Ethics of Business

While discussing client’s and projects with my team, I hear a lot of interesting conversations.

One of them revolves around who we should work with

Our Partnerships:

Everyday, a diversity of business and startup owners talk to us.

They cater to different problems, industries and have their own unique take on the products and solutions required for their market.

This way, we get access to new, exciting and cross-industry learning and insights.

And some of these solutions are incredible, and we can’t stop talking about them. But a lot of them are not, and we face a moral dilemma.

Mostly, this means that we don’t trust the business owner’s intentions.

This has made me realise it’s not the business in itself but the intention of the leadership and their values which reflects in their approach towards business.

The business or startup owner is responsible for making decisions about acquiring customers and delivering quality.

And if they are not serious about doing a good job, but simply wants to pocket money from the market, we feel uneasy.

Taking up a project means working closely with another business.

It means a partnership, a relationship and something we don’t take lightly.

Our relationships impact us and the way we work, so we are intentional about the kind of people we work with and the kind of work we do.

We make it a point to promise at the outset that we’ll not engage in unscrupulous activities in the name of marketing,

even if that means losing an account.

Our Beliefs:

  • Communicating clearly the scope of our services so that we don’t overpromise and drain our team’s energy.
  • Talking openly and often about expectations
  • Not take up tasks simply because someone asked us to do them.
  • Brainstorming on the best course of action for our clients.
  • Saying no to sub-quality requests and projects , &
  • Suggesting data-backed alternatives.

We also go out of our way to deliver quality work instead of chasing many clients and doing subpar work.

But we only do all of this if we believe we’re doing the right thing.

& sometimes we slip, because we’re not perfect but we’re learning everyday even though we make mistakes.

We never make sweeping guarantees,

but if we had to, we’d guarantee that we are committed to

  • Learning
  • Experimenting
  • & Talking.

We would rather focus on quality than quantity.

Whenever we take up a project, we don’t do it simply for putting money in the bank.

We take it up to invest in our learning, contribute to making our culture and processes efficient and building better resources for the industry

Ethics in business is important for us.


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Foundations of Marketing for Business Owners (Read this before you spend a single marketing rupee)

To all the founders out there.

Also the founding team members

And a handful of committed marketing team members

In short, for all business people tired of doing everything all time.

I have bad news

Marketing is magic doesn’t exist.

And Digital Marketing is magic doesn’t exist.

But I want the magic

Yeah, who doesn’t?

The only real magic is in the hard work.

Learn the basics of your market, learn the message, channel and creatives that work best

or

If you have money, spend it on the person you’re asking to do this work

That’s the only magic.

Build the foundations of your marketing.

&

If you don’t fail to get this right,

there’s really not much use spending time, energy and money in the wrong direction.

Are you ready to work for it?

I advise all my clients to do their own research first.

Recently, at an Entrepreneur Masterclass, I asked the attendees.

“Are you ready to put to understand your market?”

Only if the answer is yes, there’s any reason to talk more.

About Digital Strategy and Execution.

Else, there’s no point.

Don’t get me wrong,

You can (and should) take the help of experts, people in the marketing industry, communities, online resources etc., but you are the one who has to figure out the space you are operating in.

Some of the non-negotiable things you have to learn:

You can only build a repeatable scalable marketing and distribution channel when your marketing foundation is strong.

Work on building that.

An employee or an agency can only help you reach your market if you’ve done the groundwork and set them up for success.

Learn your marketing

I and my agency is a strong advocate of getting founders to learn about marketing.

Don’t panic.

You don’t have to be an expert,

Remember when you started, you didn’t know much about anything?

But you learned, right?

Similarly, you’ll learn the foundations of marketing your own business.

Some of the points that you’ll have to research are:

And once you have done your homework,

you can give out the execution to someone one.

Remember, no one will experiment and learn the way you do.

As an marketing agency head, I request founding team to do this work.

It obviously works better for me if you give this work to me….

But I am okay to let that money go.

Why?

Because I have seen too many business and startup owners make the mistake of giving way too little importance to marketing

And once they have launched their business, and they’re not getting any customers,

they start to panic…

And make mistakes.

Falling victims to scams, inexperienced marketers and unscrupulous agencies whose only motive is to make you spend money so that they end up earning more:

Marketing works but it’s not a magic bullet.

It is an art and science much like any other business function.

You make assumptions, benchmark with industry standards, research your market, experiment.

All the time.

And hopefully you learn 🙂

Contact us if you have any questions about how to get your foundations of marketing right.

We are happy to help!

The full slideshow that I used for a recent event is here:


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