Hi Friends

I am going to share some tips on buying a perfect running shoe for beginners and also how to get it cheap.

Step 1 - Identify the problem - pain in my leg

Recently started jogging and as any other beginner, i started to have some pain my lower legs.
So, I looked on the internet for possible reasons.

The best help I received was from - RunnersWorld. The doctor explained the three main possible reasons  SHIN SPLINTS, STRESS FRACTURE and COMPARTMENT SYNDROME. 

There is also a very nice video for visual explanation and also how to do some basic muscle exercises

I also found that unlike most of the runners I have under pronation as explained in this post. The video show feet and leg movement during a gait cycle in slow motion.  

You can easily find if you are over or under pronator looking at your old pair of shoes.

If your shoes wear off from the outside - you are under-pronator, if your shoes wear off from the inside you are over pronator.

For over pronators, you need a special type of shoes which can help you correct motion control and prevent foot injury.


Step 2 - Find the suitable type of shoes

This post explains choosing the right shoe.

Based on the insights, i chose a neutral shoe. 

Next question is if I need a trail shoe or a road shoe.

I do run in beautiful city of Hamburg, where there are specific running track

They look like -

and 

So although it's not the road it's quite flat. Most of the trail is quite flat. Since most of the trail shoes are heavier and since I do not run a lot I settled for road shoe with normal support.

Step 3 - How to get good shoes for a great discount

Once I have finalised a couple of shoes across brands. There is very little difference in similar models of between Brooks, Saucony, Asics, Adidas or Sketchers.

Some people go for style over comfort and that is fine. My personal choice is the comfort and shoe fit.

I found that Brooks and Saucony are more durable than Puma, Nike, Adidas and Sketchers and they are also recommended by doctors.

Visit follwing websites

1. RunRepeat - i love this as they also have a section for offers/deals which provides a good summary. They also provide score for each shoe based on feedback from users and expert users.
2. LadenZeile - you can set alerts to your chosen shoe types and get notified when you get your chosen shoe


This helped me get shoes at more than 65% discount eg below

1. Merrell - http://amzn.to/2uEdUQn
2. Brooks - http://amzn.to/2vxO3FU


So this was my journey to find an awesome running shoe based on my running requirement and to ease my leg pain as a beginner.

Update

I was able to buy an awesome Brooke's shoe MRSP of 140 Euros in just 45 Euros because i followed this strategy

Proof

Interesting Email Strategy by Snapdeal

Today i noticed that snapdeal has started to include partner banner ads in emails they send.
I guess they are the first ones to introduce and use their emails as direct revenue source.

This shall definitely help them cover up some of mailer cost, which is one of major cost head for any marketing team especially in eCommerce.

From the look of it SD would have sold the space in PPC and CPM. Theya lso mention dedicated phone number, all leads on that number can be ,measured and later investor clinic can be charged accordingly.

BTW, this is the first time SD has done something like this, earlier they had tie up with insurance companies where users were given Rs 50 as SD cash to give minimum 15 minutes to listen to insurance advisors and hence generate lead.

It will be interesting to watch this space and check who else SD may have had tie up for this space in their emailers.

On the down side usually no reputed ecommerce company yet, have started to showcase ads in their mailers though quite a few display banner ads on their landing pages (naaptol, shopping.indiatimes.com).

Is just the marketing sufficient ?

Well As Arindam C of IIPM says, that you can give Thorns to competition and eventually defeat, guess the statement is just partially true.
Else IIPM would have been a better brand by now than IIM (which everyone knows is not true).
Guess they have to learn and know Product (in case of manufacturing or .com) & Content & Quality (in case of service).

Companies can spend crores on paid search use SEO/SEM. But unless they cant keep themselves updated they will eventually loose.
Recently Google search engine modified algorithm to increase/include weight of freshness in search results. Content (majorly dominated by keywords) already has got good weight in search results.
Its essential now for websites not just to spend money on paid search but also on keeping content fresh/ modified.
As internet penetration has been increasing and whole world looks to Indian as a country where % Inet users growth is highest search results and role of content writers would also become more important. Not just normal keyword search , but keeping blogs updated, visitors interested in website to increase time spent on site .

All internet (especially the new formed one's) know importance of this and are gearing up, investing heavily on this.
eg aaramshop.com, flipkart, myntra,infibeam all keep their blogs very updated and keep users informed about services offering, latest on their site, how they doing, latest on ecom technologies etc..
If you see their competitor of aaramshop, mygrahak.com has not invested much on this and thus is loosing as now many people yet know about the site. So I have been trying to talk to mygrahak people to make them aware of the fact and enlighten importance of  content, blogs and keeping content fresh.

So this part of my blog covers the quality or content bit, later will share some new product ideas i saw recently on a few websites.