Convincing Bosses

I happen to work for a company that is amongst the country’s biggest online advertisers. Most of the monies are spent on the traditional lead generating sources: online banner ads and Google/Yahoo pay-per-click programs. These online marketing efforts have been successfully delivering the organizational marketing goals so far….which is all very good.
But the flip side to this is that it becomes difficult to convince your bosses that an alternative source of online marketing may also generate as much revenue….at least that it is worth a try.
I am coming from a presentation we had the other day on Blogging and Affiliate Marketing. Both these methods of marketing are comparatively new to India. Our competition, we know, has tried it without much success. We were supposed to convince the marketing team that these ‘fads’ in the Indian Online Industry would eventually help us in creating a stronger brand, manage consumer perceptions and generate additional revenue for the company.
The presentation went fine…the team (which predominantly had an offline marketing background) was wide eyed with interest as we elaborated on the concept of blogging and affiliate marketing with their pros and cons. However, when it came to initiating action points for concrete measures to use these channels, we felt the team vibes change to that of mistrust and disinterest. To add to our woes, we found that we hardly had any data to back our claims.
So new is the industry and so little is the amount of research done in this sphere that marketers nation wide face a not-so-surprising dearth of data on sales projection figures, success stories, case studies. As any manager would know, in the absence of such material, selling a new marketing concept to the team, especially one which involves money spends, becomes quite an exasperating task.
The Indian Online Industry, as I have mentioned before is at a very nascent stage. It is only an 8-30 age group that is truly internet savvy and makes its purchase decisions via the internet (to a certain extent).
Marketers in this country will have to wait a few years more to convince bosses that the rules of this industry are slightly different. But the earlier companies wake up to the potential of the Indian Internet phenomenon, the better will they be able to monetize on the coming generation of fiercely net savvy individuals.