Smart Rely on Chatbots for Digital Marketing Learning

Digital marketing (digital marketing) is one of the jobs most needed by companies to attract consumers and potential customers quickly. This is because the acceptance of technology and the internet in the wider community has made digital marketing activities the main choice for companies.

As a result, companies compete with each other to create interesting content to display on various digital platforms. Some examples of marketing techniques that fall into this field are SEO (Search Engine Optimization), advertising online such as FB ads and Google Ads, print media promotions, television and radio advertisements, billboard electronic, e-mail marketing, mobile marketing, and others.

All of these skills, of course, must be mastered by prospective talents who want to explore jobs in the digital marketing field. Not to mention the MSME business owners who want to take their business to the next level. Smart offers digital marketing learning solutions that don't need to come and take online classes regularly, just go through chatbot accessed via WhatsApp.

The inspiration to start Pingtar came from the desire of Marsha Hamdani and Arvinda Tripradopo who are close to the digital marketing training landscape in the organization that houses them both. Arvinda has been in technology and marketing for more than 15 years. He pioneered and led a Digital Marketing consulting service called SkytreeDGTL since 2015.

Meanwhile, Marsha joined Skytree the following year as a Digital Strategist. “At Skytree, the two of us have helped various organizations at the maturity and industry level in the process digital marketingher, good at handling manufacture The roadmap digital, leading the execution, and providing training and consulting for business people," said Marsha when contacted DailySocial.id.

From their experience in previous companies, they saw firsthand how Digital Marketing can help business growth in various industries and wanted to accumulate the knowledge that had been collected for more business people. Therefore, in 2018, released a business unit called TalkDGTL which is focused on Digital Marketing training.

“At that time the business model was still in the form of direct training, so we and several Skytree experts became speakers at various seminars, workshop, and training sessions. But so far, we are aware that this business model is actually difficult to implement.scale up, let alone many competitors. Finally, at the beginning of 2021, Talk DGTL was finally discontinued because it seemed that it had not yet succeeded in reaching the desired educational scale.”

In the same year, he and Arvinda began to study WhatsApp technology chatbot who started coming in. WhatsApp itself is a communication platform that is widely used by people around the world to carry out any activities, including marketing. From the side of the WhatsApp company itself, it has opened pintu for developers to access its API officially.

“So that's where we started to do further research on this technology. Because this technology can be a solution to the scalability and accessibility that is a problem in TalkDGTL and similar training organizations today. The two of us started to seriously discuss Smart at the end of this year.”

Smart Products

Pingtar divides the solution into two business models, namely direct-to-consumer (D2C) and B2B. Marsha explained, for D2C products, Pingtar products will be offered as a choice of new learning methods through WhatsApp. Module participants can register for a Digital Marketing topic they want to learn through the site and receive module submissions directly on their WhatsApp.

“Chatbot will take the place of a coach Digital Marketing, so participants can interact on a limited basis to get personalized recommendations according to their business conditions.”

This first model will be released in the near future, and offers this product with a Freemium model. So there will be basic modules offered for free and the option to buy premium modules individually. The price will be made very affordable because it wants to reach MSME businesses in all corners.

"Our benchmark is that the purchase of one module should not be more expensive than the price of shopping for coffee in cafes in Jakarta, and this still has a healthy margin because Pingtar's training uses chatbot technology, not relying on trainers."

Second, for B2B it is present because it is aware that the method used is microlearning via WhatsApp can be an attractive option for organizations that want to increase the effectiveness of their current Knowledge Management (KM) system. For business users, Pingtar will help organizations transform existing content and/or KM systems into WhatsApp format with the cost of installing and subscribing to the platform.

In this initial version, Marsha admits that she is still working with third-party solutions chatbot, while ensuring cost efficiency and speed of product launch time. Therefore, the early learning model at Pingtar will rely more on guided learning, meaning that participants will receive rather rigid directions in their interactions with the chatbot. "Chatbots are also not able to answer direct questions at this time."

Nevertheless, chatbot development in-house The plan will be one of the company's top priorities after the business model validation phase with stronger financial support. In addition, to reduce dependence on third parties, features that are specific to the learning process can be added immediately.

Differentiation and next plan

It could be said that the first WhatsApp-based training solution offered by Pingtar in Indonesia. This advantage also makes Pingtar accessible anywhere, even in areas without stable internet access. Businessmen in the regions often have difficulty accessing training directly online.

"Using a text-based format, Smart is much more flexible than the model video-based learning, live stream coaching, or offline training currently available in the market. This is also why we use the WhatsApp that everyone is familiar with using their smartphone.”

In terms of module development, it was developed by the responsible Pingtar team based on extensive experience in this field. However, the team plans to engage various experts in other business fields who can contribute to Pingar's modules on a royalty model.

In addition, he continued, the learning materials were built with the context of MSMEs in Indonesia. This is because most training generally targets very general or very specific capabilities, so that it is often difficult for MSMEs to understand. "This learning model through WhatsApp is still very few or even non-existent, both nationally and globally."

Smart products are currently not released to the public, still in the final process of developing D2C products. The pre-release is planned to be held in August. Later the company will provide opportunities for more than 100 MSME owners in Jakarta to try and provide input for Pingtar for free. "The public release of the D2C model itself is planned for early October 2022."

After the pre-release and public release have been successfully passed, Marsha believes that her party will get the initial business validation needed for the next development process. If the results are positive, Pingtar will accelerate its operational scale so that it can reach MSMEs in all corners.

"Until the stage of product development, Pingtar is still 100% self-funded. However, we are in the process of discussing with several VCs to get further funding, especially to support a large-scale increase after market validation,” concluded Marsha.