 "Manish Vij")
Digital will become the second largest branding medium after television in India soon, Manish Vij tells Sangeeta Tanwar
The rules of digital marketing are still evolving. What are the cornerstones of an efficient digital marketing strategy?
Digital marketing is a dynamic, ever-evolving business. With continuous shifts in the technology landscape and unprecedented rise of smartphone users in the country, consumers' content consumption patterns and buying behaviour have also changed. It's not just ads, any content for that matter only has a fraction of a second to capture the attention of the user before she moves on by scrolling past or closing it. It's only natural that if you are not keeping a close watch on your digital marketing strategies you are bound to go more wrong than right.
So if digital marketers are still buying digital media the same way it was bought, say, a year back, and pegging their digital buying on just the number of clicks then it's not in the best interest of business. If marketers are still not using data to drive their strategies or not collecting and analysing their own data to arrive at actionable insights, it is a sign of problems for them in the near future. While data has its own place, digital marketing strategies should not lose creativity, that's the only way brands can remain fun, relevant and connect with consumers much better.
Do Indian marketers still harbour any misconceptions about digital marketing? The digital spends don't seem to be rising as expected...
The biggest misconception is that a brand cannot be built on digital. This is partly correct; a brand might not be built only on the basis of digital. But, digital media formats are now available, which are as comparable as television and as mass. Therefore, the digital media should be used very carefully as a branding medium as well. Digital will possibly become the second largest branding medium after television in India very soon. My guess is that it will be equivalent to television by 2020.
With so much consumer data floating about in social - or digital if we look at the big picture - it is natural for managers and decisions makers to get overwhelmed. How should a marketing manager pitch social media to the C-suite?
That's a very common problem faced by marketing managers. Though boardrooms of organisations are warming up to the idea of social, there is still a long battle to fight. A marketing manager needs to understand that C-suite executives will most likely be focused on business results and until it's shown how social can help in achieving this end objective, social may remain a big question mark for them. Explain how social media can enhance the functions they are associated with - be it sales, customer retention, marketing etc. Take them through case studies of competitors who have used social and benefited from it.
What are the top three must-have social media tools for enterprises?
I'm a fan of concentrated marketing and alternative marketing. So, of course, budget is an important factor but then companies can do a lot with limited budget as well. And, big players can spoil their large budgets. That's why I like concentrated and alternative marketing. What does that mean? If you have limited budgets, focus on the media cycles and use it the way others haven't even used so far; so that you are not a blind eye to the consumer. Because media starts to become blind-eyed very soon. So a combination of these two things can do justice to companies with limited budget.
And which would be those two-three digital marketing vehicles that burst into the scene with great gusto but were never able to live up to their potential?
One, digital audio advertising is still facing challenges of scale and acceptance. The data management platform, to make display advertising more effective, is still struggling to find mass adoption. Last but not the least, location-based advertising for local advertisers continues to be a niche.
How important is a business's online reputation to building their brand? What is the one best practice about using social media to grow a business?
Online reputation is paramount in this digital age when it comes to building a brand. No organisation, which aims to be successful, can think of ignoring online reputation management. 2015 was an exciting year for social marketers but as social media continues to evolve strategies around it cannot remain static and need constant upgradation.
In my opinion, a best practice all social media marketers should follow is taking data-driven decisions. The kind of information marketers have today about consumer preferences is unprecedented and this data can help gain valuable insights around platform-specific strategies. However, numbers or data should not replace creativity. There should always be a fine balance between the science of data and art of creativity.
We keep talking about data and big data analytics, but now the problem is that there is so much data and there is a possibility that you'll get lost. What are the dos and don'ts when dealing with data?
I think a lot of data-oriented digital marketing teams stop experimenting. They forget one aspect of marketing that at some level emotional connects with a consumer to your brand is much bigger than or equally bigger as compared to the usage of data in marketing. We deal with some advertisers who are so data-savvy, but brand is a connect, it has a life. Brands, like humans, need not be rational all the time. Brands need to have emotions.
