e4m Business Leaders Roundtable: Driving customer engagement with the power of digital

At e4m’s Business Leaders Roundtable: Unlocking digital for growth powered by Google, a panel representing India's most eminent consumer brands came together for a insightful session on unleashing the power of digital to keep pace with the dynamic consumer.

The speakers for this webinar were: Achyut Kasireddy, MD, India and Indian Sub-continent, Mayora India; Anshul Agrawal, Director, Mysore Deep Perfumery House; Deep Malhotra, CMD, Oasis Group; Oliver Mirza, MD & CEO Indian Subcontinent Dr. Oetkar; Ruchita Taneja Aggarwal, Head, New Business Sales, Google India; Tanveer S.Uberoi, Director, Agency Partnerships & Sales, Google Customer Solutions (GCS), Google India and Rajiv Ochani, Director, Collegian Cream. The session was chaired by Ahmed Aftab Naqvi, CEO & Co-founder, Gozoop Online.

The panellists discussed how businesses should re-examine their priorities and evolve at the pace of their consumers. They also shared their insights on how businesses should be more inclined towards adapting fresh perspectives on the digital front.

Actionable insights were also shared on how brands must change the way they market and sell to the consumers in order to remain connected with their target audiences and progress their business goals while remaining mindful of consumers’ wellness. Apart from this, they also shared their astute suggestions on how businesses can differentiate their brands from intense competition that is seen in both online and offline through digital transformation.

Achyut Kasireddy shared his views on the effective ways to test the market before launching a product by adapting digital. He said, “The COVID pandemic accelerated a change in the way the consumers are viewing, shopping, eating, searching, and reading. Everything is going through a lot of change. It's not a single recipe that can be followed. Depending on what the brand is and how it is moving, digital has a significant role to play. We ourselves have been learning. There are lots of questions like, ‘is it right for me?’ ‘Is it cost effective?’ Hesitation should be avoided in order to learn from the journey. And the last six months have been a period of accelerated learning for us. We have seen a lot of opportunities to build brands through the digital first approach, which, in my view, did not exist about three to five years ago as it was a complex model. And when I say that, I'm not just talking about reaching and communicating, but also in terms of making your product available through digital commerce or e-commerce. So when you see a mix of both, I think that the digital-first approach works for brands depending on what your ambition is for the brand.”

Anshul Agrawal talked about how digital helps brands be in the right place, at the right time.

He said, “A lot of things have changed especially since COVID. The whole context around how we market our business and how we want to present in front of customers has changed. This is because the habits of the customers have changed. Now, the customer is spending more time on digital. In advertising, you have to be where the customer is. You cannot advertise on an empty road. You have to advertise where the customer is actually spending his/her time. Communication is designed for digital now. We shoot TVCs keeping digital in mind. TV is an add on for us. Therefore, the advertising and marketing means have changed. The digital spends are increasing and that is something that the brands cannot ignore right now. Digital has to be a sizable percentage of the marketing budget. As a brand, we always want to be the first in that race. And now when it comes to digital advertising, again, we want to be one of the first brands to register our brand into the customer's mind, because for a customer, the whole perception of a brand, develops around whatever comes first on digital.”

While digital has helped shape, influence and in some cases transform consumer behaviour, COVID has accelerated the pace of adopting Digital and therefore, Digital has taken centre stage in many aspects. We have also seen a larger trend where brands are adopting digital marketing in order to engage with the consumers. Ruchita Taneja Aggarwal shared her experience on how the Google team helped advertisers get started with a digital marketing strategy last year. She said, “We have worked with quite a few brands in the last one and a half years where the times were so uncertain and dynamic. There was a focus on achieving marketing objectives, but there was also a lot of focus on optimizing. And, that's where the power of digital came in. You have the power of targeting, the power of personalization, the power of measurement. We all have to prepare ourselves to be where the customer is, and aligning our communication strategy and marketing strategy to be there in the consumer journey. It is important to start small and define what success looks like. The brand should first focus on driving awareness and then move to consideration and purchase. There are milestones to be built on the plan. And if milestones are met then digital spends must increase. Traditional media is a journey and so is digital. Therefore, it is important to stay committed to the journey.”

Sharing his insights on the importance of Digital and how it plays a major role in Influencing consumer behaviour Tanveer S. Uberoi said, “Every media functions and serves different purposes. We were in an era where print used to be one of our largest failures and radio was emerging very fast. But it is inconsistent over the last few years. But that's again, prior to the emergence of digital, and more importantly, the emergence of video in digital as well. I think, if any agency is to look at cross media planning, they've got to look at a cross media reach as well, because digital now gives you the advantage of looking at a reduplicated reach. You're able to go ahead and reach out for the most effective and the most impactful customer that you possibly looking out for in the market. So the questions that the brands need to ask themselves are, ‘are they looking at pure reach? Are they looking at effective reach? Are they looking at reduplicated reach? And are they looking at incremental reach?’ That's where the cross media planning and the impact of digital really comes into play. So I think we need to kind of move away from our traditional media planning methodology because the world is evolving. The digital consumption per citizen has skyrocketed. There are 622M internet users currently according to Kantar iCube report. By 2025, we will have close to a billion people online in India. This will lead to a rise of vernacular content consumption as 90% of internet users prefer to use their local language to search and carry out tasks online. There will also be an increase in online shopping and a rise of digital advertising spends. Businesses will follow where consumers go. However, the fact of the matter is accessibility, screen types, consumption habits and awareness has increased.”

In conclusion, the highly informative webinar gave the attendees an overview of how digital plays a significant role and how establishing digital marketing is a thing of the present and not of the future.

As Anshul Agarwal rightfully said, “Anshul Agarwal pointed out that one may love digital for its efficiency or get intimidated by its complexity. But organizations cannot afford to ignore it.”