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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.
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.
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.