Sometime during the month of July, i got to know that a Digital Masters Conference is happening. I follow Kulwant Nagi and already knew that a group of top digital marketers from India are up to something and when Kulwant broke the news of the conference i really felt excited because as a Digital Marketer myself i have always felt that the industry needs such conferences to happen in India in order to add value to the Digital Media ecosystem and thankfully it happened. 

After DigiCon, last month, this was my second event purely based on Digital Marketing and with this post i will try my best to share the insights of the entire event. So here is what happened:

The start:

A huge crowd of more than 1000 people gathered at Sahara Star in Mumbai. I flew from Indore just a day before the event and reached Sahara by 7.15 AM. There were some nice arrangements for morning tea and coffee. The event was set to start from 8 AM meanwhile i got a chance to do some networking and I was amazed to see that people from different streams had come to educate themselves.

The event began at 8 AM with the host of the day – Ms. Prachi Mayekar. She brought so much energy to the stage, made us laugh, dance and totally got everyone involved in the event. I must say that I haven’t seen such an amazing host in a very long time. Prachi totally rocked the stage.

Now was the time to start the event officially by none other than a national award-winning actor and motivational speaker – Mr. Ashish Vidyarthi. I have seen him in so many films and totally admire him for his acting skills but to see him live in action was totally a different experience. He was so energetic and totally made the audience excited.

He discussed how the internet has brought the world closer and that today we hold the power of immense possibilities with having broadband connections in every home. Now this can’t be truer than this Sir. All of us are living in an era of infinite possibilities and all we need a vision on how we plan to serve the world.

The Masters Session: Part 1 

Ashish sir set the mood of the audience and now all of us were ready to listen to the masters.

Master Avijit Arya: 

The first master to come to the stage was Mr. Avijit Arya, who has been ranked as one of the Top 100 digital icons of the region by Impact Magazine and has also been named amongst the top 25 influencers by Influencive. 

Avijit is known for creating micro videos for telling a story or generating leads with the same. He explained his 4 step formula of creating a 3 minute sales video and says any one can create a video using these steps:

1. Story: Tell your story – Your name, family, skills, achievements and vision.
2. 3 Pain Points: Address the 3 pain points of your target niche. 
3. Proof: Give a proof stating how you have helped others in overcoming these pain points.
4. Offering: Finally make an offer, a solution to the problem of your target audience. 

Avijit showed us some examples of his videos which totally makes us believe that the formula totally works and can be used by anyone.

Master Deepak Kanakaraju:

Mr. Deepak Kanakaraju happens to be an Author, Speaker, Trainer and Consultant. His blog digitaldeepak.com was awarded as one of the top 10 digital marketing blogs in India by SearchEngineJournal.com. 

So Deepak mainly talked about the 7 Steps to Sales. He says that the art of sales can be learned just by following these steps:

1. Social Proof
2. Authority
3. Reciprocity
4. Scarcity
5. Commitment
6. Liking
7. Fear

Deepak mainly wanted to say that buying is an emotional decision and making someone buy even when they don’t want to, is what makes you a successful seller and hence how you use all the above stated points to move someone emotionally determines the success of your campaign.

Deepak brought so much humor to the stage and made us laugh with this wit and intelligence. It was a pleasure to hear you sir.

Master Sorav Jain:

Mr. Sorav Jain, a popular name when it comes to Social Media Marketing. He has been awarded as the Top Social Media Marketers under the age of 30 by Social Samosa and Global Youth Marketing Forum has awarded him as “Top 25 Social Media Professionals of India”.

I was really keen to hear him because he was about to speak on my favorite subject: Influencer Marketing.
Sorav gave the theory of 4Cs which is as follows:

1. Clarity: Not only you should have a clarity about your ownself but your page’s mission should also be clear. It should answer why someone should follow you ? Your posts should give the answer to it.
2. Content: As we all know Content Is KING! And hence the importance of having a quality content isn’t something to be ignored. He explains 5 types of content which one should create: Helpful Content, Inspirational Quotes, Entertaining, Topical / Current Affairs, Personal / Lifestyle
3. Creativity: He says that if content is King then creativity is your Queen. We should try to create content in a creative way and he listed some of the tools that he himself uses to create creative content which are:

• Canva – A simplified graphic-design tool 
• Inshot – Video editor & maker
• Quik – Free Video Editor for photos, clips, music
• Photogrid – A video & pic collage maker, photo editor

4. Consistency: Sorav says that consistency is the key and it even beats quality, hence one should try to remain consistent over social media. He gave a 3 staged formula to remain consistent with posting content. He says that as you start your journey you can post curated as well as original content into following ratios:

Stage 1 – 80% Curated : 20% Original

Stage 2 – 50% Curated : 20% Original

Stage 3 – 20% Curated : 80% Original

Honestly speaking, this is the most simple formula which even i think, anyone can adopt and once you get comfortable producing your original content, you can simply put more of that on your page.

Sorav’s session was really very electrifying and full of insights. 

This concludes the Masters Session 1.

The Story of “Success Gyan”:

After concluding Masters Session 1, it was time to hear the story of Success Gyan right from the founder Mr. Surendran Jayasekar. 

Honestly i din’t have a clue about him until I got a chance to hear him live on the stage. Mr. Surendran’s story is an interesting one, as he told us how he used to attend several international and national seminars and workshops and always used to wonder how to bring all the international speakers to India. 

With the vision to empower Indians with quality knowledge and skills at an effective price, he founded “Success Gyan” and today it happens to be the #1 training company in India with a huge list speakers and trainers including Brian Tracy, Dr. John Demartini, Robert Riopel and many more.

Surendran told us about 5 success principles:

1. Strong Why?: Have a clear and strong why which makes you take action even if you don’t want to.
2. Invest in Education: It’s important to keep learning and implementing and hence one should keep investing into learning new skills and acquire knowledge.
3. Fail Fast, Fail Forward: One should try and fail things but should keep moving forward until you find the right mix.
4. Win-Win-Win: 

• Win for Partner: Your partner should also get his reward in the collaboration.
• First Win for Customers: Give them more value than what the customers have paid for.
• Win for Yourself: Finally You should also feel successful and get rewarded.

5. 3H Formula:

• Happy: Be Happy in life 
• Hungry: Be hungry to grow in life
• Humble: Be humble specially when you are at the height of your success.

I was totally blown away listening to Surendran’s session and felt very inspiring.

Guest Speaker 1: Reshveen Rajendran

Now was the time to listen to our first guest speaker. This was the first time that I got to know about Mr. Reshveen Rajendran. Reshveen happens to be an investor and coaches people on how to invest money into the stock market and make millions out of it. 

He shared his story and i was shocked to know that he got a cardiac attack while he was just 18 years old. Then he told how exactly he changed his life and become financially independent at the age of 22 years only. This was such an interesting story to listen to.

Rashveen, gave some really interesting insights about creating a portfolio in 3 steps:

1. Assess: What to buy ? – Where is explains how to access a company before you purchase shares from them.
2. Buy Price: When to Buy? – He tells what is the right time to buy the shares and how to prepare for it.
3. Cash Flow: How to create cash flow? – Which helps in creating a sustainable income and investment opportunities.

Rashveen, also explained about what he calls as a snowball plan in which he explains 3 methods:

1. Buying Stock by Stock
2. Buying Batch by Batch
3. Buying in Lump Sum

Personally i am not a stock market investor but after listening to Rashveen, I know think that anyone can become a successful investor. It was truly a wonderful session with him.

Guest Speaker 2: Bhavesh Bhatia

I consider myself lucky enough to get a chance to hear Mr. Bhavesh Bhatia on the stage. For those who don’t know about him, he happens to be the founder of Sunrise Candles, a candle manufacturing company which gives employment to blinds and help them earn a sustainable income. 

Mr. Bhavesh suffered with retina macular degeneration which caused him to lose his eyesight completely. He told his story and explained how he had a hard time earning money to support his family and fulfill his basic needs. I was heartbroken to hear his story and how challenging it was to earn money as almost everyone opposed him in his idea to do something on his own and instead told him to stay with NGOs for the blinds.

But instead he chose to keep trying. He told how he met his wife Mrs. Neeta Bhatia, who played an instrumental role in helping him establish himself and his company. Today the company – Sunrise Candles is very successful and a multi million company with a base of esteemed clients like Reliance Industries, Ranbaxy, Big Bazaar and many more. 
Mr. Bhavesh Bhatia, has won numerous awards and you can read his biography in a book called “Ruk Jana Nahi”. It was an honor to hear his story of struggle and rise, Sir you are truly an inspiration.

The Masters Session: Part 2 

After the exciting Guest Speakers session, came the Masters session 2:

Master Faheem Ahmed:

Mr. Faheem Ahmed happens to be Founder Of BYT Digital which helps real estate and ecommerce companies to acquire customers using various digital marketing techniques.

He talks about 4 Pillars of a right digital marketing campaign, which are:

1. Perfect Offer
2. Right Traffic
3. Leads to Sales
4. Tools and Automation

He starts with explaining how important it is to understand your buyer persona and based on that how your copy writing should address their problems. Then he explains how to drive traffic through various digital marketing techniques.

He specifically mentions about two of the most effective techniques as:

SKAG – Single Keyword Ad Group

RLSA – Remarketing List Search Ads

Faheem suggests to use the above techniques to enhance the results.

Later he talks about how to convert leads into sales and how to make effective use of various tools to automate the entire process. 

Faheem gave us 6 Growth Hacks to work upon:

1. Lead Nurturing via Remarketing
2. Ask questions for generating leads
3. Slide to Submit (For generating leads ex: FB Ads)
4. Create lookalike audiences to expand your target audience
5. Remarketing of List Search Ads
6. Live Chat Integration on sites to improve sites visits and ultimately sales.

Faheem’s 6 growth hacks have definitely gave me a direction to make experiments with my own campaigns. 

Master Sanjay Shenoy:

The first time I ever heard Mr. Sanjay Shenoy was on Avi Arya’s show. Thanks to DMC, I got a chance to hear him live on stage and guys it was a treat to him. Sanjay happens to be a Content Marketing Specialist and is also a TEDx Speaker himself. He has successfully helped companies like Thrillophilia to create viral content. 

So Sanjay gave us useful insights on creating a content that can go viral and here is what he has to say:

The meaning of a good content:

Any form of content which can make people to take an action is a good content.

In order to create a content worthy of generating million sessions, one must do the ground work which includes:

1. Understanding the target audience, their demographics
2. Building detailed audience personas
3. Competitive research to identify the gaps in your content
4. Finally creating content for the audience (not for yourself)

He also talks about how important it is to understand a customer’s journey and that you need to visualize the buyer’s journey and create different content for different stages of the buyer.

Talking about creating amazing content, he says:

First find out what your audience wants then choose and group the right ideas. Then he gave a simple formula to make some estimations:

TSV*20%*10%*5%

TSV – Total Search Value

20% – Average click through rate

10% – Traffic to leads ratio

5% – Leads to customer ratio

Sanjay, also mentions that one should create at least 25 different headlines for the content and pick the best one to use.

Promoting the content:

When it comes to promoting the content, Sanjay mentions to identify all the right channels where your audience is found and share your content there. He also says that one should own the audience either in the form of an email list or a facebook group in order to nurture and create a community of the targeted audience.

Repurpose Content:

Sanjay says that it is good idea to repurpose the content like turning blogs into videos, videos into infographs, infographs to blogs and so on. 

Measuring Content:

It’s not just important to write and publish the content but is equally important to measure the effectiveness of your content because:

• It’s not possible to improve what you can’t measure
• It’s important to understand if your content is creating enough engagements or sparking conversations or not.
• The ultimate way to track is to check the revenues.

Finally Sanjay stresses upon the fact that it’s very important to plan your content because content is a long term game, after writing one must schedule the content to post on the right time before the audience for maximum efficiency. He also insists to publish content consistently.

Finally Sanjay’s amazing session came to an end with the following list of tools helpful in creating content:

• Ahrefs – For Competitor Analysis, Keyword Analysis
• Ubersuggest – For Keyword Analysis
• Answerthepublic – For Keyword Analysis and Topic Ideas
• Buzzsumo – For Keyword Analysis and Topic Ideas 
• Grammarly – For writing mistake free content

Master Gaurav Gurbaxani:

Mr. Gaurav Gurbaxani happens to be the founder of OnlineBusiness.org, an Agency similar to SEONerds.Digtial and hence i was able to resonate a lot with the systems and processes Gaurav talked about during his session.

I was amazed to note about the great work Gaurav has been doing and got featured to Entrepreneur.com and YourStory as well.

Gaurav’s presentation was very unique and carried a very different style to it which totally made the session much more interesting.

So Gaurav talks about that there are 3 Dimensions to Digital Marketing which are:

1. Traffic
2. Conversions
3. You

He explained how all these are connected to each other and how we end up earning once we have connected all these 3 dimensions.

Gaurav, says that one can earn 1 Million in a span of 1 year and he also gave a magic number which is $2740. He also explains how one can break this figure down and can earn 1 million in just 1 year.

He also talked about the 3 ingredients required to run an agency successfully which are:

1. Smart Scaling: How one can scale his digital marketing business without increasing operational costs.
2. Quality of Work: How one can keep delivering the same quality of work everytime.
3. SOPs: How Standard Operating Procedures helps in meeting the above two points.

Gaurav, also gave a list of a lot of his favorite tools, which are as follows:

• For Screen Recording and Video Editing: https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html
• For Creating Proposals: https://www.proposify.com/, https://betterproposals.io/
• For Delivering Results: Follow SOPs
• TemplateHeaven – https://themeforest.net/
• For Codes – https://codecanyon.net
• For Videos – https://videohive.net/
• For Audios – https://audiojungle.net
• For Graphics – https://graphicriver.net
• For Photos – https://photodune.net
• For Competitor Analysis: https://www.semrush.com/
• For Link Building: http://www.senuke.com/pro/
• For Team Collaboration: https://slack.com
• For Project Management: https://trello.com
• For Reporting: https://raventools.com/
• For Automation: https://zapier.com/
• For Social Media: https://hootsuite.com/
• For Team Management: https://hubstaff.com/
• For Mind Mapping: https://www.mindmeister.com/

The Masters Session: Part 3 

Finally we entered into the third part of the conference.

Master Gopal Krishnan:

Mr. Gopal Krishnan happens to be a Facebook Funnel Specialist and has been credited to introduce “Story Triangle Technology” which can be used to create high converting Facebook Ads.

Gopal shares his life’s story and tells how he was able to successfully establish himself fighting all the odds. He said he faced a lot of opposition while trying to pursue his dreams but thanks to his father who believed in him, his ideas and kept supporting him.

Then he talks about the reason why entrepreneurs fail with their marketing! The reason is simple, most ads talks about the features and benefits but only a few talks about the problem and a solution. 

So when you are able to address the pain or a problem of your potential customer you are instantly able to connect with them. And this is where the story triangle comes into play which has 3 parts to it:

1. Addressing your customers untold pains, fears and frustrations
2. Mentioning unexpected gains
3. Finally how your solution will help them to overcome their pains and fulfill their dreams and desires.

Gopal gave some real life examples from ads like Havells and AirPods to explain the success of these campaigns. 

I was thoroughly impressed with this new way of creating ads which are not only mindful but also effective from customers’ point of view.

Thank you Gopal for developing such an interesting concept, it was a pleasure to hear you on the stage. 

Master Kulwant Nagi:

I have been following Mr. Kulwant Nagi since many years now and a part of his Facebook Community too. It was from Kulwant only that i got to know about the conference in the first place.

Kulwant is a successful blogger and an affiliate marketer. He is very popular amongst the bloggers and has spoken on various national and international stages.

Kulwant shared his inspiring story about how he faced several downfalls during the start of his career but finally managed to make it big and all because of the Internet. He mentions how he used to work using a 2G connection and had to spend hours just for reading an article on the internet. 

One fine day, Kulwant published a post on his friend’s blog and instantly that post attracted thousands of views which made him decide to start his career into Blogging.

He then went on and explained how he was able to make $500K from his hometown. Later, he gave insights about his process which is:

1. Keyword Research: Targeting long tail keywords
2. Market Research: Researching about the market to understand the demand and trends
3. Content Writing: Writing a creative content and sharing various insights about tools and the products
4. Marketing: Finally marketing the content produced on the channels where the targeted audience is found.

He also shared some insights about scaling the blog by creating a process, hiring and training various niche specific content writers to create some amazing content.

Kulwant’s story is motivating and he is one live example that anyone from anywhere even with limited resources can achieve heights provided they are ready to put in efforts.

Master Siddharth Rajsekar:

Finally the moment arrived when Mr. Siddharth Rajsekar got on to the stage. Siddharth is widely popular across India as he has helped thousands of coaches, trainers, speakers & experts to build their own profitable businesses using Internet.

I have heard Siddharth in various webinars but this was the first time I got a chance to hear him live and to be honest this was a moment full of excitement for me as i have always looked up to him and have been highly influenced by his methods and ways of teaching. 

Siddharth gave us insights about the growing eLearning industry. He shares an interesting finding about the Top Millionaires and Billionaires across the globe that most of them are good speakers and also do videos.

As per him about 87% successful marketers use videos for content marketing, which really is an interesting finding. There are 4 types of videos that we can create:

1. 30 Second Videos
2. Explainer Videos
3. Live Videos
4. Webinars

After that he explains the different types of business models which are:

1. Manufacturing
2. Distribution
3. Retail
4. Services
5. Franchisee
6. Aggregation
7. Freedom

While all forms of business models are good however it’s the FREEDOM business model which is making waves these days. Some of the most successful businessmen have created their businesses using the same model for example: Neil Patel, Pat Flyn, Gary Vee, Garant Cardone and many more.

Moving forward Siddharth shares the top 3 secrets to create your own FREEDOM Business, which are:

1. Video Influence: In order to create video influence one must focus on authenticity, putting strong logic and empathy.
2. Info Product Funnel: Where he describes you can create your funnel based on following principles – Lead Magnet, TripWire, Core Product and Profit Multiplier.
3. Video Money Blueprint: In which he explains, how you can use your website to drive traffic to using platforms like Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn then capture the leads, create email lists and finally convert them into sales.

Siddharth’s knowledge and the way he puts things makes it really easy for one to understand and even adopt. Thank you Siddharth sir for such an amazing session.

With this, it was time to wrap up the event, but wait a minute, how about a surprise ? Yes team Success Gyan decided to end the conference in style and who better then our next Guest Speaker…..

Guest Speaker 3: Rajiv Talreja:

I had heard a lot of Mr. Rajiv Talreja and finally got a chance to hear him. It was a treat to hear him LIVE. He totally owns the stage and could connect with the audience instantly.

Rajiv happens to be India’s Leading Business Coach and won several awards and recognition for this work. He is a serial entrepreneur and owns 4 companies at the moment. He has also written a book called “Lead or Bleed” which is International Bestseller and Amazon Bestseller

Rajiv shared his own story about how he got broke with his initial businesses but then how he used that experience to understand and create a profitable business.

He explains how he decided to re-educate himself and how it had helped him to grow exponentially in the last few years.

Rajiv is known for developing a system called P.A.C.E. which focuses on training entrepreneurs to understand the art of doing business in a successful way. 

He explains how one can create a successful business by following 5 simple concepts:

1. Principles
2. Scientific Tools
3. Simple Templates
4. Structure
5. Skills

It was a pleasure to listen to Rajiv’s ideas and the information that he shared is priceless. 

Well, folks this was all about the Digital Masters Conference 2019. I would like to congratulate the entire team of Success Gyan along with all the masters: Siddharth Rajsekar, Avijit Arya, Deepak Kanakaraju, Sorav Jain, Gaurav Gurbaxani, Sanjay Shenoy, Gopal Krishnan, Faheem Ahmed and Kulwant Nagi for putting all the efforts and making this event such a huge success.

To the readers of this post, I hope you liked the content. Please make sure to share this post if you enjoyed reading it.

Should you have any comments, queries or just want to say HI, please feel free to post below.

Until the next event,

Signing Off.

Harshwardhan Kusumakar