“Analytics is an aid to judgment, not an alternative”

The advent of market analytics in the last decade has brought about a sea change in terms of return on investments. With changing consumer behaviour and market dynamics over the years, market investment decisions are become more complex, remarked Sam Balsara, Chairman & Managing Director, Madison Communications. “Arrival of business analytics has changed the scenario. Overall, delivering the R in ROI is very difficult and different now,” he added.

According to Juhi Ramakrishnan, Director, mConsult, GroupM’s strategic marketing consultancy, finding out the right segment is the first step towards gaining ROI. Marketing inputs, media inputs, sales inputs, better awareness of brand, and so on are some points marketers need to carefully take into consideration.

She underlined certain steps to allocate marketing budget efficiently: the first step is to know what the objective is – one has to be very clear and specific about his goal. Second step is to define variables that affect the objective (fixed media and non-fixed media marketing variables). The third and the most important step is to make an ‘Econometric Sales’ model.

Ramakrishnan particularly emphasised on tapping the right segment and creating the right marketing mix. In terms of right segment, she suggested that marketers see which techniques work on which segment, since each market and segment will respond to different techniques differently. “Similarly, in terms of marketing mix, the activities should be ROI specific. Marketers have to see that out of the entire marketing mix which delivers the best,” she added.

While Ramakrishnan focuses more on numbers, Narayan Sundararaman, Director-Powdered Baverages, Gum and Candy, Cadbury India, emphasises on the right balance of “heart” and “mind”.

While shopping a consumer does not rewind and play every ad he has seen in his mind. It is only the ads that leave a mark on his mind that drive his shopping spree. “Thus, as analytics, scrutinise every move of the market and performance of their campaign, they also have to think about the edge – how a campaign can be done differently, which is practical and heart touching,” Sundararaman added.

He noted that almost a decade ago marketers were conservative. However, the mentality of impacting the behaviour of consumers came in as a game changer. All the activities are now focused around this idea. However, as a marketing person, Sundararaman strongly believes that impacting the attitude and not the behaviour is the right way of going about it.

With the availability of choices and tough competition in the market, measuring the impact of an activity has become very difficult. Thus, analytics now play a very important role. Analytics are now easier to navigate in terms of collecting, improvising and manipulating data. Moreover, analytics too are now in a game changing position.

Giving an idea of measuring ROI in financial services, Manisha Gupta, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Axis Bank, remarked that all inputs and outputs can be measured; however, it is not necessary that it will result in terms of ROI. In financial services, the best impact that ads can create is getting the product in the consideration set of the consumer. “Thus, financial services need to go out of the way just to enter the consideration set. For instance, sponsoring shows creates a lot of buzz, making the product a household name. Also, the measurement is not only by seeing the impact on consumers, but also on employees,” Gupta shared. In case of financial services, the pride level among the employees of various branches is an indicator of the effectiveness of a campaign.

The gist of the discussion was to know your segment, activities and measure the outcome and do not fear in doing anything out of the box to create a balance of mind and heart.

The panellists were sharing their views at the 12th CII Marketing Summit, held in Mumbai.