Sharanya

Books - Music - Classical dancing - Travel - Technology. An all time student of Marketing. | Customer Experience and Marketing @ Zoho. All views are personal.

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

Effort does not create demand - A lesson from the movie industry

Recently, I read a review about a movie in India Today. This portion of the review caught my attention.

You can spend years making a film. You can pour your heart into it. You can create what you genuinely believe is a Taj Mahal. And the audience can still look at it and say, "Sorry, not interested." They can find your Taj Mahal less shiny. They could even find it fake.

That is their right. That is the deal. Cinema is not a welfare scheme. A theatre is not a cultural rehabilitation centre. Screens are not distributed as charity. Exhibitors put films on screens because they want people to buy tickets.

That is not discrimination. That is called the market.

This is exactly how to think about a product's success in the market.

There is no privilege in the market. Releasing a product from a well-known brand is like casting a popular hero, heroine, or music director in a film. It gets attention, but it does not guarantee success.

Success comes only when the product is genuinely useful, solves a real problem, and helps people in a way they care about, not a problem we imagined in our own minds.

In the end, it does not matter who built the product. It does not matter how much time, effort, or money went into it. It does not matter whether everyone internally agreed with the direction. It does not matter how sophisticated the technology is, how strong the sales or marketing is, or what titles and degrees the team holds.

What matters is much simpler:

Is the product useful?
Do people actually need it?
Will they keep using it?

Everything else is secondary.

Those who internalize this reality stay grounded. They spend less time defending assumptions and more time understanding customer problems and validating whether the solution they think actually solves the real problem people / businesses face. That mindset, more than any technology, process, or strategy, is what leads to products that people truly want.

Note: I haven't watched the movie and so this is not about any particular movie or director.

[Sharanya @sharuram]

Please help us find our 10-year old child. It is a very devastating situation for the parents and for the family. We are just waiting indefinitely. Please help. @IndiainHamburg @DrSJaishankar

[anu @anu479532812797]

@GermanyinIndia @IndiainHamburg @DrSJaishankar Dear Sir,
I’m a distraught mother, living in Hamburg Germany,who has lost my 10 year old child by drowning in the Elbe river in Hamburg. It’s been more than 48 hours since she’s drowned, and we still don’t know what happened to her

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

Fresh new look for Zoho! We have been quietly rolling it out for months now and today it is "official", about as official as anything gets at Zoho! 😀

[Sharanya @sharuram]

Tidbits from my journey at Zoho.

[Zoho @Zoho]

Sharanya has been with us for 13+ years. She leads the customer experience marketing for @ZohoCRM, CRM Plus, and @Bigin. She loves dancing, reading, and has also recently taken up gardening and crocheting!

Know her story 👉 https://t.co/1Ct0vrl7hf
#HumansofZoho

[Zoho CRM @ZohoCRM]

Introducing Canvas—the industry's first CRM design studio.

Your business is unique, so should your CRM.

It's time for a new #CRMexp 🔗 https://t.co/eTa0QMmaDN

[Sharanya @sharuram]

@gopals These books must be a treasure trove!

[Sharanya @sharuram]

@iAmbii We continue to use the diamond. :)

[Sharanya @sharuram]

@FURLENCO Need some information about your products. Every time I call your customer support, I am made to wait, and then the call gets cut. Can you give a call back?

[Sharanya @sharuram]

@aishashok14 @meerasapra Congratulations, Aishwarya! And wishing you success always!

[Sharanya @sharuram]

@reshroy Beauty! God's own country?

[Zoho @Zoho]

There's so much to how our journey of 25 years started.

What has remained constant is our focus on R&D driven by people committed to patiently investing in it.

Our CEO, @svembu, looks back to share some lesser-known details about our early history. ✍️ https://t.co/TGAALL6AUv

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

On the Padma Shree award, it is a huge honor and I feel humbled. I dedicate this to our employees, my extended family, for keeping the faith.

I want to thank friends and well-wishers for all your messages that have poured in. Your support keeps me going. 🙏🙏🙏

[Sharanya @sharuram]

@Kuppulakshmi Yes, yes, yes!

[Gopal Sripada @gopals]

"Testimony that’s all anecdote with no data carries little in the way of actionable information." https://t.co/Pw2q2w41oF via @thisissethsblog

[Zoho @Zoho]

📣 One day to go!

Join @reshroy, as she explains how your back-office technology can impact your customers and business.

Learn how to provide contextual customer insights to your employees, build an integrated platform around customers, & more. 👇

https://t.co/GCQiQnqD1x

[Sharanya @sharuram]

@ZohoCampaigns A5: Try sending them one re-engagement/consent email asking if they would like to continue receiving emails from your brand. You then have a clean contact list. #ZCampaignsChat

[Sharanya @sharuram]

@ZohoCampaigns A2: Keep testing, especially with time and date. You might find new normals that work with your audience.
Segmentation is always the key to better engagement. #ZCampaignsChat

[Sharanya @sharuram]

@ZohoCampaigns A1. Brands need to prepare well in advance and need to take extra steps to take care of customers and communicate this as well. #ZCampaignsChat

[Zoho @Zoho]

Software is our craft—a craft we’ve honed over the years.

We’re inspired by simplicity and driven by passion, to bring you the ultimate product of the mind and hands.

#ZohoMadeInIndia. Made for the World.

[Zoho @Zoho]

Introducing Puvi—a down-to-earth font from Zoho.

On the mission to define our visual identity, we've created a typeface that is functional, scalable, dynamic, and speaks our philosophy.

Here's a closer look: https://t.co/zn8RKjMaOx