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Ravindra Datar

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Ravindra Datar

Vice President and Marketing Head at TRIMAX

Trimax IT Infrastructure and Services Limited

Ravindra Datar is a member of:

Importance of On line marketing

The "Digital Marketing" channel is now a must-have for B2B as well as B2C products and services. It cannot fully replace the off-line marketing channels but has become an avenue for visibility that marketers cannot avoid. However, it may not be of value to have a separate online marketing strategy in isolation from the offline marketing strategy. There has to be an integrated marketing strategy that combines the best of both online and offline channels in synch with each other to deliver superlative results.

Branding

Branding is of prime importance in all markets, be it commodity or specialty products or services. Brand visibility drives customers to you, after which it is upto you to leverage the visibility and deliver to expectations to establish credibility and a positive reputation.

Future trend

There is a strong and growing preference for Digital Marketing channels from both the buyer and provider sides due to the sheer convenience factor. Social and professional media are gaining high importance in B2C as well as B2B products and services marketing.However in some cases I have seen my offline campaigns as simple as direct paper mailers work much more effectively than online marketing in B2B space due to the "digital fatigue" of most recipients and also dwindling volumes of paper communication that makes a well designed paper communication stand out and get noticed.

Suggestions to aspirants

To be able to do effective marketing, you need to establish and understand the definition of your customer first in as much detail as possible. Then understand your company's offerings in detail and establish the value that the target customer would get from the offerings. Identify the channels the target customer uses to get decision-support information on matters concerning the value your offering claims to deliver. Use these channels, digital and offline judiciously and in an integrated manner to reach out to the customer in a value-focused, short, crisp and direct communication.

Growth Prospect in marketing

Growth in any career stream depends on value delivered to the organization. In case of marketing this value is measured tangibly and intangibly. One good measure of measuring effectiveness of marketing is measuring how many new leads came out of marketing efforts that were not coming earlier.

Marketing

Consider a war situation. There is the ordnance factory that creates and procures weapons and armaments and there is the field force of army, navy and the airforce that delivers these weapons and armaments to the targets effectively to achieve war objectives. There has to be someone in between these two sides that continuously monitors war zone scenarios, accurately forecasts further developments in scenarios, identifies key targets to be taken out, informs the ordnance factory to make suitable weapons available for the field force to be able to effectively achieve their mission goals, informs the field force about the targets and synchronizes the entire effort to ensure the war is won. Marketing plays this role in a corporate set-up, where field force is the sales and distribution channels and ordnance factory is the production / delivery function.

Recommended Courses and Certification

While an MBA has now become a hygiene factor, I believe more than any certification, the ability of a person to quickly assimilate knowledge of the function and start delivering results is most important.

Role in an organization

Marketing has the key roles of:
1. getting market and competitive intelligence and feeding it to the stake-holders within the organization, typically the corporate leadership, sales force, production / delivery engine, HR function and finance function.
2. Developing market scenarios and how customer / buyer behaviour is likely to be changing in these changing scenarios.
3. Create and align messaging of offerings to changing value expectations of the customers.
4. Potentially help change and align the offerings portfolio to align better with changing customer needs. Either change the offerings portfolio or change the market focus to where the existing portfolio would be in demand.
5. Drive visibility, positioning and positive, value-based reputation of the corporate brand.
6. Create pull / demand for the organizations offerings in the market.
7. Identify and develop visibility and demand generation channels and opportunities.
8. Develop compelling messaging and collaterals

Importance of sales

The sales function is the team that actually gets the money into the company that pays all the organizations expenses and salaries. To that extent it is a KEY function in any organization, more so in a B2B environment. Everything that the organization does is to increase money inflow and reduce money outflow for profitable business growth. Sales takes care of the "increase money inflow part".

Growth

Marketing as a function is largely misunderstood as a design and content factory in B2B set up and PR & communications engine in the B2C set up in most organizations. Marketing is actually a function with much more potential than these activities which are also key functions within Marketing. In organizations that I worked in, my effort has always been to first deliver to exceed their existing expectations and then raise the expectations bar towards a more strategic direction. I have been reasonably successful in achieving that in most organizations I worked at.

Motivating

Fortunately I never faced a situation where my team "lost all their hopes". However to keep my team motivated, I explain to them that they are not working for me or for the organization. They are working for their own professional growth, which has to be aligned with the business needs of the organization that pays them their salary. Everything they do within the organization should reflect their competence, existing and growing, to further strengthen their own professional standing in their careers. The team usually gives their best when this angle is explained clearly and all that remains later is to align their zeal to grow as professionals with the organizational needs.

Achieving Targets

Key things I help the sales force with are:
1. market, competitive and account intelligence
2. value-focused collateral to help them position the offerings more impressively
3. air-cover in the target market by way of visibility and positioning campaigns through online and offline media
4. story-boarding a compelling pitch and providing aligned AV and collateral support to help the sales persons position impressively in case of large deals
5. constantly listen to the sales person's observations on the market since they have their feet and eyes and ears to the ground in the course of their daily jobs and have access to insights and information I can never have sitting inside the office or even listening to industry experts.

Positioning the product

In today's low attention span markets, I prefer to position my offerings with an "outside in" perspective highlighting benefits received by customers and users.

Importance of STP

It is not just important, it is key to marketing success.

Future prospect

I am already a CMO and may not necessarily look for the CEO position which requires much different skills sets and wider capabilities than the marketing function. After enough years in the marketing profession I look forward to getting into Marketing Consulting to help organizations benefit from whatever I have gained by way of experience and insights through my career that has so far cut across a large Indian research firm, an American MNC research and advisory firm, a large Indian public sector global IT & BPO service provider, a small Indian Public sector global IT & BPO service provider, a privately held global KPO provider and a mid-size Indian, and India focused privately held IT infrastructure services and cloud provider.