I was not always a Marketer, I started my career at the bottom of the ladder in the
Tourism & Hospitality Domain way back in 1989, The initial phase of my career I learned
from ground up. Since Tourism and Hospitality seldom operates in Isolation, I had to
work with many people in different Industries. This helped me very early on to get a
deeper understanding of people.
Putting people first and learning from them gave me an edge
which also started to get me noticed.
In 1993, I was invited to Join Nepal Travel
Information Centre as Nepal was being launched as a Tourism Destination. In those Days
marketing was restricted to Billboards, TV, Radio, Magazines and Newspapers Ads. We
chose multiple options to take Nepal live. This gave me my first taste of Marketing.
After having grown Nepal for 4 years in India and
International Markets, I entered International Sales and was responsible for selling
India, Nepal & Bhutan in the German Speaking Markets since I speak German. Over a Period
of time more European Markets were added to my portfolio and for the next 6 years I
travelled the length and breath of Europe doing Sales.
Around the turn of the century Email Marketing was becoming a
thing and having tried it I believed I could use it to my advantage. This was also my
first entry into Digital Marketing, Email marketing at that Stage helped me produce
results which were unheard of in the Industry.
As more and more tools kept on getting added, first Facebook, then Youtube followed by
Linkedin and Instagram, I started testing these and Facebook & LinkedIn became the go to
medium for me to scale up Sales.
At the same time started my experiments with Paid Marketing for Lead Generation. It
did not take very long for me to recognise that If you wanted to scale up any Business paid marketing was the way to go to reach a new audiences.
However all that I got when I tried to work with Consultants and Agencies were
promises which were not kept, timelines which were not respected, which led me to learn
about Lead Generation on my own.
My Sales improved but at a reduced cost which got noticed by my then Employers (A Large
Global Multinational Company) and I was asked to share my success story with the
Management which led to my being appointed as Marketing Lead for the Group crafting
Marketing Strategies for 200 plus companies in 32 Countries.
This was a Turning point for me as I got exposure to multiple geographies, multiple
tools and understanding that something worked well in some countries while failed in
others and all platforms are not created equal. Demographics, Pschyographics and
interests matter a lot and building of Buyer Personas or Target Groups is critical.
Leveraging the power of Google and now META we were able to buy traffic and drive in tens of
thousands potential customers. In 2015, I moved to Dubai to establish Taiwan Tourism Bureau in the Middle Eastern
markets and here we did with a Digital first approach and it was an instant success, We
were able to build the Destination recall in a span of 6 months, something which earlier
took upto 2 years to achieve.
Based on this success, I started getting many companies specially in Tourism & Hospitality Domain
approaching me to help with their Marketing which led me to start my own Venture called
Bigfoot Marketing. I started producing results and the management of these companies
noticed the same and since most of the Tourism companies belong to Big Groups with
Interest in multiple verticals,
I started getting projects to consult on different
industries from Healthcare to Retail, from Hotels to Real Estate, from Start ups
to E-commerce stores.
With my hands on approach I always had a steady stream of Digital Marketing Companies
whom i was consulting, mostly working with their teams and sometimes with multiple teams
for Multiple geographies (When same company had Offices in Dubai, Oman, Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Turkey or Kuwait and each had its own marketing team).
Seeing that India was booming and #makeinindia was trending, I returned to India and
then COVID happened. During COVID I started helping Hotels to go direct and pass on the benefit of pricing to end customers v/s
Online Travel Agents like Make my trip and Booking.com. A lot of my friends who had successful businesses suddenly realised during this period
that they had very limited online presence and this could be the best time to upgrade
their operations. From helping them set up the right tech to promote, any place working
to a Strong online presence on Digital channel to building automation which could make
them automate the mundane tasks, I did it all.
A lot of Digital Marketing Companies at this stage had also lost a lot of specialists
and needed experts who could help them build the next level PAID Marketing strategies
for this period. Since this was an unprecedented time frame and no one had ever
experienced something like this, I got to try out so many different strategies and this
in turn led to a Learning which has no parallel and which can benefit you immensely.
All of this has helped me become who I am today, A Lead Generation Expert in India who is
flexible, has worked in 50+ industries, With fortune 500 companies and with Start ups,
with Large Indian Manufacturers to 20 people companies.
However the most success I have had and 2 Verticals that I immensely enjoy are Real Estate and Hospitality Industry and this is where I focus the most as I can combine my experience of Branding and Lead Generation and help you scale up to your Liking.