We all love to travel to new places. Traveling becomes easy when you have a local guide who can take you to places. Using ScoutMyTrip you can hire a professional guide for your travel. Scout will plan your entire journey based on your requirements. You can even create your own plan at ScoutMyTrip.
Along with luggage keep your mind light with the help of ScoutMyTrip. All the important places to visit along your travel route will be in your itinerary. You can even book hotels, cabs through SMT. You just relax and enjoy your vacation.
Keep going! Have a thought? Implement it.
Sunaina Aiyappa, AVP Marketing, ScoutMyTrip
Today we got an opportunity to talk with Sunaina Aiyappa, AVP Marketing, ScoutMyTrip. She walked us through ScoutMyTrip and what we as an entrepreneur can learn from her experience.
1. Hi, It’s Our Pleasure to interview you, Please Introduce yourself to our audience in your own style.
Self-proclaimed grammar nazi. Wit and words are how I roll!
2. Give us brief details about your current company and what it does?
ScoutMyTrip is India’s first subscription-based trip planner powered by local travel experts spread across India, Nepal, and Bhutan. Over 150 local travel experts whom we call Scouts have signed up with us and help over 450 travelers each month. Building local economies is very core to our vision, and this was recognized by the Government of India too when they conferred the National Entrepreneurship Award 2019 to us in November 2019.
3. What marketing tactics you employed to generate 1st five hundred new sales since you joined?
We worked on creating content that our customers would identify with. Our typical customer or target audiences are above 25 years to 58 years. They seek experiences, adventure and looking for off-beat experiences.
To market to such an audience it is important to build enough brand relevance for them to be pulled towards our services. Push marketing can fall flat on its face; so we started focusing on conversations. Our social media is social in the real sense, less push; more chat. Creating relatable content also increased social shares, and half of our marketing was done by word of mouth.
In terms of tactics, we focused on increasing content on our blog which directly impacted our search traffic; which has been one of our biggest successes. We also focused on sharing customer stories; because with our target audience – seeing is believing. The focus was on posting authentic stories, dreams, and aspirations – not destinations and places.
4. Which marketing channel has been beneficial for you in getting more traffic, and customers?
Instagram is the most active channel that we use. The hashtag is everything! Response rates featured posts, contests are what works for us.
5. How do you generate comfort and trust among your customers, so that they buy your product?
Every trip that we plan, we plan it like it’s our own. Our Scouts play a huge role in making our customers feel at ease and have an experience that they will cherish. Scouts are travel experts who virtually assist them throughout the journey and always suggest places that aren’t the usual ones. We give the customers what they desire and more!
6. Organic ranking generates free traffic. What kind of strategies have you employed to improve organic traffic?
We create original and innovative content. That never fails.
7. Can you please share any one growth hack that has worked for you?
Content is key! Give the audience the information they want and need. With good research, you can achieve this.
8. Re-engagement is the key to get repeat business from existing customers. Do you agree with this? How do you re-engage customers? Have you considered using Web Push Notifications for the same?
I couldn’t agree more! After all, it is about maintaining the brand’s presence. Yes, we use push notifications, newsletters, paid ads. When it comes to Web Push Notifications – we use them in a segmented way instead of spraying and praying.
We also used advanced analytics like segment and customer.io to re-engage with customers which is platform driven. This has reduced dependence on paid marketing and put the focus back on the platform as an engine for growth.
9. What steps did you take to make this company a Big Brand? What marketing strategy you employed for branding?
Relentless focus on understanding the customer is the first step – so while our marketing needs to speak the customer language we also need to understand catchment areas for the right set of customers.
Our marketing is closely aligned with go to market with B2C, B2B, and B2B2C and is the key strategy we employ. All mediums are it push notifications, emails, social, etc are all addressed keeping the GTM in mind.
I do want to add that our team comprises avid travelers and the founding team; which gave us a head start in customer surveys, market research and engaging early adopters. When the groundwork is that strong, your team automatically works with the same force. Not just marketing, but our sales and tech team have a huge role to play in building our startup.
10. What is the next milestone for the company?
Launching in South East Asia is next on the to-do list.
11. As per you what skills a marketer must possess in order to succeed?
The ability to sell a comb to a bald guy! Jokes apart, if you believe in your product, the marketing part will come naturally to you.
12. What is the best advice would you like to give to upcoming marketers?
Keep going! Have a thought? Implement it. You never know what’ll turn into a trend and what might work for your company.
