4 Performance Marketing challenges that haunt the industry

Nilesh Gohil, COO / SVP - Merkle
Sokrati shares the Performance
Marketing challenges faced by the industry and how to overcome them.

There has been a significant 26% growth of Internet users in the last year and a 26% growth of social media users during the same tenure. Another advantage of digital marketing over a traditional one is its edge on measurability. Being able to measure every minuscule development towards a brand’s ROI is performance. Performance marketing has one sole objective - to simplify and optimize the whole sales’ journey from the first point to the last, rather than focusing on just the interest of the consumers. However, there still are certain Performance Marketing challenges that Indian brands and performance agencies face today

1. Data Attribution: Talking about data measurability, attribution is one of the imperative challenges that all of us are dealing with. With omnichannel customer journeys coming into play, attribution has become even more complex. As much as it is important to for a brand to be present across the plethora of channels available, it is equally crucial for the same brands to be aware of which channel contributed maximum to the resultant ROIs.

With a data-driven approach, machine learning and automation taking over, the industry is going through a shift from a single-touch attribution model to a multi-touch attribution model. When talking about attribution, cutting-edge marketing technology allows us or rather gives us the lever to combine siloed data from across channels and eliminate human bias.

2. Integrated Media Planning and Channels: As a marketer, I can’t certainly say that all brands are omnichannel. Of course, their presence is across multiple channels, but omnichannel is inclined more towards my seamless customer journey. As a brand I would want my consumers to be connected to me- a click-away or a store away, right?

It has been almost 5 years, and we’re still transforming from multi-channel into omnichannel. Omni-channel is all about the fluid, hinderance free customer journey. Automated solutions, for example, Programmatic Media, promotes this thought. And this has directly impacted our Media strategies. We’re now able to connect and make the most use of siloed data from various platforms and then plan accordingly.

Also Read: #SAMMIE2019: Performance Marketing 101 by Nishant Singh Didawat

3. Quality of talent: Digital marketing in India has recently evolved with artificial learning and automation being the key driver. This has created a major demand for Data Scientists and Business Analysts over Digital marketers alone. With the limited man-power resources available, the Indian Advertising Industry is trying to cope up with evolving trends especially considering the every-day innovations in various platforms which tends to keep us all on our tippy-toes. All these years, demand has exceeded the supply of talented digital marketing experts. To overcome this ‘demand-supply gap’, agencies are coming up with numerous hands-on training programs with foresight of molding these analytic experts into data scientists. This is the future.

4. Reaching all Indian audiences- Audience and Communication: There has been an almost 40% rise in Internet users from last year and around 38% hike in mobile internet users and with networks like Jio, Digital media has reached places unimagined and un-thought of before. Every brand wants to target and communicate with the top 10%-15% of that internet-active population. Thus, as brands and agencies, as marketers, we cannot afford to not have a full-funnel approach.

With my 20+ years of experience in this industry, I can tell there is only one bridge between the audiences and brands, and that is messaging relevancy. That’s the kind of personalization we’re talking about here. It becomes even more challenging considering diverse geography like ours. All the brands are trying to be present across all vernacular languages, across all geographies, across all demographics. We came up with our ‘hyper-local’ campaigns for Dunzo and Swiggy and I think that’s more or less the approach to ‘hyper-personalized’ communication.

Currently, as the COO and SVP of Merkle Sokrati, the author, Nilesh Gohil leads the 200+ team of business analysts and performance marketers