Ad:Tech 2023: The dynamic duo of business heads and marketers fuel marketplace success

The first day of Ad:Tech saw Sai Narayan, chief marketing officer, Policy Bazaar and Santosh Agarwal, chief business officer, Policy Bazaar speak about the synergy between marketing and business goals to drive profitable growth for brands.  

The panel was moderated by Priya Choudhary, director, business solutions and insights, Google India. 

Driving value for consumers

The session kicked off with Agarwal sharing how a brand needs to be value-driven in its approach. She said, “While driving value for consumers, marketing plays a key role both for creating traffic and building the brand. The traffic has to convert into sales. When marketing, sales and technology come together, a brand’s marketplace will be profitable. The dynamic duo of business heads and marketers fuel marketplace success."

From a marketing perspective, Narayan aims to ensure effective communication with consumers. 

He stated, “We have a complex problem to solve in the category of finance which is selling term insurance and making people understand the policy offerings. When our brand communication problems are complex, and the consumer needs to be informed about our offerings, the primary focus needs to be solving complexities internally so that brand communication is smooth with our consumers. When the brand and the consumer are aligned we will be able to leverage.”

Dealing with disagreements between marketers and business heads

Agarwal believes that if the marketing team is aware of how profitability is measured, what revenue the brand earns, and what is a logical spend no clashes can occur. When the objectivity is aligned between marketing and business teams, they can work in unison for the growth of the brand. 

Narayan opined, “Marketers are known to be the owner of ideas. However, this ideology is changing. The idea can come from the business team as well. If the business idea is good for the brand to scale all ideas are welcome. Collaboration should start at the level of ideology while business propositions are discussed.”

Performance governance 

Agarwal giving her views on the best practices for performance governance chimed in by saying that when a new idea is brewing it needs to be executed for a short duration to know if it can work in the long haul. 

“We don’t spend a lot of time deliberating or discussing. Our goal is to execute the idea proposed and analyse the results. In regard to performance governance, trust should be the main factor between the marketing and business teams. If there's belief in each other within a brand, performance governance can be ruled out. Our common goal is to execute products that drive growth and once that purpose is in unison performance governance isn’t really required”, added Agarwal. 

Narayan believes that having a common goal when it comes to executing ideas is key instead of focusing on the performance governance of other teams. 

Advice for nascent businesses and marketing leaders 

Agarwal advised, “Building a brand is extremely important. It takes a long-duration and the results don’t come easily. While building a brand, everyone looks at profitable growth. However to scale it is key to cut down on brand spends because the impact will take place over a period of time. Today, the reason why our brand provides value to our business suppliers is that we have been able to acquire customers efficiently. The reason why we are a low-cost marketing channel is that we drive direct traffic. Our goal is to achieve long-term growth and brands starting out need to make note of this business strategy.”