Pause. Think. Re-start.

Pause. Think. Re-start...

Three different words; however if brought together and put to practice can change lives for better. Wondering why... let me share a small story. I travel to office by local train. Every day while returning from office, I walk for a kilometer from my office to the train station. Man! I walk fast, and that’s a routine. It is only one day that my colleague accompanied me and took a turn on a street that I discovered was a short cut to the station. Over the next couple of days, I realized that I can save about 3 minutes if I take the short cut. It is then that it struck me...why is it that we keep running in our lives without really thinking. My sole aim was to catch the earliest train. I was so obsessed with the route I followed that all I cared about was walking faster. I never paused to think if there is an alternative route.  

And that’s where I think this is a powerful combination… Pause. Think. Re-start. 

We get so used to the routine or a single way of doing things that we forget to pause and think out of the box and then we complain of monotony and boredom. A lot of us crib about our jobs or the sales figures or our marriage. Whatever be your problem, these are all symptom of deficiency of vitamin P, T & RJ. 

When is a right time to pause… at times there are visible and obvious cracks and at times, we need to dwell deeper to identify them. The visible ones are those where we complain. The deeper ones are those where others complain. In either case, ask yourself and think are you working in the right direction. 

For example, you are not getting sales. May be you are not targeting the low hanging fruits to begin with or you are targeting the wrong prospects or you are not understanding their real concern and addressing them. Instead you are probably talking what you have with you and not what they want. It could be an issue of positioning it differently. 

Similarly in your marriage, pause and think what is killing the spark. Identify her expectations, what is it that she likes and dislikes about you? What is it that brings a smile on her face? Instead of expecting her to make changes, take the initiative to find what change she expects from you. Make the move my friend. Do a few things the way she likes it and see the difference. Do something differently. For instance, we use social media to build our social network, use it to re-build your marriage. We are all on FB these days, find out what has she liked or what she is discussing… mind you, don’t stalk her there. Do it to know what she likes that you don’t know. Take eating out as an example. Find out if there is any restaurant she has liked or commented or following. For a change, take her there. Once you do so, look at the difference it will make to her. You will immediately see the glow and surprise on her face. There are many such small things you can do to bring back the spark. All you need to do is pause a little, think over and then re-start. 

I’m telling you this principal applies to all walks of life and situations… identify yours, apply it and see the difference for yourself.

Advertising alone is not the answer to all sales problems

Some brands often commit the mistake of thinking that advertising heavily or anyhow will solve their problems. However, what they forget is that aggressive advertising alone does not suffice. Let us take the example of Quikr. Currently, Quikr is advertising heavily in the hope that it will draw mileage from the IPL fever. Personally, I find it one of the most meaningless ad campaigns in recent times. The campaign is picking on those players who did not have any takers in the IPL auction. It is claiming that if the same player was a commodity and put up on Quikr for sale, it would have sold easily and quickly. Need I say how disgraceful an ad it is and how desperate an attempt it is to regain its market share?

What Quikr needs to understand is that it is not advertising, rather meaningless advertising that will help it. It is the product itself that will fetch it the much needed customer traction. While we talk of Quikr, it is imperative that we talk of its nearest competitor, Olx that might soon surpass it. 

Let’s draw a little comparison between the two.

In India, Olx was launched in 2006 whereas Quikr in 2008. However, Olx re-positioned itself in 2010 with a massive ad campaign – “Bech De” promoting the idea of selling old items in a hassle-free manner.

Performance

·         User base – Quikr currently has 24 million visitors each month whereas exact stats of Olx are not available. However, the company claimed to have 8 million visitors per month a year ago – 3 times more than what it had in 2010

·         Search results – For a two-wheeler (both motorcycle and scooter) in Mumbai: Quikr – 4,132 results; OLX – 11,919 results

·         Relevance of results – Both sites offer a search bar on the top. On both sites, one can filter the results on various parameters; however Olx offers more criteria that further helps in deriving more relevant results

·         Mobile Apps – Google Play as of May 10: Quikr – 4.1 (with 1,652 reviews) and around 500,000 installs in the past 30 days; Olx – 4.3 (with 15,870 ratings) and around 1,000,000 installs in the past 30 days

There are more parameters on which Olx appears to be performing better. However the point is not who is performing better, but why it is performing better. At this stage, you may also note that my intent here is not to prove one better over the other. Olx and Quikr are mere examples. The key message I’m trying to communicate here is that aggressive advertising alone does not solve all sales related issues. There are many other factors that contribute to increase of market share. Continuing with the same example, let me tell you why I think Olx is better and poised to overtake Quikr.

Reasons for better performance of Olx

·         Better user interface – it is much easier to post an ad on Olx than Quikr

·         Instant gratification – as soon you submit your ad, you can actually view the ad, which gives you an immediate sense of gratification and something tangible to see, whereas on Quikr, you wonder where your ad is. You have to navigate to identify your ad

·         Premium services – Quikr constantly pokes you to subscribe to its premium services during and after the posting process; which quite frankly is annoying for the seller as well as the buyer

·         Junk listing – while searching for ad listings on Quikr, one often observes a long list of premium ads on the top of the page. This long list is generally of premium ads by traders of new commodities than actual sellers of used commodities. Need I say how annoying it is to find traders on a site wherein you are looking for real sellers of used commodities?

·         Chronological listing of ads – another downside of the premium services is old ads featuring on the top of the list, thereby leading to more confusion than clarity on Quikr. Olx on the other hand has little such ads and mainly maintains the chronological order of ad listings

There would definitely be more reasons than the ones mentioned above behind the success of Olx. However as mentioned above, the Quikr – Olx examples only goes on to prove that you need something much more than mere aggressive advertising to re-gain your share or develop it. Olx identified the challenges, consumers were facing with Quikr. It simply worked on those and ensured its consumers do not face the challenges and re-launched itself with a decent ad campaign. The results are for all to see.

As marketers, we need to see what is it about our product that can help the consumers accept it. Ask your product team, what specific features offer a better value to the consumer that the competition doesn’t. Once that is identified, developed and implemented, position it with a great meaningful campaign. That is when advertising will help you address challenges and achieve results.