Marketer’s guide to 2023

From reinventing consumer segmentation and the marketing mix to devising mobile-first strategies, five marketing leaders offer some food for thought this new year.

‘Time to build personalised, deeper consumer connections’

Jennifer Pandya, VP marketing, CaratLane

• With so much data on consumers available to marketers, we need to take personalisation to another level. For example, what I view as a consumer on an e-commerce site should be different from what my spouse sees when browsing. We need to build more sophisticated levels of personalisation because mass mailers and messages are now dead.
• There is a need today to re-examine celebrity endorsements. If a brand enlists a celebrity just to capture eyeballs, that may help for the short run but it is not an effective way to build a brand meaningfully in the long term. Celebrity endorsements are better pursued when they can add long-term value.
• For the longest time, marketers have segmented their consumers on demographic and psychographic criteria. Over time, we have realised that we need to segment consumers on the basis of why they buy into a brand. For example, at CaratLane, we examine if the consumer has come in to buy a gift or to make a purchase for herself? Once you get a clearer understanding of the motivation, you can create more meaningful messaging for your consumers.

‘Rethink your media mix and stay true to your core persona’

Naveen Murali, vice president & head of marketing, Pepperfry

• In today’s age of social media, it can be tempting to chase every trend that comes along, but more often than not, these fads fizzle out quickly. In fact on a lot of occasions, in trending for the sake of trending, brands sometimes alienate their core audience. Hence, the key would be to stay true to your core persona and core audience and engage them with content that matters.
• While the pandemic accelerated the digital contribution of media, there is a resurgence of traditional formats over the course of last year. This is possibly an apt point in time to rethink the entire media mix for your brand.
• Over the last few years, there has been a lot of noise around what to do and what not to do, given the rapidly changing environment fuelled by multiple factors. Hence, it would be a good idea to go back to the drawing board to the very basics of marketing with your consumers at the core and rethink your overall marketing strategy.

‘Go beyond performance marketing; make the medium your message’

Poulomi Roy, CMO at RSH Global

Marketers need to stop viewing campaigns only from a performance marketing lens. Often, marketing is focussed at the bottom of the funnel, but brand leaders need to be aware of broader aspects like the category as a whole and communicating with new consumers. We should deploy campaigns in such a way that we take a broader look at outcomes, measurement and objectives.

This is also a good year for marketers to revisit what the Canadian theorist, Marshall McLuhan once famously said – the medium is the message. Often, we hear people say that content is paramount. But the impact of the content is different depending on the medium employed, since there are a plethora of options available before marketers. For example, consider how a platform like Swiggy or Zomato sends a daily reminder to order lunch through their app. It has thus become important to understand which medium is the right one to communicate with the consumer, keeping in mind the objective and the message.

‘Under-utilise social media; focus on mobile-first content’

Mathew Joseph, CEO & co-founder, Sleepyhead

Stepping into 2023, marketers should re-evaluate their focus on these activities:

• Under-utilising social media. Consumers are most comfortable with brands that have a personality and ongoing banter. Understand what your customer cares about, lean into their aesthetics and interests, and engage them with relevant conversations.
• Hard push should phase out. Privacy and consent are crucial. Constant bombardment is not push-marketing rather, it is pushing the customer away.
• Lastly, something that we should focus on is mobile-first content. Our customer is on-the-go, multi-tasking and seeking convenience and speed. Make information easy to find and act upon.

We keep experimenting with marketing tools and optimising our communications playbook, but this year our key focus will primarily be on understanding the changing psyche of the inflation-aware customers and making the discovery-to-service process easier for them.

‘Keep things simple; humanise your communication’

Soumali Chakraborty, head of marketing, Arrow

• One of the things marketers need to do is keep things simple, and avoid over-intellectualising brand content or messaging. Straightforward communication is remembered better than elaborate messaging.
• It is also important to humanise your communication strategy and approach. For example, when it comes to SEO strategy, we often tend to use more technical terms and jargon. Work with words that your consumer uses and pay attention to how he/she thinks.
• Brands today also need to stay connected more frequently with consumers by putting out bite-sized content, rather than only doing 2-3 big, seasonal campaigns. This helps build a connection with your consumers and ensures top-of-mind recall through the year.