Archives March 2021

We have seen in the last part how there are different types of digital marketing solutions available n the market which can be used .Now lets see how a MSME entrepreneur like Sharath can benefit from it

He can create a Google Ads or Facebook ad account ,Normally he  can associate existing Google account or Facebook account to the Ad accounts itself .Lets start with Google and for that he needs to go to Ads.google.com and sign in

Then he needs to start to identify different things like  who are his potential audience for which Google will ask an important question as shown below

So by answering this question he can define the purpose of his campaign

There are different options that Google gives as listed below ,He can choose what is appropriate for his business

Then he will get the below screen from where he can chose his budget .This is one of the most important features in Google ads ,that user can pre-define how much budget he wants to allocate to the campaign and based on that start his campaign

Then  there are different types of Ad  like Text Ad or Image Ad or video Ad .If he chooses Text Ad then listed below are his options

There  have 300 potentially visible characters (3 headlines, 2 descriptions, and URL path) to encourage a user click on your ad.

Character Limits

Headline 1: 30

Headline 2: 30

Headline 3: 30

Description 1: 90

Description 2: 90

Path 1: 15

Path 2: 15

Then You have 300 potentially visible characters (3 headlines, 2 descriptions, and URL path) to encourage a user click on your ad.

Character Limits

Headline 1: 30

Headline 2: 30

Headline 3: 30

Description 1: 90

Description 2: 90

Path 1: 15

Path 2: 15

Then there are Ad extensions which is nice feature to have as it enhances the Ad  .Some of the examples are

Sitelink – Link customers directly to areas of your website

Callout – Text based links to highlight benefits

Location – Encourages people to visit a brick and mortar business

Call – Allows people to call directly from your ad

Price – Shows the price of products or services

Promotion Extensions – Highlight promotions on your site.

So all  or some of these extensions can be made use of to improve the quality of the Ad and to make sure that main purpose of the Ad i.e.  the customer notices the ad and whatever call to action is undertaken by the customer .

Next part if very important when the Advertiser picks the Keywords .This is very important because when potential customers search for some thing  then relevant Ads need to shown . The goal when picking keywords is to choose terms that you think people will search for when they’re looking online for what you offer. In addition, you want your keywords to be as relevant as possible to the ad they trigger and to the landing page people will arrive at if they click that ad.

To help you get started, Google Ads comes with a free tool called the Keyword Planner, which can generate a sample list of keywords for your campaigns. The Keyword Planner can also help you estimate how much to bid on a particular keyword so your ad shows up in search results — this can give you an idea about whether certain keywords are too expensive for you to bid on, and which will fit within your budget. This is the flexibility that is unique to digital marketing ,can pick and choose the budget

Next thing would be Keyword match type  ,it could be any one  of the below

Broad Match

Phrase Match

Exact  Match

Each of these have specific uses and we shall go through them

Broad match: The “broad match” setting shows your ad for searches that contain your keywords in any order, and for related terms

Phrase Match: This option shows your ad for searches that contain your exact keyword, or for searches that contain your exact keyword plus words before or after it

Exact Match: When you choose exact match, your ad will only show if someone searches for the exact word or phrase you choose

There are also other type of matches like Negative match through which  match option allows you to exclude undesirable words or phrases from triggering your ad, weeding out irrelevant traffic.

Then the next step would be to setup a landing page i.e. when the customer or audience would land once they click on the ad .This needs to be configured

Once all this is done  ad can go live . In next part we shall see one of the biggest advantages of Digital marketing where target audience is defined .This is one of the biggest advantages of digital marketing due to which Ads will reach only specific target audience and not all audience

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Digital marketing is the new and dynamic way of marketing .It is the future of marketing .Digital marketing offers several low cost options specifically tailored at specific audience .Here lets look at why digital marketing is best way to market especially when you are  from the MSME sector

As we have seen from Sharath’s example he is very confident of the quality of his product and wants to expand his market and he is looking at various options

In the days gone by Sharath would have made paper leafs and put it amidst the newspaper in hope that when people read newspaper in that locality they would come to know about his product and contact him.This is tried and tested method  and this  method is certainly cost effective and cheap and can still be tried by Sharath. However there are some disadvantages .

These days the popularity of newspapers in slightly decreasing so in quite few households they are not buying newspaper itself .Then even if they buy the newspaper some people might not react very favorably to paper leafs i.e. may not take it very seriously especially if he wants to market his brand as premium brand .

Also he needs  to be prepared for very low conversion ratio i.e. out of many paper leafs he sends, a very low percentage of people will enquire and certainly  in that lesser number will buy.So he needs to generate large number of enquires for his sales to rise

Next option would be to advertise in local radio stations and regional television channels then he would obviously get larger audience but they don’t come cheap and for Sharath currently the finances is limited and would be a challenge .

So here is where Digital marketing is very useful for MSME’s .Now the Digital penetration is increasing

Digital marketing can be done in different ways placing Ads in Google,Facebook,Instagram or Twitter ,but more importantly Ads can be placed targeting the exact people and giving  them relevant message .

For example Google ads can be run targeting people specifically of particular demography and location .Also More importantly Ads can placed when people type a specific search and next to it they see ads so only relevant people are seeing the ads .

There are many features in Google Ads like Pay per click where Advertisers pay only when the viewer clicks on the Ad or the advertiser can choose Clicks per impression so the money is always well spend .Also Google Ads has different formats like Search campaign where mostly Text based Ads are placed next to relevant search .Another type is display Ads where visually appealing Ads are placed mostly to create brand awareness .Yet another type of campaign is video campaign where Video Ads can be shown when people view videos mostly on Youtube.

Apart from this there are also type of Ads like Shopping Ads where any Retailer who is looking to sell his company’s inventory might be interested in this type of Ads.

Ads from the platform can span across other channels too, including YouTube, Blogger, and Google Display Network.

Over time, Google Ads will also help you analyze and improve those ads to reach more people so your business can hit all of your paid campaign goals

There are many advantages of Google Ads like

Google Ads have a click-through rate of nearly 8%.

Display ads yield 180 million impressions each month.

For users who are ready to buy, paid ads on Google get 65% of the clicks.

43% of customers buy something they’ve seen on a YouTube ad

So how will this help Sharath market  his goods and why should Sharath choose Digital marketing rather conventional marketing

 

In this part we shall look at some customizations that DEEP i.e. Digital  Enterprise engagement platform of Sixth Circle technologies offers to MSME

We have observed earlier that these solutions are based on Microservices architecture .The unique characteristic of Microservices Architecture  is that each module is independent of the overall service and can be scaled up and modified as per the requirements .

Now lets go back to Sharath’s case .As discussed before Sharath has a small company and he wants to have digital transformation but he finds the cost exorbitant and many  of the features unnecessary at this point of time So here is where DEEP comes into the picture

DEEP is based on microservices architecture so initially Sharath can choose anything that he needs and then scale up.

For example in financial and accounting module initially Sharath can choose only the features that he requires for his current requirements like general ledger and later on can scale up to other features when he expands his business

Similarly for supply chain management Sharath can choose basic services like inventory management and order management for his current needs and later on scale up to other requirements like Warehouse management and other features when he expands his business

DEEP can be customized and integrated onto any platform so people like Sharath can get all the benefits that he needs and also  as his business develops and grows he can keep adding more features.

Another important thing is the cost ,Already we have seen that the prices of these solutions are very exorbitant and some one like Sharath who has capital constraints will be hard pressed to raise funds for these solutions

DEEP can be offered at Rs 99/- per month for basic services and Rs199/-per month which means that for people like Sharath  it will not be a burden and they can join the digital revolution and enhance their productivity and improve their sales which will ultimately improve their bottomline and profits

DEEP will act as the bridge that will bring the next set of people into the digital mainstream

In this Series lets look Enterprise resource Planning systems and how people like Sharath can benefit from it

ERP systems are used to give companies the ability to see business processes from a single integrated view. Data used on ERP systems are maintained through a common database that can track data on real time. An ERP system is commonly used to track business resources, such as materials, inventory, production capacity and liquidity, as well as business commitments such as customer orders and payroll.

ERP systems connect to real–time data and transaction data in a variety of ways. These systems are typically configured by systems integrators, who bring unique knowledge on process, equipment, and vendor solutions

Different types of ERP’s are there which cater to different functionalities like

Financial Accounting

Human resource management

Supply Chain Management

Customer relationship management

So we can observe that there are different types of ERP and each of them offer solutions in their respective domain which really  gives user complete freedom to monitor but all of them cater to big companies who have large capacities .Now as we  have observed before Sharath has relatively small requirements and Implementing ERP typically requires changes in existing business processes some thing that people like Sharath cant afford .

Does it mean Small and medium  industries should not  have ERP like solutions for their Supply chain management ,HR and marketing needs

And what about cost can Sharath really afford these expensive solutions Lets look at these in next part

In the last blog we saw the pain points that an entrepreneur has to endure .There is help at hand in the form of DEEP by Sixth circle technologies .DEEP is Digital Enterprises Engagement Platform  for MSME .Lets see the salient features of DEEP and how it can be beneficial for people like Sharath

DEEP is built on the Microservices architecture  which means that itis an architectural development style that allows building applications as a collection of small autonomous services developed for a business domain. It is a variant of structural style architecture that helps arrange applications as a loosely coupled service collection. The Microservice Architecture contains fine-grained services and lightweight protocols.

The Characterisctics of Microservices Architecture

• Organized around business capabilities
• Smart end points
• Independent Governance
• Independent Technical stack
• Independent Deployment
• Improved Fault isolation
• Consistency of data
• Customer first

Below is an image that illustrates how Microservices functions

We can see from above diagram how through different browsers an online shopping service can be accessed .Then website has different sections like Accounts ,products Carts and orders .What we can observe here is that each of the sub sections is developed independently  .This is the single biggest advantage of Microservice architecture compared to Monolithic architecture .Also each section can be scaled up independently depending on the requirement .

Develop each function of the application as an autonomous, independently-running microservice. These usually run in a container on a cloud server. Each microservice answers to a single function – like search, shipping, payment, accounting, payroll, etc as shown above

Given below is an illustration of how UBER used microservices very  effectively

We can clearly observe that different modules is working independently and yet interconnected .Any of the Modules can be changed or modified without changing and disturbing the entire system

Now  how will this Microservices architecture help an entrepreneur like Sharath Stay tuned to find out

Sharath  has Small Scale company which manufactures Agarbhathi’s or incandescent sticks for which  he employs about 30 woman .These woman are employed for rolling the sticks and packing the sticks .For these woman this job is very important as it provides them a source of income and help improves their living standards .Sharath is very confident of the quality of his products and wants to expand his business by selling it on  Platforms like Amazon and even exporting it to other countries .

Since He started his business most of the accounting work has been done manually by an executive and Sharath only relies on word to mouth publicity for his products .Also he needs to maintain an inventory database to know how much inventory he needs to maintain  since during festivals and other special occasions when  the demand rises .Also he needs to file his returns and get input credit on GST.

Sharath has been searching the internet for customized solution for his needs but he finds that many of them are very exorbitant .A typical ERP solution costs Rs 30,000/- per year and above and then typical  accounting software which  might cost Rs 15000/- per year and then if he wants a professional website that could cost him about 10k as one time charge and if we are going to add professional email that would cost another 2k .We have not even started to consider him having Mobile App or taking help of Digital marketing solutions to  market his products in the digital era

Now obviously Sharath will also have other expenses like paying salary to his employees and buying raw materials etc. He will also have indirect expenses like Electricity so how can Sharath really afford these costly solutions .

Also Can Sharath afford time on filing his returns every year ,he rather spend that time with his family

Watch out for next edition where we discuss solutions to these pain points

The Small and medium Industries in India is a  huge sector which contributes 8% to India’s GDP and provides employment  to lakhs of people .In recent years this sector has faced many  challenges like competition from China  and then most notably the COVID-19   pandemic and the subsequent  lockdown which brought about set of challenges which was never experienced before and there was no reference point in recent history as to how to overcome them .So many MSME owners have had to unlearn old ways of doing business and adopt to the ‘New normal’

Some of the challenges that the MSME have had, are not technology specific like import cost and availability of raw material but many of them are indeed technology specific. We are truly in the smartphone era in which content is king and content drives the business forward and it would be good for MSME to use platforms like digital marketing to advertise their products to anyone in the world in cost effective manner  and have robust IT infrastructure which includes databases through which they can manage the inventories and get in touch with other suppliers  around the globe .

Having the Robust and reliable IT infrastructure is basic requirement for any MSME ,however it might not be very affordable to buy and maintain Servers for MSME since they don’t have the necessary competence to manage them and it will definitely be an additional cost which they can ill afford, so they can reach out to   Six Circle technologies which has proven expertise in providing  range of solutions in both Web and Mobile so that they can concentrate on delivering value to their customers.

Another aspect of Digital solutions is digital marketing .Compared legacy marketing like Print ,Television and Radio  the new age marketing needs to precise and concise since the attention span of people has become very short these days  .So Digital marketing is  the vehicle which can deliver powerful messages directly to the audience at fraction of the cost compared to Television and Print. In Digital marketing the Ads can be tailored to specific demographics ,interests and categories which other mediums like Television and print is not able to do hence it huge saving for companies since they can target only those audience who they would like to target using banners and videos .Six circle technologies has the necessary expertise in digital marketing to help MSME reach out and advertise to their audience so MSME should get in touch with Six circle technologies for their marketing requirements