Author: Sanjay Mehta

Few people in the advertising and marketing ecosystem are better equipped than Sanjay Mehta to lead this online Masterclass on Digital Transformation. In our discussions with him, we were inspired to ask Sanjay Mehta to formulate a three-part series aimed at motivating founders and owners of mid-sized businesses in India to embrace digital transformation. 

 

While Digital Transformation is a much-touted (and often incorrectly used) buzzword in Indian business circles, Sanjay Mehta’s series highlights the real growth potential that comes with the right retooling. This insightful series, ‘Digital Transformation 1-2-3 with Sanjay Mehta’, will culminate in a Zoom-based webinar on Wednesday, August 7, at 3 pm IST. The webinar is exclusive to 40 professionals on a first-come, first-served basis.

 

Masterclass #1: July 17, 2024 – Boards and Founders need to see “outside the box” for the multiplier effect (published last week. Link: https://www.mxmindia.com/advertising/digital-transformation-1-2-3-with-sanjay-mehta-part-1/)

Masterclass #2: Today, July 24, 2024 – Exploiting Opportunities, Overcoming Challenges

Masterclass #3: July 31, 2024 – The Specific Nature of the Beast

Masterclass #4: August 7, 2024 – Live webinar (Registration will open on July 31)

 

By Sanjay Mehta 

 

Exploiting Opportunities, Overcoming Challenges 

In the first part of this three-part set of articles, we saw that there are many growth opportunities for a company, not just ordinary regular growth, but potential growth multipliers, and within the company, the skills may be limited, to exploit all of those. The idea then being that companies, and Boards and Founders should be open to think outside the box and reach beyond and outside their current set of directors or leaders, to find the right help to enable them to crack these growth multipliers.

 

When we think around the larger aspect of generating growth, it is about increasing revenues increasing profits.

 

Breaking it down further, increasing revenues could include:

• Getting more customers to buy
• Getting existing customers to buy more frequently
• Getting existing customers to increase their average spends each time they buy
• Increasing product lines / categories
• Increasing distribution channels
• Increasing geographical reach
• Getting new kinds of customers – some new cohorts
• etc.

 

Likewise, increasing profits could include:

• Reducing cost of new customer acquisition
• Generating repeat sales from existing customers, preferably unaided or at least additional cost
• This could then include remarketing, marketing automation, CRM being done well
• Ensuring against loss of customers, or basically enhancing lifetime value of an acquired customer, so that you can keep generating revenue from that customer
• Ensuring a good brand reputation so that a miss there does not cost sharp drop in customers and transactions
• If people are a key to your success, ensuring a good employer reputation, which translates to long-term and good employees, and reducing cost of hiring good new talent
• Reducing all other costs and expenses in general, to improve profits
• Using tech solutions for internal processes to enhance productivity and efficiency
• Using AI tools to get significant improvements in processes and efficiencies

 

These bullets do not indicate any kind of exhaustive and comprehensive lists here. There could be many more things that one could think of generically, and many others that one could think of, specifically for a certain business.

 

However, what the list indicates is that one can take each of these bullet points, examine either the opportunity that can be exploited and converted into a growth multiplier, OR in case there is a weak spot, then it may be seen to be a challenge and work to overcome the same.

 

Let’s look at an example from the revenue side. Say, you are selling a product which in a way, has an end life, and then a new one must be purchased. You could be speaking of printer cartridges or milk bottles or a car battery or a whey protein or whatever. In all such cases, either you exhaust the content and need more, or there is an end of life, and then you need to replace the product. Now, as a seller, you may have the knowledge of a buyer in as much as what specific SKU they are purchasing, what is the likely life of that, what date it’s been purchased on, etc.

 

Once it approaches for the time to buy again, the customer is up for grabs. Open to be acquired by your competitor, as loyalty pull may not be that strong. But the customer is yours to lose. So, do you have a comprehensive strategy around this? Is it in place, is it working, what are the metrics to confirm the same?

 

Done well, this is a classic growth strategy as you continuously increase the lifetime value of the customer, you get more sales without corresponding cost of acquiring a customer, and your new customer acquisitions continuously grow your base of customers.

 

Do you have the skills and expertise to think through the strategy to make this happen, and then the necessary technical support to execute this and the ability to measure the ROI on this effort?

 

Let’s look at a second case, which may be in challenges. And if not addressed, it could be hurting your growth and your revenues.

 

Let’s consider the matter of your online reputation. This can be manifested by conversations on social media, mentioning your brand. It could also manifest as reviews on Google, reviews on Amazon and other marketplaces, that people have put. If you are an employer and people are a key, the reviews on HR portals like Glassdoor become crucial, etc. I have often seen people not taking these with much seriousness. When people shop on Amazon, your rating and review can make a difference between a customer buying your product or your competitor’s. Over time, this factor alone can make a big difference to your sales. Likewise, if there is a poor mention of your company on Glassdoor, that could be the reason that good talent is not joining you. And so on.

 

Finally, all those factors play on your growth – of revenues or profits.

 

Again, as a company, are you handling these and more? Who’s looking at the larger opportunity grid? And the challenge grid? Who is prioritising what you need to be doing from amongst those items? And then, who is executing and monitoring progress?

 

Here again, for the building out of the opportunity and challenge matrices, in case in-house expertise is not available, it goes back to the Part 1 – that think outside the box, and get experts from outside the current base, bring them in to work closely with the Board or with the Founder etc.

 

Next week (Wednesday, July 31, 2024): Masterclass #3: The Specific Nature of the Beast

 

Sanjay Mehta is one of the pioneers in the digital world in India, having founded and spearheaded several companies: HomeIndia, Mirum (earlier SocialWavelength before WPP took it over) to name a few. He is also an author and commentator on all things digital, and beyond. He is an investor, mentor and also helps organisations – large and small – in their process of digital transformation.

He tweets @sm63. Linkedin.com/in/spmehta