Thinking is the ultimate human resource.

Hey Everyone, Welcome to another blog in which I intend to share how to run better meeting & take faster decision while working with people. This blog is inspired from a recent read-Six Thinking Hats By Edward de Bono.

The reason I right this is because I found this to be the most best method I have discovered till now when it comes to understanding thinking and effectively using it to your advantage.

The Problem- Juggling with too many balls

The main difficulty of thinking is confusion. We try to do too much at once. Emotions, information, logic, hope, and creativity all crowd in on us. This concept of using the six thinking hats allows a thinker to do one thing at a time.

White of Black? – The Man who Painted his car half white and half black.

Once upon a time, a man painted his car white and the other black. His friends asked him why did he do such a strange thing. He replied: ‘Because it is such fun, whenever I have an accident, to hear the witness in court contradict each other.

And that is what exactly happens in conflicts, meetings and dispute each party focuses on influencing their part of the story rather than collectively thinking and making proper hypothesis of what can be?

The Six thinking helps an individual to move from what is to what can be.

SIX THINKING HATS AND THEIR COLOR

Every color of the six thinking hat is related to its function.

• White Hat: is neutral and objective. The White hat is concerned with objective facts and figures.
• Red Hat: suggests anger, rage and emotions. It aims to give an emotional view.
• Black Hat: is serious. It’s the one cautious and careful. It intends to point out a weakness in an idea.
• Yellow Hat: is sunny and positive. It is optimistic and covers hope and positive thinking.
• Green Hat: It invites creativity and ideas.
• Blue Hat: concerned with control and use of other hats.

Its easy to refer the hat by its color and indicate or make aware someone about their way to thinking without actually pointing it out directly. You can ask someone to remove their red hat for a while rather asking them to stop being emotional. With people who are unaware you could be someone to share or since now you know this direct this among them.

The goal is to sit down at any discussion and switch in and out of ‘hats’ with ease.

Which Hats to choose When?

The first question that arises is how to use them and there isn’t any hard and fast rule. Depending on the situation the type of conversation you are having the sequence of the hats changes.

For Instance Blue hat is above all and it always used in the beginning and the end since it what controls the rest. The Blue hat in the beginning speaks about the agenda, definition, where we want to end up whereas in the end it indicate what we have achieved, outcomes and conclusions.

In situations where there are already strong feelings or opinions on subject it’s recommended to use red hat and get those feelings out right in open at the beginning. In assessment situation , it makes sense to put yellow hat before black.

The White Hat

Think of paper. The White hat is about information.

When the white hat is in use everyone focuses on directly and exclusively on information.

What information do we have?

What information do we need?

What information is missing?

Reporting on your feelings, opinions is not a part of white hat but showing a happiness index of employee in your organization or country is a white hat thing.

Incase if two pieces of information are contradictory we don’t argue straight away we put both of them down in parallel.

The Aim is to be NEUTRAL

The Trap

If you have an enemy provide them with information.

Requesting facts and figures can let to so much of information that you or the people might get overwhelmed and hence request focused information. The goal is to discover and not distort.

Check whether the fact provided is a believed fact or a checked fact. Belief level of fact simple means something which you believe to be a fact but have not yet checked out thoroughly.

Clay Sculpture v/s Drawing a Map

We cannot change cultures but we can develop mechanism that helps to fit a particular culture and eventually drive a change.

In Western-Style it the output is one arrived by everyone and agreeable to everyone. It’s more like a ‘clay sculpture’. There is a core around which pieces of clay are placed and moulded to give final output.

Whereas, The Japanese sit down with out any preferred ideas. The purpose of meeting is to LISTEN. Each participant puts his/her white hat and proceeds to give his piece of neutral information. Its more of drawing a map. With each input the maps gets more complete. The map gets richer and more detailed.

The Information slowly organizes into ideas.

White hat thinking is a discipline and a direction. The thinker strives to be be more neutral and more objective in the presentation of information.

The Red Hat

Red thinking is all about emotions and feelings and the non-rational aspect of thinking. It is almost opposite of white hat thinking.

Once emotions have been made visible by means of the red had, then an attempt may be made to explore and even change them. Thinking can change emotion but it is not logical part of thinking that changes emotions but perceptual.

Intuition is also a part of red hat thinking. It can be classified into two types:

1. A sense of sudden insight. It means something which was perceived in one way is suddenly perceived in another.
2. Second could be an immediate apprehension or understanding of situation. It is the result of a complex judgement based on experience.

When a thinker is using red hat, there should never be any attempt to justify feelings or provide a logical basis for them.

The Black Hat – Cautious Cap

Black hat thinking is concerned with caution. At some stage we need to consider risks, dangers and obstacles, potential problem and downside of suggestion. The black hat seeks to avoid dangers and difficulties.

Under black hat we focus directly on the cautious aspect. This is the basis of survival, of success and of civilization. The black hat seeks to layout the risks and potential problems in the future. What may go wrong if we implement this suggestion?

The purpose is to put caution points on the map.

Black hat thinking can be abused in no way diminishes the value of the black hat, just as the dangerous and reckless driving of a car does not mean that cars are dangerous.

Yellow Hat

Think of optimism

Under this hat the thinker deliberately sets to find out whatever benefit there may be in a suggestion. We need to develop ‘value sensitivity’. That means being as sensitive value as we already are sensitive to danger

Even the most unattractive idea can have a high value.

Yellow hat thinking is constructive and generative. From yellow hat thinking come concrete proposals and suggestions. It can be speculative and opportunity seeking.

Green Hat

The green hat is for creative thinking. The person who puts on green hat is going to use creative thinking. Search for alternatives is a fundamental part of green hat thinking. There is a need to go beyond obvious and the satisfactory.

Green Hat symbolizes GROWTH.

In this the seeker seeks to move forward from an idea in order to reach a new idea.

It is used to generate new concepts and perceptions.

Blue Hat – Above All

Think of the blue sky above. The blue hat is thinking about thinking.

Conductor of the Orchestra

The blue hat is like the conductor of the orchestra. The conductor gets the best out of the orchestra by seeing that what should be done is done at the right time. It is for process control.

Using blue hat at the beginning of a thinking session defines the situation. The blue hat may seek alternative definitions of problem. The blue hat lays out the purpose of the thinking.

At the end of session blue hat asks for outcome. This may be in the form of summary, conclusion, decision and so on. It aims at acknowledge the little progress that has been made and lays down the next steps to be taken.

The focus aspect is one of the key roles of blue hat thinking. The difference between a good thinker and a poor thinker often lies in the ability to focus. What should the thinking be about? It is not enough to be conscious of the broad purpose of the thinking.

Blue hat thinking stops arguments and insists on the map type of thinking. It enforces discipline.

Benefit of Six Thinking Hats – Choosing The Right Hat

If you have to drive to a certain destination and the people involved know the roads only vaguely, there will be a lot of argument about which road to take. If, however, there is a road map laying out the roads the traffic densities, and the nature of the road surface, then it is easy to choose the best road. The choice has become obvious to all.

Using this six hat methods the decision seems to make themselves. When you come to the final blue hat, the decision is often obvious to everyone present. This seems hard to believe in theory, but happens very often in practice.

Reading this method from Edward de Bono work was very insightful it helped me become more aware on my dominant thinking hat and how to conduct better meetings and conversations.

I hope this blog was a valuable read for you as well. Share it among you colleagues, managers and organization and let them learn about this too.

Thanks for reading!
Haider.

If You Have an Enemy, Give Him Information

The above quote is precise in this of age information overload and as marketers the learning that I am about to share through this blog has definitely helped me get better insights and measure what matters.

Metrics Introduction:

Metric are data that demonstrate how your Intended user action Impacts your business. For Instance If your metric is CAC It simply shows how much are you investing to acquire that one customer.

But the real question is why are metric so important?

Without proper understanding of the metrics for your business or product your situation somewhat be like…

However, with the proper understanding of metrics you are able to understand your user behavior better, and this also helps you in deciding the next course of action for your business.

With an understanding of metrics in this world overloaded with jargons and data it feels like….

Usually these metrics can be measured through various tools but the most widely used and which I have practiced on is Google Analytics. Other commonly used tools are Mixpanel, Clevertap and Amplitude.

Product Goal – Importance Of Goals

Before we define the right metrics for our product there comes defining the right goal for our product, company or business.

A Product Goal is the final result that the company is looking to ACHIEVE.

The most common example that comes in my mind is when TATA Nano’s goal was to make car affordable to every house in India.

Other common goals vary from company to company depending on what are they trying to achieve.

A company could have goal related to revenue, customer satisfaction, retention and many more.

The Product Goal will determine the exact Product Metrics that will important for the organization.

Levels Of Metrics

When I work as a performance marketing expert many a times my task included to find the reason or recommendations behind a particular drop in performance. Working in a digital space provided me with a huge amount and I used to always feel as if I was stuck in a maze.

Even though I used to have an approach but in between I used to get puzzled among the different metrics and get completely confused.

Then I found the concept of the level of metrics and since then I have been a better understanding of the tasks and also been able to provide better insights and recommendations.

My Approach: Below are the steps that I started to use after the understanding of the hierarchy of the metrics.

1. Focus Metric: Also called North Star Metric. This is the top Priority metric. And thus has a direct impact on the goal of the organization. Thus improvement in focus metric leads to direct improvement of the product goal.
2. Once you have determined the Focus Metric comes the Level 1 Metrics. These metric complement the focus metric. In digital media space majority of the time the level metrics included these important ratios like CPM, CTR, CPC, CVR, CPA. These Level 1 metrics are a more deep dive in direction the focus metric is pointing to.
3. Level 2 Metrics these include a more detailed breakdown of Level 1 Metrics. The Level 1 Metrics could either be broken down on the basis of their individual metric or on different segments like location, device type, platform etc.

Once you create or setup this simple Levels of Metric you tend to easily diagnose and detect the drop off points or areas of opportunities.

Here’s an example of Ecommerce in which The goal of the organization is to increase the No. Of Weekly Active Buyers. I found this insightful and similar could be build for your Product Metric too.

Types Of Product Metric Frameworks

Every Product, company or situation is different, hence a framework might not fully fit in but it will us in structure our thought process.

Most Common Used Metric Frameworks:

• AARRR – Pirate Metric
• HEART – Google’s Invented
• GAME – Impact Map

AARRR – Pirate Metric Framework

This framework is mostly used when the product is about to be launched. This allows us to identify each and every stage and evaluate it.

The AARRR Consist of:

1. Acquisition: How are customer finding your product? How many are using it?
2. Activation: How many customer are signing up and using the product?
3. Retention: How many customers are still using it regularly?
4. Referral: Do your customer tell others about the product?
5. Revenue: Is product making money? How is it monetized?

HEART – Google Invented

As the title suggested this framework was invented by google and is widely used in terms of engagement.

HEART:

1. Happiness: We determine the customers level of happiness and satisfaction from our product. Key metric that can be used are NPS, CSAT, CES.
2. Engagement: This aims to measure how long and how frequent are the users using the the app and product. Key metrics could be time spent, completion rate.
3. Adoption: This allows us to understand how quickly are user starting to use your product. Is it getting them Hooked?
4. Retention: Goal is to make sure user continues to use your product for a longer period of time. Retention Rate, Customer Churn Rate, Repeated Purchases are few metrics that can be used.
5. Task: How long does it take for user to complete task with any break or bad experience. This could end on a more technical side were bugs, crashes, bounce rate are few metric frequently measures

GAME Framework:

It is the most hot topic and this framework helps you in defining your own custom metrics.

GAME:

1. Goals: what is the advantage from user activity or what is product or features commercial objective. It determines what objective we want. Eg Onboarding new customers, Increase Engagement etc. Identify the business and user goal first
2. Actions: This tends to break down all the steps that user takes in their journey. The goal is to prioritize important actions and avoid intangible metrics
3. Metrics: Identify our north star metric and then try to fit in metric on every part of journey broken down in step 2.
4. Evaluate: This step is like an audit that helps you to determine the strength and weakness of your approach.

Learning about these frameworks helps and individual have a systemized thought process. This helped me to have a better bird’s eye view and come up with my own version.

Also while Studying these frameworks I noticed a common pattern which I had learned fron Nir Eyal book-Hooked. It focused on the MAT principle that helped us in making habit-forming products.

The MAT Principle included Motivation, Ability and Trigger.

1. Motivation: What motivated customer to use you product
2. Ability: Is your product easy to use?
3. Trigger: What triggers them to use and return back to your product?

On learning about product metrics this made more sense.

So that’s all I could summarize about my learning on product metrics and growth. Today with the new age startup where product is the key. Understanding their metric could give us an edge as marketers.

I hope this blog provided you with some useful insights. Let me know your thoughts in the comments and so share it with someone who might find this helpful.

Thanks for Reading!!

I welcome you to my blog!

In this blog, I will share my learnings and experience of working as a performance marketer. I am about to share 12 points that I learned working for more than 12+ months now.

When I started my career as a marketer I was always confused on how do CMO’s, brand manager’s strategize their marketing but after working at companies & agencies, reading and investing in multiple courses I have come up with these 12 essential points with which one can start building their marketing strategy and increase their performance.

So let’s get started with Step 1:

Step 1: Know Your Target Audience

There is nothing called as Market For Everyone.

When it comes to finding your target audience, marketers usually have their own ways. Some start off by defining the buyer’s persona whereas some use different need based frameworks to understand and evaluate their target audience.

I still remember making the buyer’s persona using the tool Hubspot. A buyer’s Persona works best when making your brand story or preparing a presentation but It does have its limitation when it comes to finding the target audience. You will rarely find an individual or group of individuals with similar characteristics to your buyer’s persona.

This led me to research more about Client Acquisition and how to find the right client and that’s when I realized that finding your target audience is very similar to how animals hunt.

Animals while hunting look for the quickest and easiest one to catch as all big species that hunt don’t want to run out of energy. Similarly, a business also has limited energy (when it comes to money and resources), and when I learned this fact It made me realize we need to prioritize our target audience, and by doing this I came up with this 3P Framework.

P: Stands for Priority. Your audience can be classified as P1, P2, P3

P1: People who are most likely to buy. As per data, there are always 3-5% of people who are looking to buy what you sell. Being a marketer I realized these are the best audience to go for.

As a kid, I used to go to my Dad’s shop and he used to always insist me to first attend the people present and not go for leads or calls. What he meant was that these were P1 audiences who were ready to buy and leaving them would be a waste of our resources and efficiency.

P2: People who can be convinced to buy. These are audience who are looking to be educated and encouraged.

I learned this when I was learning the google ads platform we had the term in-market & affinity audiences. Google’s algorithm was used to segregate people actively looking for or interested in the products that we were selling. This helped us to get better ROI on our campaigns. This is when I realized the importance of the P2 Audience.

P3: People who need a lot of Education: Lastly some people would need a lot of your investment and resources. These are people I refer to as priority 3. The best way is to use social media and low-cost marketing techniques that get you the maximum eyeballs.

So that’s how I define my audience. This P1, P2, and P3 not only make things simple but also help you to effectively get the maximum investment from your marketing efforts.

Step 2: Persona V/S Audience

In step 1, We learned the importance of knowing your target audience.

But the question is how to put this audience to use. Working as a digital marketer has helped me with this. As mentioned a persona might be good for your brand story and character but you can rarely find an exact audience that might be similar to your persona.

As Performance Marketers, we used to always define an audience rather than a persona. Say for instance which of the ones do you think would be easier for you to find and target?

Finding an audience and then optimizing is always been the best way to go for your target audience.

Step 3: Build Your Value Proposition

A good marketed product will always beat a bad marketed good product.

Marketing is about communication and how well you communicate your brand’s proposition will be a deciding factor in your marketing success. Ads with Clear value proposition and messages tend to rank higher than those with lesser clarity.

When I learned about Ad Ranks I realized how good ad copies and LP affect your overall quality score.

So how do we come up with a Value Proposition and understand we need to understand People. We as individuals are always looking for better alternatives to bad alternatives. Good marketers know how to find a bad alternative and then draft value propositions that indicate the implications of bad alternatives.

Here’s how I come up with Ad Copies

Four things people will take quick action for:

I learned this about people that the best ways to motivate any individual to take action is to link the implications with one of these four things:

1. Health
2. Money
3. Relationships
4. Significance

These four indicate the basic needs of any individual and once you link them with implications you can influence anyone. Influence is not to manipulate but to inspire them to take action when they read your marketing copies.

Step 4: Build A Proper Infrastructure

I learn’t that unexperienced marketer get started directly with marketing without a proper infrastructure this makes their entire marketing system really complex in the longer run which in turn builds a huge mess which is not easy to resolve.

Doing a proper transitions and integrating proper tags and tools can save a lot of hassle in the longer run.

Some Popular Integrations Include:

1. Landing Pages x 3 – Home Page, Product & LP
2. Web Measurements – GTM, GA.
3. App Measurements
4. Heatmaps & Click Maps
5. Copywriting & Designing

Step 5: Build a High Converting Landing Page

Now which LP will turn out to be the best for your brand is difficult and most efficient way to decide is with data. Split test your pages and combinations and see what works best for your business.

I learned and noticed that most of high converting LP have many of these common attributes

1. Explain the Value Proposition: someone with a better brand value can have higher conversion than their peers
2. Explain How Will You Create/Provide Value mentioned: This provides a sense of certainty and trust among people
3. Visualize: Recently google came out with an added extension called image extension. No wonder copies and pages that are able to help their audience visualize convert better.
4. Make It believable: Social Proof
5. Make taking the next step easy: have a clear CTA

Step 6: Competitor Analysis

I still remember my manager asking us to come up with 6 ad copies we all were struggling with finding the combinations and then he shared an insight on competitor analysis. He asked us to always study the existing ads of competitors that are running and take inspiration from their right work and improvise on their weak spots.

Tools like:

1. Similar Web
2. FB Ads Library
3. Ahrefs: For SEO
4. Competitors Newsletter
5. Power Ad Spy
6. Social Listening Tools

can help you take inspiration and come up with better creative ideas than your competitors

Step 7: Sync your Messaging

Someone with a better brand communication message will have a better ROI even though their competitors may have better tools.

Clarity & Communication are the core skill in marketing whether it is online or offline. The more clearer you are able to transfer the message to your audience the better are your results.

Having a sync messaging not only provides this clarity but also helps you in getting better Ad Ranks & Quality Score.

Whatever your ad says your landing page should convey the same. Most of the marketers lose their money here, if you get this right I must say your job is half done.

Show up for the right keywords and then use the right messaging for all your communication & marketing

Step 8: Explore Acquisition Channels

Spending time on the right platform is the most important thing you can do as a Performance Marketer!

Unfortunately most marketers jump to different channels before evaluating them properly.

What I have learned and observed is there are three criteria by which one needs to select their Acquisition Channel.

1. Volume: As an Ad Channel what volume or kind of volume you have and how much of your target audience is present there.
2. Targeting: What kind of targeting does that platform offer? Interest targeting, lookalike, behavior and intend targeting.
3. Est. CAC: You can reach to this estimated value by calculating how much will it cost you to acquire one customer?

Step 9: Master Full-Funnel & Improve Your Conversion Rate

Most big agencies and marketing have very vast & complicated funnels. One working might not be able to get access or opportunity to master everything. But trying to learn about it and being curious about the full-funnel is what helps you in optimization and growth.

Improving your conversion rate also commonly termed as CRO Optimization is another thing that can add up in increasing your efficiency and get better results.

It Includes these 4 steps:

1. Find Problem
2. Test Different Hypothesis
3. Fix Problem
4. Repeat

Step 10: Learn Media Planning & Buying

Media Planning helps you to Ensure that you reach & communicate with your desired target audience in an efficient & cost-effective manner

If you are new to Marketing & Digital, Media Planning should be learned last after you have had sufficient exposure to various platforms.

Media Planning & Buying requires:

1. Campaign Duration: The Duration for which the particular campaign would last.
2. Definite Budget: The budget to be spent.
3. Media Planned As Per Creative Strategy

I have written a dedicated blog about my learning & experiences about Media Planning. So you can Read More from the blog.

Step 11: Know Your Metric

As a marketer the one biggest challenge that I face even today is getting lost in numbers & metrics. There are so many campaigns to look at more the metric more is it confusing for the team to monitor and measure.

Setting a North Start Metric helps the entire team to align.

But the Question is What should be you North start metric?
Well the simple answer to this is the Metric that Matters.

I have created this small pdf mentioning the metric that one can choose depending on the type of objective they are trying to achieve. Download it to learn metric matters for you.

Step 12: Optimization In A NutShell

At first it’s most likely that the campaigns won’t work in our favour. In such cases the best way is to keep the existing structure running rather than coming up with a completely new structure. Small Wins and Optimization are key at first to get started.

Goal is to find a combination of

1. Creative
2. Copy
3. Frequency
4. Audience
5. Timing
6. Platforms

That get us the best results.

One thing that I usually follow is to pay attentions to frequency & rising CPM cost.

So that’s all my learning & experienced summarized in this blog. In case you are someone who’s interested in marketing & life do keep coming back to my blog where I passionately share my ideas & learnings.

Let me now in the comment your view about the blog and what are the best learning you have had.

Thanks & God Bless

Before I start let me share that I have been working in the marketing domain for 2+ years, working with brands & businesses has helped to learn and share this along with you.

This year along with my work I decided to invest in a short course that helped me learn about Media Planning & Buying. To those who don’t know what this term means it’s basically planning your marketing & media for Digital and Physical to get the maximum efficiency & ROI of your marketing budget.

So if you are a digital marketer, entrepreneur, marketing enthusiast or curious to learn about agency this blog will help you to get an overview of How to Plan & Buy Media.

Media Planning helps you to Ensure that you reach & communicate with your desired target audience in an efficient & cost-effective manner

Myth In Media Planning:

Media Planning is the last step of process.

Reality is that one should Always plan media alongside the creative as it helps you to create the best Impact.

one thing which I would want to highlight is if you are new to Marketing & Digital, Media Planning should be learned last after you have had sufficient exposure to various platforms.

What is a Brief? – A Brief In Media Planning

Everything that happens in an industry starts with a BRIEF.

When Client Shares a brief there is a certain objective that you need to map to the brief & there comes the 4 Elements of AIDA Model:

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Desire
4. Action

A Brief helps us in Understanding the objective the client is trying to achieve. It helps you to map your objective from the AIDA Model and plan accordingly. Every brief that reaches you ultimately is mapped to one of these objective.

Two Sides Of Any Media Plan

Just like a coin has two sides. The two sides of brief has two solutions:

1. Creative Solution
2. Media Solution

The best results that we have noticed appears when you plan your creative along side with your media. This helps you to judge what will work and plan accordingly.

Here’s a case study of Campbells Soup that was shared to us during our online course at IIDE:

In 2016, Australia Witnessed its warmest winters which lead to an all time low sales of Campbells Soup.

The Brief Given To It’s Marketing Agency had two Points:

1. Sales of Campbells soup have hit an all time low.
2. How do you make soup still relevant for people in today’s time?

The Agency came up with a Media Plan that created Individuals ads each one specially tailored for what your were searching for on youtube.

This didn’t give the audience a reason to buy it gave them Thousands

Requirements For Every Media Strategy:

Every Media Strategy Requires:

1. Campaign Duration: The Duration for which the particular campaign would last.
2. Definite Budget: The budget to be spent.
3. Media Planned As Per Creative Strategy

For Instance:

If your creative strategy involves # Based Content then the media platform you will use: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & Influencer marketing.

Note: The Media Planner sits with Creative Strategist understands the brief and try’s to see where the Creative Strategist is trying to take the campaign and accordingly plans for media that fits perfectly with creative.

All of this plan could be drafted roughly in an excel sheet. Learning basic of excel would always be helpful while designing media plan

The excel sheet simply contains: Platform, Budget, Campaign Duration, Media Planning Components.

After Planning Comes Buying.

But before buying one needs to understand the basic terminology of Media Buying Ecosystem.

Understanding Ad Publisher & Networks.

An Ad Publisher is nothing but an individual site that has become so large that it can run media on its own. Eg. FB is a Ad Publisher

Whereas, Networks are a cluster of unrelated small website that might now be able to attract on their own & hence they team up together.

They are similar websites that team up together so advertiser find it easier to target them. Eg. GDN you can find network of websites related to Home Décor. Double Click consist of network of premier websites and is also managed by google, popularly knows as DV360

Understanding Self Serve & Non- Self Serve Platforms.

Consider you go at a restaurant that is self served. What do you do?
You go help your self Similar is the case for Self Serve Platforms where you can start running ads on your own.

Popular example for this is: FB, Google Ads, Youtube Ads.

But In case of Non-Self Serve there’s a difference. Non-Self Serve is when you actually need to contact the platform to buy media space.

Popular example:  Scoop Whoop

Components Of Media Plan

In total there are Eight essential Media Planning Components that is present in mostly all media plans:

They Include:

1. Budget
2. Targeting
3. objective
4. Platforms
5. Ad Format
6. Deal Type
7. Duration
8. Weightage

Components of Media Plan is something that is the job of A Media Planner so unless you are someone who plans media knowing these terms would be sufficient but incase you want to dive deep into learning these components download this pdf that I have created.

Metric That Matters: Choosing your North Star Metric

As a marketer the one biggest challenge that I face even today is getting lost in numbers & metrics. There are so many campaigns to look at more the metric more is it confusing for the team to monitor and measure.

Setting a North Start Metric helps the entire team to align.

But the Question is What should be you North start metric?
Well the simple answer to this is the Metric that Matters.

I have created this small pdf mentioning the metric that one can choose depending on the type of objective they are trying to achieve. Download it to learn metric matters for you.

Lastly, Media Planning & Buying is also more of dependent on intuition and the brand you are working with. You can switch the budgets to performing campaigns incase of digital even after you have planned media.

The more you practice the more you do the more efficient you will become. To understand how all of these it put together in an excel sheet download the mock media plan.

Incase you have any doubts or want to learn media planning & buying in depth feel free to reach out on my email: haiderppc@gmail.com

Thanks for Reading!
Haider

The other day I watched a flock of birds fly and make a beautiful formation and I am sure that everyone must have seen such kind of art that the birds make when they fly.

This type of flying shows an amazing co-ordination and team work and I wondered what did they do that formed such a piece of art.

Recently I read these Lines from the book Good To Great and it spoke about what makes a company & team great and it goes like this,

When there’s disciplined people you don’t need hierarchy,
When there’s disciplined thoughts you don’t need bureaucracy,
When there’s disciplined action you don’t need excessive control.

Good To Great

Every extraordinary team has a culture of discipline with ethic of entrepreneurship in it’s members.

When there’s Disciplined People you don’t need Hierarchy

When we talk about discipline we usually tend to think about rules what we learned in school, Stand In a Line Don’t do this, Do this.

Every Organization which deals with a group people needs to have a sense of discipline. And All have their Carrots and Sticks to make it work.

But What I want to emphasize on when it comes to discipline is Self Discipline.

And I have had an experience of working with teams which have self disciplined members and one’s which don’t and here’s my experience:

One of early job in a startup which was growing significantly well in numbers was not up to the mark when it comes to having disciplined people in their hierarchy they lacked in having professional leaders which resulted in tremendous work pressure as well mental in the lower hierarchy and which led to a high attribution rate especially in the upcoming talents. I remember 7 out of 10 people including myself leaving the company in few months and most of them were engineers from top most universities in mumbai

Second, working at an agency with good people taught me how well can discipline people contribute in growth of an individual and the company itself. Talking about hierarchy I never the way I felt at the startup. I never left that we had hierarchy It was more a team who has members who want to constantly grow and contribute.

Two opposite experience and the only thing that made all the difference was Disciplined People.

When there is Disciplined Thought you don’t need Bureaucracy

One of my favorite quotes states:

Self Control is solely a matter of thought Control

When it comes to people thoughts is what creates conflict. A unproductive thought us all you need to get the entire teams morale down. But great teams and great managers know this skill is how to keep up the energy of the team and help people to work with their maximum efficiency!

While I was working at an agency we used to have weekly catchup and I over the period of time I realized that the 1 hour catchup meant so much to people working. We used to learn, share and express and this was one of the biggest motivation we had.

Great Leaders, Great Manager and Great individuals know how to keep disciplined thought among its team members

When there is Disciplined Action you don’t need excessive control

No one will dig into your past or work unless you give them a reason to do so

If you really want to lead people you need to instill disciplined action among them.

In the business world we commonly have a metric called the North Star Metric. It’s a metric were all the people’s efforts are aligned too and everyone works keeping that in mind. What it does is it helps people gain clarity on what they priority is.

Clarity gives you power. High Performing teams all are aligned and obsessed with action. They know when to keep their ego’s aside and work in sync to achieve that one metric.

Coming back to how birds make that beautiful piece of art…

On finding out how birds make these beautiful formations I found out that they follow a simple rule which is Don’t Collide.

And this was their secret. Play Your Part and Don’t Collide

This may sound simple but this is what makes a piece of art!

So to conclude its important that you co-operate and help people play their part. Contribute, Encourage and Inspire people around you and that is what will lead you to success.

Do let me know thoughts in the comments. Share this blog with someone you feel will benefit out of it.

Thanks for reading!

Haider

Great Marketers are people who know how to win and influence people

Hi,

In today’s blog, I wanted to write about Marketing & Relationships. Now it may sound a bit vague but by the end of this blog, I would want to demonstrate that how good marketers are people who know how to make good relationships and vice versa.

Let’s take Steve Jobs He never sold but what he did was build an everlasting relationship between apple and its user. He made raving fans. He knew how to build that relation. Gary Vaynerchuk is another brilliant icon when it comes to the marketing world. His content is all about building relationships between him and his audience.

So what I recently learned was that

To understand how marketing works you need to understand how relationship works.

And Marketing is often Referred as Marketing & Communication as relationships are built on communications.

So Here’s what Great marketers and Great relationships have in common they both to be successful need the commitment of the other person. When it’s business it’s your client and when it’s relationships it’s your other half.

So Marketing and Relationship work the same way and follow the same process which is Curiosity, Engagement & Commitment.

The Triangle consist of 3 parts and whether it’s a relationship or marketing it follows similar sequence:

1. Curiosity
2. Engagement
3. Commitment

Curiosity

The first goal of any marketing is awareness. Unless you have enough awareness about your brand nothing is going to work. So Awareness being objective is what is needed for every business.

But how do you get someone’s attention in this noisy world? Curiosity.

Getting other person curiosity is the best way to hook them. Talking about them or about subject that they are interested in is what gets you their attention.

Similar is for relationships consider you going in a party and you found an individual that got your attention. You become curios them and you go and start a conversation which then leads to exchange of numbers and building a friendship.

Events might be different but most of the relationship we build are built on curiosity.

You get interested about something and that’s where it all starts.

Engagement

So you started a conversation with you person you met and found interesting but later you realized that they are completely different and you can’t keep the conversation going?

What do you think is the future of them bond?

We all know the answer!

Great Hooks with bad stories are turns off!

Similar in marketing good Ads with Bad Landing Pages Don’t convert

Mastering the art of engaging is one of the utmost skill that you need to learn in order be a good marketer as well for keeping good relationship.

Commitment

You get their curiosity and you engage but if you don’t get their commitment you are neither gonna have a relationship nor are you going to get business.

Good marketers knows how to get the commitment of their prospects!

Commitment determines and completes the triangle.

So I hope this blog helps you to See marketing with a different perspective and understand it better.

I have been a passionate about life and people and that has helped me to learn and come up with this blog.

Let me know your thoughts about the same!

Love & Respect

Haider

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
– Abraham Lincoln

Recently I read an amazing book “Go Giver” here are the 5 laws I learn’t from it. These 5 Laws gives a simple view about how can one simply scale your business.

5 Laws :

1. LAW OF VALUE 
2. LAW OF COMPENSATION
3. LAW OF INFLUENCE
4. LAW OF AUTHENTICITY
5. LAW OF RECEPTIVITY 

LAW OF VALUE

The one thing that you should always be practicing is providing value in the life of other people.
Value = Brand Value.

LAW OF COMPENSATION

Your next job is to maximize your efforts and provide the value to as many people as possible.

LAW OF INFLUENCE

The degree to which you will be able to influence the other person is directly dependent upon how you put their interest ahead of your own interests.

LAW OF AUTHENTICITY

Every individual craves to have someone where they can express themselves without being judged. You need to be a person on which people can rely on trust on. The best way to do this is by being authentic to people. Be real.

LAW OF RECEPTIVITY

The art of receiving . Always be open to receive what you deserve. It’s your piece of cake be grateful and have it.

These simple laws can be applicable in all aspects of life.

Every crisis have and equivalent seed of opportunity. It’s our job to find it.

Do let me know in the comments what you think about these laws and do share it someone this could provide value to you.

Regards,
Haider

I have always been someone who loves to go out, explore meet new people and make the most out of it. Travelling has helped me grow & learn so much about different societies and cultures.

India in itself a huge land to explore and travel. Living in Mumbai since childhood we use to travel at different states mostly Mahrashtra, Gujarat, MP, Rajasthan.

Our Go-To Place as Kids.
Every other Vacation we used to go Ahmedabad at Our Nani’s Place. Living there for days, walking in pol and playing with friends.

Trip With Dadi – To Bangladesh

The Reason I Shared this picture is because its very close to my heart.

I was in my 7th Grade when it was only me and my grand mother and we decided to go to bangladesh we stayed there for 1 month and then later we extended 15 more days. These days were truly amazing from visiting to the world’s longest beach to watching one of the giants turtles present on the planet. This trip was truly a memorable one.

Solo Trip To karachi – My Most Epic 72 hours of Journey

I was in my second year of engineering when during my first semester I went to Karachi. My parents had already left a week ago and I somehow I decided that even I wanted to join them so I left Solo. I told my Dadi that I am leaving tonight and incase my parents called, tell them I will connect with them in Karachi.

I left for Amritsar by train but unfortunately due to cyclone the train got delayed by 18+ hours. Most of the passengers left because of this delay but I ended up staying as I was alone and had no other option. Finally I reached Amritsar and had to spend night near Wagah border as it was closed for the day.

On Day 3, I finally crossed the Wagah border and reached the other side, Lahore.

I had three options to travel from Lahore to Karachi:
Flight which was way to expensive and I didn’t have that much money, Train which just like us had a huge amount of wait listing and last by road which was a 36 hours journey. I decided to take that and it was one of the most adventures road journey I ever had.

Our bus was escorted by Pakistani Army and we were only allowed to get down when told. We stopped at various stops including Multan, Hyderabad and then finally I reached Karachi. I asked a local to take me to chowk near Burhani Hospital where I knew my parents were staying. Finally I contacted them and reached karachi safely.

I stayed there for the next 12 days attended a congregation and visited many places like Saddar Bazaar, Clifton and more

On my return I again crossed the Wagah border this time with my parent though! We saw the Golden Temple and spent our evening over there.

BE Trip Engineering – Last trip of Our College

Most Fun & Memorable Trip I ever had. Last year – Last Days-With These Friends.
For Our Final Year Trip We Went To Delhi, Rhishkesh, Mussorie & Chopta.

This trip had been in plan since the start of our final year and what we experienced was worth it. We Danced, Trekked, Chilled. I ended up doing India’s highest bungee and did my first small snow trek in tungnath.

kuari Pass Trek – Trekked 12516 ft (2022)

Life is not just a passing of time. Life is a collection of experiences, their intensity, and their frequency. Travelling is one of my ways to explore, grow and collect experiences.

I have been fortunate to be a part of trekking group we call it trekking enthusiast. During Covid, I was by a invited friend and since then we have been regularly trekking at various trekking places in Maharashtra. Some of which include, Kalsubai, Prabalmachi, Ganpati Gadad.

This year we ended up planning to go Kuari Pass Trek In Uttarakhand. It was a long-awaited trip with soo many adventures.

We ended up going on the trek we climbed more than 12500+ ft and reached the kuari pass summit. The adventure was truly amazing from climbing through the challenging path during the hot day to experiencing chilly nights which went to -10/-12 C. We did a lot of other stuff building snowmen to celebrating birthdays and dancing.

I Even Got Featured at my organization’s magazine.
While writing this article I just wrote what I felt, I never knew It would be shared with The Entire PGD Family.
(PGD Pulse March 2022)

Trip With My Team

Career is to support life and life is love!

We are a team of 14 but not long before we were merely four of us and within just a few months we grew rapidly. We all belong to different parts, including Kanpur, Jamshedpur, Mumbai, Mysore, Delhi, and Bangalore. After working for almost a year remotely we decided to plan a trip where we all could catch up!

So we planned a 4 day trip to Chandigarh – Shimla. People within our team quickly took up the initiative and planned and executed all that was needed.

Adventures I have done:

1. River Rafting (white River Rafting – Rhishikesh)
2. Paragliding (In Manali)
3. Bungee Jumping (India Highest Bungee Jump at Rhishikesh)
4. Flying Fox (India’s Longest Fly)
5. Glass Walk
6. Trip to Delhi 16 Hours-16 Places Challenge
7. Helicopter Ride
8. Parasailing
9. Snow Trekking
10. Valley Crossing – Kufri Valley
11. Solo Kayaking – Udupi

Things I like to do:

1. Trekking
2. Cycling
3. Exploring New Places
4. Trying New Adventures & Experiences
5. Reading
6. Creating & Building things
7. Travelling