Neil Patel Digital India is the Indian counterpart of the global agency Neil Patel Digital. Having successfully helped industry Giants like Google, GM Motors, Amazon, Intuit, etc as a consultant, Neil started NPD with the agenda of helping startups in 2016.
NPD India’s story began last year in June in Bengaluru being Indian Headquarters. What started off as 2 member team, today has grown to over 50 members. They aim to reach 100 in the next couple of months, so yes they are hiring! NPD India is expanding to Delhi and Mumbai soon.
NPD India helps businesses grow traffic and ROI exponentially, and what’s interesting to note is that they strictly accept inbound business requests, and don’t actively pitch for clients.
NPD India’s CEO, Pradeep Kumaar spoke exclusively to Medianews4u on its journey and their plans for the future.
Read on.
How has the growth story been like for NPD India? Can you give us an insight into your services and clientele?
We are off to a phenomenal start in spite of COVID putting a damper on the industry. We recently completed a year of our Indian operations at Neil Patel Digital India with a very happy client roster and some great case studies to show for it. It is indeed a huge milestone for the entire team and testament to the amazing work they’ve put in to scaling the business so quickly.
We recently celebrated our first-anniversary event virtually, with Neil Patel, Global CMO and Mike Kamo, Global CEO joined the celebrations. We are growing at a rapid pace; we started our Indian operations with 2-members, and today we have over 60 specialists on the team. It has been a fantastic journey. Over these 12 months, we have won the trust of many marquee clients spanning Hospitality, Pharma, Logistics, and E-commerce. We specialize in SEO, Social Media, Content Marketing, Paid Media, and Conversion Rate Optimization. We currently serve over 40 accounts and hope to help over 100 businesses achieve their growth goals by the end of 2020.
How is the business shaping up in times of Covid-19? What has been the impact of Covid on your business?
The outbreak of COVID-19 has disrupted all the sectors. It has been a difficult time for people around the globe. Like all the industries, the pandemic did have an impact on the Digital marketing industry as well. It has both pros and cons to it. Maintaining business continuity with strategic communication was our utmost concern.
Client retention was another major challenge as we faced during the stringent lockdown and face to face client meetings were no longer a possibility. Now we are back on track and have adjusted to the new normal; brands have realized the value of going digital and staying connected with their consumers online and this has given a boost to the number of inquiries coming in. We have won several new accounts during the pandemic, which only bolsters our confidence in the offerings we provide.
Any recent campaigns/work/case study that NPD India was credited for in times of Covid-19? Something you would want to highlight?
Yes, I would like to highlight our SEO campaign and our Content Marketing Strategy we implemented for our health sector client Narayana Hrudayalaya. It did exceedingly well, we managed to achieve 300% growth on their SEO traffic amidst the ongoing pandemic which is a great win for the brand by any metric.
How have brands changed or modified their communication strategy? And what has been your advice to all your clients?
Brands have changed their approach and have adopted digital first strategies to engage, interact with, and sustain their customers. Leveraging content marketing with creative visual storytelling has been a significant move we have seen across the board. Our advice has been simple, keep empathy at the core of all communications and be sensitive to the current environment while drafting any communication. We have tried to catalyze a shift in communication by highlighting the value of the service or product during these pandemic times while ensuring brand consistency and reassurance to the customers. Eventually, this storm will pass, and things will return to normalcy.
During these hard times how are you keeping up the morale of your teams that are working remotely? How are you making sure the mental health of employees is not compromised?
In these hard times, ensuring all employees of security and well-being is our topmost priority and part of our core values system. We ensure that all employees have adequate healthcare cover for themselves and their loved ones to relieve that major stressor. Our leadership is always available to employees to discuss concerns and issues. We’ve also extended our support in terms of providing the right digital infrastructure to them at their homes. To keep the team morale up, we are conducting weekly virtual fun sessions and internal contests to ensure the camaraderie and engagement is maintained. We strive to keep things exciting and stay connected with the team.
What is your experience of Working from Home? How has the agency adapted to the new normal?
This year has been a radically new experience for me personally as I’ve always been passionate about work life balance. The idea of taking work home and creating a new kind of balance took some getting used to, especially with family and loved ones and so many distractions in a home setup. While there is no replacement for physical presence and face to face interaction with clients and team members, we have been able to adapt quite well using all the connectivity and productivity management tools and resources at our disposal. Although we weren’t entirely ready for WFH initially, our teams are now quite comfortable with the idea of a virtual work environment. We’ve also ensured that we’re highly proactive with communicating with clients to ensure a smooth transition. I’m very proud of the way the team has been able to shift gears into this environment nimbly while keeping our clients happy along the way.
Being a digital agency how are you making sure that you’re ahead of the curve in these times of uncertainty and crisis?
We are a bunch of die-hard optimists; we are looking at this situation positively. I believe this is an opportunity for us as a brand to show how much care for our clients. We have a great team, and our crew is well versed in different markets. We are supporting all team members to use this time to brush up on their digital skills and have provided the right learning tools to facilitate it. We’re sure that we’ll come back even stronger as a team and we’re constantly laying the groundwork to that effect.
What has been the impact of COVID-19 on your ability to generate new business?
It was a dicey situation initially and we did not know what to expect. Most of our clients asked for discounts and slashed prices since their purse strings had been tightened. It wasn’t business as usual that’s for sure. We didn’t panic, but we assured our clients that strong brands would emerge stronger from this crisis, we carved out the right strategy for their respective industries to deal with the impact of COVID, whether it’s focusing on driving higher conversions from existing traffic or using paid to generate immediate results when needed. Our agility in pivoting our strategy to our client’s changing priorities helped us weather the transition period.
How will businesses shape up post the lockdown?
Amid this lockdown, most businesses, even small and medium sized ones are realizing the importance of digital. They are scrambling to get themselves online and build a presence in the virtual world. Also, with people spending most of their time at home the world will increasingly take more and more activities online, whether it’s socializing, shopping, exercise, working or entertainment. In such a climate, I’d say it’s an opportune time for the digital marketing industry. It’s a time to help and educate business owners understand the nuances of digital and handhold them to tap into the opportunities it presents.
Any trends that you see emerge post-lockdown?
I think native apps will play a significant role in brand marketing strategies; This will be the new trend post-lockdown. Brands have already shifted their focus more on native service sectors and apps. The market has witnessed a massive surge in terms of the user base. Freemium models are also growing these days in an effort to tap into the surge in time spent online.
