Rajiv Sharma, Head of Marketing and Product Management

Established in the year 2008, Reliance Innovative Building Solution, caters to the growing needs of sustainable building products. Rajiv Sharma, Head of Marketing and Product Management talks to ICR about their marketing strategies to promote the products the company offers.

What is the consumer insight that drives your campaigns?
Our campaigns principally targets architects, consultants, builders, developers, contractors, structural engineers. We will also participate in exhibitions related to buildings and construction. The basic purpose is to make them understand the concept and technology involved with our product and to generate interest, inquiries and qualified leads.

Do you give more importance to advertising campaigns or PR campaigns? Why?
We basically emphasise on PR campaigns, because our main motto is concept selling and in order to do that we need to interact with the prospective customers individually or in groups through exhibitions, conference and one to one meetings.

What is the thought process behind the preparation of your media plan? What marketing tools do you think serve your business the best – online, print, television, hoardings?
We provide Green Building Solutions, the concept and technology behind these solutions can be understood by thorough professionals, technical persons, builders and developers. So when we prepare a media plan we make sure we provide all the necessary details to the prospective clients and in order to serve the purpose we generally choose the online and print media such as newspaper advertisements, magazine articles, brochures, pamphlets and hoardings.

Does your marketing strategy also involve direct selling or interaction with customers? If yes, please give us the details.
Yes, our marketing strategy involves direct selling and interaction with customers because it is very important for the customer to first of all understand our product and technology. Thus see whether we can serve their purpose by incorporating our products in their structures. For interaction with customers we conduct one to one meetings, exhibitions, conferences, speaker’s desk, in- house presentation involving architects and builders.

As a marketing professional responsible for developing communication for a mass audience, what kind of responsibility do you think you have towards the consumer, society and towards yourself?
Our main motive is to make our presence felt in the market showcasing our product in the best possible manner in the eyes of the people, for this we need to choose the correct medium for communicating our message to the people. We need to target specific groups, so when we choose the media, be it print, electronic or online we have to keep in mind that the basic objective is to conduct the message clearly so that the general masses can relate to it. We are also responsible for conducting market research based on our products and services. It helps us to determine what markets to target and how to best reach these markets to maximise sales and profits of our company. Coming up with ad campaigns, which often include catchy phrases and powerful images, as well as deciding where and when to place the advertisements. Promoting our product by going to trade shows and other relevant events to help spread the word and make connections. Seeking out potential customers or clients, offering them your product or service and persuading them to make a purchase or investments.