FlirtSmart - Launching a location based dating app

More than one year ago I founded together with a friend of me a company named FlirtSmart. In this blog I would like to share a number of lessons I have learned from this venture.

FlirtSmart (www.flirtsmart.com) is a mobile application to flirt with interesting people around you. Based on the users’ profiles and personal preferences a match percentage is determined between the FlirtSmart users. The match percentage helps you find other users that are interesting for you. One can use the radar or scan your surroundings using augmented reality to see where the matches are and check out their profile to see if it’s an interesting match and use the chat function to start interacting.
Due to the network effect (the application is only relevant when there are sufficient users within a specific location/proximity), it was paramount for us to create a buzz around the product launch. At the time of the launch we immediately needed a large amount of users, only then the application would be relevant. The complication was that we did not have any budget to spend on marketing at the time.

We needed to focus on a specific geography and chose the Netherlands (our home market) to roll out the product first. Because we had no marketing budget, we needed to be creative. Our only chance was to leverage free publicity to its full extent. Two days before the launch we started to approach bloggers, blogs and journalists from news websites. We told them that we were a startup that could revolutionize the way people date, meaning that our application could truly change the way people date.

To our surprise two days later many articles were published all over the web, talking about our new company. The media believed our (exaggerated) story that our product was much more than just a “new” application. Within 1 day we had more than 5000 new users without any marketing expenditure (except for the time we spend to spread the word). These 5000 users (primarily located in Amsterdam) were sufficient to make the product work. Users could immediately after the launch see thousands of profiles of the people around them. Most blogs and website articles linked to our webpage or the Youtube video. Without any SEO (there was no budget) we managed to also increase our exposure at Google right from the launch.

In my next blog I will write more about the lessons I learned regarding customer acquisition.

China's Largest Search Engine - Baidu

As we see the world map in class, Google has the highest market share in most countries in the world except a few countries which include China, Japan and Russia. In China, Baidu is the largest search engine. Baidu has around 70% market share and Google has around 20% market share in China. Baidu functions in a similar way to Google, including its search engine and advertising methods. Baidu offers many services, including a Chinese language-search engine for websites, audio files, and images. Baidu offers 57 search and community services including Baidu Baike, an online collaboratively built encyclopedia, and a searchable, keyword-based discussion forum (similar to Wikipedia).

Baidu gets a lot of criticism for being a Google copy-cat. At first glance, it’s easy to see why:

Its interface is extremely similar. Too similar to Google’s. However, do not be fooled. The real meat of a search engine is the engine itself and any Chinese internet user will tell you that Baidu provides the best results for Chinese queries. This is why in mainland Chinese circles Google’s leaving the mainland market was neither surprising nor of great significance. When Google finally closed down its mainland China site (it now redirects to the Hong Kong site), most Chinese people saw it as Google admitting defeat in the presence of a superior product. Perhaps the real feat of digital marketing was Google’s ability to influence western media in portraying it exclusively as a human rights/freedom of speech issue.

One-Click Selling

I recently came across this article about a startup that wants to enable one-click selling. As someone who just sold a whole bunch of textbooks online, I found the idea interesting. Basically, they will send you a proposed sale price based on a picture and a short description, and if you accept they will send you the proper box for you to ship your item.

While I do love the idea of selling as quickly as I can buy, and not having to go through the hassle of writing up a description of every product I want to sell, this doesn't seem to be enough of an improvement on our current selling options unless detecting the item by the picture works so well that it's all I have to do. If I have to write a description, then I pretty much have my eBay ad ready.

Given my poor experiences in trying out Google Goggles on my phone, I'm skeptical that we can actually get good results when searching by images. Also, the easy products, such as textbooks with ISBN numbers that are just as easily typed as scanned, are already too easy to find on sites such as Amazon. And for electronics, too many of the differences affecting the value are inside the product. So even if the image search works well, I'm not sure it will add much value.

Seems to me like all they are doing is helping me find a box.

Uber-Like Payments To Restaurants

I am amazed that someone has yet to create a company that can easily handle mobile payments to restaurants, bars, and even grocery and retail stores.  Waiting for a bill can ruin an entire dining experience, standing on line at the Gap makes you want that teeshirt less, and while Whole Foods has devised a revolutionary checkout process, there are still lines and lines of people waiting to buy a single organic product. Given all the technological advances today, why can’t we create the same experience and ease of checking out in person as we have for online purchases? A few companies have attempted -  TabbedOut, Square and, most recently, Cover. Cover may be the most promising (for restaurant payments); a few reasons why are below:

Cover founders Mark Egerman and Andrew Cove decided that a solution was needed to make the experience of paying a check as seamless as paying for a ride on Uber

For users, Cover is designed to allow one-click, instant payments without them even having to get the check. Users simply check in to a restaurant at the start of their meal, and when it’s time for them to pay the final bill, it’s immediately charged to their credit card. They modelled the experience on Uber, which Egerman called “one of the best payment methods” out there.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/08/cover-1-5m-oatv/

The Opportunity Engine

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The Opportunity Engine:

When Prof. Kagan asked the class, if anyone is not on Facebook, I was the only one to put my hand up. I was completely surprised. I definitely expected at least a few more people to not be on Facebook. For years, I have resisted years of peer pressure to join Facebook. I have heard a range of emotional and business cases in favor of joining Facebook, but I whenever I did a cost-benefit analysis, I could not convince myself that the benefits outweighed the cost. My primary concern all along was the amount of unproductive time that people spent on Facebook. I just was not sure of my ability to resist the wide range of temptations and distractions offered by Facebook. Besides, I also liked the fact that my street cred was up among my peers because I was one of the few cool people who resisted Facebook.

Well, that was before I sat in my first Digital Marketing Strategy class. At the end of the first lecture, I realized how limited my understanding of the potential of digital marketing was and what an exciting industry it is shaping up to be. The second lecture on Search and reading “The Search” by John Battelle reinforced this belief further. I realize now that Facebook because it is a channel of Digital Marketing is something that’s unavoidable as a business tool and I now feel that I have to be on it.

What excites me the most about Digital Marketing and its several channels, particularly search, is its potential to identify actionable “hot leads” in a cost effective manner. Fifteen years ago, I used to be in direct sales and sold cellphones in India. That experience helped me to understand the value of a quality lead and usually only one in thirty leads turn out to be a good lead. Successful sales professionals are able to identify hot leads faster than their competitors and optimize their efforts. Sales professionals spend extra-ordinary amounts of their time trying to zero in on the “intention” of the potential customer. Sales strategies were based on intuition and experience and not very scientific. How can I know more about the customer I am about to meet? Is this customer really interested in buying my product? How can I convince this customer that my product provides more value than my competitor’s? Before Digital Marketing techniques were widely adapted as they are today, sales professionals had to rely on intuition to answers these questions, which are important to get them close to a sale.

However, Search has turned the whole game on its head by providing businesses with an endless supply of the “clickstream of intentions”, to borrow a term from Battelle, and helps businesses immensely in developing a sales strategy that is more targeted and scientific.  What is even more exciting is the fact that Search is just one of the many channels of digital marketing and the whole industry possess unlimited potential to change the course of marketing and how businesses interact with their customers. I am grateful that the course has already shifted my paradigm in a meaningful way and I now look at Google not just as a search engine, but also as an opportunity engine.

Warrantless FBI Searches of Google User Information in America

In a bizarre interpretation to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution's Bill of Rights, a Federal Judge in San Francisco ruled against Google's attempt to stop the FBI from using secretive warrantless search program. The judge ruled they must comply with the FBI's request for sensitive user information. The program advocated by the Department of Justice, use edicts, called "National Security Letters" (NSL), to force internet search providers, financial institutions and other telecom companies to hand over whatever the FBI deems fit for 'national security' investigations, including but not limited to:

• User IP addresses
• User search histories
• Youtube videos viewed
• Gmail content
• Travel bookings

Some may believe the FBI and other federal agencies need this 'tool' for genuine terrorist threats and not against undeserving Americans. However, recent history has already shown contrary. A 2007 report by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, found the FBI used its NSL based secretive warrantless searches committed various unlawful activity and serious misconduct. The report found that 53% of all search requests in 2006 were targeted for Americans. 

Given the FBI can levy these search commands on telecom and internet companies in secret, without notifying the user of his or her Constitutional rights, what makes this government violation of privacy and liberty any different than the third world dictatorships that we detest? History government over-reach, and recent events such as the recent IRS scandal and the AP reporter phone record tracking, shows the wisdom behind Founding Fathers desire to protect Americans' right to free speech, personal property and other activity from government infringement and intrusion. 

As Big Data's scope and importance for companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and others evolve at an increasingly greater rate, it will be imperative for US citizens to demand its Congress to act to clarify the constitutional protections of free speech and personal autonomy in the 21st century. If there is any silver lining in this recent ruling, hopefully this judge's decision will sound off an alarm across the country to constrain the government from further intrusive and unconstitutional activity.

How to Calculate Customer Acquisition Costs

 Blogging for Customer Acquisition 

The cost of acquiring a customer can make or break a business.  An early indication that a business has found the right model is when the costs associated to acquire a customer are less than the revenues generated from the customer.  In order to clearly account for acquisition costs, businesses must consider the following metrics:

(1) Costs to Acquire a Customer (CAC): take the businesses's costs of sales and marketing over a particular time period (include salaries and other expenses) and divide it by the number of customers acquired in the same time frame.

(2) Average Revenue Per User (ARUP): Total Revenue / # of Subscribers

(3) Lifetime Value of a Customer (LTV): Average Revenue Per User/Customer (ARUP) for the lifetime of the business.

(4) Subscriber Churn: the number of subscribers to a service that discontinue their subscription to that service in a given period.

   

The ratio of CAC to LTV is a good measure for evaluating the effectiveness of the business and the market in general. A good rule to follow for online is CAC should be less than LTC (3x's appears to be a rough minimum for SaaS businesses). In terms of subscription businesses, CAC should be recovered in less than 12 months. In short, it's important that all startups find a way to make their CAC less than their LTV. Otherwise, there's no real hope for profitability. 

Chinese social network

Social network has been around in China in 90’s, with first company called chinaren, that I used back in 2001. It’s like no face “facebook”, because back then it’s hard to take and upload pictures. One fun thing is you got connected and grouped by your high school, your university alums. The company phased out in 2003 and then is the rise of renren network, a Chinese version of facebook. The company was listed in NYSE a couple years ago and its major way of generating profit is through online gaming.

According to the speech of Renren’s CEO Joe Chen, the company is positioned at “bleeding” edge of Solomo. So what is Solomo?? SoLoMo, short for social-local-mobile, refers to a more mobile-centric version of the addition of local entries to search engine results. SoLoMo emerged as a result of the growing popularity of smartphones, and provides greater local precision to search engine results than what's available via a PC. Way of monetizing the website now come from gaming and is predicted to come from e-commerce. Renren has groupon like functions that feeding local deal news and utilize it’s social network to do some viral marketing for vendors. Speaking of ecommerce, it’s not fair not to mention taobao, a legend that Jack Ma made in Chinese internet business. Taobao won the battle with ebay by offering on line interaction with seller and buyer, and by Alipay, a trusted payment service.  Taobao’s revenue is claimed to surpass walmart in 4 years but no one knows the profit of taboo since it’s a private hold company under alibaba. How will these companies do in the future? There are a lot of hurdles, the censorship, the competitions, etc. It’s an era of change and only customer centric innovation made at the right time, will be the winner.

Digital Real Estate Agents

I think the time will come where the need for a physical real estate agent may come to an end - if it already hasn't started happening already. Currently, 90% of homebuyers are turning to the internet to "research" neighborhoods, home/apartments on the market, and amenities in the area. Over the past 4 years real estate related Google searches have grown 253% and further, homebuyers perform an average of 11 searches before going to view any property or meet with an agent.
(Source: www.realtor.org/reports/digital-house-hunt)

The business model for becoming a successful agent in any market has already changed. Realtors need to be able to effectively market themselves across a number of mediums. It is no longer good enough to have a strong company backing, a solid book of business and a "catchy" business card slogan. Successful realtors add value and navigate the changing real estate landscape through digital marketing. In Australia and Florida, there are companies creating search engines specifically for real estate agents to perform real estate SEOs to help meet the demands of wired consumers.

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Prahran, Australia -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/16/2013 -- Like many things, the real estate market has been profoundly affected by the online revolution. Most vendors now search for real estate agents online, but this has left many in the industry behind, as entrepreneurial individuals who have struck out on their own online win big while those faithful to their franchise lose out. AgentMate is a new digital design firm created by a real estate agent and an internet marketer that promises to offer the best of both worlds to their clients, and get them ahead in the online rat race.

The site offers a full suite of services, including real estate web design and real estate SEO, from personalised websites to multimedia content creation, including video presentations and social media accounts that are both created and managed by the company on behalf of their clients. Utilising the latest search engine optimisation techniques, the company promises to be able to generate leads that will get estate agents out of cold calling once and for all.

The specialization of the firm in real estate means that all their approaches are grounded in what has proven to be successful within the industry itself, so that all the investment their clients make goes directly into proven strategies to improve their success.

A spokesperson for AgentMate explained, “We believe in liberating real estate agents from the restrictions of relying solely on their franchise. The reality is that local searches are becoming more and more prevalent as the internet evolves. 70% of vendors go with the first real estate agent they find and those are increasingly local, not franchise matches. In order to build a local presence and personal brand, we create personal web presences for real estate agents in a bid to maximise their exposure and put them ahead of their competition. We also provide SEO to ensure that their office gets the exposure it deserves in the search engine results. We provide numerous other online services from PPC through to social media management so local real estate agents have access to online marketing expertise that is a rare skill in their industry.”

About AgentMate
AgentMate create and manage online marketing on behalf of real estate agents. The company aims to allow individual real estate agents to build their personal brand and control their own destinies. They provide video presentations, set up and manage social media accounts and optimise web pages to target keywords used by those searching for these services. This work is performed by people who are trained and understand the Australian market place. For more information, please visit: http://www.agentmate.com.au/

Why is there minimal investment in defending earth and exploring our universe ?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/31/world/earth-new-asteroid/index.html?iref=allsearch

Recently I read this interesting article on an asteroid with a small revolving moon has zipped past earth. It was very close about 15 times the distance of the moon.  Human race first landed on the moon during late sixties and ever since we have not made any significant progress in exploring our universe and galaxy. We have been busy trying to control natural resources of earth while not considering the abundant resources available in the galaxy and beyond.

Two things come to my mind. First, we have no defensive mechanisms in place to protect our planet if in case a large asteroid were to be on a collision course. It is high time that developed nations come together to fund a global program aimed at building defenses to protect human race.

Secondly, I feel we have missed an opportunity by not landing on the asteroid to learn more about the galaxy. We should invest in such a program to get better deep insights into other galaxies and planets. We should also invest in further developing inter space communications so that we can plant a device on the traveling asteroid to learn more about our universe and galaxy. Even though we may not have vehicles to travel the universe we can leverage a traveling asteroid in the interim.

Can we reach various communities in the developed countries and educate the masses on the risk of not have a defensive mechanism to protect earth. This will lead to put pressure on politicians to pursue this as one of their agenda items.

Face book marketing (solicitation way)

     Recently, I got a weird solicitation, or friend request, from the stranger on Facebook. The stranger seems to be a woman given the name and used beautiful woman picture. She just sent me a friend request, but I didn’t have any clue on who was she. I ignored it.

     Few days later, I got another friend request from another stranger who seemed to be also a beautiful woman from the name and picture but I found that the sex was male on Facebook. I wondered why this guy did this action.

     I searched this and found that some companies sent friend request and try to get friend link connection with general public. Once they got the link, they try to communicate with that guy and to get know each other, pretending they are beautiful women… Finally, the company, which is kind of a long firm, tries to sell something to the deceived men. 

     Is this good marketing way? I definitely don’t think so but I heard that a lot of men were deceived already in Japan. I believe that the company must utilize this kind of way in a legal and good logical way, not illegal way.

Still, one mystery remains. They sent the same request to many people who has the same Last name… I don’t know why..

SEO goals and tools for small businesses

It is well-known that Search Engine Optimization takes time which at times increases the frustration and anxiety of small business owners who are assured by SEO analysts that while this is a time-consuming process, their SEO dollars are well-spent.

According to Why Does SEO Take So Long?, some of the factors to be explained are the following:

·         Analyzing Your Competition Takes More Time than You May Think

·         Build Links from Sites with Authority

·         Good SEO Takes Fine Tuning Along the Way

SEO Tools are a time saver for everyone. However, the majority of the tools are too costly for small businesses or digital startup.

Small businesses can start keyword research with Google's keyword tool, which can help in tracking rankings and links by exporting them from Webmaster Tools to a spreadsheet. But to get all analysis done in a reasonable time, it's advisable to look at paid tools. Paid tools offer advanced features like exploring the link profile of the web, auditing site, and finding data with any real depth etc.

This article on EConsultancy lists the following paid tools

SERPS.com

The most impressive feature is the unique SEO correlation testing feature. It's built to help you test what tactics are actually improving your rankings, and which ones aren't.

SearchEnabler

It offers a well-rounded collection of tools that every SEO can benefit from:

Site Analysis. The website analysis tools essentially audit your domain for errors and areas for improvement.

The domain analyzer helps with navigation, redirects, and hierarchy, while the crawler warns you about unreachable pages, no-indexes, sitemaps, malware, and so on. A content analyzer also checks for issues like duplicate content.

Link Analysis. The link analyzer tracks your links, and the links of 3 competitors (up to 15 competitors in the Pro version). While this tool lacks PageRank or authority information, it helps you discover anchor text, and measures the spread of no-follow vs. do-follow links. You can see where your competitors' links are coming from, and find keyword opportunities.

SheerSEO

A well-rounded tool with different pricing options, ranging from $7 to $40 per month. The $15 version, offers everything but competitor analysis feature. A $25 version includes competitor analysis, and it's only limitation is 100 keywords instead of 400.

UpCity

This is really more of an educational resource than a tool.

Small businesses could start tracking their website for the following factors to uncover what they need to do to rank high on Google.

Factor	Significance
Number of Incoming Links	You want a lot of great incoming links.
Quality of Incoming Links	The number of incoming links is important, but the quality of those links is even more important. You want your incoming links from high-quality sites and websites that are related to your site.
Anchor Text	When you’re trying to rank for “exercise equipment” a link such as “check out our exercise equipment” is much more valuable than one like “for exercise equipment click here“. You want your keywords in the anchor text of your links.
Number of Indexed Pages	You want search engines to index as many pages of your site as possible.
Website Architecture Issues	If your website isn’t designed right, search engines won’t be able to spider it.
Keyword Cannibalization	If you have several pages on your site competing for the same keywords, it can hurt your rankings.
Duplicate Content	Internal duplicate content can kill your rankings. You need to detect it and eliminate it.

References:

Why Does SEO Take So Long?

Five cost effective SEO tools for SMEs and digital startups

SEO Competitive Analysis: Your Roadmap to Ranking #1 On Google

Understanding buyer personas

Recently, David Meerman Scott, an American online marketing strategist, and author of several books on marketing, criticized poorly planned website that Tokyo Olympics 2020 committee developed for the Olympics 2020 bids.

http://www.webinknow.com/2013/04/worlds-worst-website.html

He mentioned few flaws, which I also agreed.
The first problem, he claims, is direct translation of the contents to another language.

The vision of the Tokyo Olympics 2020 is the following:

"Tokyo 2020 will bring together dynamic innovation and global inspiration. It will unite the power of the Games with the unique values of the Japanese people and the excitement of a city that sets global trends. It will be a unique celebration that will help reinforce and renew the Olympic Values for the new generation. And will contribute to more young people, worldwide, sharing the dreams, hopes and benefits of sport."

The paragraph really doesn't convey clear message except it has a lots of buzz words that nowadays does not actually have much value by itself (there are many reasons I can think of why this is happening, but it is off the main theme of this blog post, so I will refrain from writing it).

The second problem, which I believe is more crucial than the first one is not understanding the target audiences. The Tokyo 2020 committee has to promote the city to the entire world but they do not understand what the audiences are interested in. This is actually very typical of many Japanese firms who attempt to go global, as the author of the article said. First, the Japanese firms do not understand what is going outside their island. Second, they believe applying the same approach, which was successful in Japan, will ensure the success in the other region of the world. Third, because of the first and the second reasons, feedback that the Japanese firms receive from local markets are simply nonsense, if the feedback and the firms mentality conflicts.


The website of the competing cities, Madrid and Istanbul, seems it is more carefully planed and delivered more effective contents that are translated to wider range of the audiences.

The lesson learned here is not to denounce Japanese but to understand how the contents should be well studied, planned, and presented in any website especially the owner of the website is reaching the market that they are unfamiliar. Without an effective website, no matter how much you optimize the search or invest money to generate traffic, you won't see any success in the website (unless your objective is purely to generate traffic).

Your Personal Brand

I stumbled across this post, “How to Hide Facebook Posts From Your Boss”, which provided valuable information, should you need that kind of privacy feature in your life.  Disturbingly, this is the case more often than not as we, aware of it or not, build our personal brands through digital marketing.  Unfortunately, we are either unaware of the reach of the digital paintbrush or just plain careless in our online actions.

Like it or not, we are always advertising ourselves via our online activity.  From emails we send, to blogs we write, to facebook posts we vomit, to online groups in which we belong, we are creating a personal brand.  Perhaps I was born just early enough to be skeptical of the internet (I’m 34), but it seems that the Millenial generation (which I may be part of by some measures) are the largest offenders of poor personal digital marketing.

It can be tough to balance a digital presence where you want to be expressive, but still maintain a positive personal brand as measured by common norms.  Carelessness will always exist, but as our digital world expands, we need to be more thoughtful in teaching future generations about the information that is being collected with and without their consent.  And that this information will live on in perpetuity and be accessible by virtually anyone.  If we can instill a mindset from the beginning of a youngster’s online life that they will be digitally marketing themselves from that day forward, we can give them the best opportunity to establish a positive brand that is invaluable in so many aspects of life.

Savvy Consumer and the Smart Marketer

Today's consumer is socially more connected than any other time in the history of mankind and has greater access to information on everything ranging from news about a remote place in South America to the latest fashion trends from Paris.  The consumer is no longer a lame sitting duck that can be subjected to ad after ad in newspapers and TV.  She now has the advantage of technology improvements like TiVo to be selective in watching ads on TV and has been forced, by being bombarded by flashy ads on webpages, to learn to tune out the ads that pop-up everywhere.

If we categorize the web viewers from to novice to savvy, based solely on the number of hours spent on the net and the comfort level using it, would the demographics show people are less likely to click on ads displayed if they are veteran web users?  As a user of the internet from its birth in 1993/1994 I can state that most ads on webpages are invisible to me and I hardly ever click on them.  Though I would like to think otherwise, I doubt that I am unique in this aspect and for sure there must be millions in my camp.

The younger user who has been exposed to this form of advertising from an earlier age will learn even faster than the generation before to become immune to advertising and be skeptical of the information presented.  With the increasing number of companies that are now targeting mobile devices for marketing, this trend to be inoculated against advertising and informational blogging from brands and companies is only going to grow...I hope that through a series of posts and contributions we can delve deeper into how to deliver valuable content and a meaningful message to capture an audience and most importantly retain the audience so that we may be successful digital marketers.

 

BIG data in big companies

Isn't BIG data making headlines in major blogs and heads turn in C-suite from retail to financial services industry? So, what is BIG data and how it all started?

Big data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, curation, storage, search, sharing, transfer, analysis, and visualization. The trend to larger data sets is due to the additional information derivable from analysis of a single large set of related data, as compared to separate smaller sets with the same total amount of data, allowing correlations to be found to "spot business trends, determine quality of research, prevent diseases, link legal citations, combat crime, and determine real-time roadway traffic conditions".

Source: Wikipedia

As businesses and marketers try to sell more, it's all about customers: their actions, intentions and behavior. Companies grew and offered more products and services to the customers. At the same time, customers started to engage with brands in multiple ways ( web, mobile and traditional media outlets), increasing complexity for marketers to understand and follow "true" customer behavior and potential as a prospect. Technology enabled gathering data from web, mobile, social media ( Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc) and other mediums, leading to a state where it first becomes extremely costly to capture and later to massage the data for any meaningful results.

Though BIG data presents new difficulties from IT to legal department, it certainly presents unique opportunities to explore - a new way to truly understand customers. Leveraging new customers insights from the analyses gives competitive edge and ultimately drives new age marketing decisions. It all looks logical; however, BIG data creates huge problem for large enterprises to move fast enough to capture the value. 

According to one of the blogs in Harvard Business Review, most business executives and their IT counterparts agree to implement state of the art system to capture value from BIG data. However, it requires large enterprises to break silo'd approach and bring different line of businesses together to create new data driven culture that can help company achieve higher profitability. This implementation essentially requires executives to change the strategy for the company, hire skilled resources and create culture to cultivate data backed decision.

Once implemented, the returns are limitless and the most important from marketing perspective is to understand customers. Digital Marketing relies on customers' intentions and BIG data provides exactly the same. So, customers can expect to see more relevant content ( including textual, audio or video) and offers on the company's eCommerce portal.

On my way back from the International Seminar in China I happened to sit on a plane next to a director of Digital Marketing for Estee Lauder. This was a great coincidence as I was about to start this class on Digital Marketing next day! Based on that I was extremely happy to continue the discussion and asked her to explain to me what really her job is and what exactly she was doing in China.

She quickly explained that her job was mainly about creating strategies to drive online traffic to Estee's webiste by designing and developing digital marketing campaigns, social media strategy, increasing brand's awareness through online ads, etc. She then explained that with China's 500+ million online users, digital marketing in this country is of humongous importance and that's why she's forced to fly to China few times per year.

Chinese digital marketing strategy is significantly different from the rest of the world as companies not only have to create brand awareness and attract traffic through appropriate online marketing tools but they also have to heavily focus on educating users as many of the products being introduced are completely new to the Chinese consumers.

Check out the link below to find out more on what exactly Estee Lauder's strategy is and how they became the best digital brand in China.

http://www.digitalmarket.asia/2013/01/estee-lauder-is-the-best-digital-brand-in-china/