Any technological innovation reveals its full impact and potential over a while. Take digitalization, of which whatever the initial predictions made fall short when we look at its effects and potential proven so far.
Similarly, in the beginning, social media was viewed as an elitist trend, which is embraced by even the poorest of the poor today. This widespread impact gives social media an edge over traditional media. Because traditional media, even though influential, remains outside the personal reach of the masses living in the remotest areas of our country. This is where social media makes all the difference. It can reach anywhere, anytime, and is easily accessed at one’s convenience.
If leveraged effectively and innovatively, social media can be much more than marketing. We have seen that it can be a digital social revolution. And when it comes to championing social media’s extensive ability, there is none better than SocialChamps Media–a full-service digital marketing agency.
Bootstrapped in 2011 by Prahlad Sahu, a seasoned Digital marketing professional with over 14 Years of experience and the Co-founder and Managing Director, SocialChamps is a growth-oriented Digital Marketing and Strategy Consulting Company in Pune.
Driven by Data
Leading a team of 80+ digital marketing enthusiasts who have worked with more than 800+ brands from 20+ countries in their journey of 12 years, Prahlad says, “We are dedicated to delivering targeted results for your business. Our approach towards creative problem-solving differentiates us from the competition. While many of our competitors look at Social Media as a marketing platform, we look at it from the solution lens, and it helps us define various creative ways to solve the growth challenges.”
Prahlad has seen the evolution of the Indian digital ecosystem, from the emergence of social media to its being a critical part of our daily lives. Prahlad has consulted numerous brands, including startups, MNCs and Fortune 100 brands.
Telling more about SocialChamps’ offering and aspects that make it stand out in the cutthroat competition, Prahlad says they at SocialChamps believe in a consultative approach, wherein they spend considerable time understanding the business and offer bespoke solutions to address the growth challenges. These growth solutions are a mix of various offerings like Customer experience design, Data and Analytics Services, Social Media, Performance Marketing, SEO, Content Marketing, Idea Validation Services, Full Funnel Strategies, Influences Campaigns etc.
He adds, “We also offer staff augmentation services, wherein brands can get the digital marketing experts exclusively working for their brands.”
SocialChamps has been creating its position in growth solutions and data-driven strategy with creative execution.
Inspired by Creativity
Further telling about the immersive benefits of the services they offer to their clients, he says that they work towards giving a great customer experience through well-defined processes, live reporting dashboards, single point of contact, etc. Beyond this operational ease, clients leverage the SocialChamps team’s over a decade of experience and learnings with use cases across industry verticals.
The media team has strategically divided the operation into four SBUs for
- Content marketing and SEO.
- Performance Campaigns and Marketing Automation.
- Social Media and Creative Brand Solutions.
- Product Development.
This helps to keep the focus on all the niches in a changing digital ecosystem.
Being an experienced leader, Prahlad opines how adopting modern technologies like AI and ML impacts the current digital media space and how SocialChamps adapts to the change. He says that AI & ML has been getting in faster than expected by many. “We believe that with the adoption of tools like ChatGPT, the transactional work like writing content, basic creative outcomes, basic digital advertising guidelines etc. will get automated.” This means more emphasis will be on strategy, consulting, conceptual creativity and creative problem-solving. He furthers that they have emphasized moving towards digital strategy consulting.
Weaving Incredible Digital Stories
When probed about considering the current industry scenario, what kind of challenges they face and how he drives SocialChamps Media to overcome these challenges, Prahlad says that with the Indian Govt. supporting digital initiatives, there is a pretty good boost in the confidence of Indian business towards adoption of digital marketing in their business.
However, the major challenge is ‘education on digital for business growth.’ The larger emphasis is given to tactics vs planning/strategy/business impact. Strategy in the real sense is highly ignored while clients are looking for social media postings. The reason for this is the emergence of many new small digital marketing startups that are portraying digital as content publishing on Social Media. Clients fall into the trap of more posts/visually attractive posts vs a strategic discussion on business goals and objectives.
Turning Ideas into Astounding Brand Experiences
In his advice to budding entrepreneurs aspiring to venture into the digital media niche, he says he would advise the budding entrepreneurs to strongly emphasize strategy, planning, and growth aspects vs a narrow vision of creative content publishing. Likewise, a better approach is picking some specific niches that give quicker traction vs doing everything for everyone.
On envisioning scaling the company’s operations and offerings in the future, Prahlad reveals that they are moving with new-age trends and developing their expertise in data science, marketing automation, usage of AI etc. “From the expansion perspective, we would be gradually expanding our physical presence to domestic and international markets,” he says.
He also adds that SocialChamps Media’s creative work has been featured and nominated at various award functions and sites like Pune Brand Leadership Award Social Samosa, Mad Over Marketing etc. Founders being invited as speakers across national and international events etc.
