Nitish Bhardwaj is Chief Technical Officer at Propel Guru, a full-service independent lead generation and digital marketing agency that helps startups, small, medium, and Fortune 500 Companies find new customers, grow revenue, and increase engagement.
We caught up with Nitish to find out more about his day-to-day life and how his company is keeping morale of employees up during the pandemic, the trends he’s witnessed from inside the sales and digital marketing sector, and what does long term planning and strategy look like now at Propel Guru.
Please describe your job: What do you do?
I’m the Chief Technical Officer at Propel Guru. We’re a full-service sales and digital marketing agency working with startups, nonprofits, healthcare organizations, and Fortune 500 Companies to build digital platforms, products, and offer experiences that delight users.
As the CTO, I work closely with our clients, advising them and formulating their lead generation, email marketing, and digital marketing strategies. I’m also part of new business efforts and focused on creating well-built, efficient, and effective media plans that complement the media strategy of a client with broader thinking and ideas. My role involves leading activity in multiple areas, including marketing, product, and client success teams. There is always more we at Propel Guru can do to help our esteemed clients grow.
How has your typical day been impacted in the short term by the pandemic?
Working from home has surely not slowed down the pace and rhythm of my daily routine. In fact, I’ve found that I’m working more without the commute to differentiate work from home.
I’ve discovered the significance of carving out thinking enough time to reflect and fit that into my day. For me, this takes the shape of a 30-45 minute meditation session at home. Staying connected with my thought process provides me both the space and time I need to process thoughts and ideas to ward off challenges with a fresh perspective.
Since the pandemic, I am spending more time than ever looking at our reporting dashboards to precisely identify micro trends. This helps us at Propel Guru remain relevant, proactive, and nimble for our customers that is really important.
The strong corporate culture at Propel Guru has ensured we all still feel connected, and everyone makes a concerted effort to socialize and connect with everyone in the team. This is demonstrated from the top down – it is really an important part of our brand ethos.
Truth be told, I now have more time than ever that I can devote to leveraging amazing opportunities ahead of us while maintaining an equilibrium with the personal life at the same time.
What trends have you seen in the last few weeks and months in your sector?
In the early part of this year, everything was about having interactions with brands about business continuity and how they would provide tactical responses to the pandemic. Today, the interactions have become more strategic and shifted to how organizations should respond for the long term, how COVID-19 has permanently redefined consumer desires and needs, and what that means for our clients’ brands and businesses – how they should behave and what they should stand for.
In the last few months, we have dramatically increased the consultative side of our brand to help our customers uncover emerging client challenges and identify & pinpoint steps they can or should take to thrive, grow, and navigate the turbulence.
What advice would you give a marketer right now?
It is important for everyone to stay in the present. I don’t mean you should not plan ahead but you should also check that plan in real time before it gets deployed to make sure it makes sense. As a marketer, it is high time that you are in your customer’s head. If you haven’t yet done that, it is just the right time to really get in there and make a shout. I will also like to highlight here that this is not the best time to test the ‘all press is good press’ mantra (it really isn’t true).
At Propel Guru, we innately realize the power of digital marketing to leverage email marketing and lead generation to help our clients and their customers. So our support for our clients, our employees, and our audiences during this crisis can be best termed as an extension of what we have tried to do everyday since we all started at Propel Guru.
I personally believe that organizations today need to move from less “saying” to more “doing.” Find out how you can make a difference by calling +1-604-256-0821 now.
