Impact of IIM Lucknow on a life of a budding marketer.

Today there are a bunch of courses out there that promise you the world, in terms of learning, pay hikes, better job opportunities in new fields or a quick career growth. But one thing which you must look into every course is the name behind that course i.e. credibility of the person or institute who is delivering it. Ideally instructor must be someone who has utilized that education or a skill-set in a real world scenario.

 While I was promoted in a new job as a manager (now an Associate Director) it came along with an additional responsibility of product marketing. So then I was in urgent need of some course to get my product marketing basics right and also to provide me with some insight as to how to implement that learning in a real world business scenarios.

 There were many courses that were offered on Instagram which were for as low as 500 rupees and then of course you have courses from Ivy League colleges that will cost you 50,000 US dollars. Again, on one hand there are courses that are delivered by young millennial , while on the other hand there are courses that are offered by industry veterans. But, in the end if you want any course to be a good mix of something that you can afford as well as something that also brings in a lot of credibility. Because in any service just like education, you can only realize the benefit of that service delivered after that service has been consumed not before it :-). So if it is coming from a credible institute or an industry leader then you have some assurance of getting the required quality otherwise it is just like any other certification.

This pursuit of education landed me in Indian Institute of Management Lucknow. Although I was in need of something quick course but then I realized that a structured approach to learning can always give me long term benefit and a life long learning.

Because as a principal it is easy to come and easy go right?. 

At first I thought it must be an easy course to get in as it was a side hustle which you can do along with other professional commitments. However the course involved a written test, two rounds of interviews and your profile evaluation before selecting for a small batch of 70 students. It also involves you to deliver several projects, min 90% attendance and three major assessments which are evaluated every quarter. And finally the evaluation of all these scores makes you eligible after one year for that premium certification. Now that is one hell of a difficult journey and many people give up on it but for those who remain get a IIM Lucknow alumni status.

Now let's talk about the three major learning in this one year

1. Digital marketing is not any option but a must have -Especially considering the post covid-19 situation. Because digital marketing and tools like hubspot can eliminate the need of entire sales teams if executed to perfection. Before a person does business with you he or she will definitely go to your web presence or a web portal or a social media website. And all these activities require a lot of care in terms of auditing, monitoring, managing, modernizing and supporting with right marketing material that is able to engage audience business needs. (its not about you but them)
2. All the marketing tools and technology and people can only help you when you know the root cause of the business problem so defining a good business problem is a good logical point to start narrowing the scope of that problem so that you can fail fast and resolve it. Yes, failing fast is important especially in marketing. And if you don't like failing try testing it several times with the smaller group that represents your ideal customers. 
3. One of the Peer learning from this program is that many of my friends have opened up their own startup or are leading marketing functions in different companies. They have spent a lot of time identifying the single business problem which saves a lot of time when they try to identify or match the right product with the right customers who are influenced to buy the product using the right communication channels and messaging.
4. Another learning was from one of my mentors Professor Kumra who has the ability to bring in people with totally different points of views to the same logical thinking. Life lesson aka learning was that interpersonal skills are required not only to manage people or students but also to empower personal growth. Because in the end you are not only dealing with marketing tools or business problems but you are exchanging your views with people and trying to come up with a progressive solution that works in favor for your customers' customer, your company, your product and enables long term your vision for yourself.

 Let me know what are some of your business learning or something mention above is just theory and in-fact their is different story when you run a business in comment section below.