Deepak has years of experience in digital marketing. He has worked as digital marketing manager in well known start-up companies in India such as Exotel, Practo.com and Instamojo.com.
He quit his full time job and now he is mostly a blogger and entrepreneur working on his own projects. He is also a trainer and speaker in the digital marketing field. He blogs about digital marketing at DigitalDeepak.com.
Digital Vidya: How did you get into Digital Marketing?
Deepak: I graduated in Civil engineering but I got into digital marketing by chance. During the final year of my engineering degree I had plenty of free time and I started a blog about Indian Motorcycles.
I wanted to drive more traffic to it and earn more revenue via display advertising. In the quest to develop my blog, I ended up learning everything in digital marketing.
Digital Vidya: Why do you think it’s important for entrepreneurs, marketing professionals and students to learn Digital Marketing today?
Deepak: Digital marketing is the future of marketing. In a decade when you say “Marketing” it will be 99% digital marketing. Great products and services fail because the marketing part is not taken care of.
Many people think that you need to learn marketing only if you want a job in marketing – that’s a huge misconception. Marketing is a part of everyone’s life in every stage.
Marketing starts when you are a child and you start crying to get attention of your parents! Marketing is needed to get a good life partner. You need to market yourself to your employer to get the job.
You need to market your products and services to your clients. And if you want to change the world, you need to market the issues in the right way. If you care about world hunger and want to solve it, you need to market to issue to reach people, touch their hearts and only then you can initiate a change.
Gandhiji was a pure marketer. Why would he make his own salt? And inspire millions to do the same? It was to spread a message, an idea.
Our Prime Minister Mr. Modi is also a marketer. He is also a great digital marketer. He markets the brand ‘India’ to other countries. You can see that ‘Make In India’ campaign has been a huge success.
I don’t read news on papers, I don’t watch TV and I don’t listen to radio. I use the internet for all these and more. There are millions of people like me and the pie is growing. Traditional marketing is dying. There is no option not to learn digital marketing in today’s world.
Digital Vidya: According to you, what are the top mistakes committed by organizations today in leveraging Digital Marketing?
Deepak: Many organisations think that only the medium of reaching people has changed. So instead of TV ads, they run YouTube ads. Instead of print ads, they run display ads. But they fail to realise that the way people decide and buy has also changed.
Consumers are tech savvy and alert. They will buy only from someone they know and trust. They read reviews, educate themselves about a product and only then make the purchase.
Hence Inbound Marketing is very important to convert strangers into happy customers. Many organisations have no clue about this. If you are someone who knows inbound marketing, many companies would be interested to hire you.
Digital Vidya: You led the webinar ‘How To Sell Effortlessly With Inbound Marketing’. How was your experience in leading the webinar?
Deepak: I have been speaking about digital marketing to large audiences for years, but it has always been in person, on stage. This is the first time I am doing a webinar and I was surprised at how effective webinars can be.
It took me around 10 minutes to get adjusted to speaking in front of a webcam, but once I started seeing some questions and responses, I got into the flow!
Digital Vidya: Please share top 3-5 takeaways from the Webinar you led for our community.
Deepak: Many people are unaware how to get started with inbound marketing. Here are some takeaways:
Do personal branding. Start a blog and write about what you know. Do inbound marketing for your personal brand like I do at DigitalDeepak.com
Start learning about companies that do inbound marketing well. You can also write about it.
Read books and articles about Inbound Marketing.
Almost all the inbound marketing tools that I mentioned in the seminar have a free trial option. Go ahead and try them all. Experiment with it and write about it.
Read, Think, Do, Write. Repeat! That’s the only way to become an expert in any field.
Digital Vidya: Do you have any suggestions for us to further increase the value of our Digital Marketing Webinars for our community?
Actively creating and sending content to participants is difficult. And you very well know that content marketing is important. I would suggest that you can create a set of 10 lessons in each topic and start drip marketing for the people who opt-in. It will keep them engaged for a long time without manual human effort.
Also you can start a public forum on Digital Marketing. This could be a place where anyone can come, register themselves and discuss on digital marketing. It is not easy to grow and maintain a forum, but if a company like Digital Vidya cannot do it, who else can? This will get more participants for your webinars.
Digital Vidya: Would you like to share few words about the work we are doing at Digital Vidya?
Deepak:
Digital Vidya is the leader when it comes to digital marketing training in India. You are helping the industry grow. Everyone in the digital marketing field including consultants, professionals, SaaS companies and service companies will gain because you expanding the digital marketing ecosystem. I can envision that Digital Vidya will become a billion dollar brand someday! And I am proud to be associated with your brand.
The post Interview With Deepak Kanakaraju Digital Marketing Consultant, Blogger, Entrepreneur appeared first on Digital Vidya.