Mantra of Marketing

It is not about new ways of marketing and promotion , it is about categorising old ways
Must Use them : IF one advertiser which you should use always and at any cost , that is your customer . There are very few businesses which use their customers as their brand ambassador. I feel rather then investing a million dollar on a big celebrity , it will be worth more to invest 1 million dollar on 10,000 customers and give them some kind of benefit to advertise for you.
Customer must be used to promote your product as they are the one who can convey the message with the most credibility to other likeminded people . A customer can even break another persons brand loyalty and bring him to your shop . I have seen this many times in youth and teenage group where they are mostly influenced by people walking around them.

Can’t do without them : In todays world one thing you simply can not do without and that is internet . It is redundant to say how important is net for your products advertising and promotion. Social networking sites like orkut , facebook and linkdln are creating hypes they give you power of reaching to thousands of people , categorize them on the basis of different parameters and target them by writing just one message. That’s the power of technology and innovation which simply can not be ignored.
Other medium like blogs , ads in websites and search engines also provide similar value in almost insignificant cost.
Use them anyway : TV and newspaper are the medium which are anyway used they have become so obvious that now advertisers don’t even bother to find out how many people they are going to reach by putting their ads on these medium , they simply going for it knowing both of these medium jointly penetrate more then 90% of the population. So next time you decide to advertise a product don’t waste your time thinking how many people will you reach by TV,Radio and newspaper . Everyone can be reached by them and everything can be sold using them.
Don’t Go Alone : Almost every business needs partners and suppliers , one must also try to arrange mutual cooperation with partners to promote each others product . Remember how intel become a brand by advertising on PCs with “intel inside” logo , that was a very smart move and before that no one cared much about internal processor of the system , what mattered was the name of the assembler or manufacturer of the laptops or PCs but this advertisement generated the kind of awareness which made intel a strong brand .
CoCreate Value : Once the business is in comfortable zone , it is time to give something back to society , environment and planet , infect now there is concept of triple bottom ,where even the social activities and values generated by these activities are also added in balance sheet , ITC is one of the few which have already started doing it. So if you are in associated with any NGO then it can be promoted on your websites and similarly your product can be listed in NGOs website . Its all about being in the club of mutual admirers after all :)

Realizing the power of Small ( and medium enterprises)

In most economies, smaller enterprises greater in number then the large corporations . some of the facts related to SMEs in the world are:
1) In the EU, SMEs comprise approximately 99% of all firms and employ between them about 65 million people.
2)China’s more than 8 million SMEs, account for 99 percent of China's total enterprise and 60 percent of the nation's industrial output and exports.
3) In India 4.5 million SMEs contribute 40% of industrial production but create 70% of industrial pollution.
4) As per the latest Microsoft-AMI Partners report, "the India SMEs are on a firm growth trajectory, with 60 per cent of PC-using businesses expecting 20 per cent growth and 16 per cent planning to add branch offices to expand operations" .

Not only are SME's seen to be the engine of employment growth but they are also responsible for driving innovation and competition. These are the businesses which later on become some of the largest empires in the world , recall the days when Infosys started with 5 man and a two BHK aprtament in Pune and went on to be the second largest software services provider in Asia. SMEs also play a major role in developing entrepreneurship and ways of diversifications.
Given the rosy picture , SMEs are the one hit hard even by minutest change in the macroeconomic conditions. They have great difficulty in obtaining captal for scaling thier operations , crossing boundaries of nation , going with technical upgradation and attracting the best talent. This all keeps these indegeneous industries shackled with thier potential locked.

The Human Identity Crisis

In last few years I have noticed that almost every one under the sun suffers from identity crisis , there are very few of us who can be themselves and hardly influenced by what others say or do , these people have only two categories , either they are mad or they are highly successfull individuals in thier fields. Every one wants to become someone else and it starts from very early stage of life , since childhood you are being told that you are not good enough , you should become like your elder brother , sister or some freinds . This comparions keeps going on in school and college and after some time rather then exploring your self you start exploring idntities and traits of others because you want to become like them . If you sing good
then probably your parents would like you to become Abhijit sawant as he prove himself somehow somwhere , I am sure that parents of Abhijit Sawant must must have asked him to become like Sonu Nigam and Parents of Sonu Nigam might have had an expectation that one day thier son would be like Kishore or Mohammad Raffi. This continues and does not have any end or beginning and strange part is this happens even when the difference between us and someone might be very little and insignificant.
Swami Vivekanand used to say in many of his lectures that only those who are brave and couragious can admire and accept themselves , Infact hindu philosphy goes beyond this , Vedas put forward the concept of "So-Aham " , " Shivo-Aham " , Brahm-o-Aham" which was to believe that you are everything , you are not a part of god but god himself because there is only one supreme power and all souls are his projection just like thier is a single sea which has many waves coming and disappearing in a span of time . With the help of this knowledge our sages and greate man were able to see unity between Universe and themselves and attain the highest level of one ness and peace. Alas we don't even know this wisdom and even if we know , it hardly impresses us because what matters today is materialsic pleasure and success with which no one can be satisfied , so one always keep on looking to someone else who "look" more satisfied and happy and behold here starts desire to become some one else and loosing yourself.
Come one be brave , be strong accept yourself as you are . It is not bad to keep on improving yourself but that drive should come from within .

Not just Quotes : The Guide to live life with joy and pride

An auditorium full to its capacity , people even sitting in the stairs and attentively listening and taking notes . On blackboard ( actually it was a white board ) their is Sanyasi explaining a process flow as how to take corret decisions in life , what are the roots of good management . It is Gita shibir in SPJIMR where HH Swami Viditatmatmanada ji have come down to the campus for one complete week and every day he discussed with whole college the very core of almost every religion , the value systems which human should follow and the art and science how one should live his life , He says " If you don't accept yourself then how will you expect world to accept yourself " . We cam across many such insight full thoughts and quotes during his discussion , here are some of them.

" I am consciousness with body and not ody with consciousness "

"Be happy with oneself"

" Rather then being commanded by environment , one should command enviornment"

" Only he can serve society , who himself does not need to be served"

"HAte the sin and not the sinner"

"Being simple is not simple"

"Happiness and Anger does not go together"

"Contribution leads to discovery of inner divine wealth"

"Indulgance , Anger , Greed , are gatewy to suffering "

" Remember 3 Cs Control , compassion and Charity "

"It is not we who get angry , It is anger whch gets us"

"People want to be accepted AS they are"

"Love is given and not asked for"

""The basis of universe is contribution"

"Help is attitude and nt action"

"A leader should influence others not by word but by action "

"Freedom of performing action comes with Responsibility"

"Be Kind and Forgiving"

"Whatever nourishes also required to be nourished"

" If you would love yourself , world will also do so "

" A reactive mind is not an objective mind"

" Being good is not enough , one should also be perceived good"

" Make an effrot with attitude of contributions and returning a favour "

"Gracefully accept whatever outcome is "

Entrepreneurship : Do you have it in you

Few day back we were listening to Captain G.R. Gopinath of airdeccan ,his tell of building an empire was mesmerizeing and from that speech and our readings we have drawn some basic characteristics of an entrepreneur
1) Risk Taking abilities : So taking risk is the first step of entrepreneurship . An entrepreneur must have risk taking ability , one who can not take risk can not become entrepreneur. When one tries to enter into any venture he never knows whether it is going to be successful or a failure and that makes it very difficult for a normal person to come out of his comfort zone . The decision of taking a risk is very important , one who passes this examination of taking risk has surely one of the very basic characteristics of being entrepreneur. If we track back the starting point of some of the today’s successful entrepreneurs like G.R. Gopinath, Mr Narayan Murthy and many of their likes have left their jobs and took a risk of loosing the financial security of their life.

2) Entrepreneurs believe in humble start : Many of today successful entrepreneurship ventures have started in a garage , almost all of them have had very humble beginning be it HP , Amazon , Dell , Infosys , Linksys or Google. The reason was obviously not that they liked the idea of working from garage but because of obvious resource crunch in the beginning phase of entrepreneurship most of these people have to work with minimum available facilities and resources in early days. Just before starting google , larry page and Sergey bin have concerted their own hostel room into a research laboratory , In early days of Infosys it used to function from a small 2 BHK in Pune , there was no servant to clean the flat and founder members themselves used to clean it .

3) Entrepreneurship demands Vision : It is not a mandatory criteria that entrepreneurs must have some clear vision about what they are about to do but if this vision exist then the organization is bound to sustain for long term. When Gopinath Munde started a no frill cheap airline , he had a vision that his fellow countryman should be able to travel by air without paying a fortune for it , It was this vision that kept his motivation high and made air deccan an instant hit among people from middle society. Consider example of Harper-Arrington Publishing and Media which was started by Harper and Arrington with a vision to educate kids and adults.

4) Entrepreneurship demands persistence : There are very few entrepreneurs who get it all right in the very first shot. It need lots of persistence to carry on the quest for success and to not give up the hope. Entrepreneurs don’t let it go , they would exercise all available options and make sure that they get the outcome . One of the example of persistence is

5) Entrepreneurs learn from mistakes : Infosys was not the first venture started by Mr Narayan Murthy , First of all he started a company named softronix but within a span of 1.5 years he had to close it , after doing a job for few years he again started a new venture named Infosys but this time he had already learnt the lesson , Softronix was targeting indian software market which did not have much scope at that time so later on with Infosys Mr Murthy targeted US markets where software industry was booming at that time .

These are not the only characterstics for entrepreneurship but these are definitely few important onces and if you have them all then I guess you should start now