his start-up makes parenting easy for you

Babychakra's online community has 500,000 mothers seeking advice and support and who share lessons learnt on their journey through pregnancy and parenthood, reports Abhishek Jejani

If you are an expecting parent and live in a nuclear family, with no support system to fall back on, there is a start-up you can look up to for advice and support during pregnancy and raising your child.

BabyChakra is a social discovery parenting platform for young parents for pregnancy and childcare.

Last month, it received an undisclosed amount of funding in the Series A round from Seattle-based RoundGlass.

In 2015, the start-up had raised the seed round from Mumbai Angels, the Singapore Angel network and Arihant Patni (an entrepreneur and venture capitalist).

BabyChakra is an online community, which provides information on conception, pregnancy, birth, and early childhood for parents and parents-to-be.

The platform also provides with reviews of maternity and childcare services and content focusing on healthcare, nutrition, early learning and support services (daycare, nanny agencies).

Launched in February 2015, the start-up plans to use the money raised for product development, strategic hires and to create localised content.

The start-up makes money by providing a marketing platform to companies, including Johnson & Johnson, MamyPoko, Babyoye and Unilever.

It is also in the process of launching a commission-based model where it will provide with the services in maternity and child care and charge a commission on the services booked.

"We have been cash-positive from the past couple of months as money has been coming in from the top brands," says Naiyya Saggi, founder and chief executive officer.

The community comprises 500,000 mothers seeking advice and support and who share lessons learnt on their journey through pregnancy and parenthood.

The start-up has a 40-member strong team and it aims to have two million monthly users by 2017.

It is currently operational only in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru and plans to expand to major metros. It competes with FirstCry, Tinystep and ZenParent in this segment.

IMAGE: Kind courtesy Babychakra

'Mistry brought biggest turnaround in Indian corporate history'

'There were multiple turnarounds that were happening in the Tata group.'
'In fact, it can be called the biggest turnarounds in the history of Indian corporates.'
'Just see where the companies were three years ago and where they are now.'
Dev Chatterjee finds out how Cyrus Mistry fixed 'legacy hotspots' to clear the financial mess.

Former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry had put in place a strategy that would have pulled most of the Tata group's 'legacy hotspots' out of the financial mess from legacy issues and helped turn around the group's finances.

Mistry's turnaround strategy, a source close to the development said, included a merger of Tata Teleservices with a large Telco that would have resulted in merger synergies worth Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion).

Mistry was also keen to end the dispute with DoCoMo, but as the Reserve Bank of India's permission to remit funds of $1.17 billion to DoCoMo had not come, the merger deal was pending, the source added.

"After the turnaround plan was put in place, Tata Teleservices had started making an Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) of nearly Rs 2,500 crore (Rs 25 billion), and had asked DoCoMo to make a joint application to the government but they moved court," said the source, asking not to be identified.

"Mistry was also keen to pay Docomo and end the dispute, but his hands were tied by present laws," the source noted.

The option of paying Docomo from Tata's overseas accounts would still violate Indian laws, the source added.

Following Mistry's removal by the Tata Sons board on October 24, the new management led by Ratan Tata is planning to end the litigation with DoCoMo by making a fresh application to RBI.

The government is likely to help the transaction by making an exception to the law and allowing the buyback of shares at pre-determined rates.

Mistry had explicitly mentioned the five 'legacy hotspots' of the group in his letter to the Tata Sons board: Indian Hotels, Tata Motors, passenger vehicles business, Tata Steel Europe, Tata Power Mundra and Tata Teleservices.

A realistic assessment of the fair value of these businesses would result in a potential write-down of $18 billion.

At Tata Steel, the source said the British operations were hit due to cheaper Chinese exports to Europe.

With the steel price crash, the fate of high-cost British operations of Tata Steel Corus was sealed.

At the same time, the Tata Steel board was asking Mistry to get out of Europe so that the Indian operations could be salvaged.

The high cost of acquisition made by Tata in 2007 had already led to a loss of up to Rs 80,000 crore (Rs 800 billion) to Tata Steel.

"Tata Steel sold a couple of operations in the UK to cut costs but due to aggressive cost cutting, the Port Talbot operations were looking up and the sale of the Port Talbot plant was put on hold," the source said.

A merger with Thyssenkrupp, which was on the cards, would have helped Tata Steel to focus on Indian operations that was fast turning around with Kalinganagar coming on stream.

"In the past three years, Tata Steel executed the largest industrial project ever in the Tata group's history with 49,000 people working at the site at its peak," the source close to the Mistry camp said.

The infrastructure is already in place to expand the capacity by another five million tonnes a year, the source said.

• In line with Tata's personal style

On Tata Motors' Nano, a board member said the product was losing close to Rs 1 lakh (Rs 100,000) on every car produced, and the project has made total losses of Rs 6,000 crores to Rs 7,000 crores (Rs 60 billion to Rs 70 billion).

"The company has had four managing directors in the past 10 years, and employee morale was low. It took two years for Tata Motors to get a new CEO as the Tata Sons board was rejecting most candidates selected by Mistry."

However, Tata Motors' domestic passenger vehicle business is on the right path, say insiders, and Mistry's turnaround strategy with the launch of new products such as the Tiago, new branding and a new CEO at the helm will help.

At Tata Power's Mundra project, the source said the company was suffering due to Indonesian coal prices that went up due to a change in local laws.

A turnaround strategy was put in place by selling stake in the Indonesian coal mine and the company made an acquisition in renewable power sector from Welspun for Rs 9,700 crore (Rs 97 billion).

As coal prices were falling, Mistry saw that the production costs at Tata Power's coal mines were also reduced, which has helped the company's financials, said the source.

• The halo around Ratan Tata has gone

To turn around Indian Hotels, the company first merged the off-balance sheet Sea Rock hotel, a legacy purchase and took the impairment.

The Pierre in New York, which is losing $15 million a year, could not be sold due to unattractive lease terms.

Write-downs were also made for other bad acquisitions.

In the process, 75 per cent of Indian Hotels' net worth was wiped off. A new management was put in place and a new branding for the Taj was launched.

The company was back on track -- a fact acknowledged by its independent directors at its board meeting held on Friday, November 4.

"There were multiple turnarounds that were happening in the Tata group. In fact, it can be called the biggest turnarounds in the history of Indian corporates," the source added. "Just see where the companies were three years ago and where they are now."

IMAGE: Former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry. Photograph: PTI Photo

India rises to 2nd spot on global business optimism index

India, which is ranked 2nd in Q3, raced past China where only 30 per cent respondents expect an increase in revenue. In India, 85 per cent respondents have voted in favour of increasing revenue.

India improved its ranking by one spot in a global index of business optimism, with policy reforms and Goods and Services tax (GST) expected to become a reality soon, says a survey.

According to the latest Grant Thornton International Business Report, India was ranked second on the optimism index during the third quarter (July-September 2016).

Indonesia took the top spot, with the Philippines coming in third.

India was ranked third during the April-June period after being on top for two consecutive quarters.

"The improvement in the optimism ranking in the recent past clearly reflects that the reform agenda of the government and its efforts on improving the climate for doing business are having an impact," Grant Thornton India LLP Partner India Leadership Team Harish H V said.

India regained its top position on this parameter, from second position in the April-June period, while profitability expectations also moved up.

"...all the programs and initiatives of the government as well as its focus on building relationships with all major economic powers has made India a bright spot in the global economy," Harish said, adding the recent push for GST augurs well and should give a further boost to business optimism.

While India continues to be among the top five countries citing regulations and red tape as a constraint on growth, for the first time in the year, the country's ranking on this parameter has dropped from second to fourth.

As per the survey, 59 per cent of the respondents have quoted this as an impediment in the growth prospects compared to 64 percent in the previous quarter.

The report is prepared on the basis of a quarterly conducted global business survey of 2,500 businesses across 36 economies.

Meanwhile, in terms of revenue expectations, India slipped to third position from top in the previous quarter.

In spite of the downturn, India is much ahead of China where only 30 per cent respondents expect an increase in revenue, whereas in India, 85 per cent respondents have voted in favour of increasing revenue.

The survey further noted that 68 per cent of respondents have voted for an upsurge in selling prices. On this parameter too, China lags India with only 10 per cent of respondents expecting an upsurge in selling prices. The global average is 19 per cent.

Globally, business optimism stands at net 33 per cent, rising 1 percentage point from the previous quarter but falling 11 percentage points over the year.

"Political events such as Brexit and the US presidential election understandably rattle the global economy and test the resilience and elasticity of businesses worldwide. In general, businesses do not like uncertainty, and that is what is happening," Grant Thornton Global CEO Ed Nusbaum said.

Image used for representation purpose only.

5 Habits That Are Stopping You From Becoming Rich

Everybody loves a blame game.If stock markets crash just after you made your first investment in equity, it’s a bad gamble. When interest rates rise just when you take a home loan, you blame it on your luck.Our bad luck happens all too often!!

As a finance writer earlier and now as a financial planning guide for women, I have come to understand that we choose to multiply our savings with our habits and attitudes and not just due to sheer luck or timing.

I spend a lot of time helping people understand their wealth-obstructing habits. The top five are:

#1. Procrastination: Close the dormant bank accounts.Visit the post office to encash national saving certificate (NSC). Start a systematic investment into a mutual fund.

Our financialto-do-list just keeps growing. I admit having a long-one as well. Until I got an SMS alert from my bank about low minimum balance in3 out of 4 savings accounts I have, I didn’t realise that I needed to close the dormant ones.

Similarly a cousin in his early forties has been “thinking of an SIP” since the past 5 years.

A few weeks ago, I advised a friend to consolidate her multiple insurance policies into one and invest money in other avenues. She is yet to take out a weekend to figure out the list of the policies she has.

We make great plans but don’t implement it until we realise what is the cost of postponing these decisions.May be I should call up my cousin and say “You just lost the opportunity to earn 14-15% return on your savings”

2. Staying Ignorant: Our ignorance is a blessing for someone who is lurking around for a big bonus or a commission. Someone who parked their savings into unit-linked insurance plan (ULIP) will very well understand the dangers of ignorance.

These days,bankers give it a fancy name; a savings product with words like guaranteed rate of return thrown into it. Recently a high net worth senior citizen couple in my family were persuaded to open a third bank account along with a Rs 20 lakh commitment into a closed-ended fund for 7 years. The banker came through a friend’s reference so they trusted him.

Staying ignorant these days could easily lead you into a trap of investments not suited for you.

3. Being Fearful Always: Indeed equities are a very risky asset class. My heart sank when I heard a 22 year old engineering graduate telling me “I would rather put my first job’s savings in fixed deposits otherwise I will lose all of it in shares” The young man wasn’t really convinced about the mutual fund route too. You will have to work really hard for your retirement is what I felt like telling him.

Not that staying away from shares or equity funds is a wrong decision but there are some risks you can take early on in life. At 45, you should think twice about the equity risk you take. At 22, you can atleast try and see what a risky asset looks like.

4. Living a Life others live: We think owning the latest car or a phone is an absolute necessity, even if it depletes in value the moment we purchase it. For some people I have seen, a palm size tablet phone has got more value than a kids’ education fund.

Instead of our income, or budgets, it’s our office colleagues, relatives and neighbours Facebook posts that decide our expenditure. Whatever is left is what we save instead of it being the other way round.

5.Expecting a Free Ride Always: Let’s admit that we love bargains and we love free goodies with our grocery bills. But how many times do we really find those goodies worth using? 8 out of 10 times we don’t use it. Same is the case for the free financial advice that you always look out for? A free insurance or the accident cover that comes with credit card or investment plans, may not serve the purpose at all.

A stock broker will tell you to buy a stock that he must have bought two years ago at a much lower price.

But it’s our fickle mind that at times doesn’t want to do our own research and instead look out for someone who can tell us the best insurance policy or the best fund that will double the money at one go.

Do you relate to any of these wealth-obstructing habits? Would love to know how you plan to overcome them.

About the Author: Rachna Monga Koppikar is the founder of thegreatgruhini.com, India's first personal finance website that helps women navigate through the money maze.  

Having swam and mastered the treacherous waters of corporate and personal finance writing, she is now on a mission through her blog to make every Indian woman a Money Savvy Woman and a Money Savvy Mom!

Why I hope Hillary loses as an Indian

'Hillary Clinton is no friend of India,' says Rajeev Srinivasan. 'Not that Trump is necessarily one, but at least he gets the benefit of the doubt.'

I could say a couple of things about the US elections nobody would disagree with: First, these are the most nail-biting and most uncertain US elections in our lifetimes; second, whatever the result, we are all sick and tired of the constant stream of abuse by both sides, and so we'll welcome the calm and peace and silence come Wednesday.

Beyond that, there's nothing most of us will agree on.

The latest polls are a dead-heat, but as has happened before, Hillary Clinton could in the end squeak home by a whisker even if she loses the popular vote, by dint of the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College.

That would be a shame. Because I think she does not deserve to win.

Let me be quite up-front with my biases. I have never been so worried about a US Presidential candidate as I am about Hillary Clinton. (Not that I am blissfully happy about Donald Trump: I support him mostly as a protest against Clinton, as I suspect large numbers of people do.)

This surprises me because I did not take an instant dislike to her. There are several others whom my political instincts made me nervous about the moment I came across them: Barack Obama, Huma Abedin, Arvind Kejriwal, for instance, and they have proved me right.

I am worried both for America and for India, and for the world in general. The media has portrayed the battle as one between a boor and a liar; better have the finger of the former on the red button.

Years ago, when Hillary Clinton first came into the limelight, she didn't appear so dangerous. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe she wasn't born to greatness, or become great, but had greatness thrust upon her? Maybe it was the taste of power with her husband as president that corrupted her.

Somehow, Bill Clinton was able to get away with abuse of power because he is a charming rogue. Hillary isn't charming, so the dirt sticks to her.

Just a few facts about her candidacy concern me: The reputed $1.14 billion war-chest she raised (the donors, some of whom are quite dubious, will surely demand their pound of flesh); the cavalier treatment of corporate governance in the Clinton Foundation which appears to not make any distinction between the charitable foundation and the Clinton family's coffers; the unexplained and yet-to-be audited consequences of her classified emails ending up on insecure server.

These would be enough to kill off a normal candidate's chances; the fact they haven't is itself suggestive that something is awry.

On the other hand, there is also the concern that if Hillary Clinton wins, that would mean a perpetuation of dynastic politics in the US: The Bush dynasty, then the Clinton dynasty, with a brief non-dynastic Obama interregnum.

And the gender card, which seems to be Hillary Clinton's trump card, isn't enough to overcome all these negatives. The idea that it's about time that a woman became US President is laudable, but that alone doesn't mean this particular woman is the right candidate.

On top of all this, there is the possibility of a constitutional crisis.

Given the unclear status of the email server issues (the FBI, in its wisdom, appears to claim that it evaluated 650,000 mails in as many seconds to reiterate today its July recommendation to not prosecute her) it is possible that Hillary Clinton will end up charged, found guilty and impeached.

Which will, of course, bring her Vice-President, Tim Kaine, to the presidency, and he is not exactly a shining star in the political firmament. (And the FBI's antics, which will surely be investigated, will make it look like the famed Caged Bird of India, equally subject to political pressure).

And that's not to mention persistent concerns about Hillary Clinton's health. Some people allege that she's suffering from all sorts of diseases, including the results of mild strokes, or early stage Alzheimer's: You could attribute this to conspiracy theories, but again remember the red nuclear button in the hands of someone who is not quite there.

All that is about America, and by extension the impact of Hillary Clinton on the world. But the likely impact of her presidency on India is not even open to speculation: It is demonstrably the case that Hillary Clinton would be simply awful for India, based on her prior actions.

Here are a few examples of the Clinton family's and friends' attitudes towards India (the research courtesy Arvind Kumar):

• In 1992, Trade Representative Carla Hills, a Clinton friend, imposed Super 301 sanctions against India.
• In 1992, the US blocked the sales of Russian cryogenic engines to India. This, and the fake Maldivian spy case and the ruining of Nambi Narayanan, chief engineer, set India's heavy satellite launch capability back by 19 years.
• In 1993, Bill Clinton as POTUS blocked the sale of a Cray supercomputer to India, but permitted the same to China.
• In 1993-1994, Bill Clinton refused to appoint a US ambassador to India.
• In 1994, Robin Raphel announced that Kashmir is not a part of India.
• In 1994, Robin Raphel announced the sale of F-16s to Pakistan, in Delhi.
• In 1998, Bill Clinton imposed sanctions against India after the nuclear tests. Madeleine Albright, never pleasant, excelled herself by calling this 'a felony against the future.' But the duo extended MFN to China.
• In 2001, the USCIRF was created to harass Hindus and India.
• In 2005, India was advised to give up nukes and join the NPT as a non-weapons State.
• In 2009, Hillary Clinton proudly released the USCIRF report which unfairly slammed India.
• In 2009-2012, Hillary Clinton and her cronies, including the American ambassador to India, ran a crusade against Narendra Modi.
• In 2014, Robin Raphel was accused by the FBI of spying for Pakistan.
• In 2015, Tim Kaine praised Pakistan.

Then there is, of course, Huma Abedin, who clearly takes after her Pakistani mother in temperament and tastes.

For instance, it is quite likely it was Huma who astro-turfed the formidable Khizr Khan, a Pakistani, as though the far more numerous Arab Americans could not supply a suitable hero.

So the pattern is clear. Hillary Clinton is no friend of India.

Not that Trump is necessarily one, but at least he gets the benefit of the doubt.

Besides, it can be argued that Indian Americans should not care about a candidate's impact on India, only on the US. That is not unreasonable, but in my opinion, she'd be a far worse POTUSfor the US as well.

I have tried, but I fail to see why anyone should vote for Hillary Clinton. She is possibly the worst candidate in living memory for the US Presidency.

Forgetting the dead US ambassador to Libya, the Arab nations that have been destroyed on her watch, and a whole trail of dead bodies would be unfair.

Atlanticist Democrats on average are dangerous: Think Kerry, Brzezinski, Albright. Hillary Clinton would listen to the worst of them, try to corner Russia, and succeed in further driving it into the arms of a welcoming China. And that would be disastrous geo politically for all of Asia.

I do hope that Americans do not make their biggest mistake this century by electing Hillary Clinton.

How to Get the Maximum Reach for Your Facebook Page Posts

A few years back, if you had a Facebook page with thousands of likes, it was considered as a good digital asset. If you posted an update on your Facebook page, it would actually be seen by most of the people who follow your page.

As the popularity of this publishing medium grew, more people and brands started creating Facebook pages and publishing updates regularly. Facebook users also ended up following a lot of pages. This resulted in too many updates in a user’s feed which were not always relevant and useful.

Facebook knew this was coming. Hence, they built an algorithm in such a way that only selected updates were displayed on a user’s Facebook feed. The decision is made by Facebook’s algorithm. This is called the Facebook’s EdgeRank.

According to Wikipedia: “EdgeRank is the name commonly given to the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine what articles should be displayed in a user’s News Feed.”

The Facebook team is continuously working on improving the algorithm to show the most relevant and useful updates on the user’s feed. It makes sense because if users are shown updates that are not interesting enough, then they will stop logging into Facebook frequently. Even, you would stop using Facebook if the updates that you get are not relevant and interesting.

Facebook now uses more than 100,000 factors in deciding what to display on a user’s feed. As more people and brands use Facebook to post updates, Facebook will become even more selective in what to display in the user’s feed. Only the highly relevant and useful updates will be displayed.

Obviously, Facebook doesn’t have manual reviewers to check if the posts are interesting or not. That’s why they use the algorithm to take the decision. But the algorithm is built by humans.

How a Post Gathers Momentum

A simple way for Facebook to check the quality and relevancy of the posts is to see how many likes, comments, shares and clicks the post gets, and how fast it gets.

If you post a new update, Facebook will show it to a test group of people. If it doesn’t get enough activity the post will die down. Lack of activity is the proof that the post is not of good quality. If it instantly gets a lot of likes and other activity, then Facebook’s algorithm ‘knows’ that you have posted an interesting update and it will show the post to more people.

Facebook is continuously working on improving their algorithm and making it fool proof. For example, many people post click-bait and like-bait articles such as ‘Like this post to win XYZ’ or something like that. The Facebook team has reviewed a lot of such posts and they have built it into the algorithm to look for signals for such misleading and click-bait posts.

If you post such misleading updates, it may reach more people in the short term, but in the long run, your page and domain will be flagged and your reach may be restricted.

So how do you make sure that your Facebook posts reach more people? You just need to think from the shoes of Facebook. Make the posts interesting enough to make people stick to Facebook. Share limited posts on your page and share only interesting posts. Build authority for your domain and page slowly over time. Make Facebook trust you.

Also if you think from Facebook’s shoes, it makes sense for Facebook to retain users on Facebook – than let them leave and visit some other site. So obviously, the posts that do not contain links perform better than posts with outbound links.

I have noticed that Polls, photos, text posts and Facebook videos reach more people than external links. This has been tested several times by others as well.

For example, look at the post below. It is a set of 3 photos with one line of text. Here, people spend time on Facebook and do not click away to another website.

Such posts usually have high organic reach. But the higher reach also applies for paid reach. Here you can see that for $5, I’ve got 957 photo clicks. That’s just 0.52 cents ($0.0052) per click!

Apart from getting more post engagement, this paid promotion has also given me 50 new page likes.

Your Facebook Page is Not Your Property

End of the day, try not to depend on Facebook too much for reaching your audience and followers. Because you are building your home on someone else’s land.

Try to get people back into your digital properties and use Facebook and other social media channels to build your brand. Do not build something on top of Facebook. Even if people ‘Like’ your Facebook page, they are still Facebook’s users and not yours. FB’s terms can change and it may become even more difficult to reach your audience in the future.

That’s why it is important to build an email list. When people sign up on your website by giving away their email ID, they become your users and you have explicit permission to contact them; and no one can restrict your reach when you are sending emails.

4 Ways to Ethically Steal Customers from Your Competitors

Building a product or service that your customers want is just half the hurdle in your startup journey. Reaching out to your target audience & converting them into your customers is probably as difficult as building the product itself.

There are several ways through which you can target and reach your potential customers. But one of the best and easiest ways to get customers instantly is to target your competitor’s customers!

If you are entering a profitable market, you are sure to have competitors already. In fact, if you are trying to penetrate a niche where you have no competition, it could be a recipe for disaster.

Your competition has already done the hard work of convincing people that they need the product. They have created the market for you. Now you have an opportunity to beat them by creating a product or service that’s better than their offering. And when you create a better product at a better price point, your competitor’s customers are sure to flock to you.

Before the advent of digital marketing, it was not easy to reach your competitor’s customers without a huge marketing budget. But digital marketing has given us a lot of growth hacks that can help us achieve the same goal with a very small budget. Here are 4 top methods that you can use to reach and convert your competitor’s customers.

1. Target Your Competitor’s Brand in Google AdWords

Your competitors build brand awareness using ads and other branding exercises. A good percentage of the people who have heard about that brand would end up searching for that brand name on Google. These potential customers are closer to the conversion stage in the funnel because they are searching for a specific brand name or product name.

Google gives you an opportunity to tap into this market by running ads for your competitor brand keyword. For example, have a look at Hootsuite’s (a social media management tool) ad for its direct competitor’s (Buffer) brand name search.

This type of bidding in Adwords is a double edged sword, you have to follow the rules and guidelines by Google for using brand names as keywords.

One of the disadvantages of these type of ad is you are inviting your competitor to bid on your brand search as well. And also due to low-quality score, it will be costly to maintain the first ad position. You might have to pay a lot more than your competitor for their brand keyword. And note that it is a good practice to run ads for your brand keywords as well.

If you are advertising for your own brand, you will get a lot of clicks at a very low cost due to high-quality score and you also prevent your competitors from stealing your potential customers by advertising for your brand keywords.

2. Facebook Interest Targeting

Unlike other ad platforms, Facebook doesn’t allow you to target your competitor’s customers directly. But still, you can use interest-based targeting options to show ads to the audience who Like your competitors brand.

In the targeting section just type in your competitor’s name or domain name, most of the time it will show up. However, your competitor’s name won’t show up if they don’t have a big enough audience.

In the above example, you can see that the brand Shoutmeloud has around 50k followers. Though Shoutmeloud.com isn’t my competitor per se, their audience is similar to mine and hence I can use in my targeting.

How do you know that you are targeting exactly targeting your competitor’s Facebook fans? You can compare the interest-based audience size and competitor’s Facebook page followers.

The risk of this kind of advertising is you will never know how your competitors built their following on Facebook. It will be a total waste of campaign budget if your competitor built their follower base with poor targeting. The only way to find out is to monitor the conversion quality and taking a call accordingly.

3. Native Gmail Ads

Email is the best conversion channel for both B2B and B2C segments. That’s why most companies spend so much money to capture people’s email. But did you know you can send emails to people even without having their email ID? You can do that with native Gmail ads!

Gmail is part of the Google display ad network. Gmail ads are the expandable ads that will be shown in the Gmail Tab. You can target people based on keywords, topics, and demographics. Apart from this, you can target people those receive mail from a particular domain.

These ads look like an Email first. You can use any of the available templates or plain HTML to create the ads. All you have to do is add mail.google.com as a managed placement in your display network and your competitor’s domain name or brand name as a keyword. I will soon be publishing a detailed guide to running Gmail ads. Stay Tuned!

4. Twitter Ads

Studies show that “42% of Twitter users follow brands or companies”. You can get more followers and create awareness using Promoted tweets, Promoted accounts, and Promoted trends.

You can target people based on their Bio, accounts they are following, and keywords. Twitter provides username based targeting called tailored audience targeting. You can use any of the following tools to download your competitor’s account followers: Twitonomy, Audiense, Followerwonk or you can use this free Google spreadsheet.

Upload the downloaded usernames in the tailored audience targeting section and create the ad. You can use any of the 9 different types of twitter cards based on your campaign’s goals: Summary card, Large photo summary card, Product card, Player card, Audio card, Photo card, Gallery card, App card and Lead generation ad.

5. Bonus Tip: Stalk Your Competitor’s Unsatisfied Customers

For all the above-mentioned methods you need to have an ad budget. But what if you don’t have enough budget?

Did you know that around 30% of the companies having a separate twitter account for customer service? Customers believe response rate for any complaint is high on twitter and companies are more transparent than ever.

Now, this gives you an opportunity to stalk your competitor’s unsatisfied customers and possibly convert them into your own customers. People are highly likely to switch brands when they are not satisfied with a brand.

There are several tools that will help you monitor your competitor’s brand mentions. One of the best practices is to create a channel called #competition on Slack (or any other internal messaging tool that you use) and set up an automation in such a way that all your competitor’s tweets appear on this channel. This will help you monitor and respond quickly!

Source: http://digitaldeepak.com/customers-from-your-competitors/