MxMIndia

Tag: DMAasia

  • 62% CMOs said spends on video for consumer outreach delivered the highest return on investment, reports research firm Octane

    Spending on videos to reach consumers yielded highest returns: Octane CMO Report

     

    By Our Staff

     

    Spending on video to reach consumers during the lockdown period yielded highest return on investment, said the ‘Digital 2021: Adapting to the New Normal, a report prepared by Octane Research and DMAasia.

     

    Octane Research engaged with 250-plus Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and leaders – as part of its research study to gain first-hand insights and perspective on outflanking the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

     

    According to the report, as many as 62 per cent of India CMOs said that spends on video for consumer outreach delivered the highest return on investment. “The digital industry and streaming video players like Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube and others decided to temporary default their video quality to SD. This initiative was in consumer interest to ensure better access to the internet by maintaining the robustness of cellular networks,” said the Octane’s annual state of online marketing report published on its 10th anniversary.

     

    The report said video continues to be the most stimulating type of content for the consumer, as well as offering maximum engagement.

     

    Marketers said that video-along with live streaming—gave their brands the maximum amount of customer engagement, only social media had more. It was also noted blogs and email campaigns have continued to be among the Top 5 channels for customer engagement. Promotion and updates through the use of traditional SMS is also among the Top 5.

     

    “Content Marketing in India has finally found its place as a separate line item on the marketers’ budgets. Online is driven through effective content management practices and we anticipate surge in this area for the 2021 Annual. Engaging new audiences emerges as the no. 1 area of opportunity for India brands,” it said.

     

    Video continues to be the most stimulating type of content for the consumer. It continues to offer a solid ROI (return on investment), as 61.8 per cent of our responders deploy content marketing strategies within the videos & webinars.

     

    The report revealed that a video for “Nutrela” titled #AcchaKyaHua, and promoted with minimal budget, managed to garner over half a million views on Facebook during the lockdown.

     

    “With movement of people severely limited during the lockdown and even after that, companies swiftly adopted digital mode to reach out to wider section of people, the evidence suggest that the strategy worked,” said Punit Modhgil, Chief Research Officer, Octane Research.

     

    The research report said about 51 per cent of India CMOs admitted having leveraged branded pages, microsites and social media handles for marketing promotions and consumer engagement. Promotional microsites allow consumers to have a quick, focused journey based on their immediate need, rather than dispersing their attention. They are also cost-effective in increasing a consumer’s engagement by promoting brand specific content.

     

    CMOs in India also leveraged their brand’s social media handles to actively reach out and engage with their followers. They used their Instagram and Twitter handles to showcase emerging creative talent—and commissioned select creative work to help tell the brand story. The brand ‘Converse’ ran a campaign on new ways to create progress together with consumers.

     

    As regards emailers and newsletters, 43 per cent of India CMOs participating in the study ranked email third in terms of impact & return on investment generated. According to Campaign Monitor, open rates for email increased by 16 per cent in March and email sends increased by 19 per cent.

     

    2020 is the year influencer marketing became mainstream with marketers in India and a majority of them plan to invest in 2021 in influencer marketing programs because of its high impact in driving awareness & engaging consumers. Celebrities regularly conducted “Instagram LIVE” sessions to engage their followers. In addition, a number of BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) and e-wallet brands utilized influencers to inform consumers on how their services were relevant during lockdown. An overwhelming 88 per cent of the participants said they would be trying influencer marketing in the next 12 months as “Consumers trust what influencers say about brands far more than what brands say about themselves in their advertising”.

     

    Thirty-three per cent of CMOs feel they would be running seasonal campaigns on loyalty programmes and an almost equal number vouched such initiatives in the short-term.

     

     

  • The Times Internet- DMAasia report throws up some interesting data from the CMO perspective

    Customer engagement key focus for 45% marketers

     

    By A Correspondent

    Times Internet, in association with DMAasia, today released a report titled “The State of Indian Digital Marketing- a CMO Perspective 2017-18.” The second edition of the comprehensive online study was conducted by surveying a group of over 150 marketers from leading brands across verticals including real estate, pharma, FMCG, auto and retail. The report underscores their learnings for the year gone by and highlights their priorities and predictions for the year to come.

     

    Key Highlights:

    • Content marketing displaced social media marketing and emerged as the top strategy for marketers in 2017, as per 57% respondents
    • Social media marketing saw a 30% decline over the previous year as only 36% of surveyed marketers cited it as a strategy that worked well for them in 2017
    • Over 42% of the surveyed marketers allocated more than 25% of their total marketing spends on digital marketing in 2017
    • Securing enough budgets for digital marketing and measuring ROI remained the two of the greatest challenges faced by marketers in 2017 at 32% and 27% respectively
    • With regard to the frequency of measuring ROI on digital marketing, weekly and monthly measurement remained the most chosen options at 38% each
    • Almost 30% of the marketers said consolidating their content marketing strategy would be their key focus for 2018, closely followed by measuring ROI at 27%

     

    Commenting on the findings of the report, Gautam Sinha, CEO, Times Internet Limited said: “As we move forward at full throttle toward a more digitally inclined audience, marketers need to have a keen ear to the ground, to identify the trends and evolved mediums that their customers prefer. Our report goes on to capture the finer nuances that have been shaping how this environment is changing. We hope that our intensive research, in collaboration with DMAasia, culminated in this report, helps marketers in India stay ahead of the game and align their strategies and budgets accordingly”

     

    Added Vatsal Asher, CEO, DMAasia: “We are delighted to launch the second edition of the “The State of Indian Digital Marketing- a CMO Perspective 2017-18”, an exhaustive and in-depth study unveiling insights from over 150 CMOs across 15 verticals. The report, which has been curated in partnership with Times Internet, serves as a guide for marketers to prioritize efficiently to ensure growth and enhance customer experience. As revealed in the report, content marketing has taken centre stage, promising exciting times ahead.”

     

  • Is content marketing the new frontier? Are digital marketing agencies up to it with client goals? A study by DMAasia & Times Internet throws up some interesting findings

    The CMO view on Digital Marketing

     

    By A Correspondent

     

    Leading brands are refocussing on digital assets as the atomic unit of marketing. Digital Asset Management – Digital Assets, that are traditionally under the IT budget, today account for 30-40 per cent of the digital marketing budget. As digital continues to transform, it is forcing marketers to re-think their omnichannel approaches, personalisation led by analytics or disruption like chatbots and virtual reality – a key priority for marketers in 2017.

     

    Meanwhile, Content Marketing and Distribution is the centrepiece of the Digital Marketing strategy, with the budgets on content marketing and distribution estimated to double in the next two years. Also, Social Media Marketing along with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) accounted for a lion’s share of the CMO’s ‘Always on Budget’.

     

    These and many more insights were unveiled by DMAasia and Times Internet on Thursday in Mumbai in a study titled ‘Digital Marketing in India: A CMO Perspective 2016-2017’.

     

    The study also yielded that 40 per cent CMOs are not satisfied with the contribution of agencies as they do not manage to deliver in conformity with their marketing goals and growth prospects. Consequently, in house marketing asset creation movement is gaining momentum and will see surge over the next few years unless agencies reinvent their models.

     

    At the launch, Gulshan Verma, CRO Times Internet Limited and President of the DMAasia Insights Council said: “With this study our goal was to understand what the marketers were thinking and help them learn from their community. By speaking to over a hundred CMOs in the country, we realised that ultimately the core goals of marketing haven’t changed – reaching the consumer, engaging with them, and making them a loyal customer are still essential to all marketers. Digital will continue to be very important in the years to come to achieve these goals and what is interesting is the way marketers are approaching it. We hope this report will be useful to the marketing community.”

     

    Commenting on the release of the report, Vatsal Asher, Founder and CEO DMAasia said: “The report reveals the contribution of digital platform in the overall marketing mix and shares an insightful road map for the coming years. Basis current trends & sentiments, this report aims to help businesses understand, analyse and make decisions by being an indispensable guidebook to sail through the abundant choppy marketing waters.“

     

    We reproduce here the Executive Summary of the report:

    Through the years what has remained consistent has been the marketer’s concern. With the evolution of technology and the tools and the increasing clutter, prioritisation and choosing the correct strategy is of paramount importance.

     

    When we undertook this survey, our goal was to understand what were the digital priorities of those who make brands – the Marketing Officers. We spoke to 115 marketers, only to realise that for each of them the only priority was building their Brand and Product Portfolio.

     

    Today, digital plays a critical role in every aspect of marketing – whetherit is about awareness, customer engagement, acquisition, and product development.

     

    As the mobile screen became the first screen of India in 2016, it is rapidly changing the way we consume media, interact with others (including brands)and how we live our lives today.

     

    Companies today, work hard to create brand awareness and an experience,seamlessly in the offline as well as the online world. Thus, the marketers’ today have two critical roles to play:

     

    1. Strategic Role – Impacting the consumers in the digital medium by creating the same brand association and customer engagement in the offline andonline world. Facilitating a consumer’s journey through the life-cycle of discovery to consumption and most importantly recommendation.

     

    2. Execution role – Supporting marketing initiatives done by the Brand Managers using traditional marketing and supporting business goals of generating leads/ sales.The strategic as well as executionary level roles that CMOs play today, put them under a lot of pressure. Many marketers have started allocating a large share of their budgets to spends on Digital. This is primarily due to a better measurability and the “higher Return on Investment” (ROI) vis-à-vis traditional media options. This is a double-edged sword as this is skewing spends towards performance marketing, directly compromising on brand awareness and top of the funnel initiatives.

     

    As per a recent IMRB International study, the share of digital in the total marketing spend is at 12% in India. However, our discussions with the 115 top marketers in the country suggests a much higher digital share, averaging 50 –55% of the entire marketing budget. We also found that for some of the new age online retail firms, digital marketing spends were as high as 75-80%.It is critical for marketers to set their marketing and media buying goals in line with their business objectives. Each marketing dollar must be back-calculated to derive top, middle and bottom funnel objectives,factoring drop-outs at every stage. This is the first step towards measuring ROI.

     

    Focusing on wrong measures can often be a challenge as marketing objectives are constantly revised alongside the business objectives. Leading brands are refocussing on digital assets as the atomic unit of marketing.Digital Asset Management – Digital Assets,that are traditionally under the IT budget,today account for 30-40% of the digital marketing budget. As digital continues to transform, it is forcing marketers tore-think their omni channel approaches,personalisation led by analytics or disruption like chat bots and virtual reality – a key priority for marketers in 2017.

     

    Building on digital assets is the content that engages with the customer.Content Marketing & Distribution is the centerpiece of the Digital Marketing strategy,with the budgets on content marketing and distribution estimated to double in the next two years. The marketing mavericks we spoke to believe that content distribution will be50% of the content marketing budget.

     

    Social Media Marketing along with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) accounted for a lion’s share of the CMO’s ‘Always on Budget’.

     

    What was interesting to note was that Influencer Marketing and Video Virality did not live up to the expected hype in 2016. This was predominantly due to limited execution.

     

    What we overwhelmingly heard was that Influencer Marketing was hijacked by Social media, while they attributed the failure of video virality to limited investment in distribution.