The Current Focus is on Targeted Performance Marketing and Ensuring a Top-notch Resident and Community Experience- Somanna Muthanna, Stayabode

Here’s an exclusive chat with Somanna Muthanna, Head Marketing at StayAbode Ventures. While he’s been associated with Stayabode since 3 months, he previously headed the marketing department of Chumbak Design Pvt. Ltd for nearly 4 years.

1. Stayabode will observe Asia’s largest co-living project next year. But noting that you are not very heavy on advertising, how do you keep up with its marketing strategy?

Our project that will go live in 2020 will be Asia’s largest co-living project and design and construction is underway on it. Currently, a lot of our focus is on targeted performance marketing and ensuring we have a top-notch resident and community experience which ensures we have very high referrals too. The market is driven by demand and we are really catching up on supply. So with marketing the idea going ahead will be to build a strong resident brand and a seamless experience across which we are able to sell through our social and performance campaigns.

2. With the idea of sharing economy growing steadily, how is Stayabode changing the face? Do you think this model will fit in Tier II & Tier III cities?

We are part of the co-living movement and the sharing economy is really solving for an important phenomena in today’s millennial’s need hierarchy, which is that they value access over ownership. She is exposed to a certain lifestyle early on through media and therefore when she gets into her first job, she wants access to that lifestyle but is also aware of the economics that support it and therefore sharing makes sense. Co-living does the same for living as you get access to live in great parts of the city, close to work and living in fully furnished and managed spaces with a vibrant community and access to interesting events and networking opportunities, which in turn ties a lot of their needs into one space.

3. You have worked with plenty of good brands in the past. What new innovative marketing strategy would you like to implement while in this position?

With StayAbode, the uniqueness is that we are getting to work with a consumer base that is literally living with us. That changes the dynamics of how you look at the customers and what you can learn from them to improve our offering. So, I intend to focus on how design improves community interactions here and how we can use data from our residents back into our social and performance marketing. Also, a huge reason for excitement is the number of events we organise across our properties. We do upwards of 20 events every week which gives us great room to understand how our residents interact with each other and what they are looking for us to create for them, which we can then replicate across our spaces. 

4. Would you consider analyzing data or information a strength? How so?

Human insight is a big draw for me. Across the brands I have worked at, spending time talking to the end consumers and understanding their journeys and challenges is what has reinforced my brand thinking. I do not enjoy creating ideas for the sake of it unless I’m convinced it will hit a chord with my consumer. Therefore, I spend a lot more time on qualitative data and then execute ideas which we have enough tools to quantitatively measure after that. I would consider that more of a strength for me.

5. What do current trends indicate about our customers? How would you respond?

Our current consumer is impatient and significantly blessed with options. Gone are the days when you could launch one large campaign during a large sporting event and expect that to stick for the rest of the year. If you are addressing the millennial, then you need to take into account their diverse media interests and see how you fit in the larger scheme of things. You will have to align your brand against their lifestyle and journey and see where you fit in and ensure you relentlessly work to build a niche there. Consistency and constantly being updated about your audience’s preferences is key to being relevant. At the same time being authentic is very important for this audience, as they value it and seek authentic brands especially with all the clutter on social media.

6. How do you explain a marketing plan to someone without a creative background? How do you prove the plan’s value?

Depends on who you are speaking to. I have always believed that a lot of marketing is really common sense as far as knowing your consumer and delivering for them, but the rest is a science of knowing how to activate various channels and how to measure for them. With that background, you need to be very clear who you are pitching a marketing plan to and what is important to them. Your CFO may ask you for an ROI or the specific metrics you will be measuring, but your CEO may ask you for how your plan will stand out and how will it play out; the interests and end objectives can be diverse, so your presentation style must change. But increasingly, I’m also seeing a much more rounded approach to such questions especially in the stratas I have worked with as founders have a fairly wholesome approach to marketing which ensures you can sell them both the creative and strategic sides of a plan.