The perfect storm of digital, data and devices is empowering India’s online consumers and creating newer challenges and opportunities for marketers and brands. In 2019, a whopping 93% of Indian marketers are planning to increase their digital investments. Overall India digital is growing at 30% year over year. However, most India marketers are reporting challenges around ROI. The top 3 challenges articulated by them are Proving ROI on Digital Marketing activities, Justifying revenue impact of high spends on Social Media, Accurate Click Attribution model for effective measurement of digital channel effectiveness. Key Takeaways: 1) Which are the top performing digital marketing channels in India? 2) What are the top digital marketing investments marketers are planning for 2019? 3) How do different digital channels compare in terms of consumer engagement and acceptance? 4) Which are the top 3 digital marketing tactics to deploy for higher ROI in 2019? 5) How are India consumers changing the online landscape and what are the top 2 megatrends for India marketers to exploit in 2019?

2. Marketing 2019: How To Get More From Your
Digital ROI?
The perfect storm of digital, data and devices is empowering India’s
online consumers and creating newer challenges and opportunities for
marketers and brands. In 2019, a whopping 93% of India marketers are
planning to increase their digital investments. Overall India digital is
growing at 30% ear over year. However, most India marketers are
reporting challenges around ROI. The top 3 challenges articulated by
them are Proving RoI on Digital Marketing activities, Justifying revenue
impact of high spends on Social Media, Accurate Click Attribution
model for effective measurement of digital channel effectiveness.

3. 1. Which are the top performing digital marketing channels in
India?
2. What are the top digital marketing investments marketers are
planning for 2019?
3. How do different digital channels compare in terms of
consumer engagement and acceptance?
4. Which are the top 3 digital marketing tactics to deploy for
higher ROI in 2019?
5. How are India consumers changing the online landscape and
what are the top 2 megatrends for India marketers to exploit
in 2019
Key Takeaways

4. Digital Transformation: Disruption’s 3 legged stool
Devices Digital
Data

5. 3x Networked Disruption
1. Digital
– Speed of light
– Global Scale
– “Hyperlinks
subvert
hierarchy”*
2. Data
– Moore’s Law
– Storage:
Terabytes every
day
– Analytics & Big
Data: Moment
of truth
3. Devices
– Metcalfe’s
Network Effect
– Every one is a
publisher / media
– Unprecedented
access and
empowerment

6. India Audience Trends | The Surge
• Mobile first, largest smartphone shipments
• Leader in mobile video consumption (Hotstar)
• Tier 2-3-4 towns new growth engines
• English limited reach; maxed out
• Youngest Internet Users in the world
• 400-450 million users; 80-100 million active online users, 20 million
online buyers and rising
• 800+ million new users are about to show up; smartphone + cheap
4G combo
• Digital payment transactions huge jump; Digital India (Gov gone
digital, example Indian Railways)

7. ACE it
• ACE: Algorithm, Community, Engagement
• Attract, Engage & Convert
• Start-up marketing
– Story, story, story

8. Digital Channels
Owned | Rented
• Websites
• Landing Pages
• Blogs
• Content
• Videos
• Email lists
• Databases
• Marketing Automation
• Chatbots
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Affiliate
• Tech platforms

9. www.octaneresearch.in

10. www.octaneresearch.in

11. 93% of marketers are planning to increase their Digital Marketing
budget in 2019.
Wherein, the primary marketing goal for 63% marketers will be
customer acquisition.
Digital Marketing Investment

12. Content Marketing dominates as an emerging trend around the globe. In
2018, 34% India marketers chose to invest the most in Content Marketing
out of many other available channels.
For the year 2019, Content Marketing is the no.1 investment area for India
marketers.
Content Marketing

13. Importance of ‘local language content’ is grabbing the attention of India
marketers.
With a 30% increase in votes since last year, local language initiatives are in the
top 3 areas of investment.
Local Language

14. India marketers continue to find it difficult to attribute success accurately.
The biggest hurdle in attribution as shared by marketers over the last two
years is ‘technology limitations’.
Measurement of Success

15. AI & Chatbots and Cross Channel Marketing are voted as the top 2 latest
technologies that are changing the marketing scenario and will continue
to do so in the future to improve the user experience as well as
marketer’s ease of doing business’.
Future of Digital Marketing

16. To be a successful digital marketer, ‘the ability to embrace change’, ‘the
ability to spot the right opportunities’ and ‘being passionate, curious
and hungry to learn’ are the top 3 skills that marketers consider highly
important in the present dynamic and competitive digital marketing
scenario.
Crucial Skills of Digital Marketer

17. ‘Proving ROI on digital marketing activities’ remains the top challenge
for India marketers.
‘Justifying revenue impact of high social media spends’, ‘Correct click
attribution for effective measurement of digital channels’ emerge as
the top 3 challenges for India marketers in 2019.
Challenges in 2019

18. Email continues to be an effective channel for driving maximum ROI amongst all digital
marketing Channels. However, the low engagement rate is a big concern as 55% of
businesses have an average Open Rate less than 10% and 56% of businesses have an
average Click Through Rate less than 5%.
56% of marketers are planning to use ‘behavioral targeting’ for their email campaigns
in 2019.
Surprisingly, only 35% email marketers are extremely confident in understanding the
data privacy laws governing email marketing.
Email Marketing

19. 1. ROI ROI ROI:
India marketers are under invested in terms of time and tools to effectively measure
success of their marketing efforts, with 18% marketers not performing any
attribution and 49% marketers indicating attribution as a major challenge for 2019.
Social media spends are increasing but their contribution to revenue ROI remains a
big issue.
It is crucial to create a customized model which aligns with a customer’s journey
holding all the touch points that has led to revenue conversion allowing for a more
intelligent analysis of efforts and budget across channels.
Top 5 Recommendations

20. 2. Deploy Smart Systems:
Customers are online 24x7 and demanding higher performance from brands. It is in
this context that the rise of artificial intelligence and natural language processing has
made a perfect environment for chatbots to flourish.
There is no better time to start the use of such AI platforms for businesses. It is
incalculably efficient and effective to carry on simultaneous customer service
conversations with a machine than with a giant human call center. These self-learning
machines are getting smarter with time and eventually are becoming the first point
of contact between customers, providing instant assistance, buying advice and
resolving common issues.
Top 5 Recommendations

21. 3. Automate Your marketing ‘Last Mile’:
Fragmented consumer attention across increasing number of digital channels is
proving to be a double challenge for marketers. Automation is making
marketers’ life a lot easier as it streamlines, automates, and measures tasks and
workflows allowing marketers to be more efficient in contributing towards increased
revenue with modest budgets.
With online marketing getting more complex year after year, the marketers who are
already using automation tend to outperform the marketers who don’t as per recent
research studies.
Top 5 Recommendations

22. 4. Understanding Email Psychology:
Email continues to be the highest revenue RoI channel for India businesses. According
to our research in this area, businesses are under invested in automating email
workflows, list management and improving content.
Most marketers are struggling to keep up with the changing algorithms of email
engines which punish non profiled, unsegmented ‘batch and blast’ email campaigns.
Personalization aligned with consumer buying journey has been rated as one of the
most promising practices for a relevant and hence a higher revenue.
Top 5 Recommendations

23. 5. Sharpen the Content Focus:
Behind every great brand is a wealth of valuable and relevant content that truly
connects with the audience. Good news is that most India online marketers are
investing more in content management programs.
Great content, especially the dynamic, well thought out ‘stories’, can create contextual
conversations with the customers and convert better on the consumer buying journey.
We believe 3 trends that deserve a special focus in this area are:
A) Consumption of local language content is growing way faster than English content.
B) Video content is top of the charts and brands need to leverage this content format.
C) Google India forecasts more than 50% search queries to be voice driven by 2020.
Enabling Voice Search for content discovery is must.
Top 5 Recommendations

24. 1. Which are the top performing digital marketing channels in India?
2. What are the top digital marketing investments marketers are planning
for 2019?
3. How do different digital channels compare in terms of consumer
engagement and acceptance?
4. Which are the top 3 digital marketing tactics to deploy for higher ROI in
2019?
5. How are India consumers changing the online landscape and what are
the top 2 megatrends for India marketers to exploit in 2019?
Key Takeaways:

25. www.octaneresearch.in

26. #Digital2019Punit Modhgil
धन्यवाद|
Thank you.