Paul Writer launches Innovative Marketer Dialogue , 
Video interview series with CMOs highlights marketing best practices
Anisha Motwani
Director & CEO
Max Life Insurance
On the future of marketing…
For the future, marketers need to gear up for the new environment and the new normal. There are two large changes that I see, one at an organizational level and the second at the marketers level themselves. The organisation have to become marketing organization, the marketing department itself should become a customer department. What I mean by marketing organization is; today it is not just the job of the marketing department to convince customers and create growth in the market place. The entire organization needs to be responsible, whether it is the call center or the back end or the seller himself who needs to tell a story. It cannot be done in a manner where the storytelling is done by marketers and the sale is done by somebody else. The story telling needs to be in a way which the organization needs to be geared up so it is important for organisations to become marketing organisations. You are creating demand generation, and creating demand becomes the responsibility of the entire organization.
When it comes to the marketing department, it is not just about creating awareness for the brand but creating engagement with the customer or the prospect. Customer engagement is going to become a big challenge for us because the environment is fickle, the customer is spoilt for choice. The challenge is how do you continue to create a dialogue and engage with him so he doesn’t get tempted and fall off the curve at the drop of a hat or at the drop of the first possible opportunity that he gets. Customer engagement is how the marketing department needs to redesign itself.
“Customer is changing everyday, the options that are given to him are changing everyday so the marketer should be willing to learn, build, operate and then renew again. It’s very important that he is an on the go marketer who is constantly renewing and reinventing himself”
When it comes to the individual marketer and the people who run this department, the biggest change that needs to be seen is people who are willing to learn and change themselves and adopt to new practices because the customer is changing everyday, the options that are given to him are changing everyday so the marketer should be willing to learn, build, operate and then renew again. It’s very important that he is an on the go marketer who is constantly renewing and reinventing himself and if that doesn’t happen and if he thinks he knows it all and continues to use conventional methods of marketing then it is not going to work. Experimentation, innovation and having some bit of a risk appetite to experiment, learn and make mistakes are going to be important. To do that he needs the support of the entire organization, by that I mean that the organization should become a marketing organization. By marketing organization, I don’t mean spending more money on advertising but instead looking at growth and demand generation.
