BackWhat is new age marketing?
Retailers point out that using the online medium helps them get real-time feedback from customers
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Ever thought of reaching out to truck drivers in UP and Bihar through WhatsApp? While conventional thinking says you need to use billboards because they drive on highways, or advertise in the vernacular press, or release television ads that they watch in dhabas, ‘new age marketing’ says you need to go beyond and see what else they own, says Karthik Srinivasan, national lead, Social@Ogilvy at Ogilvy and Mather.
Well yes, this is the ‘new age marketing’ that combines online and offline platforms.
At HT’s Brands Summit on Friday, offline and online retailers came together to discuss these new steps in marketing.
“Two-three years back we would not have thought of mobile marketing for Cafe Coffee Day, but today we cannot live without it," says Cafe Coffee Day’s president of marketing K. Ramakrishnan, adding that they recently used online media to develop their menu by having an online expert panel and asking people online to contribute.
“My own parent group TTK was averse to digital media…always believed in traditional channels…but is now forced to push hard for digital marketing," says Sunder P., co-founder and CEO of HomeShikari.com, TTK Group’s online real estate marketplace.
Even well-known traditional products are changing their form, points out Indranil Mukherjee, vice president and global practice lead, systems integration at SapientNitro, a digital marketing agency. “For instance, the Britannica encyclopaedia is now a CD…or an app."
Ramakrishnan of Cafe Coffee Day says the purpose of having websites earlier was to push people to visit the stores, but there was never a reverse trend. Many brands are now realising how they can push people from shopping in stores towards shopping online.
Moreover, retailers point out that using the online medium helps them get real-time feedback from customers, which would not have been possible through the usual channels of door-to-door surveys. Sunder P. of HomeShikari gives the example of amazon.com which applied a patent for “anticipatory shipping" in January, a platform that would make use of the customer’s past shopping and browsing history and start shipping products to a nearby warehouse even before the person makes the order.
These newer ways of reaching customers and the use of data analytics have opened up a tremendous opportunity for retailers.
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