Omnichannel presence is the way forward for brands today: Panel

The e4m Xaxis Programmatic Summit, a platform that brings together industry leaders, brand creators, marketing professionals, and the entire gamut of digital marketing within India, and beyond, was held virtually on December 17.

Given the explosion of digital marketing across advertising, branding, and media spheres since the pandemic struck, it’s vital to preserve the constant evolution of this ecosystem. The e4m-Xaxis Report 2022 aims to create an interactive platform for marketing agencies and digital brands with data-driven analytic insights in this ever-growing market.

This is also why the first session of the day, ‘Significance of Omnichannel Integration’, took an in-depth look at why exactly brands across all markets today need to marshal their marketing resources and advertising initiatives into an omnichannel.

Akash Deep Batra, Head of Marketing, Growth and Customer Experience, DBS Bank, chaired the session, with the panelists being Harshit Jain, Founder and Global CEO, Doceree; Pankaj Singh Parihar, Vice President and Head - Digital Marketing and Transformation, Godrej Consumer Products Limited; Smita Murarka, CMO, Duroflex; Hiren Shah, Founder, Vertoz Adtech and Martech Business Group; and Gulab Patil, Founder & CEO, Lemma.

The engaging session saw Batra starting the discussion with one of the key aspects of programmatic advertising, which is establishing the measures on why brands should leverage omnichannel media marketing initiatives. He said, “Consumer journeys, which used to be quite linear, have evolved to become a lot more complex, especially due to the effect of digital consumer behavior. A statistic that always gets to me is that a consumer will use an average of six touchpoints when purchasing a product, and 50% of them regularly use more than four. This means that consumers have a lot more choices, have access to a lot more information and options and so have high expectations when it comes to their purchasing behaviour.”

Batra further added that given the number of options, it was important to have a presence across platforms and social media and this is where an omnichannel presence really became necessary for a brand to establish and build its presence in the market.

Muraka fully endorsed this view, asserting, “Today, omnichannel is the main way for India to go digital with consumerism. We’re a 50-year-old company and for the majority of that time, our sales have been offline, face to face. But, today, we’ve also got a large online presence. Because D2C relations have always been central to us, we will deliver the same experience at our stores as well as online. But whether an established brand, or a new one, it’s vital to have an online presence, because more than 60% of brands are discovered online today, and that means digital has displaced a lot of other media when it comes to advertising and making a brand stand out.”

Parihar observed that the industry had evolved from an inventory level approach to a completely audience-driven approach. Referring to an earlier conversation about First-Party Data, he said, “First Party Data is very important to us and we have millions of customers we are engaging with online as part of our D2C. Now it’s not only D2C, but also tools like Whatsapp Business API, and similar others are being used to reach out to customers. I admit though that omnichannel is going to be critical.”

Addressing the present-day use of Programmatic and omnichannel, Shah said that his company Vertoz combed through deep data every day, logging reams of information and observations. He stated, “We do both marketing and advertising, and are present both online and offline. And both adtech and martech are needed to create the omnichannel. India lags behind the west when it comes to data collection, because many companies are still only looking at CX and not the data coming in. Companies need to invest in processing that data and building platforms to collect their own data at the source, to properly create that omnichannel presence.”

Patil summed it up, saying, “We all agree that consumers are the main focus, and we serve as the interface between the two sides of demand and supply of goods and services. And this is where the importance of omnichannel comes in. From a brand’s point of view, we can help them build platforms and systems to track consumer behaviour and response to different media and help them target the audiences their products and services would appeal to. And so, the consumers always have the best choice to make.”