Marketing methods have evolved. Businesses are starting to rely more on digital marketing than merely sticking with the tried-and-true strategies. And why shouldn’t they? The value of digital marketing is found in its low cost and wide range of alternatives for connecting with potential clients all around the world. The use of social media, email, and content marketing all helps to increase brand recognition and inform customers about the goods and services.

However, every businesses are encouraged to make the firms accessible at online and it is facilitated through digital marketing strategies like paid advertising and link-building. As a result, businesses will get orders from various locations without investing any money in a sales team.

Whereas in 2023, regardless of how small or large the company, digital marketing is necessary, but it is especially vital for students who wish to pursue a career in marketing. How and why? The value of digital marketing has risen for various sectors of the economy during the course of the epidemic.

Digital marketing was expanding prior to the epidemic. Though more slowly, awareness and knowledge of digital marketing were growing. Very few major brands considered it necessary or a way to broaden their customer base internationally. As a result of their limited marketing resources, unorthodox businesses were also the first to investigate digital marketing.

In order to meet industry demand, Operating Media offers training to marketing professionals who wish to advance their education and careers. And the company is a well-known trainer in digital marketing in India. The agency also provides customized digital marketing workshops to corporate professionals and those looking to advance their enterprises through digital marketing. 

The agency’s Founder, Harsh Pareek, interacted with The Knowledge Review and discussed the agency’s history of success as well as its future plans and objectives.

Dive down to find out more.

Brief us about the corporate training institute’s journey since its beginning.

Operating Media is a bootstrap organization started by Harsh Pareek and Rahul Singh in 2011. We both started our journey of Digital Marketing together in 2008, and post having sufficient knowledge about the domain; we decided to pass on the ability to others.

I’ve always believed that digital marketing is the future and there will be ample career opportunities, so Operating Media came into existence. Initially, it took a while to establish as the awareness of digital marketing was little in India, and it was slowly picking up, but with time, people were more aware of it.

Coming from the digital marketing domain, it was easy to start, and the day-to-day activities always went smoothly. We launched our first centre in Andheri, Mumbai, followed by Borivali, Vashi, Thane, and Delhi. During the pandemic, we had to shut down most of our centres, but we are aiming to start with more centres in 2023.

Operating Media is backed by Ibraine Digital, a digital marketing agency founded in the same year as Operating Media. The agency aims to provide our clients with the best services, to be updated with the latest digital trends, and to provide students with live experience on the projects.

Tell us about mission, vision, and core values of the institute.

Operating Media was formed with a core principle to provide the best quality education to our students. So we only take up to seven students in a batch to give them the most excellent personalized attention possible.

Our mission is to make as many careers possible in the Digital Marketing industry, which we have been doing since 2011. We don’t only target an audience from colleges, but our significant student base is entrepreneurs who want to learn digital marketing and take their businesses to great heights.

We don’t aim to be the top digital marketing institute, as these are just numbers compared on the basis of a number of students trained. We want to provide quality education to help them in the future, make promising careers for themselves, or take their business to new heights.

Being a prominent training institute, what significant contribution the institute has brought in corporate for the upliftment of the country?

Small steps lead to big success. We want to be another brick in the wall of success of this nation. India is a vast country with a considerable population, and the path never ends when you try to do something good. It is challenging to contribute heavily to such a nation, but we are trying to play our part in small steps.

Every month we have many students who complete the course and make a career in Digital Marketing. We even provide lifetime support post the class finishes, and we still have our eight years old alumni who are in touch with us and keep contacting us for suggestions, and we take this as a success for us.

What challenges does the institute came across since its beginning and how did it overcome them?

The good part is being from a similar industry; it was not difficult to start with the course content and other things. One challenge we faced in 2011 was awareness amongst the audience regarding Digital Marketing, which could have been stronger then. So we had to run many awareness campaigns and do demo sessions and seminars to educate the audience about it.

Another instance was COVID, and we were no different being spared by it. We shut down four centres, and students had to undergo online training to cover the pending modules. Though on the brighter side, it opened many opportunities for many marketers and new career options. There is always a difference between online and classroom training and we had to stick with online training for those two years.

Apart from these, it’s always been a smooth journey training students.

Being a leading institute, what are the advanced skills the institute indulges in the students?

Since we started, we always have preferred to be glued to Digital Marketing courses which have been our forte. We teach end-to-end complete digital marketing, which helps you to start with a new career, switch careers, start your own business or enhance your existing business with the power of digital marketing and reach a relevant audience.

Digital Marketing is a skill training that helps you learn various skills like SEO, SMO, PPC, Analytics, Web Development, Mobile Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, and many more. Now overall, every skill set in digital marketing is a career in itself and is very vast.

In the past decade, we have learned to break down the course so that you can comfortably learn everything from essential to advanced levels in a fun way. We are confident that any student can quickly get a job at a top agency basis on what they have learned with us.

How do you cope up with the new trends in the corporate world? How do you ensure that the students meet the needs of the corporates?

We are the only institute that provides lifetime query-solving. You can call our trainers or meet in person for any query you face with your project, whether you work as a freelancer or with an agency. We always believe in building relationships with our students in a way that makes them feel comfortable approaching us anytime they want.

Apart from this, from our end, it is never-ending learning as marketing in the digital world is updated frequently and hence we have an agency. We are working with over 100 clients from different countries and industries, which helps us update with other trends across sectors and countries.

As a leading corporate institute, what would be your advice for upcoming leaders?

One thing which I learned as a kid, there are two times when you have to work hard in your life: Either you work hard for ten years and enjoy a good life for the next 50 years, or you enjoy these ten years and work hard for next 50 years of your life.

The world is quite competitive these days, and millions of companies are looking to hire good talent. It is not a big deal to become successful in today’s world, but what’s challenging is at what age do you become successful? So, don’t waste your time and work hard and smart and make the best use of this one life we have.

How do you envision the future of your corporate institute?

When I started Operating Media, there were hardly three institutes in Mumbai; now, you can’t even count which shows the future of digital marketing and its potential. Every company in today’s world needs marketing to survive, and digital marketing has been a boon for all the small and mid-size companies who cannot afford offline advertising, which is comparatively quite expensive compared to digital.

Even with such a small percentage of people using the internet in India, we are among the top five heavy spenders on digital marketing, which shows how much scope we still have to grow. In a nutshell, digital marketing is the world’s future, and it is still an excellent time to start a career. Take your time and go for it.