Agency Feature: Savisha Marketing

Who are we?

Savisha Marketing was founded in August 2014 as a full-service digital agency. Initially, we had offices in Mumbai and Pune but now have a presence across Mumbai and Lucknow. By the end of 2016, we pivoted towards focusing on content marketing.

Sham Srinivas and Utkarsh Verma are responsible for running
Savisha Marketing. Sham handles Sales and leads the content marketing vertical.
Utkarsh leads our design and technology offerings.

We have a mix of full-time employees as well as freelancers.

What's in the name?

Savisha is a combination of Savithri (Sham’s mother) and
Sham. Savithri has been one of Savisha’s original co-founders and has played a
key role in the formation of Savisha Marketing. She has also provided
infrastructural and financial support which has made it possible for Savisha
Marketing to exist without seeking external sources of funds. Above all, her
positive and tenacious attitude has rubbed off on the other members

What we do?

We are a content marketing agency. We create written as well as visual content.

Written content includes articles for company blogs, online publishing platforms (such as Quora, Linked and Medium), EBooks, and authored posts (for business publications, newspapers, etc). Visual content includes animated videos, infographics, website design, landing page design, social media banners, and logos.

We have been primarily creating content for firms in the BFSI space (Banking, financial services, insurance). Brands may find several agencies to help them create content across verticals such as fashion, retail, travel, food, etc. But they have always found it difficult to work with agencies that understand financial services.

We, on the other hand, have been passionate about investor education. We believe that investing over the long term in the stock markets can enable Indians to create wealth. We believe that credit, when used appropriately, can fuel business growth. We believe that insurance can protect one’s personal wealth in times of distress.

By creating content for firms in the BFSI space, we are able to fulfill our Ikigai.

Why we do it?

Running Savisha Marketing enables us to fulfill our Ikigai.

Wondering what is Ikigai?

Ikigai, in Japanese concept that means – ‘reason for being’. Our Ikigai is what enables us to get out of our beds every day in the morning. Ikigai is where the following meet:

• What you love to do
• What you are good at
• What you can be paid for
• What the world needs

We love writing. We are certainly good at it. We get paid for it. And the invoices that we raise reminds us that the world certainly needs our services.

How we evolve?

Before rebranding ourselves as a
content marketing agency, we were a full-service digital media marketing agency
offering various online marketing services. However, it felt as if we hadn’t
really found our calling.

During this time, our founder Sham had started a blog on personal finance called Gulakh.com. This blog started getting eyeballs and soon enough brands from the BFSI space were keen on getting their content developed by us. This enabled us to figure out that creating content for the BFSI sector was a key area for us to explore and possibly create a niche in.

Soon we had stock market companies, banks, insurance firms
and providers of financial services contacting us to help them create content.
Earlier it was only written content which soon evolved into written and visual
content.

This provided us with our greatest learning that to sustain
in the digital media marketing industry, an agency needs to find its niche and
stick to it.

Social responsibility in social media

Since clients depend on us to create content, we need to ensure that not only is the content grammatically correct but also is factually accurate. This is critical especially when it comes to creating content in the BFSI space. Any claim that we make or statistics that we quote have to be provided with sources. Fortunately, all our clients have been mindful about the same.

Also Read: Agency Feature: AdEngage

We learned the hard way

Thankfully we could learn from our mistakes and almost
immediately implement these learnings in running our business.

We have tried to encapsulate our learnings into a list of handy tips for aspiring service-based startups.

Here are some handy tips for aspiring startups:

• ABC – Always Be Closing. Never stop
  selling. Clients may not always stay. Clients may not always offer work. New
  Clients and New Projects will keep your agency alive.
• Cash is king. Always hold cash
  equivalent to six months of your business operations. You will never know when
  revenues might fall and you will need cash to sustain till business picks up
  again.
• Always collect an advance.
  Especially from promoter run companies in India. Don’t feel shy or worried
  about demanding advance.
• Figure out a niche during your early
  days. Stick to the niche and slowly transform into an expert in this niche.
  This will enable brands to not only recall you effectively but you will also
  find yourself collaborating with so-called competitors.
• Hire the right people. This is
  easier said than done.
• Have an open mind about working with
  freelancers. They tend to be more productive and offer you flexibility with
  your payments.
• There have been times when we didn’t
  have any work and would wonder where the next project would come from. But it
  always did come. So believe in yourself and keep hustling.
• Clients are your best teachers.
  Learn as much as you can from them.
• Keep faith in clients who kept faith
  in you.
• Long term credibility is more
  important than short term profit.

They work with us

Our clients include brand, digital media marketing agencies, bigger content marketing agencies, and PR agencies. Since 2014, we have worked directly and indirectly with more than 100 brands.

Brands which have worked with us include Tata Capital, Kotak Securities, Yes Bank, Bharti AXA, HDFC Life, etc. Scatter, which is one of India’s leading content agencies also works with us.

The Other Circle is a leading Public Relations Agency which
has partnered with us for content creation.

Industry as we foresee

Thanks to the Google Hummingbird update, marketers have started offering significant importance to content. Marketers are also realizing that organic traffic which is pulled in by creating high-quality content turns out to be more loyal and may also spend more than paid traffic.

Although this has been already identified by leading marketers, during the next few years, content in social media will be primarily be driven by videos. Video content will have to be original and offer value to the viewer.

More than 1500 languages are spoken in India. Marketers are also looking at incorporating regional content in their social media marketing efforts. Here too animated videos play an important role as visual content can be understood by a wide swathe of audience.

A day without Internet

Thankfully we have backup internet service providers, so we
are unlikely to spend any day without internet.

However, a holiday without the internet would be bliss. But we are still at a stage where
you may find us pounding at our keyboards even on a holiday.

Lastly, are you hiring?

Presently we are not. But if you are well versed with
writing for an online audience, especially financial articles, we would be
happy to hear back.