HCL Technologies is a $7 billion global IT giant headquartered in India. The company highly encourages digital marketing, and Apurva Chamaria ( VP & Head of Corporate Marketing) oversees brand marketing, employee marketing, employer brand, thought-leadership marketing and digital marketing.
With a prior experience in sales and marketing in the pharmaceutical industry, he’s considered as a thought-leader on “digital transformation” and is a sought-after speaker at several industry conferences.
In an exclusive interview with The Tech Portal, Apurva shares his insights on digital marketing –
“The marketers should constantly reinvent and improvise their methods to keep up with the ever-changing trends of social media marketing.” What’s your take on this?
Absolutely! And this is not just true for social media marketing but any aspect of marketing. Social media is constantly evolving. New social platforms bring a host of new challenges and opportunities. How can I leverage a platform to fulfil my customer’s interests while I narrate my services? What are the metrics I should look at? What is the right spend-mix? What is the best content form? How frequently should I engage? One should continuously ask these questions around audience, brand, content and measurement.
Live interactions, VR/AR, Artificial Intelligence and compelling storytelling are some key trends that I foresee to continue to gain ground and as new-age marketers we have to be ready to leverage them.
What are your views on integrated marketing? How are you implementing this concept?
I firmly believe in integrated marketing and with our customers having multiple options to interact with us – online or offline – it becomes imperative for us to provide a seamless and unified interaction experience across the enterprise. We develop and execute integrated marketing plans across digital and offline channels with a 30-60-90-day approach. This includes running year-round 360-degree campaigns and aligning the messaging in each content asset with our growth strategy or business positioning. This also means that we follow brand guidelines and use a consistent voice to deliver a seamless brand experience.
All this cannot be achieved without a strong MarTech backbone. We have content and digital automation and analytics platforms which help to collaborate, execute and provide a single view of our programs.
How are you utilizing the digital medium to widen user base and give them a satisfactory service experience?
We have a strong presence across all major digital and social channels. In fact, we are the leaders in some of the most important metrics like applause, amplification, engagement and conversion in the industry.
As I mentioned before, we run year-round 360-degree campaigns aligned with a buyer’s journey. We maintain a sophisticated social media calendar to engage with and nurture our user base. Social media monitoring is of course part of it. From cutting-edge personalization to effective retargeting, we are leveraging the digital medium to reach our audiences and nurture our relationships.
Our approach is not just internally focused. We have a unique and multi-award winning thought leadership platform called Straight Talk, that in various ways turns the idea of thought leadership marketing on its head. It is a platform which provides insights from and for C-Level technology executives! You can explore more at https://straighttalk.hcltech.
What, according to you, are the key drivers of growth to drive business via digital marketing?
The biggest mistake, we, marketers make is that we regard digital as a very “different” and “unique” channel. While each channel brings its own set of challenges and problems, to get the best returns one should always have the basics right. And the basics are spread across the spectrum. Having the right talent-mix is the first basic. Next is providing a consistent experience across the medium – businesses have done it well in the offline world then why not online? Data related jargons come and go. What was predictive is now prescriptive. But the underlying thought is that a strong data strategy aligned to your organization’s business objectives is key to drive business via digital marketing. One should identify the right metrics to measure and align the interactions as per the buyer’s journey.
To sum it up, it is the golden rectangle of people, process, data and technology which matter the most and are the key drivers of growth to drive business via digital marketing.
What are you expecting from Pitch Off Season IV in Jaipur?
I’m expecting this season to be bigger and better than before – with more exciting products and the people behind them. The start-up ecosystem in India is close knit and I expect this to be a perfect platform to meet the people behind these brilliant ideas & products. This also gives me an opportunity to meet my old friends in the Investors, Influencers and the Media community!
Listen to Apurva Chamaria’s views on future of tech in India at Pitch Off Season IV, happening in Jaipur, on February 18, 2017, at Birla Auditorium! We will continue to bring more sneak peeks into the event, stay tuned at pitchoff.thetechportal.com
