A regular dose of D2C-centric resources & tools for Growing Brands, Startups & Entrepreneurs.

See what competitor brands are spending on

"61% of Marketers don’t have the right tech or don’t use it to its maximum potential"

Marketers focus on quality and telling unique stories to differentiate them from the… rest. But in today’s little hugely competitive world, that is hard.

So, let’s see how the first quarter of 2023 has been for D2C brands in India, when it comes to Marketing.

1. Investment in video will continue to increase.

87% of marketers reported that they used videos in the last 12 months.

Furthermore, 84% of the respondents affirmed that their organisation plans to invest in video marketing in 2023, which makes it the primary focus area of marketing investment.

2. More technology marketers plan to invest in social media/community building.

54% percent of respondents said their organisation would invest in social media/community building in 2023, up from 37% the previous year.

3. Marketers struggle with content that appeals to different stages of the buyer’s journey and aligning content efforts across sales and marketing.

Marketers cited these as their top two content marketing challenges - which some have answered with solutions like -

• Data from similar brands and past ventures to enable better predictability into brand marketing

• Real-time communication between marketers and individual services

  • For example: With the real-time information on Abandoned Checkouts, i.e, the reason behind it, will help in engineering WhatsApp Broadcasts and other form of retention strategy

Other issues included developing consistency with measurement and communicating internally.

Pragma’s Take -

Less than 50% are investing in improving their understanding of the audience (40%), enhancing UX design (27%), producing audio content (24%), and implementing technologies (18%).

Well…

1. Understanding audience is key to optimise and improve overall - which is why we compile our data from 450+ brands to help individual brands, and better customer experiences

Building community is more important than ever: While video remains the most popular, investment in social media/community-building saw a big jump with 54% picking the category – over 46% more than the previous year.

2. Audio content is the cheapest alternative to video content. And it speaks volumes, especially when you utilise podcast platforms

3. Implementing technologies is the way you become a lossless business

- Analysing every stage of customer journey- Automating services- Customising/optimising to future proof

4. The strategy for hybrid events is changing: Despite the surge in demand for digital and hybrid events in the pandemic era, it is noteworthy that technology marketers intend to allocate a higher budget towards digital/virtual events (26%) and hybrid events (27%). It's worth noting that a significant number (24%) have decided not to incorporate hybrid events in their plans for 2023, whereas only 3% plan to abstain from in-person events and 4% from digital/virtual events.

5. Brands prefer the Hybrid setup to turn on AUTOPILOT 🚀 as wellBut what is a HYBRID AUTOMATION SETUP?A hybrid automation setup consists of 3 parts.Part 1 : The part of the bot that is automated by creating flows based on brand needs across marketing, purchase & return stages.Part 2 : The part where Bots take on the role - for communication across channelsPart 3 : this is where AI comes into play, to study and optimise existing setup based on consumer data.(i.e.) 🤖 Hybrid Setup = Rule-based Customisation + AI

To Wrap it Up

Focus on Personalization: Capitalise on any and all data analytics & artificial intelligence (AI) to personalise marketing strategies and offer customised recommendations and experiences to customers.

Increase adoption of Social Media Marketing: Introduce yourself to more Social Media tools and services.

Emphasise Customer Retention: Focus on building long-term relationships with customers by offering excellent customer service with the help of 100% automation

That’s the end of our talk on 'Q1 2023 D2C Marketing Report'...

See you on the next coffee date!

How did you like our Newsletter? What topics would you like us to cover next?

Reply and let us know! 😊