What brings marketers high ROI? 

At the recently held e4m IPRCCC 2023 conference, industry leaders shared the stage and discussed multiple agendas strategically and cohesively. Following the panel discussions and fireside chats, Kamna Hazrati, Founder of KH Advisory, and Gaurav Verma, Chief Marketing Officer, of PharmEasy took over the panel to discuss the changing role of the marketers. The following panel was chaired by Abhishek Gulyani, CEO, of Hill and Knowlton Strategies.

In the opening remarks, Abhishek defined how marketers underwent through challenges after the advent of print, radio and television and how the market has become even more complex with the emergence of AI and digital media.

 Taking the discussion forward and briefing about the role of the marketers, Gaurav said, “The role of marketers can be categorised in three aspects fundamentally; understand your consumer in the fast-evolving market; critically analysing the diversified media market to invest strategically and efficiently; Analysing the demands and marketing patterns of the consumer market.” Adding on to Gaurav, Kamna said, “In the massively growing and highly fluctuating markets, the consumers’ behavioral patterns keep changing and marketers remain the same solving consumer problems after critically evaluating what consumer wants.”

Talking more specifically in the context of how marketers have to adapt to the market to understand the changing demands of the markets, Gaurav said, “There are differences in marketing strategies of traditional companies as compared to startup companies.” Quoting the challenges the start-ups face, Gaurav said, “The kind of storytelling the start-ups go for, while investing in marketing in the initial years has to go strategically on media platforms.” Moreover, describing how to get more ROI using fixed budgets, Kamna said, “Despite getting funded, the start-ups have the mindset of making a profit first and then focusing on creating an impact on the larger set of consumers. In scenarios like such, we focus more on strengthening our data using public relations and corporate communication more effectively and efficiently.”

Continuing the discussion further, Abhishek asked about how relevant the physical world was for marketers as compared to the digital world. Kamna said, “The most important thing for marketers was to understand the presence of consumers, and following the mix of retail and digital can help the brands to cater to both digital and physical markets.” Speaking about the high ROI using both digital and physical markets, Gaurav said, “Being omni-channel is highly critical for companies like PharmaEasy as it requires customer loyalty and credibility. Moreover, we must take the lessons from the e-commerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart and the way they have created personalised experiences to build customer trust.” In the concluding remarks Kamna mentioned that apart from communicating with the customers to understand their requirements, brands must also focus on improving customer experiences, which stand them apart from the other competitive brands.