Welcome Gurmit Singh, General Manager APAC at Quora sharing his insights on Influencer Marketing, O2O Marketing & Customer Engagement, as part of the MarTech Thoughts series.
What is the one marketing platform/app/solution you can’t live without? Why?
I can’t live without “Poe“.
“Poe” is an app that lets you ask questions, get instant answers, and have back-and-forth conversations with AI.
Currently, what are you primarily looking for in your digital marketing efforts? Awareness or engagement? Why?
Quora’s mission is to share and grow the world’s knowledge. It now has over 400m Monthly Unique Visitors across the world, and therefore has tremendous scale. This makes it an ideal Go-To place for Full Funnel Marketing. Our digital marketing efforts are focused on getting our users and clients to create awareness and engagement on the platform and then seek to fulfil their performance objectives.
What are some of the significant changes to your customer outreach and retention strategies? And how has it impacted the growth plan for upcoming years?
Post the pandemic, we have started to do ‘in-person’ events for our clients. We recently concluded an event in Mumbai for the Financial Services sector. This event was titled “Future Finance – Navigating Marketing in the AI era“.
We also have periodic online events. We recently concluded a webinar for our clients in South East Asia. Pooja Roy and Priyal Jain from Quora hosted this event that was live on November 2 of 2023.
These events help our outreach efforts and also help us retain our clients.
How do you see the skillsets needed for the marketing profession changing?
With the growth of Machine Learning and now AI, better tools are increasingly available for studying Consumer Insights, Analytics and Marketing Automation. Marketing Managers therefore need to learn and also adapt to these enhancements to keep pace with the changing marketing profession that constantly requires enhanced skill sets.
How do you keep your team motivated to get the best out of them during challenging economic times with additional external pressure?
The team comprises employees that are closest to the customer and therefore the team has first-hand insights. It’s important to listen to the team and interpret their observations correctly. Often these observations require you to be an efficient bridge between the sales team, marketing team, product and engineering teams. Teams deliver better when their voices are heard.
It’s also important to involve teams in key projects that could shape the future of the company. At Quora, we actively give out projects to team members that involve coordinating with both internal and external stakeholders and proposing a solution at the end of a well-defined time period. This tremendously helps bring out the best in them.
How much of your marketing is data-driven?
Our B2B Marketing aims to create a better engagement between Quora and its clients. We would like more and more clients to benefit from our Online and Offline events. We would like them to know about the product changes we have made that will make their campaign management more meaningful. We would like them to know about the best practices on Quora for Business and how best they can leverage Quora for a better ROI on the advertising dollars invested. Given the nature of these objectives and efforts, Quora is completely data-driven.
What are your views on having a single stack? (e.g. Google or Adobe vs a mix of best stacks for each function)
For effective collaboration with clients, we consider partnerships with multiple vendors for Campaign Measurement and Brand Safety.
Do you think people take influencer posts with a pinch of salt?
If the post communicates something that touches the ‘logic cord’ in you — then influencer or promoted posts end up creating far-reaching impact. That is the reason why such posts are increasingly being considered more effective now.
At Quora, we allow our clients to pick up and answer from Quora or from their Business Profile and promote it. When posts are highlighting facts, we recommend these are the posts that exist in the Business Profile or are directly promoted by the business itself. When posts are highlighting opinions, then User Answers and answers that are not written by the business tend to engage better.
How do you attribute sales to influencer marketing?
Influencer Marketing / Promoted Answers, if managed properly are a more cost-effective way to achieve scale in communication. Therefore they could impact sales better accordingly
How do you connect, engage and build a persistent relationship with your customers?
Step 1: It’s important to understand the brand objectives from a client’s perspective
Step 2: One needs to share the tools that Quora for Business has that the client can leverage
Step 3: Any advice on how to break the advertising clutter is welcome
Step 4: Work together with the client and collaborate better on Campaign Management
Step 5: Share Campaign Effectiveness with the client and have a meaningful discussion. Assimilate the learnings for future use.
Repeat the steps
A big thank you to Gurmit Singh, General Manager APAC at Quora, for sharing his insights on Influencer Marketing, O2O Marketing & Customer Engagement, as part of the MarTech Thoughts series.
If you want to connect with Gurmit, feel free to reach out via LinkedIn!
See more MarTech Thoughts interview pieces here!
Last updated: Dec 2023
