In a multi-ethnic, culturally diverse country like India, sending out a common brand message may result in the message not reaching the intended target audience. In a bid to address this issue, exchange4media in collaboration with SureWaves, a next-generation media company that is mapping audiences across diverse consumption markets, held a discussion on the topic “Diversity Marketing: The Next Big Challenge for e-commerce in India”. Moderating the discussion, media veteran Vikram Sakhuja had e-commerce players talking on various issues confronting them today
THE DISCUSSION POINTS
. Marketing challenges faced by the e-commerce marketer and what media mix has helped address the challenge.
. How important do you feel it is to address your diverse consumers differently to drive your organisation’s growth
. What interesting patterns have you observed across diverse consumer groups? Have these insights led to any path breaking marketing innovations for your brand?
Perfect alignment of marketing and business goals
By Vikram Sakhuja
Media veteran (Roundtable Moderator)
We are seeing a lot of diversity in marketing thanks to the e-commerce players. The first thing that struck me was the perfect alignment of marketing goals with business goals. These marketers are clear about the consumer tasks they need to achieve in order to reach their GMV, Profit (Loss mitigation) or market share goals. And that in itself makes these marketers more ROI focused. There is a high degree of respect for tools; and connections are being made between cause and effect. One can see that in their approach to media mix, cross channel attribution and even qualitative aspects like approach to content, and impact of a medium. Targeting also is getting more personalised with adoption of retargeting, psychographic targeting and targeting different messages to different audiences on the basis of the objective on hand and even the stage of consumer journey being addressed. This breed of marketers is self-admittedly viewing their role as an amalgam of CTO, CMO and CFO. To that end, I am pretty sure we are going to see this breed of marketers lead the way marketing will be done in the future. One area where e-commerce can learn from legacy marketers is to create differentiated brand value, to prevent the product/service from being relegated to a commodity by repeated discounted pricing. Overall, exciting times ahead.
Here are excerpts from the insightful debate.
Naveen Kukreja: The biggest challenge is the rapidly changing media. Television continues to be the biggest medium and this is reflected in our media plans. Looking at the UK and US markets we know where India is headed but it is moving at a much faster pace. With lot more data and analytics available, it becomes critical to know how to use it. With the increasing clutter, the challenge is to differentiate the message and make it simple so that it is clearly understood.
Prabhakar Tiwari: My challenge is, are we being too conservative in consumer acquisition cost? How do I balance both - keeping the cost low and not missing on the big opportunity if everybody in the industry is doing it? The next challenge is the acquisition strategy. All acquisition strategy comes with some reward or discount offer. However, smartly I may do it, I could end up discounting my current user base. I will have to come up with smarter strategies where I can have the new user come in and reward them while keeping my current user base satisfied at the same time.
Animesh Kumar: With penetration of 60-70%, the growth from air-ticketing has slowed down. As a marketer, the challenge we have is the growth of the non-air business which is going to come from Tier I and II towns. The challenge is also in getting hold of the consumer in a space where discounting is a key to acquire a customer and retain them over a period of time. It is also important to make sure that once a customer is acquired, how do you ensure repeat purchases and retention? The switching cost is low for the customer and that is a big challenge.
Paroma Sen: The extreme diversity of the customer – both international and domestic, poses a big challenge. The media mix is different for each segment and everything is about cost and justification. There is too much spill over in traditional media; however we spend on TV because it reaches Tier II and III. There is talk about big data, analytics and tons of data already pouring in but can I track one customer’s journey through my different campaigns and understand what are the touch-points, at what point do they convert or don’t convert, what are their challenges. I am talking about attributions, end-to-end marketing solutions.
Saurabh Srivastava: The role of a marketer is no longer what it used to be. You have to be a CTO, CFO, CMO all rolled into one and that is the biggest challenge as a marketer. How do you understand technology, data and use that data everyday to reach out to the most relevant customer. From a consumer’s point of view, the challenges are omnipresent - how do you ensure whether you are being consumed on television which is one-way consumption versus mobile or laptop which are interactive. Acquisition is not such a big challenge for MobiKwik. The big challenge is what do you do after that, how do you retain, engage and make sure you understand them and mass personalise stuff.
Priyanka Chugh: For YepMe maintaining a brand value, discount or a price has been challenge. We have been getting numbers especially from Tier II and III audiences. How can we convert those Tier II and III audiences to our metropolitan audience? When we look at our metropolitan audience, we would want a very contentious size, we would want to innovate and have technology, but a major chunk of audience still comes from Tier II and Tier III audiences. So what should I do? Go the conventional mode or go the unconventional way?
Manisha Rana: As a marketer who leads online and offline, my challenges are offline and online mix and balances. With tools aiding us to measure consumers’ past purchase or past engagements on every page and at every level of their interaction, the big challenge we see is the media mix allocation. Our challenge is to keep abreast to the needs of consumers and how their approach to real estate is really changing. We are gathering a lot of insights and fine tuning them to the marketing campaigns. TV and Print take priority and hard, measurable results come from digital. These are the kind of challenges we see in the real estate.
Naveen Kukreja: Specifically for Policy Bazaar and financial services as a category, a challenge we face is that there is a lot of inertia. This is both a marketing and a business challenge. The inertia is in consumers not buying financial products online; and this is what we are trying to change. The challenge is also people not being aware that Policy Bazaar exists and the fact, that comparison of insurance online is fairly simple.
Prabhakar Tiwari: If you are a leader there is multi-attribute benefit unless you start differentiating. There are some value propositions which will work - for example - buyer protection, instant refund and paybacks. The question is which of these value propositions fits the DNA of the brand and how can I build my brand and around it. Acquisition is one part of the game we are very serious about but how do I retain customers beyond discounts and offers, that’s where our value propositions come in.
Animesh Kumar: Non-air is a category in which everyone wants a bigger pie. While all the players have an established market-share, non-air is going to be a fight. Hotel is a segment from which we believe the growth will come from. The way we look at the number of customers acquired is a simple calculation – the total marketing spends versus the number acquired and we know the acquisition cost. We also put in assumption, that we will have ‘x’ number as repeat buyers over period of time and this is the cost of retaining them. While in the short term, it may look negative, hopefully as the market matures and repeat purchases stand we will see the number stabilising over a period of time.
Paroma Sen: We are talking about sales and gross merchandise volume (GMV) all the time and how do we get these numbers. We are also talking about discounting – when do we stop discounting as we don’t want to hurt our profit margins further while pursuing those elusive customers who have too many offers and choices? We are in a unique position as we have 60% returning customer versus 40% new. Our returning customers are used to the discounting that we do, so do we go after new customers for fresh blood or engage customers constantly with these offers?
Saurabh Srivastava: Two matrixes that we see every day are our monthly actives to our daily active ratio. That is very important for us because that drives conversion. If there are more people who are active with us on a daily basis then our stickiness is above 50%, that means more number of people are coming in and more number of times they are coming in a month. We have also seen from analytics and data that a person who has done two transactions then stays with us for six months atleast. My entire challenge is to get every client that I acquire to do two transactions a month.
Priyanka Chugh: We are a private label brand and sales and market share is very important for us. We do not sell other brands/products on our website so that has been a major challenge for a brand like ours. This has to go in line with my sales. Then I have to maintain my market share and position my brand as a private label brand and of course, give sales. The major challenge has been the positioning as there is a lot of overlapping with competition. We have to look at a bigger market and also be the forward runner in the private label category.
Manisha Rana: We are in the Classifieds space and we believe that market share is going to be a big driver. We have seen historically, while other matrixes are equally important, the moment one player in the classifieds space takes a 40-45% of market share, it is a tipping point for them to take a monopoly in the category. Whether it comes under consolidation or whether a single player takes that lead in the classifieds space, market share is going to be the key driver for leadership to happen. I am looking at market share as the key matrix for us to give us that leap and tipping point to grow in the category.
Feedback: simran.sabherwal@exchange4media.com
