There is a growing desire to make marketing more humane: Sharat Dhall

Adgully is back with a new edition of its annual feature – TRENDING NOW – where we present 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 the pandemic period.

Over the next few weeks, Trending Now will bring insights from industry leaders on how their organisations are gearing up to seize the opportunities in 2022, break through the Covid disruptions and find growth and remain resilient.

In conversation with Adgully, Sharat Dhall, Chief Operating Officer, Policybazaar, speaks about the growing importance of short video platforms, AI/ML, Meta and Marketing Automation in 2022, as well as the challenges and opportunities in the year ahead.

What are the trends that you expect to dominate in your sector in 2022?

As we look ahead to 2022, digital and virtual mediums will continue to play an important role in connecting brands to people. While marketers are working hard to provide a value-driven omni-channel experience for their customers and prospects, the highlights for the upcoming time will be:

Short Video – Short format videos will take over static content based ads. Marketers in 2022 will shift from hard-selling to storytellers and also becoming problem-solvers, and this is a trend we hope stays. It will all be about going that extra mile, doing some good for society.

AI / ML – While only 15%-20% organisations and marketers were using AI / ML modelling to curate campaigns. This number should grow higher with AI / ML now being used to curate, personalise and serve content.

Meta – With Facebook re-branding itself as Meta, marketers are looking at the opportunities Metaverse is going to open for them.

Marketing Automation – There are tools which have been in marketing, but not many marketers have warmed up to them. With these tools becoming more intelligent over the years and using Big Data to optimise and automate campaigns, there should be a huge scope of growth for them. It will be the age of personalisation and virtual experiences.

While technologies like AI and data-driven marketing continue to evolve, there is a growing desire to make marketing more humane. Customer Experience, Content Visualisation, and Employee Engagement will be the top marketing trends in the next 12 months.

What are the challenges and new opportunities that you see emerging in the year ahead?

Industries in India themselves have seen mixed fates since the pandemic’s onset. The challenges and new opportunities that I can think of are:

• Customer Awareness to grow insurance penetration is still the key factor and we will stay heavily focussed in our content marketing initiatives to drive more awareness.
• Brands will move away from telling what they want to say and will move to campaigns which drive home a message or are authentic, inclusive, and purpose-driven.
• Marketers will have to start to build an Omni-Channel marketing view to track how the campaigns are doing across platforms.
• It’s time to both strategise in depth and create a plethora of gloriously unique work giving out the same message for differentiated audiences.

How strong will this sector’s growth be compared to the last two years as well as the pre-Covid period?

The sector has seen tremendous growth over the past 2 years, but those have been spurts matching the COVID wave. With experts indicating towards Covid moving towards the endemic stage, we see normal purchase cycles coming back. People are far more aware about the need for insurance. So, we foresee a tremendous response for Health and Term insurance throughout the year.