Welcome Ashish Saxena, Director of MarTech & Data from Designit – a Wipro company, sharing his insights on MarTech Stack & Solutions, Influencer Marketing & Gamification, as part of the MarTech Thoughts series.
What is your industry? And how would you explain your job to a 5-year-old?
I am in the Consulting Industry. Let’s say that a 5-year-old buys an expensive toy. Now the toy is not working properly or the kid wants to change some features or he/she wants some new features. So you go to the toy shop and ask for an expert. I am an expert who can make the toy work properly, add new features or modify existing features.
What is the one marketing platform/app/solution you can’t live without? Why?
There are 1000’s of MarTech platforms currently available in the market. Most of them are quite similar to each other in terms of features etc…I am tools/platforms agnostic.
My approach is to understand the CMO’s challenges, evaluate their existing platforms and solve the problems by leveraging their existing platforms without the need to add too many tools in the overall landscape. Objective is always to rationalise, be cost-effective and provide robust business solutions.
What are your views on having a single stack? (e.g. Google or Adobe vs. a mix of best stacks for each function)
A single stack is not advisable as no single stack can do complete work. All systems have some weaknesses. We should be evaluating the existing stack and recommend additions/modifications based on ease of integration/implementation and cost-effectiveness.
How do you balance experimenting with new technologies vs. investing in current technologies that you already utilise?
It depends on the CMO’s goals and objectives. If we are able to deliver by leveraging the existing MarTech stack then it would be a preferred approach as normally it is easier to implement/integrate and is more cost-effective.
However if cannot achieve our desired goals or there is a new path-breaking technology which can be cost-effective in the longer run then we can surely experiment with it.
Which MarTech solution/platform will you invest in if you’re an angel investor?
Ideally I would like to leverage Hyperscalers or cloud platforms like AWS/GCP to build a martech solution. They have the advantages of inbuilt services along with a large set of data which can be leveraged without having to move or to integrate with different systems.
What’s the best approach/tools to understand customer pain points? Especially when the survey response rate is low.
It is always best to focus on robust data collection of 1st party data via proper tagging using analytics platforms like GA/Adobe etc. to join the dots across the full customer funnel. On top of it, we can use session recording tools like Hotjar, MS Clarity, Glassbox etc. to understand the pain points customer faces by watching the encrypted real-time sessions.
What are the best social listening tools and strategies? Why?
Sprinklr, Talkwalker and Hootsuite are among the best as they have robust integration capabilities and they keep on adding and improving. We should have an integrated channel and data-driven strategy.
How do you keep abreast of all the latest MarTech out there?
I am a regular speaker and contributor on various Data/AI and MarTech events which helps me to collaborate and connect with the leaders in this space and learned audiences, which enhances my knowledge and keeps me abreast with the latest.
Do you think people take influencer posts with a pinch of salt?
Well it basically depends on the types of people. Being a tech-savvy (Gen Z) type of person, I think they do like to cross-check the facts across various digital channels. While non-tech-savvy people often don’t take influencers with a pinch of salt.
How do you attribute sales to influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing can be used in multiple ways, i.e. for brand awareness creation, direct sales via social media channels, generating leads or buzz creation. So sales can be directly attributed to influencers if someone buys via the social media channel or app. This journey can be joined by using accurate tagging. Similarly we can attribution modelling to understand the impact of the Influencer on the sales.
What are the top 3 things on your checklist when choosing the right influencer to work with?
- Audience Match: The first thing to consider is whether the influencer’s audience aligns with your target demographic. Consider factors such as age, location, interests, and behaviour.
- Credibility and Trust: An influencer who has built a reputation in their niche can help to build trust for your brand. Do some background checks on the influencer to ensure there are no issues that could potentially damage your brand’s reputation.
- Quality of Content: High-quality content not only reflects well on the influencer but your brand as well.
Consider the overall aesthetics of the influencer’s feed, their photography skills, writing style, and creativity.
How do you foresee the role of gamification across industries?
Gamification can be used across industries as a fine line between customers and employees is getting blurred. We have more opportunities to collaborate and contribute as new digital transformation, GenAI, AR/VR technologies are taking off. Our goal should be to insert gameplay elements in non-gaming settings, so they enhance user engagement with a product or service. By weaving suitably fun features such as leaderboards and badges into an existing system, designers tap users’ intrinsic motivations so they enjoy using it more.
What are the roadblocks in implementing gamification?
Awareness and thought leadership is missing along with the use of Human Centered Design-led approach to problem-solving. Technology is available, however, companies are not able to fully leverage the technological advancements for gamification.
How would you use a million pounds?
I will explore emerging technologies to fund and contribute towards building an innovative Martech solution.
What’s the best advice someone has ever given you?
“Keep experimenting without the fear of failure.”
A big thank you to Ashish Saxena for sharing his insights on MarTech Stack & Solutions, Influencer Marketing & Gamification.
If you want to connect with Ashish after reading his MarTech Thoughts, please reach out to him via his LinkedIn Profile!
See more MarTech Thoughts interview posts here: https://themartechsummit.com/category/martech-thoughts/
Last updated: Sep 2023
