A digital marketer's viewpoint

Finally got myself to update this and write another post. If you’re someone who is working or even interested in digital marketing and/or technology I would urge you to read my posts, if you’re not then please close this page and continue doing something that really interests you. The reason I urge people to read my posts is to help others, you and me learn and discuss our views and opinions as digital marketing is such a dynamic platform and something that was a new innovation yesterday would be a redundant activity today.

Something about me – I’ve been a digital marketer for over 6 years now but I can proudly say that I still don’t know everything, you might wonder that’s a weird thing to be proud off but I feel that if someone believes that they know everything there could be to know about digital marketing then they would end up shutting themselves to new technologies and innovations. I’m currently working with the Mahindra group and have previously worked with Indiabulls, there is a lot I have learnt from these companies and in accordance with the agencies I have worked along the way.

Today we are in a country that seems to be a pro SME market and that’s where comparatively cheaper channels of marketing would help grow companies, in addition analysis and tracking have become even more important considering the kind of understanding people have and the ability to track every penny spent. The one channel that does manages to check both the above mentioned boxes, is digital. Any business, new or old, small or large have been focusing a lot more of their spends on digital marketing and this has just been growing YoY. That brings us to question, “Will offline channels become completely obsolete in the near future?”. Honestly I don’t believe so, even though most start-ups and smaller businesses are going the complete digital route but at some point any consumer would need some-kind-off human intervention in the buying cycle. Let’s take the Ubers and the Olas of the world, even though their entire platform is based on technology, they too still need a backend support system to initially train their drivers and obviously a human intervention at times when our drivers are rude, we need a refund on our cancelled trips, etc. Another great example would be Amazon, when they started off operations it was pretty much a blue ocean for them but a few years later even they are finding it necessary to open a brick and mortar store.

As per my understanding companies this year have moved up their digital spends marginally and are currently averaging at around 20 – 25% of their overall marketing spends across industries, these spends are divided into 2 major buckets, which is mainly lead generation and brand awareness or I like to call it performance and engagement. Sadly, a large portion of companies focus most of their budgets on lead generation. Have the days of creating a brand, increasing brand recall, converting customers to advocates, and the likes become irrelevant for these brands? Would a user invest a certain amount in a financial services product without knowing the brand, would a user sign up to a website or app without even knowing about it, would a customer buy a flat without knowing the authenticity of a builder, I guess the answer to most of these questions would be “No!”. Companies will sooner than later realize their strategy and at some point would have to alter their bifurcation of spends, I hope.

In continuation, lead generation channels are largely Google Adwords, Social Media ads (mainly Facebook), Emailers and SMSes, Aggregators among a few other smaller ones on the other side of things to promote brand awareness we have Display banners, Content marketing, Programmatic buying, ORM (Online reputation management) and Video Marketing among a few others. Google and Facebook hold the maximum percentage of spends by companies and on an average it accounts to as high as 60%, with the all the other channels just accounting for 40%. My next few articles would be individually focusing on each of these channels and my views and take on it.