COVID-19 has caused a major shift in the way consumers think, feel, and act. As a result, marketers today are re-evaluating their priorities and strategies to not only survive but thrive in a post-COVID world. What changes does it bring to the new normal in marketing? How are marketers staying on top of their game due to these transitions? Well, our survey of the top digital marketing leaders from Southeast Asia and India brings forth interesting facts in Marketing in The New Normal Report. 

Digital Marketing Maturity (DMM) is Key in the New Normal

With market disruption speeding up the change of a decade’s behavior in just weeks, digital is becoming a prerogative to interact with the world, consumers are facing new realities, and marketers are re-assessing their priorities to scale their marketing objectives to stay connected with the consumer.

DMM is Critical, But Are Brands Ready?

BCG states that DMM is the organizations’ capacity in delivering seamless brand experiences and is characterized into four stages of maturity levels: Nascent, Emerging, Connected, and Multi-moment. According to the InMobi survey, close to half of the marketers categorize themselves in the Nascent or Emerging Stage, leaving a large room for the growth in organizations. As is obvious, e-commerce and BFSI lead on the Digital Marketing Maturity emerging as the more connected and multi-moment brands.

Given the state of digital marketing maturity, what are the marketing goals in the new normal? Here's the list of goals placed in the order of significance:

1. Acquiring new customers

2. Strengthening brand reputation and trust

3. Increasing brand awareness, and

4. Engaging the existing community of consumers

As the DMM of brands evolves, their strategies on digital channels shift from the aspirational to the actionable. As marketers move towards the ‘actionable’ end, they are better equipped to scale ROI and measurable outcomes.

Evolving Strategies with Evolving Digital Marketing Maturity

Acquiring new customers while engaging the existing customer base has become a challenge in the APAC region. Marketers look to drive measurable outcomes going forward by investing in the following strategies:

1. Building right omnichannel customer experience

2. Accessing real-time consumer data

3. Leveraging automation across channels and

4. Building skilled human capital

Key Strategies for Brands in the New Normal

Digital Advertising will Drive Growth in a Post-COVID world In a pre-COVID world, while digital was a part of most marketing strategies, 58% of marketers spent less than 40% of their budgets on digital. With a wide variety of platforms to explore like the TV, OOH, print, and radio, the budgets were well spread across multiple digital and non-digital channels. The pandemic has resulted in marketers having to pivot their plans to be more digitally focused.

According to eMarketer, India and SEA see a tremendous rise in the ad spends on digital growing by 33% and 18% respectively from 2020 to 2021. The mobile ad spends have also seen an upward trajectory in growth in India by 38% and 20% SEA by 20% from 2020 to 2021. Overall, in the post COVID world, there is a significant 69% increased digital ad spends.

In-app and Outcome-based Advertising Budgets will Grow 87% of marketers will increase their investments in in-App advertising by up to 40%.

Programmatic buying remains the most efficient channel for marketers to reach and engage the audiences in a brand-safe environment with 100% compliance with industry guidelines. With user acquisition being the core objective for marketers, the ad spends are highly directed towards performance campaigns while there’s a downfall in ad spends for branding campaigns.

Disclaimer: Originally published in BW Businessworld on Aug 18. 2020