Building the Right MarTech Approach

The digital universe for retail is hyper-expansive and today it includes a wide list of touchpoints. So, for brands to tap into their consumer base, they need more than a strong marketing plan.

“This hypergrowth of digital platforms push us to closely analyse the touchpoints and then look into the list of technologies and tools available to make marketing work favourably in the present context. In general consensus MarTech and AdTech are loosely used words. But we need to understand that MarTech isn’t a type of marketing, it is all about using the available technologies to amp up marketing plans and make it work in the brand’s favour. There are almost 9,000 marketing tools available today to simplify our MarTech initiatives. So, it is important to choose the right tool for better results,” stated Sowmya Iyer, Founder and CEO, DViO setting the context for a panel discussion centred around how to build superior MarTech in the digital hyper expansion era at the Internet Commerce Summit MENA.

The panel touched upon various aspects of MarTech and discussed how to craft a well-honed MarTech stack to gather customer data, create distinct profiles, communicate with customers, identify and nurture leads, monitor customer service and feedback and track campaign success.

“We depend a lot on granular data and use that actively to shape campaigns and lead customers to our touchpoints. It is important to be a trendsetter and be able to spot the market needs in advance to customise the marketing tools to your advantage,” said Paras Rishi, Senior Manager Marketing, GMG while talking about the progressive and streamlined approach that GMG takes to make its marketing initiatives highly customer friendly.

“As a marketeer operating within the food service industry, the biggest thing on our mind is understanding what the customer is talking about. Are they giving good reviews or is there a bad review somewhere? To make customer listening an active initiative we use a tool called Localizer. Through this tool we can bring all our customer feedback, reviews and more in one place. This way, at one glance we know our reach and acceptance across all platforms, without having to individually scan through each platform,” shared Ketaki Shah, Head of Marketing, Jollibee when talking about the activities they have undertaken as a brand.

“Before even planning on MarTech tools or devising a plan, it is important to align your internal processes and make it MarTech ready. From streamlining inventory to getting the team up to action, so that they can understand your market needs better, you will have to align everything the right way to start investing in technology for marketing,” Shah Hassan, CEO, Jerdoni commented.

Stepping into the digital arena requires a lot of planning in terms of understanding the customer and their mindset to begin with. “This is why we waited it out before we could start our own e-commerce. We launch in June and right now we want to emphasise more on experience rather than put forward a transactional touchpoint for our customers. This is our springboard to eventually engage the right tools to make MarTech possible connecting the dots between physical and online retail,” Ana Elisa Seixas – Head of Marketing, ASICS highlighted.

Rahul Sati, Cluster Revenue Director, Suha Hospitality emphasised on the value of data and how mining and using it in the right way helps plan the right marketing actions. Alongside establishing the importance of data and its role in planning the right marketing initiatives, this session established the need for the right marketing tools to action a correct strategy. Several new-age tools that offer cutting-edge marketing solutions were discussed and how its implementations can put brands closer to their customers were key takeaways.