Digital media – a growing interest among the Indian marketers
According to the Dashboard Report of the Adobe-CMO Council APAC Digital Marketing Performance Indian marketers are the most confident, among the Asia Pacific (APAC) countries, when it comes to digital abilities. Standing almost to 42 per cent, taking a tremendous lead, following India is Australia at 37 per cent consequently Singapore at 29 per cent. Gauging from the data, a statistical estimation can be made, that is, by the year 2015 of the entire smart phone users of the world about 40 per cent will be based in the Asia Pacific. And out of the tablet using population, 35 percent will reside in the APAC.
Further analysis of the Adobe study shows that in India about 50 per cent plus people agree that the motivation of adapting and evolving to the digital media world will create a majorly positive, highly customer-focused and a greatly responsive organisation. Additionally, a stunning 45 per cent agreed on the belief that digital media helps creating a unique brand image that builds a brand distinction and results in higher customer attraction leading to more prospect affinity.
These conclusions are a tremendous swing from the 2012 findings, whose data lied in the range of 20 per cents. This swing is huge and has lead more than 42 per cent to believe that digital media services and online marketing campaigns enhances the overall effect of a marketing strategy and makes the marketing far more effective.
Consequently a majority with 60 per cent believe that digital media has the ability to be engaging, that attracts more activated and interactive audiences. This target over the active audience participation is a ‘pretty good’ shift from just last year, when barely 19 per cent believed so.
The increasing interest in the digital media, with the technological advancement, has given digital media a promising fate in the Asia Pacific, epically among Indian marketers. When it comes to the fiscal distribution in Digital Marketing, about over 22 per cent marketers put over half of the budget in Digital Media Services, among which a majority put up to 70 per cent. This is a promising change in the strategising process of marketing and brand building; just last year less that 2 per cent did so.
More and more marketers are taking up digital media as a crucial tool for marketing, which has lead to a fall in the percentage of marketers who invested less than 10 per cent of the budget in digital; this was a huge shift from a greater 55 per cent to a considerable 25 per cent. As the virtual world gains speed, more and more marketers exploit the various possibilities that the digital social world offers, marketers make it a priority in their respective marketing scheme. With an increasing trend of paid search and online advertising, from individual customer feedback to a community response, a few of diverse facets captured in the digital virtual social world.
Among technicalities, the marketing funds are mostly divided for web content enhancement, efficient performance monitoring, optimization and marketing in the search engine and other services, social media networking platforms and broadcast emails.
On an Asia Pacific level, the 2012 and 2013 data upon analysis reveals a significant increase in the number of chief marketing officers that are dedicated to digital marketing and now are leading digital marketing teams, offering more functionality, this shift indicates towards the possibility of digital marketing overpowering the overall marketing scenario very soon. Marketing in digital world is different for different target audience, taking the Asia Pacific countries into account; 40 percent of the planning covers marketing on a global level, executed and developed by their global head offices and 20 per cent is focused on the locality, localize in development and execution.
Talking about the Indian scenario; 28 percent of the marketers gauge their investment and returns in digital marketing as more than good to excellent, and following this set of data Australia and Singapore stand on considerable 21 per cent each. However, many countries still do not show their confidence on digital media’s return on investment; like for instance China – 7 per cent, Korea – 3 per cent and the rest of APAC – 12 per cent. Still, all is not well in the digital front. The efficiency of execution is hampered due to lack of skill sets, one of four correspondents stated issues in recruitment of employs with the right skills, with 34 per cent stating a lack of skills in their agencies.
A general overview of the analysing scheme of the various marketers across the ASAC shows there focus on typical areas like click-through rates (68 per cent), web performance data (75 per cent), conversion (72 per cent) and lead or acquisition costs (49 per cent). Although, these standard measurements are all excellent and necessary but when it comes to the report of returns on investment on the digital front, a greater emphasis is required on vital performance pointers, which are yet evolving, such as customer lifetime value (15 per cent), market share improvements (12 per cent) and churn rate (9 per cent).
Marketers are not able to valve in the various business-driving metrics that generally help convince the senior management on the pros of digital media and marketing, which now impacts the distribution of the current budget allocations. In conclusion, with 20 per cent APAC marketers favouring the improvement of digital media and marketing skills, as oppose to the other 20 per cent stating the lack of necessary skill set and experience in digital media and marketing; the overall growth, however, is deemed good but yet, not up to the mark.
