Brands Need to Invest Deeply at the Ground Level and Stick to Making Relevant Content: Ashish Sahni, PCA Motors

With 2019 underway, marketers are using increasingly sophisticated technology to understand their customers’ behavior patterns, to understand triggers and timings of need, and finally to create content that activates data-driven insights. Recently in a conversation with Agency Reporter, Ashish Sahni, Director – Digital Marketing India, PCA Motors shared the ongoing digital marketing trends in the automobile and other industries that will dominate the current and coming years.

Here are the excerpts:

Agency Reporter: Driven by trends like visual search and voice search, the digital marketing scope has expanded and evolved into something more dynamic. How according to you visual and voice search are revitalising the role of SEO?

Ashish Sahni: For the brands, it simply means that we need to be content ready. The gap to bridge is telling what the brand is and what the ends users relate to in their moment of need. With change in consumption patterns and medium, comes opportunities to influence differently. Voice technology is another step in the direction of improving the user experience with semantics. At the core of it, the industry will go through the experimental phase to align how a layman ‘wants to be reached out’.

AR: A lot of new launches are done on digital first these days. Can you comment on the current state of digital marketing in the automobile industry? How much has digital helped in generating the initial queries and buzz for new launches?

AS: The number of consumer touch points has grown with digital, and it is now possible to time ‘what & when’ you want to influence the potential consumer. Apart from the obvious ROI measurability, digital platforms are centric to create early adopters especially in a market like India with a growing youth population.

If you look at digital-led launches in the automobile industry, it’s gone beyond just new customer acquisition. While the new launches revolve around a digital ‘wow factor’, the attempt clearly is to build a tribe of loyalists.

Consumers are seeking more information on the vehicle they want to buy and compare it with the general public sentiments around it. They also access similarly priced competition. These days ‘the test drive’ starts much earlier! 

AR: An annual report by Google and Kantar TNS, which tracks consumers’ car research and purchase journey, revealed that almost 90% of auto sales in India were digitally influenced in 2018. What according to you are the key digital touch points that play a crucial role in influencing the car-buyers decision?

AS: This is not surprising considering the large share of touch points that digital alone occupies in the life cycle of an automotive purchase. The selling of automobiles is not the way it used to be – linear and hierarchical.

I personally feel the primary touch points to invest as hygiene are GSVM – Google, Social Media, Video, and Mobile.

AR: Artificial Intelligence in Digital Marketing is at the cusp of becoming the new normal. How Digital Marketing, being immensely data-driven and one of the early adopters of AI, can witness tremendous impact?

AS: Digital advertising is, without a doubt, the area of digital marketing that’s most successfully adopted artificial intelligence. Industry is already using machine learning and artificial intelligence to find people more prone to making the advertiser’s desired action. 

The way users perform online searches has changed. So, now we must ask ourselves how this will affect the way in which marketers create and optimise their web content. 

Content curation has also leaped bounds. Personalised content recommendations that the user may find interesting, such as the typical, “people who buy X also buy Y” has allowed superior targeting to relevant audience. 

With more people boarding AI, the accuracy of ranking or lead scoring is definitely culling wastage of resources and allowing brands to focus on ‘qualified purchasers’.  At the rate the predictive analysis is moving, it won’t be far ahead to gauge creative & message acceptability soon. 

AR: Digital marketing definitely is measurable, but you need a strong framework along with the right success metrics, as well as drilling into the details to truly get a clear picture. Tell us in a more detailed manner about some of the digital marketing mistakes that the companies make and how marketers can avoid them.

AS: At the rate digital is evolving, there is going to be a lot of test & tries. Experimental work has to get its due and mistakes will only make the industry stronger. Brands need to invest deeply at the ground level and stick to making relevant content.

AR: Lastly, would you like to share any final thoughts?

AS: Digital is the way forward and it’s only going to throw more challenges. Digital isn’t here to replace the jobs of marketers or advertisers; it’s here to unleash the true strategic and creative potential. But, for this to happen, the professionals must adapt themselves and get on board.