afaqs! Campus: Decoding the internet, mobile marketing, and its various tools

The two-day afaqs! Campus workshop for the students of Faculty of Management Studies decoded the internet and its various tools, and laid bare the tricks that they would need to be a cutting edge marketer in the near future.

The trainer of the afaqs! Campus workshop, Kamal Krishna, marketer and custodian of bestylish.com, was an appropriate guide and mentor. Krishna heads marketing at bestylish.com, which is India's largest shoe store. As part of the launch team, he helped the brand become a popular Indian e-commerce entity in less than a year of its operations.

Krishna, who started the proceedings of the day, gave the audience an exercise, wherein they were required to type on their mobile handsets their names, the companies they would like to work with, and a challenge they think the company faces, and thereafter, message it to him. After receiving all the messages, Krishna took them up one by one and gave the best possible solutions. Through this exercise, he met two purposes. First, he broke the ice with the audience, and second, through the innovative solutions, he triggered in their minds the latent potential of digital media.

While discussing about how important customer service has become, and how user-friendly brands need to be, he highlighted various examples. Talking about innovative marketing techniques, he said that they not only build a brand's image, but also help engage the consumers at a more intimate level.

Starting at a very basic level, he guided the participants on the steps to create a blog and a website. Next, he explained the various types of advertisements on a website and how they are made. Through the discourse, he also simplified technical terms like cost per click (CPC), cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM), and content management system (CMS).

After the explanation, the participants were divided into groups and were asked to create an innovative ad for a website of a fruit juice brand.

The second day of the workshop dealt with search engine marketing, search engine optimisation, and mobile marketing. Technical concepts and jargons like organic and paid search, heat maps, click through rate (CTR), and conversion rate were explained and demystified with relevant examples and exercises.

Search engine optimisation was explained threadbare, with the help of easy to understand content and relevant tricks pertaining to keyword density, keyword phrasing, and inbound and outbound link referrals. After explaining search engine marketing and search engine advertising, Krishna spoke about mobile as the most important screen for communication and marketing.

Talking about the plethora of marketing opportunities offered by mobile as a medium, he spoke about m-commerce, couponing, SMS, and MMS marketing, proximity or location-based marketing, Bluetooth marketing, and device customisation.

Interspersing learning with its application, the trainer forced the attendees to put their grey matter at work when he gave an exercise to integrate mobile with traditional media to market a brand in the best possible manner.

Concluding the session with analytics and measurement, the trainer ensured that there was not a single dull moment in the course of the workshop by distributing exciting goodies and e-vouchers for every correct answer given.

Talking about analytics, Krishna opined that every brand site should analyse who its visitor is, where he/she is coming from, and what they are looking for. Explaining measurement in-depth, he took Google and Facebook Analytics as examples and explained them with relevant examples and live usage.