Indian marketers continue their consumer focus: Ipsos study

The study revealed that Indian marketers plan to focus more on ROI of their campaigns, with better quality and insights from agency partners in 2012. Digital media, CRM and PR will play higher roles in marketing communication plans.

According to the Ipsos Asia Pacific Marketers Outlook 2012 study, the Indian marketers wish to prioritise measurement of return on investments (ROI) of their campaigns in 2012. The study, conducted by Ipsos ASI and MediaCT team, had three fundamental objectives - to gauge business performance for 2011; to understand the outlook for 2012 in terms of business performance and marketing investment; and to evaluate current trends in marketing actions and strategies.

For the study, Ipsos interviewed 443 marketers belonging to different industries in the Asia Pacific region. In India, a majority of the respondents were from consumer products, finance and healthcare industries.

The study reveals that marketers in India expect better quality insights and creative thinking from their agency partners. Also, marketers think that digital media, customer relationship management (CRM) and public relation (PR) will take up a higher role in marketing communication plans.

While 59 per cent of the Indian marketers said that 2011 turned out to be better for sales across India; over 33 per cent said that it was the same as the previous year, and only 9 per cent believed it was worse than expected.

The overall outlook for the future reflects positivity. About 88 per cent Indian marketers believe that the outlook for their brand would be better or much better in 2012, and 61 per cent think that their industry sector would fare better. About 67 per cent Indian marketers say they plan to spend more on market research.

Understanding target audiences ranked the top (84 per cent) for Indian marketers and they felt they did well; second (73 per cent) was coming up with creative marketing solutions, wherein Indian marketers felt that their agency partners did extremely well last year - but addressing this issue ranked high priority for 2012. Also, there is a big need gap in terms of measuring campaign ROI.

Agency partners are perceived to be doing well in quality of client service, overall quality of execution and delivering value for money, but less on leading and execution of digital strategies, understanding of digital media and global network.

"Indian marketers are bullish given the state of the global economy, but they have a strong vote of confidence in the Indian economy, despite uncertainties and many of them even expect their own brands to outperform the industry," says Biswarup Banerjee, marketing communications head, Ipsos India, in an official communiqué.

However, budgets are anticipated to rise in a majority of cases; very few are thinking of slashing budgets. For 2012, one-third of the marketers will work on a budget between US$1-5 million, and consumer products and financial services industries are likely to have a larger budget. Moreover, nearly two-thirds of marketers plan to increase marketing investment for 2012. The emphasis is expected to be more on brand investment, and marginally less for media spending and MR.

Building greater loyalty towards the brand remains a key focus area. For this, marketers prefer integrated marketing campaigns and the ability to measure the effectiveness of the campaign.

Social media/viral emerged as the most effective medium for the next three years, with 33 per cent of the respondents saying that the medium yielded maximum effect. Mobile and online advertising (13 per cent each) are perceived as the next most effective media.

"Development in the digital space will also be a key area for the majority of marketers. Digital agencies are likely to be in demand, to develop social media content," adds Banerjee.

Pay TV/cable TV (11 per cent) and terrestrial TV (10 per cent) were the other media that marketers found attractive for the effectiveness of campaigns.

The Ipsos study involved marketers in countries such as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and South Korea between January 17 and February 6. While 22 per cent of the respondents were from China, 21 per cent were from India. In India, more than half the respondents were from consumer products, finance and healthcare industries.

The data was collected through online survey method and the target respondents were marketers who have at least one year of experience in the field. Out of this, 42 per cent marketers have been working in marketing for 11 years or more.