Marketing experts explore the best ways to unlock the power of Martech

The eighth edition of Adgully’s flagship event – DIGIXX Summit and Awards 2024 – was held yesterday (March 22, 2024) amid the presence of who’s who of the Digital and Marketing Universe. Over the years, this annual event has consistently set new benchmarks, honouring visionary leaders and pioneering campaigns that are reshaping the future of digital marketing. This year, the focus was on delving into the latest trends, strategies, and insights driving transformation in the digital landscape.

A key highlight was the panel discussion, titled ‘Unlocking The Power Of Martech: Leveraging Cutting-Edge Tools to Drive Marketing Success’, which was chaired by Nitesh Kumar, Vice President - New Media, PivotRoots, A Havas Company. The panel comprised esteemed industry experts:

Arpit Agarwal, VP - Marketing, ExtraMarks

Avinash Choudhary, Head of Marketing, Chaayos

Dhananjay Arora, Founder & CEO, Kwebmaker Digital Agency

Gandharv Sachdeva, Country Head - India, Hybrid

Gopa Menon, Head of Digital, Mindshare South Asia, GroupM

Commencing the discussions, Nitesh Kumar remarked that the landscape of Martech is ever changing and continuously evolving. And the entire martech ecosystem is driven. He asked the panellists to define what ‘Martech’ means to them and do marketers leverage the entire Martech ecosystem in the business scenario.

For Gandharv Sachdeva, ‘Martech’, as a terminology, is a very vast word. “So, we talk about what is known as marketing technologies. It started in the nineties and has been growing since then. We see a growth of 18.5% approximately by the year 2032. But having said that, these marketing tools which are coming are really important to have the customer insights, to know how the tools will help the marketers to improve their marketing strategies and plans.”

According to Arpit Agarwal, “Martech has been there in different shapes and forms. Some form of technology we had been using to be able to target, to be able to measure, to be able to disseminate the content – those have become more sophisticated, more credible, and more linear. So for me, it has always been whatever is the solution that’s coming in the form of technology associated with marketing, it is helping me strengthen that one view of the consumer, a single view of the consumer, which has become really difficult now, because obviously now the consumer touch points have become plenty.”

Gopa Menon added here, “Very simply put, Martech is whatever tools that can actually help marketers actually optimise their marketing efforts. There can be varied tools, right from your insighting, to creative, to content creation, to CRM. Thus, there are multiple varied tools across the funnel where marketing automation or martech tools can actually enable. And that for me is Martech.”

While agreeing with both Agarwal and Menon, Avinash Choudhary said that this technology needs to be linear and suited to your business requirement. “They should be able to give you that particular output that you are aiming for. So the question is how you use technology? How you bundle those two or three or four technologies so that the output which is being required is achieved? I think if you know the objective and you know which tool to use, and you apply that input and the output is there and it helps you, that is Martech for you,” he added.

“Obviously, Martech is marketing, and how you marry technology to help your marketing,” noted Dhananjay Arora.

He further said, “Now, if you break it up, there are all kinds of marketing tools – right from your basic Google Analytics, which is also a marketing tool, to something which is a very sophisticated CRM, like a HubSpot or a Salesforce. You need to identify what your business is, what your goals are, what your customer is based on, whether you’re B2B or B2C, and what are the areas where you want to find them. So, essentially it is about getting data of all your consumers, bifurcating them into various segments and trying to reach them based on the maturity of the client, because you might have repeat clients, you might have loyal clients, you might have first-time clients. That’s really the long and short of what Martech helps you to do.”

These are edited excerpts. For the complete panel discussion, please watch below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS3a2araZsQ