Fervent Digital Helps Build Marketing Strategies to Bring Success to your Business
The digital transformation is making companies rethink their business strategies, business models and adapt to the changing market reality. Today, customers expect relevant content at all times. In order to keep up with the changing environment, a business needs a good marketing company which will not only help them stay ahead of their competitors but also help them continue to conquer markets. One company that helps businesses build stronger marketing strategies is Fervent Digital. It is a Next-Gen marketing company that offers specialized marketing services for businesses through an evolved approach of augmenting sales and marketing best practices to build their brand, increase website traffic, and convert more leads into sales. CIO Dimension, a property of Fervent Digital, seeks to accelerate technology disruption in India by Empowering Smarter and Relevant Conversations. CIO Dimension was launched as an initiative in August 2019 to connect and empower smarter conversations between the advance-tech inclined CIO community and advance-tech start-ups.
Kalika Hooja, Chief Creative Officer and Co-founder, Fervent Digital, is a creative leader with rich experience and expertise in branding, experiences, campaigns, digital, social media, online advertising, and applications. Kalika is responsible for all creative, design, content, branding, and marketing communication of CIO Dimension apart from the overall creative lead for Fervent Digital.
Kalika’s first business idea was at the age of 10 when she invested all her pocket money in buying books to rent out in the neighbourhood. The idea tanked because the books were never returned.
Kalika believes that great creative ideas can be universal and have the power to transcend cultures, markets, and technologies. She has the drive to find the human truth behind every idea and a passion for exploring new ways an idea can spark, connect and resonate with people. This passion inspired Kalika to challenge herself to work as a creative leader in multiple markets and across the advertising landscape of Brand, Digital, Experiential and Traditional, with the goal of bringing storytelling, products, and platforms together.
Before establishing Fervent Digital in 2019 and Studio Rocket Design in 2014, Kalika spent several years as a Creative Director, focusing on Brand and Experiential Design. She is fuelled by conceptual thinking & design and driven by strategy & logic. With a bachelor’s degree in design, and a master’s in marketing, this Delhi-born Creative Director is driven constantly in search of the big idea and pushing the client and brief as far as relevancy dictates.
“I specialize in creative strategy and marketing plans, but overall, the company focuses on Marketing as a service (MaaS). MaaS is a tailored services framework. One of the key elements of the MaaS framework is its easy integration with a brand’s existing sales and marketing approach. Further, it will sit on top of proven methodologies for successful sales engagement, creating an enhanced sales pipeline with increased velocity,” says Kalika.
Talking about the biggest challenge she faced as Chief Creative Officer, she says that keeping the team motivated during the pandemic was the biggest challenge. To overcome the challenge, she decided to utilize the time to up-skill them and switched to being a more horizontal organization. It became crucial in not only sustaining but scaling up the business. She also ended up retaining a great team with enhanced skill-sets.
“As an entrepreneur, one is always wearing different hats – but it is also essential to hire sooner than later. It helps to balance the workload, helps in teaching you how to manage a team, and most importantly, gets the work done more effectively. No matter how great you are at overseeing every role within your company, there comes a point in every company’s growth where the founders must turn over the reins to talented employees who can manage on their own and downstream tasks, and responsibilities on their own. In my case, I kept waiting for the business to grow to a semblance of normalcy, before hiring more people. It was only once this mindset changed, I was able to focus more on growing the business, rather than mundane and admin tasks that took up needless time and energy,” she says.
“Man-management and managing people’s expectations is the biggest challenge. Since we are a people-friendly organization, we’ve always put a high value on the work culture and employee happiness. As they say, you don’t build a business, you build people, and then the people build the business,” she adds.
At Fervent Digital, all key employees attend morning calls and brainstorm on the day’s work and pitch-in for ideas. They talk about all the things that are happening in the business. During these calls, they talk often about ideas that could help improve the business. The company has table tennis and Carrom board around the office that breeds a collaborative environment. They also have a group to share the latest industry trends, tools, and techniques.
How has the Marketing & Advertising industry changed over the years?
Advertising is now more personal. Earlier, brands would simply connect with their audiences. Now, they need to actively engage and keep up with the audience. Building brand awareness, acquiring a new customer base, retaining current customers, introducing new products and services, and delivering brand promotions are now being done under one roof. It has certainly become more challenging, especially as digital media matures. Today, thanks to digital marketing – established brands, as well as start-ups, can reach out with the same velocity. Earlier, campaigns would have a longer shelf life, touting a particular product or service. Today, there can be a 360-degree promotion of almost anything – sometimes with a blink and miss shelf life.
Talking about the most difficult part in the marketing and advertising, she says that building a brand that resonates with people is a task as consumer’s needs are ever-changing. Today, every campaign needs to generate ROI, be it B2B or B2C. Clicking on something does not mean brand loyalty. The company needs to keep pace with the changing requirement of its customers.
Great Tips from the Expert
Kalika concludes by saying if you have an idea, don’t wait it out for the perfect plan. There will always be people with the same idea as yours. The trick is just to get started. And stay resilient. It won’t happen overnight.
