Making (Power users)an advocate is very important and that comes out of data: Manab from Kommunicate

In this episode, we listen to Manab talk about his time at Entropik Tech, where he joined as a Product Marketing manager but was soon promoted to handling PR and comms for the company leading him to the field of Comms.

Here is his story:

Introduction

0:26 How I got into the field is I started with as an associated Entropik Tech and then there was a PR manager who was supposed to do all the PR and she was doing it but in the meantime, she had to leave, she had to go somewhere else and the product marketing manager also had to move out of the road to some other role.
So I was bound to do this or maybe it was in my luck to do PR and that’s where I came in.

First Interaction with data

0:58 I joined my first company, Exevo so I was in the Calling profiling.
So what I used to do, I used to do secondary research, I used to pick up the phone call these people based in Europe and America book out time with them.
And then the companies would give you a questionnaire. There are 10 questions then you set up a time with them and hey what do you think the global market is going to be? And they would say the market is going to fall or something like that and this research are then used by Forrester PWC or Ey and then they call it and they bring out some some insights out of it but my very basic starting with data started with a company called a Cvent. It’s a global event management software company based in Virginia. What we did was we used to see how many people were using our software so we used to pull the exported data and there was this guy who was a marketing analyst, he used to do power bi I but at the end of the day it was Microsoft excel when you need to deep down or see who are the power users and how can we make them more inclined towards our product.
So if you’re someone who’s logging every day, we send them free certification or free certification or training program and if you are not logged logging every day you once a month then we keep on sending you talk with the final content or middle the final content making them engaged. And the power users are always invited steven has its own events in one in London and one in Chicago. Oh sorry in Las Vegas. So these people who are using cement every day are being invited to events and they are being invited to hotel events, networking events. So we always give them engaged and all this data was seeing all this data which was very important.
You just cannot say go back to the CEO. And say hey I want to spend $2000 on this person and he would obviously come back to me why you’re saying why would I spend $2000 on this person Because I have data to back this up. I have data which says this person always goes back to your software and uses this is your perfect advocate. Make this person your perfect advocate. He would go out in the market. He would talk on LinkedIn; he would talk on such different sessions just like even I have left steven I’m still talking about seven. So yeah making advocate is very important and that comes out of data.

Favourite Campaign

3:21 So what we did for decode needs to be collaborated or integrated with other tech such as Webex or your Zoom or your Microsoft teams. So it becomes very easy for you to store or transcribe volume meetings everything. So we did a lot of collaboration with these companies and they made sure that whenever we are doing any collaboration we need to make this publication out in the market that we are now live so that people are aware that now has an integration with decode or Microsoft has an integration with decode and that’s that’s where I went to wizikey. He had no idea that the product was pretty simple created those campaigns and shoot out those emails and it really worked out for me being a non pr person. I started seeing all those google articles all of a sudden that okay, that was interesting. And that was one project where I got very inclined to. One thing that whenever I go to my founders or my reporting manager, they ask, okay, that’s good, these are so many articles out there in the market and thank you so much for what you have done.
But how do we make sure what’s the outcome of that? The same question that you’re asking me? So what we do is we integrate all the we go back to SEM Rush and we see, okay, how much traffic does it have? And I collate all the traffic from different publications. And I go back to my founders and I tell them, okay, 20k 30 k footprints are going out in the in the website every day. So either someone or someone might be seeing those articles. So that’s how we were doing it for them. So, SEM Rush and seeing how many footprints were there on on their websites.

How to measure PR impact

5:17 We use a lot of back links so we specifically ask these people if they have published, they reach out back to us on Wizikey and they say, hey we have published and then I make a request. Can you please link this article back to our website and what we have seen whenever these articles go out in the market our website traffic increases. Which is a very good metric and you never know if there’s a delay that cracks out after 3 to 4 months from that day. It could have been because of that.

Metric to measure

5:49 So currently I’m working as a customer marketing manager here at Entropik Tech. I was previously the product marketing manager. The sudden shift in the role was because we needed more case studies and everything. We needed more people to come out and speak for us.
Entropik tech has emotion AI which is a very data privacy thing and most people are, most companies are not very comfortable talking about that they are using eye tracking, facial coding into their products or into the research. So yeah they got me on board it and they wanted to get as many customers who want to speak to us. So collaborating with the CSM and sales people coming back to your question what’s my golden metric is for me it would be getting or getting on board. As many people talk about Entropik Tech. And again if they do then that goes out of the pr So that is a that’s a very aligned thing. Another thing is renewal is where my KPIs are getting counted. If there’s a customer who is getting renewed. So that that’s something where I get

Favourite tools

7:02 one was Tableau, one was power BI but I was not the one who was creating all pulling all this data. There was a different guy who was a marketing analyst but what we used to see when there were different data points, but it was all scattered. But when you collate them, when you see them in a visualization or in a in a in a dash boat, it starts to make sense. So you will start seeing all the up graphs or the down graphs. And at first it didn’t make sense, but at the end, when you see an individualized manner, it does make sense so they always the pattern always show up my favorite tool would be Microsoft Excel. Because yeah, I believe most of the biggest companies are the best companies are the best accountants or the finance people always go back to Microsoft Excel because that is where you can pinpoint or go back where something is getting wrong.

Dream Metric

8:00 One data that I would like to see is How are my competitors doing? If they have published publication, how much footprints are they getting? What kind of content are they getting the most use for? Is it their blocks? Is it the case studies? Is there? So if someone can come and tell me okay, this is the most successful part that the computers are getting, then I would take that part and I would make my campaigns better or footprints. Which publication has How many footprints each day. And how many people have seen those If I’m getting published in times of India, How many people have seen my article? That is something Yeah.

Role of PR in marketing

8:48 I think product marketing and pr are very interlinked. The main purpose of product marketing is to any new feature that is coming out in the market. The product managers from the taxi side deal with the Product marketing Manager and the purpose of the Product Marketing Manager is to simplify the language and take it out in the market or at least to the customers or and in between camps PR and why not? If I’m coming up with a new feature, then why not send it out in the market and let them know, hey, this was the problem you are facing. And now we have changed it all. There were a lot of problems people are facing recently with apples payment. And these are some things that never come out in the market. So, Apple keeps on publishing these publications or these updates onto the market and this comes through Times of India Economic times, which we never know. Okay. They are giving so much of time on the small things. But that’s coming through Product Marketing Manager management and pr collaborating together and making sure every customer is getting to know the problem has been fixed.

Future of PR and communications

9:59 I think one thing which is happening right now is a lot of people are getting laid off because of this funding winter or winter funding, especially your edtech companies are getting people cut off. So there’s a lots of negativity that’s going out in the market, people are calling out by Byju’s, people are calling out different companies and now it’s the time for the PR manager to rise up and collect the statement. Okay? We did. But there was a problem and people have shifted, the dynamics have shifted, we don’t have revenue. How can we keep these people? But we have but you have to, the PR Manager has to make that story so good. So, so that everybody understands and like people start sympathizing with companies like Byju’s or anything, so they did not mean to do it, but they had to do it because of business reasons. So now PR Manager has to step up and make the public understand it was for a reason but we are trying to make it better and we will hire them back whenever we have more funding.

My two cents

11:07 I think if you’re looking to go into PR one thing which I’m not very good at something which I cannot say is read a lot, obviously comes without saying and I think try everything, try and fail, try and fail and never be afraid of doing something new, that’s something I would say and if there’s a teammate who was doing some using some under the software, you know, you’re not interested, you don’t know what to do with it. Just go and sit with him and try to understand what he or she is doing somewhere down the line in your career. That software will come back to you and you will know to make use of it.