After interviewing several experts who have excelled in Marketing, it gives me immense pleasure to have a chef turned digital marketing expert with us today.
Yes, you read that right.
We have with us digital marketing expert Suresh Babu.
If you don’t know about Suresh Babu, here is a quick introduction to this web marketing expert.
Who is Suresh Babu?
Suresh Babu started his career as a Chef and today is one of the finest digital marketing experts in India. He is the Founder and CEO of Web Marketing Academy.
Suresh has spent 18+ years in this industry as a corporate digital marketing trainer and a digital marketing consultant. He is also a visiting faculty at IIM Bangalore, Christ University, Symbiosis and ISBR.
From a chef to a digital marketing expert, the journey of Suresh Babu is inspiring.
Let us begin with the Expert Speaks interview of this amazing personality and learn more from him.
Interview with Digital Marketing Expert – Suresh Babu
#1. Suresh, please tell us about your journey from a chef to the CEO of Web Marketing Academy
I grew up in a small village near Wellington in between Ooty & Coonoor. During my 11th standard, the school kicked me out of the school, so I had to do my 12th in a tutorial and since I did my 12th in a tutorial, I didn’t get admission in any college.
Finally, I got a seat for Hotel Management in a college in Coimbatore, and that was by accident. I completed my degree in 1996 and worked for a couple of years there and I had an opportunity to work for Cruise Ship in Miami, Florida.
In 1999 I went to the US, and it was a big deal for me and my family someone from this village going abroad.
During my first vacation, my cousin introduced me to Yahoo Chat in 2000. I had no idea about computers, the Internet, and Yahoo Chat when I saw that I was fascinated with what you can do with that. At that time, I decided if I get an opportunity, I will learn this thing called the Internet.
I went back to the ship and after a couple of years, my friend asked me to join him in an Indian Restaurant in Florida. I joined him but unfortunately, he had to shut down his restaurant
I was jobless. Finally, he found me a job at a Gas Station. This is where I met John. One day when I went to his house, I saw around 15 people working on computers. I asked him what do they do, he said they run a web design company and I told him that I always wanted to learn computers and the internet.
So I asked for an internship and that’s where I started my journey as Digital Marketer in 2002. I worked there for almost 6 years and moved back to India in 2008. In India, I worked for an e-commerce company in Bangalore.
When I moved to Bangalore, I was looking for any meetups, etc for Digital Marketers. Nothing was there so I started a meetup and for the first meetup around 75 people turned up in 2009. And every month we did that meetup. IIMB Mentored us, gave us the venue, and slowly I started to build this community called OME Community (Online Marketing Enthusiast Community) with more than 15,000 marketers.
Being involved in that community, I realized there is a need for a proper education system for Digital Marketing in India and that’s when I quit my job and started Web Marketing Academy in 2011. Slowly and steadily we graduated with more than 5000 students.
#2. What are the top 3 challenges you faced during the initial days of Web Marketing Academy? How did you overcome them?
(i) My First Few Students:
When I started Web Marketing Academy, I thought easily I will get students to enroll, but for the first 6 months, there were no students at all.
No job, no students. Finally, I got a call from someone who wants to do this course, but he said he is managing a company of 300 employees. He wanted me to come there and teach, so I went and taught. He was my first student, Arvind.
Then Phani from Red Bus wanted me to train one of his employees in their venue. After that, I used to go to students’ PG, Apartments, and teach them. That was a challenge, however, that was my advantage too because I build this relationship with them where all of them are loyal and started to refer others and give positive feedback. It took years to build that reputation
(ii) Money & Venue:
WMA is self-funded and I am the only Founder. When I started I had Zero bank balance and no job too with a commitment of 1 Lac per month.
Then how did I start?
This is where my friends/family, my knowledge and my network helped.
I asked my friend Sanjay Jain to help me with a place to teach. He was managing a company at that time. I told him I will help the company with Digital Marketing in return, he gave me the company conference room during the weekends to conduct the training.
It was in the same building where Flipkart was in 2011. It was so helpful especially when I dint have any money
(iii) Attention to Details:
I knew that I can pull it off, however, what I lacked was giving details. I always wanted to be practical and realistic. This is both a strength and weakness, sometimes I don’t pay attention.
This happened when I started, I just want to get some students in this process, I didn’t pay attention to course material, structure, etc.
This is where my wife comes into the picture, she is a very detailed oriented person, who had experience in training. She helped me a lot in the beginning to structure the course material and other paperwork. Still learning from her
#3. Suresh, You have done an Executive MBA from the prestigious IIM Bangalore. When did you realize the need of doing it? How did you get into it and how has it helped you?
When I was working for this e-commerce company in Bangalore, every one of the leaders there is well educated. And I thought it’s time for me to upgrade myself and I had no idea about IIM’s (Yes since I did my hotel management, I didn’t have much exposure in terms of management, etc)
I wanted to do an MBA distance education or something, but my wife and my friends suggested if I have to do an MBA do it from IIM. I thought what is the big deal about IIM Bangalore. I went for a meetup there and that’s when I saw whey everyone is talking about IIM.
And then I decided to do the Executive General Management Program. I thought I would never get into it and applied, I was the last person to get it. I had two days to pay the first installment. I applied for a loan and finally got into it.
Well, I did that in 2009, so after 13 years of work experience, I did that course. It helped me in my day to day work, but most importantly the relationships I built while I was there were priceless. I had a chance to work with NSRCEL for a few months, got mentored by humble and wonderful people like Surya Narayanan. Even now those relationships are helping me and I am always grateful for good relationships
#4. You would have consulted various brands for digital marketing. What is your favourite digital marketing case study?
Interesting question!
Some of the brands I worked with are Myntra, Red Bus, BOSCH India, HPE, Arvind Fashions, Yahoo, Google, etc. And I have been involved with Decathlon for more than six to seven years. Decathlon is one of my favorite brands to work with (The company’s vision and mission is something I respect)
When I started to work with them it was B2B at that time. They had their monthly projections to get into B2C and to achieve that goal, I had to come up with a Digital Marketing Strategy.
Simple X% growth in revenue from month to month. I came up with a plan and to implement that plan I suggested running a test for one month implementing the plan including Google Ads, Social Media Ads. If we succeed in that we will have concrete data to execute and that’s what we did and it worked. This gave confidence for the upcoming months and years.
To date, we have trained almost 500 Decathlon Sports Leader in Digital & Social Media Marketing to become an Omni Sports Leader. To see most of them implemented, educating other sports leaders by sharing their learnings and contribute directly to the revenue of the company bring joy and satisfaction for me and my team
#5. Today, In India a lot of people are selling a lot of digital marketing courses. People are making students think that he/she can earn lakhs/crores by doing their courses and students to believe them as those people have a good personal brand.
Yes and that’s a challenge. It’s easy for someone to show their earnings, stats. What they don’t show is how much time and effort it took to achieve that.
Since 2009, I am seeing this.
For example, I can tell someone to be a trainer and start an academy, what they might not know is the time, effort and it took years to build a good reputation.
Every once in a while we used to get questions like:
“After doing this course will I get 20 Lac package” (Who might be getting around 5 Lacs)
“I heard after doing digital marketing, one can earn a lot sitting at home and easily earn”
“After doing some course, I should easily get a raise in my job. After doing this, I will get a lot of freelance projects”, etc, etc
For all of them I say, this course is NOT for you and in fact, we have told them not to do this course.
And it’s not their fault, because they are unaware and it is my job and those who have been in this industry for a long time to bring the awareness, educate and show them the reality.
Please don’t make this Industry like A MLM or Snake oil salesmen (Early 2003, 2004 SEO’s are known as snake oil salesmen)
#6. In such a scenario, what would be the top 3 genuine digital marketing courses that you would recommend students to consider?
In most of the courses, what I see is those who purchase the course are actually not using it for the long term and not implementing what they learn. In order to motivate, make the students take action, we all need ongoing support and mentoring.
My suggestion is instead of taking online courses and paying for it, there are these amazing free resources by Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other companies. The reason, I recommend is, it comes directly from the sources and credible.
A few free resources that I recommend:
1. Everything you want to know about a Website – https://bit.ly/2Y3AI8c
2. All about Google Ads including free certificates – https://bit.ly/3cD9KcT
3. All about Facebook & Instagram for Business with a free certificate – https://bit.ly/2UKCsmj
#7. Thank you for your honest recommendations. Even I have compiled a list of best free digital marketing courses.
Your institute is providing digital marketing training since the last 10 years. Tell us more about the training you provide and how it is unique from others. Also, if one has to pursue your course, does one has to move to Bangalore?
There are a few things we believe in. Number one is building a relationship and being a mentor to not only to our students but for anyone who wants to get into Digital Marketing.
As mentioned earlier when I moved to India, I wanted to evangelize Digital Marketing in India, bring awareness. Because I didn’t have that awareness and I learned it on my own. There are several others who are like me and I want to bring that awareness, that’s why the OME Community and WMA.
If you ask our students they will tell you that we all help each other in transforming our lives not only making each other confident in the subjects but most importantly socializing, helping and be part of the #WMAFamily
We do this by helping them learn not only from their batch mates but from others too be it our alumni, or my good friends whom we invite to interact with the students on a regular basis
1. Most of the students come to us for the practical approach, we had some of the students who have taken up the course from other institutes and join us for practical
2. On a regular basis, we do the research on what the market needs like looking into most of the JD and requirements from our placement partners and from Naukri, Indeed, LinkedIn, and put together a report for all our faculty and students. We fine-tune the curriculum based on the market requirements. This helps the curriculum up to date
3. We focus more on soft skills, creativity, storytelling, Empathy which are equally or more important than the subject
4. We take a maximum of 10 in a batch to pay personal attention and mentor them before, during, and after the course. Throughout their entire career, we are mentors, we still have students who completed their course in 2011 coming in for our guidance
Yes, that was the whole idea, it’s a classroom training and around 30% of the students are out of Bangalore.
We had people from Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bangaladesh too, however, due to COVID19, we also started our Online Live Mentor Led Training Programs.
#8. On a lighter note, what do you do in your free time?
I like to hang out, cook for my friends, Deep Sea Fishing and Travelling
#9. What is the one advice that Suresh Babu would like to give to the digital marketing enthusiasts reading this interview?
Learn to make mistakes. Especially in our society and culture, we are not taught to Fail. So my advice is to make mistakes, fail, learn from those mistakes
#10. I have observed that you create a lot of ebooks and templates. Would you like to give away some to my readers?
Absolutely!
I would like to share the following:
- 20 Steps to Become a Modern Digital Marketer
- Social Media Marketing Action Plan Template
- SEO Consulting Proposal Template
- Digital Marketing Strategy Template
- SEO Competitor Analysis Template
- Facebook Competitor Analysis Template
#11. Thank you for sharing so many ebooks and templates. Before we end, would you like to share a few free digital marketing tools that every digital marketer should learn?
A few digital marketing tools that every person in this field should learn are:
- Canva
- Google Search Console
- Google Keyword Planner
- QuikApp
- Anchor.fm
- Lumen5
#12. Thank you so much Suresh. It was great hosting you. Would you like to nominate any other expert or leader from this industry for Expert Speaks interview?
Yes, I would like to nominate:
- Prasant Naidu
- Khushbu Pandya
Conclusion
I wholeheartedly thank Suresh Babu for his time and wonderful answers. His story is really inspiring.
A lot of people ask me that what is the degree required to become a digital marketing professional. One doesn’t require any degree for it. Though primary education is extremely essential. But your degrees should not restrict you from selecting the profession of your choice.
Yes, it is but obvious that if you want to become a doctor then you need to study medicine. If you want to become a lawyer then you need to study law. But for becoming a digital marketer, there is not such set rule.
Marketing can be pursued by anyone.
All you require is the passion to learn and implement what you learn.
And this interview is a perfect example of one such marketer.
If you know anyone like Suresh Babu (any person who was in a different profession before and is now doing wonders in marketing), then please let me know.
Thank you for reading!