Dr. Sumeet Kad, Marketing Leader – Asia Pacific, IBM Watson Health, got into a brief discussion with Kalpana Singhal, Editor, CXO TV to highlight the changing marketing landscape with the advent of digital marketing techniques. He stressed on the importance of AI, optimisation and data analytics being an integral elementing marketing plans to gain a competitive edge and engage with customers more effectively. Here goes the excerpts …
How Marketing has evolved over the Period?
Over the last seven or eight years there has been a tectonic shift in the way marketing is approached across industries. Traditional marketing methods are giving way to ‘new age’ digital marketing techniques and strategies. We need to get more closer to the customers and engage them in a meaningful way. This is where technologies like AI and data analytics provide a marketer meaningful insights about the target segment and hence design a more robust plan. Content marketing strategies and influencer engagement are few other areas which have been making rapid strides into the planning book of marketers. I believe that we have to unlearn and try to learn new technologies and implement new methods to achieve the desired outcomes.
What are the key things you keep in mind while designing your marketing plan?
For every marketing tactic there are a set of KPIs (key performance indicators) that I track on a periodic basis which help me to analyse the performance as well as optimize the plan. Some of the essential KPIs include: lead generation, cost per lead, engagement rate, NPS score, social media analytics etc. Such KPIs are aligned to the various marketing channels in order to track the desired goals.
What are your benchmarks?
We have both qualitative and quantitative benchmarks. For the KPIs I described earlier, industry benchmarks as well the historic data from our own plans are considered. This helps us to measure which of our tactics are under performing. Customer satisfaction in the form of NPS (net promoter score) is a very important part of our bench marking which provides us the information about customer’s pain points and how we can address them efficiently. Brand recall and brand recognition in different markets is also pivotal to our plans.
If IBM Watson healthcare solution is B2B then what is your branding strategy?
IBM Watson Health solutions caterto the various stakeholders in healthcare ecosystem like hospitals, pharma organizations, government agencies etc and ultimately patients/patient families benefit out it. So it’s more H2H (human to human) rather than a B2B concept. Our cognitive and AI solutions aim to address some of the most pressing health challenges by making healthcare affordable and accessible. This mission of Watson Health is reflective in all our branding tactics targeted towards the stakeholders and patients.If you consider the case of India, where only 13-15% of our population is insured, it becomes increasingly important that patients are made aware of such cutting-edge technologies which can help their doctors design a personalized, evidence based treatment plan for them.
What is the future of Digital Media ?
More than the various digital platforms it is the way marketers utilize these platforms that will define their success in the market. Hence, the use of data analytics becomes increasingly important. We get a lot of data from different channelssuch as social media, content or website but how do you make actionable insights out of those data points is something very essential for us to know. Though the use of AI and data sciences in marketing methodologies is at an embryonic stage but in future adoption of these will be widespread.
