I hear the terms ‘being and doing’ in the coaching circle very frequently.

 While I understood the concept, true to myself, I was trying to put together a framework around the same!

 And when I thought more about it, I realized that I need to revisit my preconceived perceptions, and instead of force-fitting this under  the framework of tools and techniques (that I excel in!), I need to take it to the next level and understand this as a framework of underlying principles of the inner self.

The way I understood –

 Doing –

• It is an approach towards visible/ tangible results and goals. It’s related to ‘action’ and execution
• The Tools and techniques that I have learned during my journey as a consultant, mentor, and now coach are a means to get there

Whereas,

 Being –

• It’s about working inside-out in a reflective state
• It’s about self-reflection and evaluate and reevaluate their perspective and then reframing them

 ‘doing’ gives tangible/ quantifiable results and therefore is a feel-good factor within short durations. ‘Being’ is long term and sustained and overall satisfaction or feel-good factor.

 While (I think) I got most of it right, I was somewhere treating ‘being’ and ‘doing’ in silos and felt working on ‘doing’ helps shape the ‘being’ and not the other way around.

So the question was, how do I approach this as a coach?

 As I walked up the coaching path, the past experiences and present coaching training plus the tools and techniques gathered over the period of time led me to work predominantly with clients where their focus was on ‘doing’ and as a coach, my focus was to support them!

 However, it didn’t take me long to figure out that ‘doing’ can meet immediate needs and goals but long-term and sustained growth and results need the coaches and the clients to explore further, deeper!

 To reach there you need to acknowledge and take the path where you lead the client through the process of reframing/ changing perspective by self-reflection and focus on values, thoughts, purpose and therefore bring about self-awareness.

Very often I have heard coaches quoting ” Give a man a fish, feed home for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed for a lifetime.” with respect to the power of coaching.

 With your permission, I’ll take this a little further. If a coach focuses more on the ‘doing’ aspect and not the ‘being’  then in that context you are only taking them half the way i.e. showing them the direction to the lake but still not really teaching them to fish.

 In a coaching conversation, the changes are the client begins or gets in the ‘doing’ state. That’s the state where we mostly try to operate from as it gives us a feeling of security as this state resonates with a sense of action/ doing something/ getting results.

 As a coach, we can get the coachee to be present and reflect on the current state of ‘doing’. We need to help the coachee explore the deeper perspective around ‘being’ by asking questions like “is this act of ‘doing’ serving the ultimate purpose”, asking them to focus and draw clarity on what matters ultimately.

 ‘Being’ is the core of the foundation. You set it in flow and you can build floors and floor of effective ‘doing’ or outcomes on top of it. It’s more like “being while doing” by leveraging your inner drivers.

 When I pondered on it, I questioned myself, Can we use the tools and techniques I have learned over here?

 And the answer is, Yes, we can still leverage the tools and techniques. We just need to tweak our approach in a way that it facilitates reflecting on the inner perspective and reframe them as desired purpose and not just the tactical goals alone.

 This changed thought process has helped widen the coaching canvas further for a deeper and lasting impact for the clients.

After all, it’s human being not human doing!

What do you have to say? Happy to see your thoughts in  the comments.

“This gives me an idea!! instead of our session 11.30 today and tomorrow … do we do a cycling coaching session??? what say? Outdoors… a setting of choice for both of us ”

“Supperrr idea! I’m game! ”

WhatsApp Chat between Arvind and I

Arvind and I started on our coaching journey post successful completion of ‘Leader as a coach’ from TPC Leadership. Idea was to start with some peer coaching sessions and then this thought struck us!

Why not go cycling and conduct our coaching session?

A magnificent setting for thinking and reflection, for someone who cycles passionately and to add to it, the perfect backdrop of monsoon countryside!

As we rode down the country roads coaching and be coached, some practical lessons that we learned outside of a classroom environment –

1. Distractions

Trying to hear each other over the rushing sound of the headwind was not easy. We had to improvise and change the cycling position to hear clearly. 

So is the case when you do not have a ‘present’ setting for a coaching session. If you do not have a proper setting where you can listen undisturbed by the ‘noises’ both internal and external, you lose the advantage of effective coaching.

2. Keeping Pace

With two of us with different riding pace, the ‘coach’ had to match the pace to ensure both of us were in sync. So is the case in a coaching session. The coach has to match the pace of coachee to be in sync.

3. Course Correction

As we left Sohna Road and got onto the country roads, the ‘coach’ felt they have taken a wrong turn. Instead of making an explicit statement about it, the ‘coach’ gently asked the question couple of times at intersections till the ‘coachee’ himself made the course correction.

Isn’t that the case in a coaching session? The coach through powerful questioning enables the coachee to find options and course correct themselves.

4. Bad Patches

There were bad patches on the road where we had  to mutually decide to break pace, cross the patch, and reconvene. So is the case in a coaching session where you feel if the flow is changing, we spot contract, change course, and reconvene on the new path.

5. Reward

After a long and successful ride back, we both always take time to relax and rewards ourselves. That is where I was introduced to Bira white (beer!) for the first time. I guess I don’t have to explain a reward anymore after this apt example!

The same is in the case of a coaching session. Isn’t it? Once coachee gets to the point of firming up their action plans with respect to their goals, its good to reinforce their commitment by making them visualize the rewards, the feel-good factor, once they achieve their goals.

Conclusion

Looking at these analogies, I feel safe to say that coaching is about a logical flow of events that a coachee walks through, exploiting his or her own potential to find answers with the coach been a catalyst, asking all the right questions!

To quote our Mentor Coach, Pooja – “it’s not rocket science”

Until next…Keep listening… Keep asking!C

This is my second blog on Integrated Digital Marketing where I will focus on Customer Avatar’s and towards the end,  some tips on effective communication and how to be a better marketer.

What is Customer Avatar and why is it needed?

Imagine.

You need to get some information on health supplements.

Scenario 1 –

You drop a message on your friends group on WhatsApp. What do you get? Some emojis. Some anecdotal responses. And, if you are lucky, the information you were looking for.

Scenario 2 –

You drop the same message to a friend or group of friends who are all into health and fitness. Voila, you will get not one but several relevant bits of information back!

What happened here? 

When you try to connect with everybody in ‘general’ you don’t get to speak to anyone BUT if you connect with someone ‘specific’ then you get to speak to many relevant people especially in today’s world of digital marketing where reaching out to the masses is easy!

The same goes for connecting with customers. If you can identify common needs and pains, you can identify a typical profile of people you are trying to address.

This profile of people with whom you can establish a connection is a Customer Avatar or Persona.

When you create a customer avatar, you prepare a list of common attributes based on demographics & psychographics and hence a profile of a typical person who most likely has a need for your services or product.

Another way to look at this is, basis the most prominent avatar’s that you discover, you can fine-tune or customize your product or offerings.

Creating a customer avatar helps you to focus on the right set of people to whom you can market successfully and increase your penetration rate.

For example, 

A professional with 8-10 years of work experience, married to a  working spouse with 1-2 small children, living in rented accommodation, with no housing loans would be a typical avatar for affordable luxury apartments coming up in the area he/she has their office/ residence. 

An avatar is that imaginary person whom you would keep in mind when you market your product!

How to build a Customer Avatar?

Now that we know what a Customer Avatar is, let me share the process of creating one. Still better, I shall illustrate this with a live example as we go.

Step 1: Define attributes of  your Avatar 

You need to create a comprehensive profile of your avatar so you know what makes them tick. Knowing the following attributes would help you design powerful and customized communication, a marketing pitch, and more importantly the right product! 

Checklist of attributes –

Demographics – 

• • Personal – information like name, contact, age, gender,  marital /relations, location, etc.
  • Professional – education, Job role, Career aspirations, Goals, income, challenges, etc

Psychographics – 

Hobbies, interests, life aspirations, social media behavior, internet/ media habits, personal values  & attributes, buying habits & patterns, etc. 

Live Example 

I wanted to create customer Avatar(s) of readers/followers for this new Blog that I am launching. That would map the right profile of people and the blogs that would interest them.

Step 2: Collect data for your Avatar

Once you have identified the key attributes, the next step is to collect data to substantiate your hypothesis that the attributes you have identified for an ideal customer avatar are actually so.

Where do I collect data?

You can collect data from your own systems and sources like –

1. Website & email  analytics
2. Profile of your past or repeat clients
3. Various social media sites where people raise queries or provide comments
4. Various keyword & competition research sites and tools to identify needs

If you do not have the above data or you want to further substantiate –

1. Prepare a survey based on the attributes identified in step 1 and use an online survey tool. The challenge here would be to get the right sample, so you may leverage your social and email connections.
2. Follow up with a one-on-one call with few respondents to the survey to get in-depth clarity on the actual problems and issues.

Live Example

As my blog is new, I launched a survey on google forms (click here). I designed the survey based on the attributes mentioned in Step 1. I followed up with a call to 3 people to further understand their challenges, goals, and expectations.

Step 3: Create the Customer Avatar

Basis step 2 you are ready to identify what are the critical attributes that will drive the right customer behavior. 

Refer to the example above. Now,  you know the ideal age-group, kind of job role, family status, etc that would drive the customer to buy your product or services. 

You may find that there are more than one customer avatar’s that address the same need or solution. Again, for the above example on real- state, there could be another avatar of 35-45 years middle management level individual, with all loans paid up, is a potential buyer for a 2nd apartment.

Please see the two customer avatar’s that I have attached as an example for this website.

Live Example

I stratified the data based on attributes 1 to 7 (refer to the Customer Avatar’s below). Accordingly, I came out with two Customer Avatars. 

Step 4: How to use the Customer Avatar

Once you have built the customer avatar, you can focus on those profiles of people and your product/ offering should be designed to solve for their pains and requirements.

 Live Example

• Points 1 to 7 Points help me understand their background and expected level of content (basis their age and experience)

•  8 to 11 give me an opportunity to better understand what topics should I be writing on, problems those articles should help address and preferable mode of communication

Some pointers on effective deployment of the avatar

• Make the Avatar(s) Real-life i.e. print it out on a card and give it face (from the stock images or avatar images) and a name too! 
• An avatar with a face and name would help you create a powerful mental conversation and therefore the customer would immediately relate to the message.
• One-on-one communication helps build trust and rapport
• Be authentic in your communication
• Simple and effective communication with good content keeps the client interest right from the Headline to the last line. Remember, the chain is as strong as the weakest link and the same goes for the weakest line in the message.
• You should prefer email or personalized messages as compared to social media posts as that gives the customer a sense of one-on-one connection.

Needless to say, refining the customer avatar is a continuous process so basis your penetration rate, ROI, etc. you should revisit the customer avatar and fine-tune the same.

Some takeaway thoughts. A better marketer is –

• A person who can connect well with people
• People with good life experiences
• Someone who keeps learning has active hobbies, travels a lot, etc.

I hope you find this article useful.  I would appreciate if you could take out a few moments to provide your comments/ suggestions.

Summary – have a look at this 3 minutes Video Snippet

I started this blog site to share the lessons I learned through my career journey.

What can be better than to start this new chapter with fresh learnings on digital marketing with social media that I have/am going through this lockdown period? 

So let me begin with some basic building blocks of Digital Marketing in this blog.

Digital Marketing and growing trends

Marketing –  “The action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising”

 The ever-increasing consumer demand, further boosted by technological advancement, continues to open up new niches and opportunities to further ‘up’ the marketing and services game.

 The changing trends where the consumer needs better engagement, experience and personalized touch, it’s imperative to engage ‘technology’ and therefore go for Digital Marketing. 

Further, with social media becoming the backbone for the 21st-century ‘way of life’, it plays a big role in influencer marketing. 

So, digital marketing is there to stay and would only grow and transform with the change in market needs and availability of groundbreaking technologies (e.g., AI, ML are already driving the change today).

Now, how would the current economy and its drivers impact digital marketing?

The economy of a country grows with a younger population, like India. The ability to spend, create debt, affects the growth of the economy. 

The slowing down of the economy has put most businesses in disarray. Digital businesses and products not only remain mostly untouched but are using this opportunity to strengthen their base leveraging digital marketing.

Integrated Digital Marketing (IDM)

The key to success is a well rounded 360-degree approach to digital marketing is an integrated digital marketing (IDM)  framework. 

Building & Branding

Content & Tribe –

The first building block is strong content. A well-structured, informative content that can address the needs of the masses is the first step towards gaining the ‘loyalty’ of people and help build a tribe or a following of your own. Build and share content in your Niche. Content could be in the form of blogs, YouTube videos, Instagram posts, etc.

SEO  –

Once you have strong content, the next important factor is to drive traffic to your site. SEO (search engine optimization) helps you to get a proper listing in the search engines. 

Social Media –

A right mix of SEO and driving social media strategy leads to further building your tribe and therefore your Brand.

As you share your content on social media and drive traffic, it’s time to build your email list and drive and leverage the same for further drive traffic and connect with people and expand your tribe.

Marketing & Sales

Till now you were building a foundation for marketing. The next steps are to establish your product and set up your marketing funnel.

• First, you leverage Email Marketing &, Paid Advertisements (i.e. both organic and inorganic sources) to start a planned marketing campaign., 
• Next, you proceed with the Sales & Convert the prospects

The Marketing funnel 

The IDM is a cyclic process that goes through a  5 step marketing funnel as mentioned below.

• Awareness – Where you provide free/ value for money content
• Consideration –  Consistent value to followers 
• Conversion – automation builds relationships
• Loyalty – help build mass trust and a brand
• Advocacy – The loyal brand ambassadors  help grow the brand

We may also see a funnel as a flow of CATT –

• Content
• Attention
• Trust
• Transaction

It’s a funnel as at each step the conversion continues to reduce. E.g., for every 1 million people touched at the top of the funnel you would get 1000 loyal brand ambassadors. However, an effective brand building can create mass trust and help an inverted funnel with an increase in the number of loyal followers who advocate for you.

An automated system keeps the IDM and the funnel robust and scalable. A strong and ‘intelligent’  measurement and analytics process helps in continuous improvement in the efficiency of the IDM and the funnel.

Where and how to start your Digital Marketing Journey?

If you refer to the Integrated digital marketing framework, the core is ‘Content & Tribe’. Your success depends a lot on that. Once you have that set up rest is more of process and automation.

So some component that you can address to form a robust core, contents & Tribe are –

Finding your Niche

When we talk of content, it’s also important to talk about the Niche you want to work in. The three key parameters are –

• Are you passionate about it?
• Do you have a talent for it?
• Is there a need or market opportunity?

These three questions decide your critical success factors and your authority in that Niche would help you build an ever-increasing tribe.

How to Identify Market demand?

Some pointers  –

• Use tools like Google autosuggest, answer the public, Amazon reviews, etc. to identify problems in your niche that you can solve for.
• You can also identify problems that you, your friends and customers faced and address them.
• You could address/provide help and information on products, services that you have a passion for.

Finding your niche and identifying the market demand would help you build a sturdy content platform. 

Some Personal Attributes

Personal attributes that would help you build the ‘Tribe’ and the following are effective communication skills and building a brand. These would take you a long way down that path.

Communication Skills –

• Powerful writing skills are key to create impactful content whether its a blog, email connection, copywriting, authoring a book or  social media interactions
• Verbal communication and visual presence are equally important for other modes of effective interactions like podcasts, webcasts, webinars, and face-to-face interactions

It’s imperative to work on these skills to be a successful entrepreneur driving all aspects of your business.

Communications Tips: Practice until you’re perfect!

• Read – 30 minutes a day – Books of interest, various articles on business sites
• Listen – 30 minutes a day – podcasts and other talks in your area of interest 
• Watch – 30 minutes a day – Ted Talks, Sitcoms shows, etc. 
• Write – at least 500 words a day – start with a blog
• Think – Think in the language of your business, if it’s English, then it’s English!

Building a Personal Brand – 

The best ‘known’ will always beat the best!

People connect with an individual, they want to hear from an individual, a person. A powerful presence via written, verbal, and visual communication further enhances your brand and your following.

Personal Branding Tips: Improve as you go!

• Publish your content, share your thoughts. Don’t be afraid to stand out.
• Show your personality on social media
• Share content via different modes – written, videos, public speaking, etc. 
• Work on feedback – improvement is a continuous process

Well, this is just the beginning, lots more to come on this fascinating topic. So stay tuned. I would appreciate if you could take out a few moments to provide your comments/ suggestions.

Acknowledgments

I based the structure of this article on the session taken by Deepak Kanakaraju and my study on the subject over the Lockdown 1.0 till 3.0