1. Marketing automation indeed stood at the top of every marketer’s strategic pyramid this year. Automation played a pivotal role in providing brands with more detailed insights on behavioural patterns of their users apart from giving them an opportunity to nurture the leads. Our research estimates that some brands even saw 30% – 35% increase in leads generated after implementing automation software. With each channel working together, brands were able to create a unified customer experience, thereby facilitating a seamless journey.
2. As per an industry research, 70% of companies observed that AI-powered personalized marketing strategies generated around 200% ROI while 86% of brands noticed a spike in business after integration. Thanks to AI, marketers were able to make product recommendations to users, hyper-personalization of messages, optimization of display and search ads, email marketing and even content marketing by discovering what works better and what type of content is more effective. All in all, it empowered brands to have a better engagement with their customers and gave a boost to customer loyalty and retention.
3. The numbers of live streaming platforms and streamers have increased mainly since the onset of the pandemic in late 2019. With the use of live streaming this year, consumers got yet another opportunity to acquire better information about brands, products & discover the character of brands. Thanks to real-time interaction, Live streaming emerged as a strong medium for brands to create a better relationship with their consumers and expand the viewership for their marquee events and new launches. Continuous visibility on different live streams enabled brands to experience better engagements. The community of live streamers is just starting to get bigger and live streaming will continue to play an exceptional role in 2022 as well.
4. According to a Google KPMG report, 70% Indians find local language digital content more reliable; 88% Indian language internet users are more likely to respond to a digital advertisement in their local language as compared to English. We saw digital marketing moving towards vernacular in a holistic way. Brands actively began transcending into literacy agnostic content across formats – audio and video to target consumers across the spectrum. For example, if you look at the latest brand video for Baidyanath Chyawanprash, the entire communication is primarily in Hindi as North India is their target location. Even the media banners and communication on the social media handles follows the same route. In this year, there have been multiple examples of brands like Britannia Good Day (Tamil), Ola Autovin Home Delivery (Tamil), Goodknight Fabric Roll-On (in Bengali), Sunfeast YiPPee (in Malyalam) which were some of the most viewed YouTube Ads in the regional language.
5. Nano influencers and creators were one of the core facets of all major ongoing campaigns and helped in providing brands with valuable awareness and recall amongst a niche audience. Nano influencers often see the highest percentage of engagement, as they have a small and more closely linked community of followers. According to the INCA report, the average engagement rate of nano-influencers in India is 30%, while for micro-influencers it is 14.5%. For mega and macro it stands at 18.2% and 12.7%, respectively. We observed major brands dedicating about 20 – 25% of their brand promotion budget to influencer marketing and primarily focus on nano-influencers that can reach their target group.
6. Voice Search emerged as a new Market For Marketers. According to research estimates, 65% of smart speaker owners don’t want to go back to a life without a voice-controlled assistant. Smart speakers will continue to change the ways users interact and spend.
Written By Shreyansh Bhandari (COO and Co-Founder, Lyxel&Flamingo)