We are publishing an interview of Mr. Rajesh Menon, Founder, How To Do Digital Marketing (This New Delhi based startup has created a content knowledge platform aimed with the objective of helping people learn art and science of digital marketing in the format they would like to- textual, visual or audio- whether online or offline).
About the founders
Rajesh has over 25 years of experience in marketing having worked on both agency and client side across multiple industry domains. He has led leadership positions in various companies. In 2005, he was the CEO of India’s largest marketing services agency which got accquired by Publicis. He started his own entrepreneurial marketing services agency in 2005 and grew it to a 36 crore business. In 2015 he sold the business and since then has been devoting his time and energy in helping businesses understand how to leverage digital marketing for their business and professional life.
What is the problem you are trying to solve? Can you share with us any insights that led you to believe that this is a big enough problem?
Every month over 3.3 million Indians search google trying to find answers to digital marketing challenges across a wide range of content topics. Unfortunately there is no single repository where one can learn, understand and use the art and science of digital marketing in a practical manner.
How To Do Digital Marketing is a content knowledge platform that aims to address the needs of these 3.3 million searchers.
What is the uniqueness about your Startup?
We are a content knowledge platform aimed with the objective of helping people learn and art and science of digital marketing in the format they would like to- Textual, Visual or Audio- whether online or offline.
Why do you choose crowdfunding?
The Small Biz communiity is the largest user base of digital marketing and their needs are large with extremely small budgets. Through crowd funding we hope to reach out to the audience who would love to learn about digital marketing and in fact contribute to helping us , help them.
Why should anyone or investor back you?
We are addressing a very large market volume that is today being addressed by millions of website and knowledge repositories. We hope to make our platform the single Go-To Platform for digital marketing knowledge.
Where can people back your project?
People can contribute in many ways- by contributing monies or by contributing knowledge that would be helpful for others. We have forums on our platform that allow people to interact with others who are more knowledgeable . They can also contribute in terms of knowledge articles, blogs, videos, courses.
What would you do after raising funds?
Increase the content volume available of the platform.
What is the revenue model? Explain your thought process.
Our revenue model is based on offering higher end coaching, consulting, and training programs for advanced users of digital marketing. We also are helping other institutions like colleges prepare course content that would help their students learn the art and science of digital marketing. In the end, we want to be a content platform.
Who are the consumers that you are targeting? How is this going to affect them?
Our consumers are students interested in digital marketing as a career, small businesses interested in using digital marketing for their business and working professional looking to apply digital marketing in their functional areas.
What is the big picture of your startup? Will it lead to something bigger? If so, how?
Yes. Our long term goal is to become the global Go To platform for anything Digital. We want to be become the de-facto Gartner when it comes to anything digital marketing.
What is the success story of your startup in your own words?
Ans: Digital Marketing is a vast area of specialization with informational learning needs ranging from the very basic to the advanced across multiple domain areas- web development, digital marketing, social media, email marketing, advertising etc. When H2D was conceived at first we realized that the content needs of the platform would be very huge and that our primary focus would have to be in developing not only depth of informational learning in each particular domain ( eg social media marketing) but also width across multiple domain ( eg social media to email marketing to digital advertising). Coupled with this was the fact that our research had indicated that different users like learning about a subject matter differently.
Some prefer to read, some prefer deep dive articles, some prefer watching videos while some prefer to learn through a personal interaction. It was and is a large challenge for a small team to develop this level of content matrix. We therefore decided to leverage the community of digital experts as far as possible in helping us develop and put forward this content. We currently have 3 guest contributors for content on our platform are continuously in the search for qualified experts who could contribute to the overall learning outcomes through high quality content.
Any other information about your startup that you would like to share with us.
This is my 2nd startup.
Thanks Mr. Rajesh. Best of luck!