflict stating it to be sexist. She then generates a poll – “Sexy or Sexist” to see what exactly the customers of the perfume brand would take the advertisement. That was a camouflaged lesson for the marketers to learn that the customers’ opinion matters the most. When you start looking at your campaigns or products from a customer’s point of view, you are most likely to understand better what to deliver.

Moreover, Emily’s approach to creating Instagram content, showcased in the series, is quite exemplary. The series truly inspires all the marketers watching it to think out-of-the-box and bring ideas to the table that stands out.

3. The Great Hack

Year of release	2019
Type	Documentary
IMDB Rating	7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	85%
Link for watching	Netflix – The Great Hack

“There is only one winning strategy. It is to carefully define the target market and direct a superior offering to that target market.”
Philip Kotler

This Netflix movie tells us about a disreputable company ‘Cambridge Analytica’ that used social media (Facebook) as a weapon to spread misinformation. The disclosures regarding Cambridge Analytica and its role in the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US Presidential elections are disturbing, but that was only the beginning. Cambridge Analytica did innovative marketing, even though they crossed the ethical boundaries sometimes (for which they paid the price).

The question is, how did they influence the result of such massive campaigns? The answer is they used digital media to target persuasive voters at the right time, and then they advertised to them. The approach is not wrong; it is just contemporary and common-sense marketing.

The key takeaway for your marketing team is that audience segmentation is the key. It is essential to identify your key audience. Understanding ever-changing consumer behaviors is crucial for contemporary marketing.

4. The Founder

Year of release	2016
Type	Movie – Drama/History
IMDB Rating	7.2/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	81%
Link for watching	Netflix – The Founder

“We are not in the Hamburger business; we are in the Real Estate business.”
Ray Kroc, President of McDonald’s.

The movie Founder is a story based on an ingenious salesman – Ray Kroc. Ray Kroc is a 52-year-old milkshake machine salesman, played by Michael Keaton. Unlike most of Ray’s customers, who only need one five-spindle milkshake maker at a time, the McDonald brothers placed an order buying eight for their single shop.

He became so intrigued that he decided to visit the restaurant. With their engineering brains, the brothers overhauled the whole drive-in restaurant idea to focus on quality food through a reduced menu of only the most popular items (hamburgers, fries, sodas), and maybe most crucially, speed in having any order available within seconds. However, the brothers failed at the business expansion despite having an efficient process in place.

Ray immediately saw the potential in McDonald’s restaurant. However, Kroc believed that the fast-food joints wouldn’t make as much money as the real estate business. He wanted to market the idea and bring the concept to larger customer sizes. He then worked on a similar vision and created a billion-dollar franchise, today known as Mcdonald’s.

Like Kroc, every marketer could relate to the fact that to be successful; you don’t need to have an original idea; improving an existing one can be an option too! Let’s face it – there is no such thing as the original. You could be up all night, coming up with a mind-blowing idea. Another million-dollar company could create a similar solution.

For someone planning strategies for business marketing, this is the movie you must watch.

5. Steve Jobs

Year of release	2015
Type	Movie – Drama
IMDB Rating	7.2/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	85%
Link for watching	Amazon Prime – Steve Jobs

A thrilling success story of a college dropout!

During his college times, do you know that Steve Jobs didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life and how college would help him figure it out? So he decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out ok.

Steve Jobs, the brain of the multi-billion dollar company – Apple, was the most imaginative product designer for millennials and a generation older than them. This movie is his biography, where we get to see the creativity and development of Apple along with his ups and downs in the journey toward today’s technological evolution.

This movie gives us an idea of how the business innovators sold themselves to marketers, just like the iPod sold itself to those who live for music. Remember the quote,

“The greatest artists like Dylan, Picasso, and Newton risked failure. And if we want to be great, we’ve gotta risk it too.”

This movie made all the marketers realize that it is essential to risk failure for a successful business.

6. The Internship

Year of release	2013
Type	Movie – Comedy
IMDB Rating	6.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	35%
Link for watching	Netflix – The Internship

Imagine someone your dad/mom’s age sitting in the same class as you? Exciting, right?

Something similar happens in this movie called ‘The Internship.’ It is about two old sales associates, Billy (Vince Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson), who aim to work for Google despite lacking technical knowledge. Somehow, they manage to take up an internship with people half their age in the company but are one of the misfit “Nooglers” in the organization.

The movie displays their dedication, hard work, and journey on how they caught up with the technological advancements. One of the most memorable moments in the film was the reference to Quidditch from Harry Potter.

Molding it to the marketing side, what would Quidditch be if the players couldn’t fly?

The above situation could be a similar case with your website. It will not be visible to your audience if it does not rank in the Google search results. This indicates that your website never ranked well. Search Engine Optimization is going to be your support here.

7. Moneyball

Year of release	2011
Type	Movie – Sport/Drama
IMDB Rating	7.6/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	94%
Link for watching	Netflix – Moneyball

“When your enemy’s making mistakes, don’t interrupt him.”

Sounds like a hack?

Isn’t it applicable in the marketing world as well?

This is one of the most memorable quotes from the movie.

Moneyball is a movie about Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt. He builds a baseball team on a shoestring budget by applying a data-driven strategy to acquire new players. This film recounts that one should neither be satisfied with minor wins nor underestimate the value of statistics.

Several such moments in the movie demonstrate the parallel between baseball and marketing. Both fields, for example, make data-driven judgments.

Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) hired an assistant who looked at the numbers, not the players. While the rest of the league was obsessed with home runs and batting average, the A’s focus was on base percentage, reducing errors, and favoring matchups that resulted in more wins. Billy wasn’t just looking at numbers differently. He was also looking at the right numbers.

By looking at the actual numbers, you will see what is working. If a webpage gives you a 5% conversion rate compared to 2%, does it matter what the page looks like? Stick to the actual numbers and not the eye. It can be deceiving. It is all about the results for business regardless of your circumstances or challenges.

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8. The Social Network

Year of release	2010
Type	Movie – Drama/History
IMDB Rating	7.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	96%
Link for watching	Netflix – The Social Network

“I made so many mistakes in running the company so far; basically, any mistake you can think of I probably made. I think, if anything, the Facebook story is a great example of how if you’re building a product that people love, you can make a lot of mistakes.”
Mark Zuckerberg

This movie is about the birth of a platform that changed the way people communicate forever – Facebook. This movie has been a game-changer in today’s world of digital solutions. Taking us into the life of Mark Zuckerberg, this movie has brought a revolution in the digital marketing world.

The film’s plot shows us what inspired him to create Facebook, how long it took, what steps he took, and the challenges he faced. The movie gives practical marketing lessons on how a person can build a business from a brand persona and what steps he should take to lead the brand to stardom. Facebook simply works on a basic marketing principle – making connections, which many businesses follow!

9. Up in the Air

Year of release	2009
Type	Movie – Romance/Comedy
IMDB Rating	7.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	90%
Link for watching	Netflix – Up in the Air

If the marketing team is not leveraging data for growth, they need to get into #FoMo.

Ryan (the movie’s main lead) understood the importance of data when he met Natalie Keener, played by Anna Kendrick, who brings digitization to his job role.

In the movie, Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, works as an “outplacement counseling” specialist for many businesses. His responsibility is to fire employees on behalf of his clients by delivering motivational speeches to make them feel powerful by letting go. He tells them that even though their professional lives are “up in the air,” they can have a good look at their ambitions from up there.

Another critical message from Ryan is precision in the timing when to strike the appropriate chord and what to say. He had done some prior research on Bob(one of the fired employees) and tailored his discussion accordingly. Marketers must also plan their efforts in a customized manner, rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all, pre-cooked solution.

10. Mad Men

Year of release	2007
Type	Series – Drama
IMDB Rating	8.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	94%
Link for watching	Amazon Prime – Mad Men

In many companies, there is a policy that “the customer is always right.” “Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read Rule 1“.

Inspired by this idea, Man Men is a series based on a 1960s advertising firm – what else does a marketer need?

It is just like a comic book to all the marketing nerds. This series will show you how the lead, , can be a fantastic role model for your marketing team, not for his life choices, though!

Professionally, marketers can learn many things from the ‘misfit’ team at Sterling Coopers and Partners, an advertising agency. One of the most memorable scenes from the movie was when Don yelled,

“I sell products, NOT advertising!”

When one of his rivals Duch Philips was ready to take over Sterling Cooper, he aimed to boost earnings by reducing the creative department’s position and pressuring customers to increase their media budgets.

This short outburst showed everyone why Don Draper has been so successful. He focused on offering the services (products) that were helpful for his clients. We might want to focus on “what can I do for my client” over “what can my client do for me,” right?

11. The Pursuit of Happyness

Year of release	2006
Type	Movie – Drama
IMDB Rating	8/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	67%
Link for watching	Netflix – The Pursuit of Happyness

In one of the scenes, Chris Gardner, the main lead, says,

“You got a dream; You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves; they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.”

The movie ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ is an inspiring plot, especially for entrepreneurs who want to launch commercials that serve a more extensive, brighter purpose of helping others in some manner.

The film is about a single father, Chris Gardner, who raises a 5-year-old son and loses a lot in life before winning it all through ambition, perseverance, and values.

Furthermore, this film can inspire marketers to create advertisements full of positivity and passion.

12. Kinky Boots

Year of release	2005
Type	Movie – Drama/Comedy
IMDB Rating	7.1/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	56%
Link for watching	Amazon Prime – Kinky Boots

Charlie didn’t let his company fall into the grave and just die — instead, he chose that he was gonna make it rise like a phoenix from the ashes.

This movie is about Charlie Price, who inherits a soon-to-be-bankrupt shoe factory. Things change when he meets Lola, the star of a Drag show. He sees potential in an underserved niche market: high-quality shoes for drag queens that suit their persona and feet. With inspiration, he strives to restore his father’s factory by producing drag queen boots.

Marketers can learn from this plot how crucial it is to find a solution to any problem and stay true to the “why” of the business, just as Charlie did with his shoe factory. Charlie understood the tenets of his company’s “why,” or brand promise – to make high-quality, hand-made shoes, so customers felt comfortable and confident. The film also highlights some everyday struggles that marketers face, like striving in the face of economic challenges and searching for ways to be recognized. It then advises on being open and flexible to changes in your business environment and brings out a lesson “Change the mind: Change the world.“

13. Thank You For Smoking

Year of release	2005
Type	Movie – Drama/Comedy
IMDB Rating	7.6/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating	86%
Link for watching	Amazon Prime – Thank You For Smoking

Cigarettes are harmless.

Thank You For Smoking movie focuses on the same concept. It shows how a comprehensive content strategy and consistent, persuasive marketing can help you completely change consumers’ perception of your product, even if it can kill them.

The movie is about Nick Naylor, a lobbyist for the tobacco industry whose job is to promote cigarette smoking when the health problems related to cigarettes are apparent to most people. Though the movie is about the cigarette sector, the movie’s message applies to many other industries.

When the movie’s main character says, “I get paid to talk,” it sounds very familiar to the role of marketers. This is probably the best example of why behavior-based marketing is so effective in spinning a product the right way and selling it to anyone with persuasion. It’s worth watching for every marketer who wants to build trust among its audience.

Parting Words

Sharing this list with your marketing team offers you an opportunity to hit two birds with one stone.

One – You can ask your interns to watch these movies as one of their weekly tasks. This will help them build a thought process, and you will be giving them a story to share about your company. (After all, how many companies ask their interns to watch movies as an assignment.)

Two – As the involvement of the senses is much higher while watching a movie than attending a meeting or reading a blog, this might be an awesome hack to train your marketing team. This is most likely to save a lot of your time in making them better at their jobs.

Ready to share this list with your marketing team, or want to save it for the future?

We are a content marketing agency that brings business, not just website traffic. Open to explore Concurate? If your organisation wants its content marketing strategy designed by Concurate, let’s connect over a short call. Block our calendar today!

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Why Wordle Went Viral to Become an Internet Sensation

“Virality isn’t luck. It’s not magic. And it’s not random. There’s a science behind why people talk and share. A recipe. A formula, even.” — Jonah Berger

Do you still wait for the newspaper every day, not just for the news, but to fill up the latest crossword? The prospect of solving that piece of puzzle, one day at a time, gives many a sense of delight. Some people go jittery if they somehow miss a day; it has become part of their routine!!

Know what has become a part of millions of people’s routines? It’s called Wordle. As you read, you’ll know what this latest internet sensation is and why it went viral.

So, What Is Wordle?

Wordle is a cryptic word game played once a day on the internet. A person needs to guess a five-letter English word in a maximum of six tries. The first try, the starter word, has to be a complete guess without any clues. Every word you guess, the game starts giving you clues for the answer word by changing the colour of the green and yellow squares in which the word is written. If a letter from your word exists in the answer word the letter tile turns yellow or green. Yellow indicates that letter present in the answer but it is not in the right position. Green indicates that the letter is present as well as it’s in the same position in the answer word.

how to play wordle — Image source: Wordle

As you keep guessing, you should be able to crack the puzzle in six tries.

What’s the Big Deal?

Yeah yeah, we know you might be thinking, “what’s the big deal? It’s just a word game!”. Well, look at the number of players who played Wordle in:

November 2021 – 90
January 2022 – 300,000
A week later – 2 million

The numbers are rising daily, with millions of players joining everyday.

In recent events, Wordle has been acquired for a huge amount by the New York Times in some undisclosed ‘seven figures’ and is now available to play on their website. Games like Wordle are amongst the key components of NYT’s marketing strategy.

People loved Wordle so much, many alternate niche-based versions popped up. There is the very famous ‘Nerdle’ which is for maths lovers, Taylordle for Taylor Swift Fans aka Swifties, ‘Marketdle’ for marketers, and many more. As they say – it’s the best compliment if someone is copying you!

The Origination/Love Story

Like many great things, Wordle’s origin is connected to love. Josh Wardle (I love the name coincidence!), a Brooklyn-based software engineer, made this game for his partner, Palak Shah who loved cryptic puzzles. In the beginning, the game was available for just the two of them, but they later decided to open it up for their family. The family got hooked instantly and gradually through word-of-mouth many more people got glued to Wordle.

What happened after is in front of you.

Reasons Why Wordle Went Viral

Wordle was not made with an intent to go viral and yet it managed to make a place in people’s hearts. Below are five reasons why Wordle went viral:

Feeling of Agency – a principle of game theory
Word-of-Mouth publicity
Automated sharing of scores on social media especially Twitter
FOMO – Fear of Missing Out
Element of Scarcity

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Feeling Of Agency | Agency Expansion

From the Game Theory perspective, a ‘Feeling of Agency’ refers to the feeling of control over actions and their consequences. In simpler terms, it is a feeling that drives you to continue making choices based on the positive results of your past actions. Almost all games have this ‘Feeling of Agency’ that drives the players. It is one of the strong reasons that drives people to continue playing any game.

This feeling is quite strong in the case of Wordle. While playing the game, the first word is a completely random guess. All the guesses after that are based on the consequences of the previous guess. If a letter turns green, it means it’s in the right place of the answer word and hence you’ll continue placing it on that spot in all the next guesses. If a letter turns yellow, it means it is in the answer word but has to be placed somewhere else. In the next guesses, you’ll place it in different positions.

With every guess – you narrow down your choices for the next attempt and get closer to the answer. The ability to get closer to the answer is actually the agency expansion. This sense of achieving something on one’s own, based on their own past actions; gives them a reason to continue playing Wordle.

Word-of-Mouth Publicity

There’s no better tool of marketing than Word-of-Mouth. Word-of-mouth was the strongest contributor to the virality of Squid Game as well. If someone likes something, they are going to tell it to others one way or the other. Unlike other forms of marketing, word-of-mouth is more credible as it comes from someone who has tried and tested what they are referring to. I heard of Wordle from 3-4 different people – once from our writer, once from a client who created their own version of Wordle called Marketdle, and more. Later I checked with my friends and acquaintances in WhatsApp groups and most recommendations came from friends or community. Hence word-of-mouth validated 🙂

Automated Sharing of Scores

Wordle’s score-sharing feature is the biggest reason for it becoming an internet sensation. Once you finish solving a puzzle, Wordle gives you an option to share the achievement with the help of colourful square-shaped grids. Without sharing the actual answer, one could showcase their achievement. These grids tell how the player managed to get the answer and how many tries it took him.

Social media feeds started being bombarded with these square grids, with users sharing their results. Other than just solving Wordle daily, people became habitual of sharing their scores on their social media. From Instagram and Facebook stories to tweets, the grids were everywhere. Twitter alone clocked 3 million Wordle tweets just between 23rd December 2021 and 27th January 2022.

FOMO – Fear of Missing Out

The Feeling of Missing Out aka FOMO is the worst feeling ever. Once those colourful square grids started popping up on everyone’s feed, people who didn’t know anything about it started feeling left out. Not just these colourful score grids but there were memes about Wordle. Companies started using Wordle elements in their social media posts. It was as if everyone was going crazy about these green and yellow grids. That sheer idea drove many people to at least try the game and see for themselves. If they liked it, they kept coming back and spreading the word.

wordle comic meme — Image source: Twitter

Element of Scarcity

Anything that is scarce is valued. It applies to games too. If you were given unlimited word puzzles to solve in a day, no matter how much you loved them, you’d get bored. But if there was just one puzzle a day, and you had to wait for twenty-four hours to solve the next one, you’d be hooked. That’s why crosswords and sudokus in newspapers are still solved with so much fervour.

Wordle leveraged this element of scarcity to its benefit. There is just one puzzle a day that leaves you wanting for more once you finish it. There’s also a ‘streak’ feature that tells people the number of days they have been continuously playing Wordle, which makes them not miss a single day. If they miss, they lose that streak.

Wrap Up: Why Did Wordle Go Viral?

Wordle’s story is fun, exciting, loving, and inspiring for many disciplines. The feeling of agency inspires game creators to add elements of agency to bring people back again and again to the games. Word-of-mouth is still one of the strongest ways to make things go viral. But it works only if you give people a reason to talk about your creation whether it’s a game like Wordle or a series like Squid Game. Social media marketing can do wonders for your product if leveraged correctly. With this, we leave you to think about how you can make your creation a sensation.

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P.S. This story was originally published on Hackernoon.

Sa Re Ga Ma’s Carvaan: The Success Story of the Bollywood Jukebox That Sung to the Tune of $264M USD

A music box helped the company sing its way to 2000 Crores INR (264 million USD) in Revenue in 5 years

From Sa Re Ga Ma’s Carvaan, we learn that creating a great product is one thing; positioning it in the right market is another. This is a story of a music box that holds ‘5,000 timeless Bollywood songs’ and has earned its parent company a revenue of over INR 2000 crores.

I was at my work desk and this urge to listen to an old classic came upon me. YouTube was the easy choice. So I ran a search for this song and stumbled upon an advertisement before the melody came alive. The ad was for a jukebox called Carvaan. And the ad told me that it was the best gift for my parents. It said it in Hindi, which I think makes it feel even better – “Mummy Papa ke liye best gift”.

I don’t know if it’s a professional hazard or whether it was just because I was at work, but the ad got me thinking about why the company pitched the product the way it did. So I began doing some digging. And I managed to narrow down what seems like a very plausible reason for this strategic piece of marketing.

The first thing I did was analyse their sales numbers. When I did, I found that they’d made their space in a market of their choosing and their sales numbers were solid proof of their success. Obviously, I then tried to understand how they managed to achieve such astounding success in the times of streaming services where music is available in hundreds of thousands as opposed to Carvaan’s library of 5,000 songs.

Sa Re Ga Ma focused its strategy on a niche market. A niche market focuses exclusively on a group that stands to benefit most from a product. This kind of marketing strategy allows a brand to stand out from the crowd, establish a dominant presence, make itself appear more valuable, and establish longer, deeper connections with its customers.

Here’s a breakdown of what Sa Re Ga Ma did when marketing Carvaan – five reasons attributable to its success.

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What Made Sa Re Ga Ma’s Caravaan a Marketing Success?

Extensive Consumer Research

Narrowing down on a list of 5,000 songs from even one era of Bollywood music is no mean feat. The team studied data from 134 partners to understand the kind of content that was being consumed. 1.1 billion consumption points were identified and analyzed before the list of 5,000 songs was curated.

Identifying the Right Target Audience

The product was targeted at the generation that is not most tech savvy, yet loves to revel in nostalgia. And what better way to transport people in time than through music?

The middle-class Indian parent was the persona that was the company’s prime target audience.

A 5-Step Thoughtful Positioning Plan

Target Audience

The target audience for the product were the children (the buyers 20-30 years old) of middle class parents (the users – 50-60 years old). The users were unlikely to spend a sum of INR 6000 on a jukebox that played a limited number of songs. Hence the millennials, who have huge spending power, became an ideal choice for the target segment.

Unmet Need

With the advent of digital music, physical cassettes and CDs were soon becoming relics. Access to music became easy for the younger generation but the older generation was not very comfortable with the idea of digital music.

The Chief Marketing Officer of Sa Re Ga Ma had this to say,

“Our research showed that a majority of that age group had simply stopped listening to music and it was ironic because when this population was young, there was no social media. All they had was the radio but advancements in technology took that away from them. Our research also gave us the reasons why people liked using the radio, it was owing to the device’s simplicity. And that was the genesis of Carvaan.”

Hence there were two unmet needs:

For Buyer

The millennials, living away from home, are constantly looking for things to gift their parents. As gifting helps them take away a little portion of guilt that they are not able to live with their parents. Gifts help them convey a gesture of love for their parents.

For User

There was a need for a product in the market that could rejoice the love for music for this chunk of people. A product that they can very easily operate.

Competitive Advantage

The element of nostalgia is brought alive with 5,000 evergreen songs available through simple controls. The uniqueness of the concept and design made it the only available product of its kind in the market, giving Carvaan the perfect advantage. Besides, the target users can operate Carvaan just like a transistor radio – something they are extremely familiar with.

Unique Point of Difference

Compared to various gift options available in the market like clothing and cosmetics – Carvaan has much more to offer. It brings a feeling of nostalgia. The songs when played lighten the mood in the house. The pitch – “Mummy Papa ke liye Best Gift” is a masterstroke. Kudos to the copywriter!

Reasons to Believe

The target market had no easy access to music any more, and pre-loading 5,000 songs that the middle class parents connected with deeply was bound to make a successful product.
Ease of use and familiar interface made it an attractive choice.
The last five years have seen sales of over INR 2000 crores!

It makes complete sense for the company to extend the range of Carvaan products and offerings. Like song libraries in multiple regional languages, Carvaan mini, Carvaan karaoke etc.

Consistent Branding

Sa Re Ga Ma is India’s oldest music label released its first-ever studio recorded song in 1902. The company probably was the biggest seller of cassettes and CDs at one point in time. For over a century, Sa Re Ga Ma has been bringing Indian music to all homes in India whether it was through CDs or cassettes then and through Carvaan now. Carvaan is a great extension of the company’s endeavour in keeping Indian music close to its people.

Creative Advertising

The company has come up with brilliant ads and placed them on the right channels to reach millennials. For instance, I was watching a remix of a popular bollywood song on YouTube and I saw the ad for Carvaan. It caught my 100% attention. Here is one of their super creative ads:

Observe the happiness on the mother’s face while she enjoys listening to a song on Carvaan.

Accurate Channel for Distribution

The next logical step was for Sa Re Ga Ma to make the product available in a marketplace that was accessible to those who will be ideal buyers. What better place than Amazon for the generation that’s at their desks and online for the most part of their day?

Sa Re Ga Ma partnered with Amazon for distribution and surprise, surprise! Carvaan became a bestseller on the site.

Today, Carvaan has expanded into various markets. It not only holds the evergreen songs of Bollywood but also has other variants like Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil, etc. Carvaans are now sold in other geographies that target the nostalgic, expat population who are constantly craving the feeling of home.

Sum and Substance

Here is how we can make the most of the inspirational story of Sa Re Ga Ma – Carvaan:

Clearly define the user and buyer
Fulfil an unmet need
Use emotion to drive sales
Stick to the ethos of your company

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P.S. This story was originally published on Hackernoon.