Paul Writer launches Innovative Marketer Dialogue, 
Video interview series with CMOs highlights marketing best practices
Anshu Bagai
ex-Tupperware India, currently MD, AMC Cookware
On Challenges that Marketers face today …
Firstly, I would say for operating in a country like India, handling the complexity of the market is the biggest challenge that any marketer faces. On one hand, you have the luxury market which is doing so well, on the other hand, there’s the bottom of the pyramid where you have metros, tier 1, tier 2 towns, the rural market, consumers in different age groups who have different value systems. Now if you want to have a business of a substantial size in India, you need to address at least two or more of these segments, which makes this job so complex.
You need a product or a range of products which appeals to consumers, the communication that you put in place is important, along with the USP and the creative, all of these elements will have to cut across well and you will need to have the kind of budgets to promote multiple brands. Hence, according to me the biggest challenge that any marketer faces in India is handling the complexity of the business in India where you are trying to target so many sub-countries within one country.
The second challenge that I feel that as marketers we face is the ‘big happening thing – digital marketing’. On one hand, yes, it is the big thing that has happened in the last year or two in the world of marketing and everyone has jumped onto the bandwagon but I don’t think so mass marketers have cracked it yet. Majority of us don’t know how to use these social engagements effectively, and more so convert them into dollars. On the other hand, mastering the science of targeting people, getting them onto your social engagement platforms is crucial but how do you utilize them beyond that point? How do you take these conversations and make meaningful relationships and convert them into customers is what everyone is grappling with. And to add to that complexity is the fact that mobile phones are becoming hugely popular, 700 million and growing and as I see a lot more customers going forward will be accessing the internet through mobiles rather than through computers and that’s a virgin territory that we have not yet cracked open.
“Majority of us don’t know how to use these social engagements effectively, and more so convert them into dollars. On the other hand, mastering the science of targeting people, getting them onto your social engagement platforms is crucial but how do you utilize them beyond that point? ”
Finally the third biggest challenge, I would say has been on for quite sometime and still continues to be a challenge is, how do you effectively measure the ROI of your various marketing and branding initiatives? Which initiative results in better prospects, better customers, better dollars? There are no analytical tools available to measure that and hence, so many times you end up shooting in the dark. These are the three biggest challenges according to me.
