Interview with Om Thoke | Webfosys Group
I hope this can inspire you to become a successful entrepreneur too! Why is it important to hear the story of a successful entrepreneur?
Having the vision to become an entrepreneur is great. Making it happen is another story!
In that frame, I had the pleasure to interview serial Entrepreneur Mr. Om Thoke. Mr. Om Thoke is Managing Director of Webfosys Group. Mr. Om Thoke is the owner of 6 companies.
1. What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e what’s your source of motivation?
The excitement of testing new things on my blogs, launching a new ecom product to test, cracking a new business deal for branding, and facing a new challenge.
2. How did you get into Digital Marketing? What interested you in learning Digital Marketing?
Way back in 2005, when I was in my 5th sem of engineering, I stumbled upon Blogspot and Google Adsense, and since then I built a series of car blogs and made a lot of money until the big G wiped out 93% of my revenues in 2011.
3. According to you, what are the advantages of Digital Marketing over traditional marketing?
Digital marketing doesn’t involve fieldwork, and its results are highly measurable, allowing you to constantly tweak your campaigns, and get higher ROI.
For instance, you can’t count how many people saw your hoarding billboard ad at the airport or at a mall or any place for that matter. However, you can very well analyze how many people saw your Facebook/Instagram/Tiktok/YouTube ad, engaged with it, and/or buying your product/service.
You can retarget them again in the future, and even build lookalike custom audiences.
4. Why do you think it’s important for Entrepreneurs to learn Digital Marketing today?
This is the best time to feel the practicality of this answer – all e-commerce and traditional businesses are closed, and the only ones surviving are 100% digital businesses, run through digital marketing campaigns.
Even the shopkeepers who were selling fashion merchandise are now selling “essential items” during this COVID-19 lockdown.
And, in 2020, anyone not going digital, is definitely going home!
5. How do you stay updated on the latest trends in Digital Marketing? Which are the Digital Marketing resources (i.e. blogs/websites/apps) you visit regularly?
I believe in practical learning, but of course, I keep watching videos, reading blogs like Moz, SEMRush, Ahrefs (as I use those tools daily), and I recommend the newbies to follow keyword ideas and blogging tutorials on www.bloggers.world
6. How do you see Digital Marketing evolving in the future?
It’s constantly evolving, and things are gonna’ change radically in 2020 with the whole COVID outbreak situation. Nobody knows what the future holds, but it’s about the survival of the fittest.
7. What is the social media platform that you’re seeing the most engagement on?
Linkedin and Quora are the two places that are exploding right now, following my Instagram and Tiktok, YouTube, and I feel people are moving away from Facebook in terms of interaction, but Facebook remains to be the most effective platform for advertising for us.
8. Is it a good time to start an E-Com store? How can one kick start their career as an E Com expert?
Well, there’s never the right time, but now isn’t certainly an ideal time, since deliveries are affected adversely round the globe, and of course, big time in India too.
Nobody can start as an expert – you gotta start as NOBODY, and then test test test, until you start seeing results; ecom isn’t any different.
You gotta test new products, test new ad copies, videos, targeting, angles, and everything – there’s no magic formula!
9. Is it enough to just increase the number of visitors to a website?
Absolutely not, but that’s a good start; once you have more visitors, you need to find relevant offers to promote, in order to monetize. You could definitely try the classic Google Adsense program, but it may not work well in all the cases.
10. What’s the one question you were expecting most and I haven’t asked you? and please share the answer to that question as well.
Ummm… that’s a tricky one – I was expecting a lot of questions right from who my idol is, how many hours I’ve worked, what advice I’d like to give to young entrepreneurs, and perhaps the list is endless.
So, I’m just gonna keep it sweet and short – my word of advice to the young blood is to be wary of Shiny Object Syndrome – you must have heard – “if it’s too good to be true, it really is, and all that glitters is NOT gold”. This digital industry is filled with fake gurus, people who’ve never done $100,000 revenues, trying to teach “10 secrets to become a Millionaire” and whatnot… I hate to shatter your dreams of getting rich quick…
There’s a lot more than what meets the eye always, and there’s no shortcut to success, and the struggle never ends in the life of an entrepreneur!
Be ready to handle a lot of SHIT before you think of doing a startup!
Always high on traffic, aspirations, and life!
Your Host & Dost
Om Thoke
