How can communication be done effectively through digital marketing? This is a question that most businesses may ask themselves as they consider how they can possibly boost their online sales through marketing. This is a question which some agencies may be able to answer, but perhaps reading information online, such as possibly this article from thecryptoupdates.com as well as completing individual research may be more beneficial in allowing a business to truly understand what they want for themselves from a marketing campaign in terms of content and communication.
Other questions business leaders may have are what are the flaws and how to overcome them while setting a digital marketing strategy? How can hiring a digital marketing company like Home Service Direct help improve strategies? How can exploration and experimentation in this arena make us better off? How has digital marketing revolutionized business communications? Some of the industry stakeholders tried to answer these questions at a panel discussion in the recently held Digital Marketing Summit 2017 presented by Meghna Group of Industries.
The summit engaged the local digital marketing fraternity with four global experts and shaped a knowledge sharing dais through various other segments. The theme for this year’s summit was ‘Strategy into Action’. This year’s summit was designed with four keynote sessions, three panel discussions, five breakout sessions, two case study presentations, and two insight sessions.
Following are some excerpts of the first panel discussion of the summit that focused on the topic – ‘Building the next digital marketing campaign – The Perfect Recipe’. Panelists for this panel were – Ashraful Haque, Vice President, Robi Axiata Limited; Hashmi Rafsanjani, Country Marketing Manager, Google; Drabir Alam, COO & Director, the “X”, Aman Ashraf Faiz, Managing Director, Gazi TV; Sabbir Rahman Tamim, Chairman, Cubex Limited.
Mr. Aman Ashraf Faiz started off by saying, “We first need to have a better insight about digital marketing campaigns before working on it.” We need to come up with a marketing objective. Then we choose the channels through which we will communicate it. In earlier times we would select TV for mass reach. We would go outdoors for larger than life impact. Similarly, you need to have a digital marketing objective before creating the content and selecting channels. Mr. Faiz made an interesting comparison. He compared today’s nascent times of digital marketing to the early days of rural marketing in Bangladesh where they would test and trial to find the best solutions. He shared, “First we thought about mobile, then we moved into conversation followed by Uthan Boithoks.” If we look at today’s internet usage today, it is still in the vicinity of 20-25% of the total population. It is funny when we realize that we do not use plastic money yet, but we are talking about virtual money. Bottom line is, the ecosystem has to evolve and the whole process has to change.
Mr. Drabir Alam stressed, “You need to have great products at the right price so that people can connect to it. However, when we think of digital marketing we do not consider these things.” Even in this digital age the fundamentals of marketing are still the same. Digital will not sell your product if it is not good enough. Today’s marketers are absolutely wrong to think that just a viral content will be enough to sell their products. The perfect recipe will be different for every unique product. Digital might do wonders for some products while other products would call for one-to-one interactions. In digital, the fundamental thing is that there is no budget limitation. You have to throw things to the wall and see what sticks. For example, if we want to know who wants to buy a fridge, we can a run campaign on digital asking who wants to buy a fridge. The perks of digital marketing are direct communication and interaction. But ROI will still depend primarily on how good the product is. The more digital presence you have, the easier it will be to measure conversion. But we should always look at the end result and measure if we are getting more business out of digital. If not, there is a bug that needs to be fixed.
Mr. Hashmi Rafsanjani joined in the discussion with some enlightening insights about the landscape. He said, “The majority of the audience is connected, multi-spring and young. When you look at the overall objective of a campaign you will see that digital is still a big after-thought and only 3-5% budget is used. Even if most of your consumers are in digital platforms you are using the maximum money in a place where there is no view. You need to do know where your consumers are spending time. If a certain product does not require digital don’t do digital.” We need to measure success, but first, you should know your own definition of success. The beauty of digital is that it really allows you to know. But you have to know what you are looking for. The Holy Grail for every marketer is to tap in and understand what my consumers really do. Today, it is a lot easier to tap into that trigger, leverage that insight and understand how it adds value to my business. We have to use that value proposition. After rural marketing, digital marketing is the new platform. When 3G came into the scene, the overall boom went through the roof. You are enabling and empowering Bangladesh. As cheaper 25 dollar smartphones are increasing in penetration, digitization will continue happening until digital media becomes mass media.
Mr. Ashraful Haque, said, “I don’t know any recipe. I am learning every day.” What comes first is a big idea. Then comes the rest. You have to be sure about what you are doing in digital. Firstly, you should sell one USP. The audience is very busy and they are being bombarded with ads. It is very tough to convince them. You have to create that relevance. In this era, there is no such thing as ‘brand loyalty’. Everyone sees ‘what’s in it for me?’ Mr. Ashraful said, “We have to create that ‘boro chele‘ (a viral television drama aired during Eid-ul-Adha this year). We need to create content of that caliber on a consistent basis.”
When asked if “X” was using target audience profiling Mr. Drabir answered that majority of the data about target audience come from third parties. Then they create a series of contents to dig out who are interested in the product.
A very debatable topic is ‘visibility vs effectiveness’. According to the discussants, we cannot measure it using the metrics currently available to us. Today, media planning is more important than ever. We only talk about impressions, but we are not seeing if we can reach our business objectives. We are not clear about where and how much to invest. We are still unsure. We are still learning.
The discussion concluded with the belief that there will never be a perfect recipe for a dream campaign. So, what should we do? The discussants insisted on the following –
- We need to experiment and try out new things.
- We need to learn, adopt and implement what works.
- What is perfect today will be redundant tomorrow.
- We need to know how to measure the success of our campaigns and how to continue creating value.
