Ashwini Deshpande, Marketing Manager
With an increasing need of simple IT solutions in the construction industry, LinguaNext Technologies offers an application which can change the reports and screens in local languages. Ashwini Deshpande, Marketing Manager spells out the marketing strategy of the company.
Could you give us details of the most recent ad campaign and its motto?
Our marketing campaigns are designed to obtain different objectives with the same motto of increasing brand awareness or generating leads. Sometimes our aim is to just raise the curiosity of our target audiences; at times the campaign acts as a recall medium or even an announcement of a new launch. Depending upon the message/media vehicle the ad campaign can work for more focused objective.
What is the consumer insight that drives your campaigns?
LinguaNext has innovated a software solution which can let enterprises run business applications in Indian languages without touching the database. In India only 10 per cent population understands English, thus there comes a requirement of an application in their local language. This is where our product plays a crucial role. In cement industry many brands have implemented ERP systems to integrate the business functions. At the cement plant workers might be using some ERP modules. Our product Linguify will convert all screens and reports in Hindi or in local language so that worker can understand. Our product being B2B, caters to a different audience altogether. The actual end user of the product who is the a decision makers and company CIO, CEOS are the decision makers who are not the end users. Keeping all these points in mind we have to design our campaigns.
Do you give more importance to advertising or PR campaigns?
Advertising and PR have two different functions. Each one comes with its unique benefits. It depends upon what are the organisation’s objectives at that time. PR is ongoing or long term activity and it is comparatively cost effective than advertising. It naturally comes with more credibility. For immediate top of the mind brand recall advertising is effective.
What is the thought process behind the preparation of your media plan? What marketing tools do you think serve your business the best?
The budget plays important role while media planning on which, media vehicles can be decided. What works for B2C might not work for B2B since the buyer is well defined. White papers, Webinars, Industry specific events, blogs are additional marketing tools for B2B. Advertising in trade magazines are also cost effective media for B2B for brand building.
Does your marketing strategy involve direct selling or interaction with customers? If yes, please give us the details.
We think our product, is at a stage wherein awarness of we being in the market is required. Not just from a compliance stand point but also productivity enhancement and new markets our clients could address with right use of our product. Marketing department would play a key role in spreading awareness and educating the market and sales function in a sequential aligned manner to address the implicit and explicit needs of our clients at individual level. Sales team’s role would extend in providing our clients with context sensitive knowledge and direction in most apt usage of our Product for maximizing usage and extent of their enterprise solutions. These two departments ultimately common goal of increasing the product footprint and enable our clients in achieving their long term and short term business goals.
As a marketing professional responsible for developing communication, what is your responsibility towards the consumer society?
In my opinion your message should not be misleading to consumers which gives a wrong message. Advertising does not mean false promises. Social norms need to be adheredin terms of visuals too.