‘Having a better planning funnel is a challenge in omnichannel marketing’

At Pitch CMO Summit-Bengaluru, a panel of experts delved deep into the why’s and how’s of representing the brand consistently across different channels. Session chair Tina Garg, Founder & CEO, Pink Lemonade opened the session by asking the panellists about their approach to an omnichannel strategy and the challenges they face while deploying these strategies.

Panellists Akshay Mathur, Chief Revenue Officer,Tyroo; Dr. M Nanda, Chief Marketing Officer, Stovekraft Ltd; Harshna Pasari, Head of Marketing, BlueStone; Rahul Tamada, Co-founder & CEO, Tamada Media; Ritij Khurana, Senior Brand Manager, PhonePe; Sneha John, Director - Brand Marketing & Social, Swiggy and Varun AR, Head of Marketing, Livspace shared their brand stories and experiences they have faced along the way. The topic of the discussion was ‘Role of Omnichannel Marketing in Building a Strong Brand Identity’

Khurana pointed out that a lot of the omnichannel plan boils down to the audience the brand is trying to reach, along with their media consumption habits. “If you are trying to reach out to younger folks, your media choices will vary. If it’s the older cohort you want to reach, the media choices are again different there. There obviously is a constant message that you want everywhere, but you need to adapt that message to different touchpoints,” he said.

Having a better planning funnel becomes a challenge, he further explained.

Mathur added that usually brands have their communication sorted out, but when it comes to certain channels which are new to them, they lack the assets and the right kind of communication that needs to go for that channel itself.

John highlighted another challenge, and mentioned that measuring how exactly this needs to be done can be difficult. “In addition to who you are speaking to and what you want to tell, it is also very important to have the objective in mind, in terms of consumers. Are you trying to get more consumers or are you trying to engage them, these need to be very clear,” she added.

Pasari shared that Bluestone started off as an online brand and now has a presence offline with over 170 stores. “The essence of these strategies starts from the DNA of employees. When you talk about 170+ stores, you are talking about so many retail employees meeting consumers everyday. So make sure that they are also aware of the brand identity. The brand and marketing work doesn’t stop at campaigns, but also how the brand identity trickles down to each employee. It is important for the customer to experience the brand at different touchpoints,” she said.

Speaking about Livspace and the audience it caters to, Varun shared that Livspace is a digital first brand and the audience they reach out to is very digital savvy. “Once you start switching channels in the media, you start seeing different personas. Therefore, when it comes to the brand you need to see, does it have the right catalogue, right stores or even the right design to cater to different needs,” he said.

Tamada added, “Considering there are so many different markets down south, and each channel or platform behaves so differently, finding your audience is becoming increasingly challenging.”

He also feels that each brand has their own aesthetic, what they want to do and do not want to do. “It is not like every brand needs to hop on every channel for every campaign that they do,” he mentioned.