This interview is with Soubhik Chakrabarti, CEO at Canada Hustle.

Soubhik Chakrabarti, CEO, Canada Hustle

Soubhik, welcome to Digital Marketing Interviews! Could you tell our readers a little bit about your background in digital marketing and what led you to this exciting field?

I have over a decade of experience in e-commerce, digital marketing, SEO, and social media management. I have worked on client acquisition, lead generation, and client-relationship management and have overseen paid and organic marketing strategies. Currently, I'm working as a Digital Marketing and Business Management Instructor at Excel Career College in Surrey, BC.

I am passionate about writing and educating people about the latest trends and technologies. I think my passion drove me to this exciting field of digital marketing. This field allows me to express my ideas and offer valuable insights to organizations and consumers for better communication.

Your journey in digital marketing is truly inspiring. Can you share a pivotal moment or experience that shaped your career path and led you to where you are today?

I remember the post-pandemic time when people experienced the effectiveness of digital communication channels to absorb valuable information about topics they followed. People were aware of different social media platforms that could provide reliable information about products and services. I saw it as an opportunity that I could use to educate the audience as well as convince businesses to understand the power of digital marketing to make an impact.

I researched various digital marketing tools that helped me design marketing campaigns to improve my reach. With an efficient team and a productive work culture, we started providing services to top-notch clients.

You've previously mentioned the effectiveness of targeted online advertising. Can you elaborate on a specific campaign where you saw significant success using this strategy, and what key takeaways our readers can learn from your experience?

In a quest to improve our email marketing campaign effectiveness, we asked our users to write content for us. We wanted to establish a personal connection with our potential customers for our travel services. For this, we requested our users to share their Instagram posts from the journeys they planned by using our self-guided tour packages.

We used these Instagram shots in our email marketing campaign to allow our customers to have a glimpse of our services. When customers received our emails, they began relating themselves with the users of our services and built a strong relationship. This strategy helped us convert our campaign into a successful business transaction.

People love to share their experiences, and they want to be heard. You can utilize such consumer behavior in marketing campaigns to inform your potential customers and build trust. I suggest businesses should promote user-generated content in their marketing campaigns. This strategy improves your brand reach and builds relationships.

Data analysis plays a crucial role in optimizing digital marketing efforts. Can you share a time when data insights led you to make a significant change in your strategy, and what positive outcomes did you observe as a result?

We know the importance of data analysis in understanding the demographics of our audience. For instance, we depend on user personas to check the impact of our content and services. Having a clear picture of the age groups of users that spend the most time on our web pages, as well as searching for our services, helps us design our marketing strategy based on their interests.

On one of our travel pages, we noticed that most of the online bookings were made by Millennials and Gen Z users. They also comprised around 70% of our regular visitors. This data analysis helped us tailor our services to this broad user persona.

We worked on creating stories to target this age group. We also improved our interface to make it more appealing according to their tastes. These updates helped us secure a 25% increase in ROI.

Building a strong online presence is essential for businesses today. What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced in establishing brand visibility and engagement in the digital space, and how have you overcome them?

The top three challenges my business faced were managing our marketing budget, optimizing ROI (Return on Investment), and generating traffic and leads to establish our brand visibility and engagement in the digital space.

Let's talk about our marketing budget scenario first. Our business mostly works on the B2C model, and we decided to invest around 10% of our revenue on marketing channels to connect with the customers. This strategy involved investing in the latest marketing tools and techniques to get promising results.

Next, optimizing ROI was another challenge we needed to sort out. We began by analyzing our audience, such as understanding their demographics, pain points, and preferences. This offered us a clear picture of our targeted customers, and we could now design our campaigns based on this. We invested in email and social media marketing channels to maximize our efforts and keep them on track.

We worked on the best SEO optimization practices to generate traffic and leads. We also hosted events and webinars to target our potential customers. Another important tactic was implementing referral marketing and word-of-mouth advertising. These strategies helped our business find a reputed position in this competitive landscape.

The digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving. How do you stay updated with the latest trends and technologies, and what advice would you give to aspiring marketers who want to remain ahead of the curve?

I spend a fair amount of time educating myself about the latest digital marketing trends. I read and follow top-notch digital marketing experts' blogs and articles. Listening to the best digital marketing podcasts is another habit I have that keeps me updated with the popular trends.

Ethical considerations are becoming increasingly important in the digital marketing world. What are your thoughts on responsible data usage and transparency in marketing practices, and how do you ensure ethical standards in your work?

I totally agree with the concept of responsible data usage and transparency in marketing practices. Such an outlook establishes a fair business ecosystem and a healthy competitive environment. Also, users feel safe when sharing their data during digital interactions.

In our business, we always provide clear and accurate information to our customers, avoiding any false claims. We've also implemented the best Internet security solutions on our websites to prevent any breaches. Additionally, we clearly inform our customers about the purposes behind using their data.

Looking ahead, what are you most excited about in the future of digital marketing, and what opportunities or challenges do you anticipate for marketers in the coming years?

I'm optimistic about the phenomenal use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the digital marketing landscape in a more advanced way shortly. I assess AI as a catalyst for establishing digital marketing trends, which is more of an opportunity than a challenge.

As I have recently noticed a major shift in AI marketing, digital marketers will have to understand its limitless possibilities. With such a fast-paced technology, marketers can spend more time developing creative campaigns to reach a large audience. Since AI is capable of performing a variety of manual tasks more efficiently than a generic workforce, marketers can also select numerous cost-effective strategies to reach their business goals.