In this latest edition of our podcast series Mobile Insights with InMobi, Navin Madhavan, VP, Growth Platforms at InMobi talks about the current state of growth marketing, top trends in growth marketing in North America and APAC, how small businesses can get ahead, and what the future holds for growth marketers. We bring a sneak peek into the highlights of the podcast in this blog. Be sure to tune in today!
The pandemic has changed the way in which people are consuming mobile and content on their mobile devices, especially in a market like India, where the lockdown kicked in with far more severity. Starting late March, early April, people started playing a lot of games on their phones, which meant that session time started going up. A lot of movies releasing on digital screens has been a witness to companies being nimble and adapting to the new normal.
Marketers are focused on understanding the highest performing channels and investing in channels that deliver the best results. It does not purely mean the scale at which users are being driven onto their platform, but also that they are looking very closely at the quality of users being driven. “What I've seen over the last, say three to five years happening across the globe, is people have moved away from just acquiring the user to acquiring a loyal user, the definition of loyal user varies by the company, and by the vertical”, says Navin.
Depending upon geography and the vertical, the growth trends vary. Marketers from different geographies like North America are primarily focused on transparency. So, the attention is far more on knowing exactly every part of the funnel of the advertising ecosystem.
In emerging markets like India and SEA are chasing growth rapidly as they are evolving faster than ever. This means these markets are more scale-focused, scale at the right cost, scale, and the right users and less focused on transparency. But given the stage of evolution of both the market and the companies are younger than what it is in North America, they've been chasing scale at the cost of transparency.
The spending ability of digital-first users in North America is very different from that in some of these markets. So, a lot of pockets in APAC may continue to drive for growth in high volumes.
Navin shares his thoughts on the varying markets and says “I think in very similar verticals, I would call it either e-commerce or, possibly media, which is the likes of Disney+ or Netflix, the trends could be very similar, where you're looking for where because any user who's transacting needs to transact and higher ticket volumes, they will tend to imitate something like North America in terms of trends that they're looking for, and the kind of users that they chase. But say verticals like fitness, education, technology, banking, and financial services, etc., will go more for higher penetration because there the ticket value could be much lesser, and hence they chase volume rather than a small set of higher quality. That is what I see as being different between the two ecosystems.”
Brands are not acquiring a one-time purchaser; they are going out of the way to convert them to loyal consumers. Right from providing incremental value to seamless experiences, brands are playing the best bets to build a strong retention pipeline. And the ones that do that well are going to really have a huge pool of long-term loyal users, that's just going to drive like continued growth for them on an ongoing basis.
To stay on top of the game, marketers must leverage the early adopters and micro-influencers who could influence the larger community. The other growth driver for startups is going to be investing in measurable channels. Paid marketing calls for systems in place that can measure the impact, be it analytics that defines the consumer journey, attribution channels, or marketing automation platforms.
Navin adds, “I think the last part in terms of measurability is to ensure that you're watching your customer acquisition cost like a hawk, right? It's important that you keep seeing how the metric evolves as you pump in marketing dollars because it's not just the paid marketing channels that are expected to drive results, you are hoping that these paid marketing channels bring in a trend of virality that I spoke about earlier, that they start helping you go up the Play Store. And so overall, your organics also start going up. So that I think is very important for every marketer to understand that your marketing dollars are not influencing just the volume of users coming into your paid marketing channels, but also look for that additional flywheel of where the organic kick is going to come in from, where are you going to get the additional benefit of putting in marketing dollars”.
Marketers must adapt to the new normal in the two large ecosystems- The USA and APAC. The leaders in the advertising ecosystem must ensure that all the right standards are set and communicated to the brands to help them understand the consumer journey in the next 12 months.
Navin concludes by saying “Our growth lies in the growth of our partners and will be far more invested as we help them grow across markets. I know that my colleagues are doing the same, I know that I and my colleagues in APAC are doing the same. And we'll continue to do that. Because I think that's the only way in which we can all learn and grow”.
A lot of the businesses have had to become truly mobile-first, rather than considering mobile as an alternate channel. App experience, the digital experience, is far more beautiful, sophisticated, and natural to the users. And it's been interesting to see how different verticals have taken the leap, moved around, fast offered additional services.
Interested in learning more about how InMobi’s growth marketing expertise can help your business? Reach out today to Navin at navin.madhavan@inmobi.com or on Twitter at @madnavin.
For more information about InMobi’s growth marketing capabilities, head to inmobi.com/dsp.
Matthew Kaplan has over a decade of digital marketing experience, working to support the content goals of the world’s biggest B2B and B2C brands. He is a passionate app user and evangelist, working to support diverse marketing campaigns across devices.
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