The Longer version of my story 🙂 

Social Media & Digital Marketing has been my passion & profession for more than a decade now. I have hepled buisness from strategy to execution for their digital marketing activities. With over 12 years of experience in digital marketing helping startups and brands build their strong presence online and generate a continuious revenue stream

Here is my story of being a digital marketer:

I am Faizan Ansari a digital marketing professional with over a decade of experience in multiple digital domains.  I started working as a website designer in 2008! Yes, that’s long back during my engineering days. Back then the digital marketing term was majorly used by affiliate marketers and bloggers. There was no big digital agency scenario (at leat in India).

I never knew in my life that I would work for a digital marketing agency forget about running of my own. It all started with one website client who called me and said, “What is the use of this website you have built for me! I have not received a single call or lead in the last three months”. I politely replied to him that his website was not optimized for search engines and that was the reason when people searched the keywords it never appeared.

This incident was a guiding light and I started focusing on SEO & SEM too along with the website design and development. I was freelancing then and in 2009 became a part of a startup company Don’t know why it was called it “e-Lightening Technologies”. Maybe the effect of engineering and technology as all the partners were engineers.

I was super excited about this company and kept on exploring new avenues to invest my time and energy. Since 2009 I have been doing digital ads and that is really a long time. I have seen these platforms evolving and have loved the process.

(The biggest mistake I made during all this year was not to focus on building a personal blog and personal brand.)

It’s never too late! Right? I am assuming this blog will help me fill this gap of years and I will be able to help people with all my skills and expertise. In return, I would expect some comments, likes, and shares 🙂

Let me continue with my story!

It was going all fine, in 2010 we added social media as well as a service to our customers. I was happy but not everyone around me. People thought I would not be able to scale it or take it to the next level, I had to prove them wrong. But honestly, I failed! I could not scale it. Trying to scale fast was the worst decision of my life. I could have continued with the pace, could have gone with the flow, could have simply believed in the organic growth. Until early 2013 it was going all fine with 9 employees and some good work to do. But everything does not go as you plan.

We were big with the number of employees but slowly started losing accounts as we were not capable to handle the requests. I faced some issues with COPYRIGHT with not just one with multiple companies. It was complete ignorance and I was not prepared for anything of that sort. I did not understand how to handle it legally. 

I started to lose money and eventually going into debts. This lead to some wrong decisions both in personal and professional life. I thought building products would help us have a sustainable business model. However, not having a mentor till then and no proper planning made things far more miserable. I got involved too much into the idea, lost my focus on the services (that was only the source of revenue) and I kept on losing money.

In Feb 2014, all the partners took a call and closed down the business. When we were shutting down, we tried to help each other find jobs and made sure all the employees to settle with other jobs. We successfully managed to do that, and we were all placed in different companies. They all are doing good with their respective careers and I still miss those days of hustle and running behind each conversion.

I took a small job for one year as a digital marketing manager for another startup in Pune. Helped them strategize to bring sales, and I succeeded in that. This gave me the motivation to keep moving. “Sales” was the core I had been doing all that long.

However, I wanted to explore my potential with bigger brands and especially I wanted to work with a big agency. Few names that I was looking for back then was: BBDO, Leo Bernett and even Havas Worldwide was in the list. Fortunately, I got a job with Havas Worldwide (now they have rebranded to only Havas).

The job was not in India, it was in Muscat, Oman. Another challenge for a married guy. Well, I took the challenge and moved to Muscat alone and after a few months called my wife too. Muscat was the 4th city I was going to live in.

Before going to Muscat, I worked with small startups with limited budgets, these startups were totally relying on the business we used to bring in from SEO, SEM & Social Media. We proudly managed to help them grow from the monthly budget of 20,000 INR to 50,000 and even 100,000 INR a month. Over a period of 5 years, we created more than 100 websites, did more than 500 campaigns for advertising and social media. During that period we also worked for some digital & advertising agencies. One of my projects was aired on national TV. If you remember BigBoss 8, there was a battery App Task, that campaign was designed by us.

In Oman, I was part of the winning team for 2 major awards, one for Nissan & other two for Oman Air.  With the team of only 3 social media executives and a digital executive, I had 14 accounts being managed at a time. This was not from the day one. I was a part of some amazing pitch wins which included a few of the following brands in Oman: INFINITI, Oman Data Park, Al Mouj Muscat, BMW etc.

I came back from Oman in 2017, which was honestly unexpected and due to some unavoidable personal circumstances. I interviewed with many good agencies and got selected as well. But their offer was not matching my financial expectations. I wanted a package of 20 lacs per anum (INR) but didn’t get anywhere near. So I left the idea of working with agencies in India. 

I moved on to consulting startups & working as a core strategist to help them grow. Slowly building a young and dynamic team of Beyond Billboards. Successfully led the initial branding and pricing structure and marketing strategy. Worked on acquiring new clients. Beyond Billboards has been successfully running in Pune as my backend team to serve various ideas and projects.  

Over a period of time, I have worked with brands like BMW & Nissan & startups like Vorbicon, Purplechai, and many other small and big players. I have learned the secrets of survival & growth. I know how to bring in sales with minimum investment. I have helped a lot of startups to launch new products. I also have personally handled a few multi million dollars campaigns for different brands. 

What I can bring on table for for your business:

-> Digital Strategy
-> Digital Marketing Consulting
-> Digital Transformation (Consulting, Planning, and Execution)
-> Social Media Strategy & Content Planning
-> Social Media Planning & Execution
-> Integrated Digital Marketing Campaign Development
-> Digital Marketing Team Development & Management (India, UAE, Oman, Qatar, KSA)
-> Business Development & Sales Optimization
-> Marketing Automation 

Other Services that we offer:

Digital Branding, Digital Content Design & Development, Website Design & Development, Mobile Application Development, CRM Implementation, Hubspot Setup, Kajabi Setup. Digital Marketing Training

G2M Digital:

G2M Digital is a VC backed digital agency. We have recently secured our first round of funding to scale our business across middlea east region. We are growing our team in India, UAE & soon will be opening in UK & Canada. Our main focus is to build a solutions driven company that helps businsses with intelligent marketing solutions always driven by performance & growth. Beyond Billboards team has now been acquired completely to work for G2M Digital Dubai.

ProDigital Academy:

ProDigital academy is an instructor-led digital training institute. All my training programs plus other trainings on Data Science, AIML are gets conducted undert this entity. ProDigtial is registered with Fujairah Creative City, UAE. 

I am a person who is always looking for great ideas & people who are passionate to build something great. Feel free to reach out to me if you are looking to upgrade your digital skills or you want to grow your business in the middle east region. We can help you with the right solutions. 

Let’s connect on Social Media: 

Instagram – https://instagram.com/faizanization/ 

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/faizanization/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/faizanizationHub 

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FaizanAnsarii/featured