Internet principles to build a brand online – Neeraj Gupta, Director, Sales and Operations, Google India

Mr. Neeraj Gupta – Director, Sales and Operations, Google India

Here are some internet principles that one should keep in mind when one think of business, product & market. When the internet started a few years ago, we could not imagine that there would be around 150 million internet subscribers in India.  That does not mean that the other mediums of marketing are losing their grip. India is one of the few countries where print media still plays an important role unlikely in other countries like US.

The first principle of Internet is: Use the unprecedented scale of internet.  Facebook has over a billion users,  Youtube has over 800 million users.  The reach through this scale is amazing. This medium allows SMEs to reach out to people of different backgrounds. Lady Gaga was a brand that was built on internet in a small period of time. One of the rare and interesting example is Psy & his gangnam style which has hit over a billion views in less than a few months of launch and made his style of dance, which was only available & popular in Korea reach across the world in just few months engaging more that million people and creating a revenue source for the artist & the publisher in very quick period of time.

How many of your remember using Google 10 years ago? How many changes have happened in the Google organic search in past 1 year?  We make 2 changes on an average every day to the algorithm and it is on the basis of anticipation which you want as users. How do you use internet medium for your success depends on you and we try to personalize internet for every user as much as we can. It is about how you want to be found on internet and what are you going to do about it.

We talked about TV as a medium for marketing. According to me it the most distributed medium of media but at the same time the dumbest piece of media today, it does not know what’s your mood at a particular moment & it does not know what you want to see, in short it is not customized.  The new medium today is the Internet and YouTube has a large share of it.

Create a “wow factor” for your consumers. For eg. There has been tremendous innovation in pizza delivery process in past few years from delivering pizza in 30 minutes to pizza delivery fridge magnet. Innovation in business process keeping them in sync with the customer need is the need of  the hour.

The next principle is Mobile First. There are about 2 million mobile devices today. Mobile is catching on and if you are not thinking ‘Mobile First’ then you are missing on a lot of things. More that 50% of India connect to the internet through mobile so if you are thinking about the internet and not mobile then you are thinking about yesterday and not tomorrow.

The next principle is that everything is getting online. Today we don’t just have online shops but shops are going online now. It is also the inside of your store that is online in the most innovative means.  We now have people online with whom we can do live conversations and who can assist us to get a better idea of the product.

Internet is an amazing medium to develop a brand online, it all depends on you how you want to use it customizing it according to your business needs.

The above article is an excerpt from the speech delivered by Mr. Neeraj Gupta – Director, Sales and Operations, Google India at AIMA’s World Marketing Congress which was held in February 2013.