Tools with Metaverse will make way: Jaspreet from Financepeer

In today’s episode, Jaspreet Singh of Financepeer shares the story of how he became a communications professional and his vision for data-driven communications.

1.  How did you end up in communications?

My career didn’t start off as part of communications. I did a lot of work in sales, and pre-sales, mostly in the IT industry. But as they say, destiny takes you and makes way for you to take you wherever it wants to take you. In my previous organization, I did sales for a product that basically served marketing organizations and bigger telecom organizations. My customers would ideally be a CIO of an organization and it will be the marketing head, the CMO of the organization. Our product would directly impact their top line and bottom line. I got a five-year extensive experience in how the marketing team functions while not being a part of the marketing team. After 10 years of experience, the founders of this organization reached out to me and said that they want me to head the marketing. It was something that I always wanted to do and I took it up as a challenge and that’s how I ended up in the communications. 

2. When was your first experience with data?  

When I was in IBM, I was in the role of business analysis. At that point of time, AI/MI use was limited for this branch. Excel was the primary tool. One of my key roles was to collate data on the mobile sites that are coming in. I started off working on data when I was using Excel as a tool for analyzing data. When I moved to Customer Delivery Platforms (CDP) for marketing, there, the use of AI and ML was extensive and algorithms were used to provide the next best offers. However, when it came to communications, there was no overall picture of how communications were helping the organization. While the reach was there and a lot of earned media was being generated, there was no bird’s eye view of what we were doing and how we were doing. I think that’s where data helps. We started looking out in terms of what was the competition doing and how the industry is talking about things that we are working on. 

3.   Which is your favorite campaign where data became vital in solving a challenge?

We have been trying to do a lot of operational work till now, where we have been trying to tell the media houses and journalists that there is something called refinancing. The past two and a half years have been about category building. On the other part of the marketing side, there is this campaign that we ran on Instagram and the response was really amazing. It was is a lead generation campaign, so the number of leads generated, what sort of leads were generated–all of it was all data-enabled and we could ensure that the leads that were generated were good because we had the upper hand on the data that we are collecting.

4. What is your go-to metric? 

It is a communication industry and the biggest goal for any professional is to make your story heard. I ask two things. Firstly, how much have we been heard in terms of numbers? Secondly, how much have we been in terms of respect to the competition? The share of voice in communication is a very important metric for me because it tells me how I am fairing vis-a-vis the competition. Thanks to platforms like Wizikey. It has one of those metrics where you can measure what are other people are talking about your organization, how many mentions you received, and what is your share of voice in the competition. 

 

5.  How do you see the PR and communications world evolve in the coming days?

I’ll go back to the earlier stages of PR and communication when it was still budding. The way any campaign or the way any activity was measured was the value that it brought in with immediate effect. We have almost reached a stage where all we have to do is decide on a story and spend money, and we can actually create a persona of an organization, of a person, of anybody in people’s minds. I think that is going to continue for some more time. There are going to be tools with Metaverse coming in. The PRN communications are going to go online. I believe that in the coming ten years, people are going to adopt Metaverse, and we are going to move in that direction. Communication is going to take a huge turn there. It is difficult to say in what direction, but I believe Meta was one area which is to look out for on the communication side. However, the principle is going to be the same. You have to figure out your story first and then any medium is just a medium.

6.  What is your advice to the budding communication professionals?

Reading is undoubted one of the best things that can happen. You have to spend time on your profession and focus on things around you – knowing about your industry and what other professionals in your industry are. It is important to know where is the industry going and what technological advancements have happened. Once you have all the knowledge, it is all about creativity and figuring out how you can far the goals of your organization. Secondly, always ask why your campaign was successful or it failed.