Panel Discussion: Real time, location-based marketing and e-tailing strategies

Day 2 of the Intenational Conference on Social Media for Business saw the 3rd panel discussion of the conference. The customers of today have evolved; the advent of social media has ensured that the communication between consumers and brands is very immediate and direct. According to Mr. Sanjay Mehta, CEO, Social Wavelength, "The customer of todaylikes or comments or tweets about the brand as soon as he sees a banner or an ad. If a marketer waits for then conventional marketing responses, he is likely to lose out on a lot of customers." 

In these changing times, speed of marketing responses has become a critical success factor. The traditional way of having annual marketing plans and running up the organisational ladder will very soon become obsolete. Moreover, the front-end of marketing is in much more direct contact of customer expectations and consequently, they are in a much better position to deal with them. Mr. Ummed Singh, Head-Marketing, ColorPlus Fashion Ltd., said, "It is very necessary and beneficial to empower the marketing teams, they are in constant contact with the customer and are the torch bearers of the brand."

With the response time becoming very short, real time marketing, in its essence has become very important. Brands have began capitalising on the various situations that keep arising through rela time marketing. "All real time marketing efforts need to have high visibility but more importantly, they need be relevant to the context and meaningful", said Mr. Manuj Bajaj, Vice President (Marketing), GreyBox Technologies.

Just to put things into perspective, the tools of real-time, location-based marketing and e-tailing are essentially to solve or mollify customer problems. These tools, if utilised via social media properly, can provide the quintessential solutions to what the customer wants, when he wants it and how he wants it.

This post was written by Jayesh Surisetti, PGP 2013-15. He can be contacted at pgp13082.jayesh@iimraipur.ac.in