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Wednesday, January 18, 2006 |
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Last Session - Digital Summit 2006 Moderator - Rohit Mull, Tata AIG
Foundation of naukri.com is based on the virtuous circle ---- we have the most jobs - so we get the most traffic - so we get the most response, so we get the most clients - so we get the most jobs. So first you have to have massive aggregation of content, unique content, need to know content and not nice to know, dynamic and updated content, and provide the best search of the content because there are 85,000 jobs on the site at any point in time. Promotion and awareness - bootstrapping was a strategy - get repeat visitors, get buzz and word of mouth thru user experience, PR, early mover advantage. Today it is a much larger business with funds and a focus on promotions both offline and online. Harsh Roongta - apnaloan.com Put all resources into the online medium, although it was an online-offline service at that point in time. The biggest learning is that it is a mix of 4 issues - better online experience, value proposition - wanted to harness the power of the interactive medium, where our offers could be tailored, delivery to consumer - customer delight programmes - eg. we would contact the customer within 10 minutes of his putting his application online (so huge process adherence and processes were required) - and this got a lot of salience and goodwill. And finally, the CRM track. Some things were learned as we went along -- that we could calibrate our exposure to customers depending on our process capabilities. To summarize - while user experience and value propositions are important, how you deliver, how quickly you deliver, and what tracking systems are in place are key. Satya Prabhakar, President & CEO Sulekha.com The most valuable commodity today is human attention. The number of offerings to us is exploding. So as the demand for human attention increases, but supply is constant, the value of attention will only decrease. The cost per unique visitor to site is about 30--35$ in the US. Sulekha - connects Indians worldwide - blogs, groups, networks, classifieds, events, yellow pages. The Internet can be a double-edged sword - while it is low cost to try and new service, it is also low cost to spread bad word of mouth. The 'mantra' - you get people, you get them to stay, you make them do new things. So acquisition is important, but retention the key. How can you get retention -- by providing value, a great user experience, caring for the customer at every turn. Many media companies have a conflict between advertiser value and user value. Focus on the user, and the advertising will come. Anup Bagchi COO, ICICI Web Trade Ltd Asks the audience, how many of you are in an online job -- i'd say over three-fourths of the audience had their hands raised. The point he makes is that businesses are businesses whether online or offline. The online world proposition must be strong. And is slightly ahead of its time - and thats good - examples - airline tickets, banking, naukri.com, apnaloan.com. In an online world service is key --- if you screw up, customer will go away and you cannot really track him. In an offline world, you can 'repair' the relationship - give him tea, suck up to him etc. Can't do that in an online world. Online can be cruel - it is completely transparent to the customer - you cannot fumble because he will not go to the next page. So the processes and policies have to be really well thought thru. Customer Activity Management must be really strong. There are no second chances, you don't have the nuances that talking to a customer can bring and that you can exploit to your advantage (IMO - Voice and even video may help here - more touch-feel definitely when servicing a customer!!!). And finally, there is a large offline portion to distribution -- eg. the supply chain has to be completed -- railway tickets must be ultimately delivered home the next day. Anaggh Desai, CEO, D'damas Jewellery (I) Pvt. Ltd What is customer acquisition --- boon or bane! Sells travel, and fine diamond jewellery. He uses the 3 I's model -- identify, invite, incentivize them to continue being with you. They provide a feel-good factor as opposed to the rest of the panelists who provide more functional offerings :). They kept advertising their travel portal on naukri.com -- naukri was doing the work and we were getting the customers ! Q&A Q - A part of the job is to make it convenient for the customer to find what they are looking for ... but it takes ages to download many sites -so what works? A - it is true - we need more usability testing (yayyy). This is very important in a country like ours where bandwidth can vary so much. The panel agrees it is one of the biggest factors in customer satisfaction and usability. It doesn't matter how good the site looks, if it doesn't load fast enough. Q - From a client perspective --- people invest in media in order to build the business for the future. Why is it they are not willing to invest now even in a cost-per-lead model - and support this medium so that it pays back in the future? A - no real answer Q - related qn --- have you killed the medium with the Cost Per Lead model ? The problem with an emerging medium, there are a large number of questions being asked by seniors about why you want to get into that space. And it is a medium that allows clear measurement and quantification. It really is the most measurable form of advertising. It is a process of evolution. It will happen. Another view --- Also, making marketing expenditure accountable is one of the key characteristics of this space. If you move away from that, you will kill the medium. If you can't deliver, you should not be there ! Q - How are cost per leads worked out by clients? What if their own processes or products don't get conversions? Or interfere with leads? A - the way forward is to start off with a figure of faith - both parties must believe and trust in the value they have worked out. Its a partnership of leads, quality and conversion. Also, are their parallel processes to identify what it the weak link if you under deliver? It was great meeting Rohit Mull and Harsh
Roongta after many many years. I had done some qual research for
apnaloan.com many years ago. 4:46:48 PM  comment [] trackback []
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Day 2 - Digital Summit 2006. Afternoon Sessions - Why Search is Hot, Impact of the Echo Generation.
Search Session - Some mention of blogs and tags. I missed the start of the
sessions but got in when Rishi Behl, head of search, Yahoo! India was talking. He spoke
of Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo's My Web that has built tags into search. They look interesting, will explore them later. He talks about 15-25 year olds. online
transactions is small compared to markets like Hongking and Taiwan -
but it is growing. Dream birthday gifts - mobile phones and
laptop computers. In China, a study revealed that all in the age
group of 15-25 are mobile savvy, and a lot of them are moblogging as
well. When asked about buying behaviour, almost half had tried
out some transaction through mobile. The American teenager is
online too, but they are also simultaneously listening to music,
reading, chatting on the phone, watching TV - so implications on how to
market to those who multi-task. (an aside - i was Googling Ashutosh to find a link and discovered Tagit!) 4:32:22 PM comment [] trackback []
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Day 2 - Digital Summit 2006. Moderator: V Ramani, CEO, Mediaturf
What drives the digital medium - personalization, expression, immediate access, inofrmatio/content, viral capabilities - the internet enables you to build relationships. The challenge for marketers - 1. Don't use online for building on your traditional media campaign - create communication specific for the net using its inherent advantages 2. Get your creative partners to think that way - the net is not just a medium - it is a creative experience 3. Look at holistic media measures - industry standards are needed Benefits - quicker, more flexible, higher response rates, real time tracking and emasurement, interactivity. The relationship changes - the customer is in control and the relationship is based on information, and the service based in real time. Examples - Make it my Moto campaign which leveraged the need of customers to personalize their phone experiences. Question from moderator - are their discussions with creative heads on the digital media - are the budget outlays large enough to justify it? Answer - honestly no. Agencies and marketers are equally at fault. As the net spreads, marketers willynilly will have to wake up to the need for specialists. But it will be a gradual process. Naren Chandra, Head of Marketing, International Banking, ICICI Bank Brief overview on how ICICI bank has gone global. Started off 4 years ago - needed to target indian customers and corporates abroad - NRI's. Apart from using mass media for NRIs - TV, print, events - they felt they needed to be more effective with reach, and at lower costs. He never needed had to justify his decision to go online to seniors - it has paid off. Started off with typical stuff like cricket and news. But that has evolved. Also used online world to test out hypotheses - through forms of research, using email, chat even. Tested new sites, channels, media, products this way. Key challenges - because it's an international target group - you need different content, style, creative, tone and value propositions. Also, need to be really active about competition. Now they have launched an online savings product in Canada and UK - where local customers and not just Indians can open accounts. That is a first ! And it is all centralised in India. Lots of pride :) Q - ICICI is one of the most advanced in scaling the digital media and marketing ladder. Whats the next challenge? A - how to take search forward into reaching the customer when she is thinking of the product - need to ascertain when a customer is reading an article on a topic, my ad pops up. Dinesh Sharma - Samsung CDMA CDMA is targeted at lower end of the market. As a technology, it has great potential for the upmarket segment as well. Marketing approach - 360 degree marketing Web marketing initiatives - target net savvy populations - we are experiencing pull traffic. Support provided to consumers - value-added services like ringtones, colour etc. Also internationally have registration and CRM programmes. Web B2B - dealers and distributors - you need to deliver digitally to them. Building a Distributors Extranet. One point made that struck me - in terms of online research, there is a lack of human and qualitative elements in online research. Comment from moderator - when you engage with traditional research agencies, do you get involved in the actual fieldwork - all marketers need to do this. Q - Why don't they spend more of marketing budgets into the mobile media? A - we have concerns and media experts need to convince marketers. Lloyd adds - traditional media will always be critical as we will always need to go further down to newer segments of potential customers. Kedar Sohoni, Director, Cross-tab Online market research firm - many other markets have moved away from F2F interviewing into telephonic interviews and online research. India still isn't comfortable with this new medium. Over 260 MR firms in Europe and N. America use online research. Been around for 10 years now. It's greater than a $ 1 billion industry worldwide. Massive projects, spread across different marets can be managed centrally and easily. Faster results. Automated so data is clean. Some advantages - monitor results of a study as it happens in real time, reach exclusive and difficult to access respondents, no chance of data entry errors, get frank and honest responses to sensitive questions. Online qualitative focus group screen shot shown - right hand side - chat window - left side is the client room - where the client can pass on virtual chits to the moderator. Q - What kind of advice would you have for clients who are accustomed to traditional offline research. A - we face a lot of questions and some resistance quite often - they are comfortable with status quo. Sudhir Nair - Grey Interactive Reality check - we have imposed on this medium too many stringent measures in delivering clicks or leads. And we haven't even begun to understand its potential. The future is surround compaigns rather than integrated campaigns. Language will play a role. Upshot - please set objective of the campaign and then craft our your digital marketing campaign. It cannot just be measured by brand leads. Digital Summit 2006 Mumbai 2:31:38 PM comment [] trackback []
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Day 2 - Digital Summit 2006. 12:25:39 PM comment [] trackback []
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Rohit Mull - Tata AIG Starts off by asking a member of the audience questions about herself ... to demonstrate interactivity. Mary Holtz -- "If you're not on the web, you're not into marketing ... " A meeting of minds --
measurable and accountable, its interactive, and it can be targeted
with much less spillage. Flip the argument that online advertising
doesn't work - how do we do this - by extending learnings from
traditional advertising, and mesh the emotional content of the
traditional mediums with online advertising - make it measurable,
memorable and accountable. And maybe there will be a time soon when learnings from the online medium can be brought to the offline medium.
So what do we need ... consistent imagery and response. It must
be interactive - and the delivery of the response shoulf be integrated
with other touchpoints - sms, telephone, internet, television. He
then shows us some advertising that actually encourages the customer to
act. They had to delete the telephone number and only
retain the sms number, as the phone lines went bust with the number of
calls from consumers. Raj Gupta - President Insight Starts off with a story of how
his son wanted to buy a digital camera and when he went to the retail
store, his young son knew more than the sales person - there is a
generation growing up on new media - and for them, traditional media
may have low relevance. Youth trends show the penetration
of digital tech is highest among them. It topples the
linear process of AIDA - now its moving from attention --> interest
---> search ---> action ---> share (AISAS).
Another indication - Information Planning and understanding Youth
Networks is now a course being taught at Carnegie Melon.
This generation of youth has more dreams than memories , it is a young
country, and digital is where they have been born. 22% of
products advertided are targetted at youth - and 59% of ad spend is on
the youth. Time spent on press is dropping, radio and TV have
dropped and the internet has grown in the higher socio-economic
groups. As a media agency, they pay channels a reach premium -
today that doesn't work because audiences are fragmented. Impact
is declining with clutter. There is ad avoidance as high as 70% -
they switch channels when the ads are aired. Avoidance is higher in upper income and younger age demographics. Internet
is among the lowest avoidance medium, SMS being the lowest.
Internet is really now positioned to service the needs of the
youth. Tushar Vyas - mOne-Group M Pearl Uppal - Yahoo! India It's not really about media mix
- the genesis of this platform has been P2P. The world is
changing - older people are using email, kids are gaming, people are
banking online. Study in the US that covered 13 households and 28
people who for 2 weeks had no internet connectivity. They were
given lifelines though, where they could use them in 'emergency'
situations. They ended up using 35 lifelines - and they were mainly
money-related --- has my cheque bounced etc. Brand awareness, brand
engagement, transaction --- the online medium can work terrifically
well in brand engagement - capabilities to explore, research, interact,
make choices. This will impact the type of messages we deliver,
also how they are delivered. Convert the broadcast into a
conversation -- target from 'mass' to 'my' media. The challenge really lies in measuring the
effectiveness of the media. She ends with the hope that marketers
and agencies will focus on being able to measure brand engagement. Huge
problem with the title of the session -- much like the others :).
Audience size of 3.8 crores - it must be mass media. That is a
huge huge market. But you still have only about 100 advertisers -
and revenues that are three times less than radio. 1 million
users added a day. So what is the problem - why is such an
effective space not getting advertising. Some thoughts on that -- the
internet is still a huge mystery for a lot of people. They are
more comfortable 'consuming' ads in print and on TV. Collectively
I'd like this audience to ask themselves one question - what are we
going to do as a community to grow our revenues ? This is great - we have about 30 minutes for discussion. Moderator asks the panelists a specific question -- what are the real-world challenges or obstacles that planners and marketers face in integrating online and traditional media mixes. Raj Gupta -- One - IRS shows a much lower number of users, then there is the issue of duplication. Three, users are defined as people with some sort of registration - until such time that the industry cannot demonstrate the numbers in terms of how many are active, duplicate etc? Rohit Mull - we're not interested in all internet users - we want those that are active, and in our target group. So, marketing plans should be linked to quality of users and segmentation. Daily reports and monitoring of ad effectiveness and direct marketing effectiveness. Media agencies are being put under pressure to ensure media plans work. Q- will advertising be thematic led or response led? Pearl -- from a publisher's perspective, more thematic led advertising, but it will leverage transactions and response. Traditional advertisers are coming online now, and there is going to be growth as a result. Rohit -- most financial companies don't spend great amounts on mass media. In his case, 40 crores spent on direct marketing and 20 crores on mass media. (ohhhhhhhhhhh such an opportunity to build communities around insurance using social tools :):):)). The important thing is we need measures to bring in accountability. Response brings in some accontability because you can verify the quality of the click. Q - perspective on clien'ts acceptance of media online. The resistance is breaking down today. They tell clients it no more is a niche medium. The challenges we face is how much and how to integrate -- not whether to integrate online and traditional media. Q - Pay per click model will move to Pay per call - VOIP integrated. How do marketers see this? Great question !
Rohit - as a marketer, this would be a WOW. A dream come
true. It will open gateways for us, because I would be able to
manage my capacity utilisation of call centres. Q - How much relevance do factors like duplication
hold - Raj - you don't want to send the message to the same consumer if
they are saturated. Q - Why is the medium not perceived as a branding
medium -- Raj - if you do that, you will shortsell the medium.
Tushar - there are companies like Castrol, Motorola, Pepsi who are
looking at it as a branding medium - but it is early days and will
evolve over time. Q - Why is accountability becoming such a huge issue
for online advertising when marketers give traditional media a little
more aren't . Raj Nayak makes some amazing comments --- Internet
sales people have been apologetic about the medium. When it
started, it was started by techies - who weren't sales and amrketing
people. The internet's biggest strength has become its weakness -
and organisations like Tata AIG are taking advantage of this (huge
applause from the audience). Publishers need to say what we need
to do with the medium - marketers will buy it. Also, people who
were selling this media were not publishers themselves, so
accountability and intuitive understanding of the medium wasn't
there. Wrap up -- are the metrics for traditional media
still relevant. Are these terms something marketers and
advertisiers talk while consumers don't really make such a
difference. Look at media from the consumer's point of
view. Wow - I really enjoyed this session ! All speakers
talk of engaging customers and acknowledge that one of the powerful
benefits of this medium is the interactivity. Enter Social Media, Tools and Networks. 11:48:38 AM comment [] trackback []
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Some impressions from Day 1 of the Digital Summit 2006 :
digital summit 2006 mumbai 1:15:21 AM comment [] trackback []
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Copyright 2009 Dina Mehta
