What strategy worked for marketers and what didn’t, ET BrandEquity

[ad_1]

<p>Image used for representative purpose</p>
Image used for representative purpose

“Is martech about automation? Or is it about personalisation?

How efficient is data analytics? Would a predictive analytics tool help me?

Maybe martech is just all about integrating all of the above with artificial intelligence.”

Above are a few thoughts that cross the minds of most modern marketers in this digital age. Even though marketing as a function has been the flag bearer of ‘creativity’ and ‘connecting with the consumer’, what now makes all the difference is how technology is integrated into this creative process.

It may be in using ChatGPT to understand and personalise better or it may also be about building attribution models in house for better measurement. Or it could simply be about partnering with the right martech solution provider.

However, the uncertainty of whether the outcome would be favourable, remains constant. Martech as such is a heavy investment for businesses. In such a scenario, the chances of moving forward with a trial and error method seems a little far fetched.

On the occasion of Martech Day, top marketers told ETBrandEquity about what worked and what didn’t, when they decided to deploy their martech strategy.

<p>Ruchika Malhan Varma, chief marketing officer, Future Generali India Insurance</p>
Ruchika Malhan Varma, chief marketing officer, Future Generali India Insurance

Ruchika Malhan Varma, chief marketing officer, Future Generali India Insurance

What worked: We use a combination of martech tools such as chatbot, Digital Asset Management, sales CRM, analytics, SEO, marketing automation, adtech and Content Management Strategy.

The use of this integrated martech stack has assisted us in managing and implementing marketing techniques that educate prospective buyers, save time, improve operational efficiency and enhance customer experience.

For instance, tools like Chatbot, which is available 24/7, helps us in providing assistance to customers, lowering overhead costs and decreasing customer wait time. Sales CRM enables us to acquire customers across touch points. It assists us in tracking leads, identifying sales opportunities, and even monitoring interactions, whereas the Adobe DAM helps us in managing and centralising our digital libraries, such as images and videos, for the best output.

SEO tools like SEMRush aids us to improve our online visibility and discover marketing insights, track keyword strategy and search backlink opportunities. Adobe Campaign, a marketing automation tool, supports us to streamline our communication and engage with customers by proactively communicating to them in a personalised way.

What didn’t work: As insurers, geotargeting is a martech tool that we were keen to leverage in order to enhance customer experience. We believe by using this tool, we can provide precise location data information to customers, such as informing them of nearby hospitals or garages in times of need. However, understandably, users are extremely concerned about their privacy and as a result, geotargeting has not taken off as expected.

<p>Karan Kumar, group chief marketing and growth officer, ART Fertility Clinic</p>
Karan Kumar, group chief marketing and growth officer, ART Fertility Clinic

Karan Kumar, group chief marketing and growth officer, ART Fertility Clinic

What worked: SEO is a powerful intervention that has worked well for us. Using keyword research tools, link building tools and analytics has helped us generate more traffic organically while remaining competitive in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

Data analytics and within that predictive analytics helped me create a very successful customer loyalty and reward program in the past, leading to improved frequency of visit, basket size and ticket value.

What didn’t work: I have still not found a perfect content management system, having tried a couple of them. So that’s a work in progress. Email and WhatsApp marketing are examples of a couple of MarTech platforms which too have provided little success with regard to the metric of pure revenue conversion and not just driving awareness.

<p>Aabhinna Khare, chief marketing and digital officer &amp; head of strategy, Bajaj Capital</p>
Aabhinna Khare, chief marketing and digital officer & head of strategy, Bajaj Capital

Aabhinna Khare, chief marketing and digital officer & head of strategy, Bajaj Capital

What worked: One martech strategy that worked wonders for me in the past was implementing a ChatGPT and Synthesia Mix for driving personalised video for each relationship manager under our campaign AmritKaal. We utilised the AI tools and then used it on personalised communication using the martech tool. The campaign was a huge success, resulting in a 32 per cent increase in lead conversion rates and sales revenue.

I believe it worked so well because it allowed us to deliver personalised and relevant content to our leads at the right time, which helped build trust and credibility with them and ultimately led to more conversions.

What didn’t work: One martech tool that didn’t match up to expectations was a social media listening and analytics tool. The tool was supposed to help us monitor social media conversations about our brand and industry and provide insights on how we could improve our social media presence and engagement.

However, we found that the tool was not very accurate in identifying relevant conversations and often provided outdated or irrelevant data. We also found the tool to be quite expensive for the value it provided.

Our next steps were to research and test alternative tools that would better meet our needs and budget and to conduct a thorough analysis of our social media strategy to identify areas for improvement.

<p>Sumeet Singh, group chief marketing officer, Infoedge</p>
Sumeet Singh, group chief marketing officer, Infoedge

Sumeet Singh, group chief marketing officer, Infoedge

What worked: I strongly believe in the fact that anything that you measure can be improved. . As we started Naukri.com way back in the late 90’s and started digital marketing in the early 2000’s, there weren’t too many martech tools available, so we built our own in house dashboards and attribution models and started measuring and tracking all our website metrics, both internal and external. For a sense of competition we would use Alexa and Comscore in those days.

Today there are many tools available and each has its own proprietary algorithm, their own UI and dashboards. It depends upon each company what suits them.

What has worked for us is working with in-house tracking mechanisms, integrating external tools and customising them to attribution windows that make sense for us but most importantly remember there will be variance in the data values between each tool as they all use their respective methodologies. Have one constant stack within the organisation so that all departs are seeing the same data.

What didn’t work: There have been tools that didn’t meet our expectations or data as compared to our internal tracking systems. It was very variant. In such circumstances we first work closely with our and their tech teams as sometimes a small little bug in implementation can lead to a lot of this. The other general cause is the level of customisation and the non-blockers .

In case it still doesn’t work we don’t hesitate to remove, rather than keep working and relying our decisions on unreliable data.

<p>Rajat Abbi, vice president – global marketing India, chief marketing officer – greater India, Schneider Electric</p>
Rajat Abbi, vice president – global marketing India, chief marketing officer – greater India, Schneider Electric

Rajat Abbi, vice president – global marketing India, chief marketing officer – greater India, Schneider Electric

What worked: One tool that has worked wonders for us is Salesforce Tableau. As a data visualisation and business intelligence tool, Tableau has enabled us to create interactive dashboards and reports that provide insights into marketing performance, customer and consumer behaviour and measure campaign effectiveness.

In addition to data analysis, it can also be used for real-time analytics, allowing us to monitor campaign performance on the go and make necessary adjustments in time. Furthermore, it can be integrated with other marketing tools, such as Google Analytics, Salesforce and Adobe Marketo, allowing us to pull data from multiple sources and create a more comprehensive view of the impact of our marketing actions.

This has helped us to make more informed decisions about our marketing strategy and tactics.

Another powerful tool we use consistently is Adobe Marketo. One of the key advantages of Marketo, is its ability to automate important marketing tactics, such as email marketing, lead scoring and lead nurturing. By automating these tasks through drip and nurture campaigns, we have been able to save time and resources, while also ensuring that our marketing efforts are consistent and targeted.

Marketo has also provided us with valuable insights into our target audience and their behaviour. By using Marketo’s analytics and reporting tools, we have been able to track the performance of our campaigns and make data-driven decisions.

What didn’t work: Speaking about a tool or platform which is yet to show its impact on the marketing industry at large would be the ‘marketing metaverse’. While it is an exciting concept and holds a lot of potential, we are yet to see its full impact as a cutting-edge futuristic marketing channel. Limited reach, technological limitations, regulatory and ethical considerations, and high costs are some of the factors which have impacted this tool’s efficiency and efficacy.

Metaverse is still a relatively niche space with a small user base. This can make it difficult to justify the investment required to create content and experiences within the metaverse, especially when compared to other, more established digital marketing channels.

<p>Samar Kagalwalla, chief marketing officer, Onsurity</p>
Samar Kagalwalla, chief marketing officer, Onsurity

Samar Kagalwalla, chief marketing officer, Onsurity

What worked: Implementation of CRM, backed with marketing automation tools was a great starting point.

What didn’t work: Having worked in the BFSI segment for the last 18 yrs, one of the most challenging aspects to solve was event-based real-time customer engagements. There were roughly about over 50 products for a bank and to build a journey that acted like a common thread was an opportunity and challenge.

When I moved to the start-up ecosystem, and because there is pressure to go to market quickly, tools are used in isolation. My team’s biggest challenge has been consolidating them and moving towards a single source of truth data architecture is a task which will make this journey interesting.

<p>Azmat Habibulla, chief marketing officer, South Indian Bank</p>
Azmat Habibulla, chief marketing officer, South Indian Bank

Azmat Habibulla, chief marketing officer, South Indian Bank

What worked: The pivotal point in our martech strategy was at the beginning of 2019 when we decided to host an on premise CDP and move all our structured and unstructured data to a single source, in fact this was a significant step in the right direction that we took at that point. building a robust customer single view allowed us to create meaningful customer cohorts and run multiple data enrichment campaigns, that is imperative for any organisation.

Today we have a robust omnichannel strategy in place and we run more than 100 use cases. This was a huge shift from the way we used to run the campaign in the past, we have a dedicated data science team in place, with the help of them we use predictive modelling for running ERV (existing relationship value) campaigns, which has helped us to improve P2C (Product to customer) ratio by about 25 per cent by understanding customer requirements and pitching right products at right time (in the moment communication).

What didn’t work: Running the campaigns without cleansing and enriching the data was the biggest mistake we made at the beginning, due to this my segmentation strategy went haywire. I think this is a challenge for most of the legacy brands. Data clean up and robustness and building a customer single view is a daunting task, especially when your base is highly skewed towards vintage customers (with more than 15 years of relationship)

We realised this when the campaigns were not giving desired results. This motivated us to take a good hard look at our data points, we went back to the drawing board, started from ground zero and got working to build it brick by brick.

<p>Saumya Rathor- category lead, Pepsi Cola, PepsiCo India</p>
Saumya Rathor- category lead, Pepsi Cola, PepsiCo India

Saumya Rathor, category lead, Pepsi Cola, PepsiCo India

Our focus is on understanding where consumers are and what they are seeking through active social listening. We follow this up by creating insight-driven strategies that are structured to deliver social impact. In line with this, we are also evolving, customising, and personalising our marketing initiatives and communications to best suit the expectations and preferences of our consumers.

The industry-first utilisation of the Deep Fake technology in the Indian marketing and advertising space along with the launch of Pepsi Black’s NFT collection is a testament to our commitment of progressing with the latest developments in the marketing technology space.

The CX metrics that really matter

CX metrics are not just numbers on a spreadsheet; they represent the voices of real customers who have the power to make or break a business. By understanding what those metrics mean and how to use them effectively, brands can create a customer experience that not only meets but exceeds expectations.

  • Published On May 3, 2023 at 08:24 AM IST

Join the community of 2M+ industry professionals

Subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights & analysis.

Download ETBrandEquity App

  • Get Realtime updates
  • Save your favourite articles


Scan to download App


[ad_2]

Source link

What strategy worked for marketers and what didn’t, ET BrandEquity
Scroll to top