Conversational marketing will be talked about a lot this year: Arjun Bhatia

Shrugging off the disruptions of last year, businesses and agencies are looking for a strong revival in 2021. Adgully – as part of our annual TRENDING NOW endeavour – has been presenting the strategies and views of a cross-section of industry leaders as they go about reclaiming lost time and market opportunities and build for a stronger future, armed with the lessons of 2020. 

In conversation with Adgully, Arjun Bhatia, Chief Marketing Officer, Matrimony.com, speaks about how digital approach to marketing and sales will remain centrestage in the pandemic times, the rise of social commerce, and much more. 

 

 

 

Outlook for 2021

After the onset of the pandemic, the way customers discover, review and buy products and services has changed. In 2021, companies will rapidly align to a digital first model to connect and collaborate in these difficult times. Social commerce, too, is expected to gain ground.

Digital now doesn’t remain the top of funnel awareness-building medium. You need to close sales and depending upon your product/ service complexity, you have to get “personal” without having a physical interface.

Conversational marketing will be talked about a lot. Chatbots, immediate call backs, connecting with a human voice at the right time, all backed by AI/ML, are already there and regardless of the size of the company, your competitors are already doing it.

Social commerce, which is gaining ground fast, will go mainstream in the next 3-5 years, albeit at a different pace depending upon the industry.

Companies will redefine their online commerce strategy, build deeper capabilities to sell direct to consumers. 

Great expectations

Given that the pandemic is again surging back, we will continue to see people in some sort of lockdown mode, hence content consumption, online product discovery will remain strong. Therefore, digital approach to marketing and sales will remain centrestage. 

Key learnings from 2020

My biggest learning was to look out for new opportunities during the crisis. For example, in the online matrimony business, during the partner search journey, meeting someone is a natural progression. But that suddenly seemed to stop for a brief while. Matrimony.com quickly innovated with solutions like Video Calling, and safety features like Who Can See Me and SecureConnect, to ensure that the match finding process doesn’t stop. Our efforts came in for much praise as soon as we rolled these out.

Customer acceptance to companies with lesser physical is growing and size and scale of the corporate doesn’t matter anymore.

Finally, the value of personal connect with your seniors, peers and subordinates has become even more important to me, because that’s what generates ideas, gives alternate viewpoints, solves problems.

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