CMOs Speak: Modern Marketing and the Customer Journey

The goal of modern marketers have moved to ‘micro-moments’, that particular point in time when the customer is responsive to a message. How can Marketers really reach the customers by mapping the customer journey?

Top industry CMOs shared their thoughts on the customer journey and other exciting things about modern marketing at the #NetcoreCMORoundtable: Maximising the Marketing Moment, jointly hosted with Paul Writer.

Vivek Singh, Sr. Vice President – Marketing & Analytics, FirstCry

The most exciting part of modern marketing is the marriage of marketing and analytics and its potential.

By putting in more efforts, art, and brain into analytics behind marketing, marketers can make data-driven decisions for personalising communication and continuously optimise the data for consistent messaging throughout the customer journey.

Dilpreeta Vasudeva, General Manager – New Age Marketing, Tata Sky

Marketers need to keep innovating as modern marketing is dynamic, agile and ever-changing. The customer journey is non-linear and cannot be thought in silos. Different functions of a business, like digital, analytics, research, communication, and branding should come together and figure out the role that a business plays for the customer.

Nikhil Rungta, Chief Marketing Officer, Housing.com

Modern Marketing is a great mix of Art and Science. The customer journey today, has become shorter, transparent and is 2-way conversation.

Aditya Save, Chief Marketing Officer, People Interactive (Shaadi.com)

The exciting part about mobile in marketing, is the fact that for the first time in my life I’m the marketer, I’m the customer. I can experience what customers goes through.

Jayraj Jadhav, Head – Business & Digital Marketing, Tata AIA

Marketing is a no longer just one of the functions in business, marketing is the business. Providing best of the experience on digital as well as offline ensures the consistency of customer journey.

Smeeta Neogi, VP Marketing & Customer Relations, Mahindra Life Spaces

Today’s environment is about customization and personalisation. Every marketer must aim at figuring out the best way to get to that one person and reach him/her at the right time, not missing out the opportunity to earn their attention..

Lancelot Dsouza, Vice President – Business Development, CouponDunia

Modern Marketing is giving an opportunity to move towards contextual marketing where we give the customer what s/he is looking for. Real-time decision and micro marketing is what matters to deliver relevant and personalised experience across the entire customer journey.

Chandrashekar Bhide, Vice President – Digital Marketing, DBS Bank

Modern marketing offers the ability to send relevant and useful communication to the customer, very specific and targeted to the location.

Jason Redmond, Director Marketing, Zoomin

Modern marketing enables us to oversee real-time shift in brands, in campaigns and making it specific to the customer.

Gagan Singla, Chief Marketing Officer, Angel Broking

Modern marketing is all about Agility, enabling marketers to change things quickly. It’s business and not brand building which should be the primary role of the marketer.

Bibhu Swain, Chief Marketing Officer– Big Bazaar Direct

Experimentation built with data science is really exciting. It enables marketers to know your customer and create the “WOW” impact by understanding their preferences.

Abhishek Gupta, SVP & Head Marketing – Edelweiss Group, Edelweiss

Modern marketers need to be the change agent by having one single objective – focus on the Customer.

Ashish Sahni, Head- Digital Marketing (Passenger Vehicle Business Unit), Tata Motors

Offering unified customer experience is really the exciting and challenging part of modern marketing. The journey of a customer starts even before a product has been launched. By mapping data to customer needs and providing right information, brands can build personalised association with customers.

Satyen Kothari, Ex CEO, Citrus Payments and Founder, CEO, Cube

Communicate less with the customer with the right marketing channel to offer great user experience. Instead of inundating customer with loads of insights, the focus should be on communicating more through less.

Karan Khanna, Vice President, Yes Bank

Modern marketing offers the opportunity to micro-communicate at a large scale through technology. We should see consumers as human beings and not machines who accept tons of information.

Kaushik Chakroborty, SVP & Head – Online Sales, Digital Marketing & Alternate Channels, UTI Mutual Funds

Modern marketers must shift from Product Marketers to Service Marketers by thinking of customers as the center of marketing. Incrementally adding marketing information to the main customer data & leveraging it to cross-sell is the key to offer exceptional customer experience.

Anu Raj, Vice President, Head – Marketing (Assets) & Corporate Communications, IndusInd Bank

Modern marketers have to go through a lot of unlearning as the Marketing and technology landscape is changing immensely and quickly. Fun part is being on the toes and adapting to the constantly changing world.