Amidst layoffs, Whisskers Marketing Comes Up With A Solution To Tackle The Problem
Gurgaon-based Whisskers Marketing has launched India’s first digital marketing simulation tool, allowing students and professionals to get hands-on experience in all major global search platforms like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. by playing with virtual money and learning the real time optimization for higher conversion rate and better return on investment (ROI).
As per a report by Morgan Stanley, India's digital advertising market has grown at a fast pace of 33 per cent annually between 2010 and 2015, while spending as a percentage of total advertising increased to 13 per cent or nearly $1 billion in 2015.
The spending is only expected to increase as more budgets is expected to be allocated to digital media, from other offline channels like TV, newspaper etc., especially with an expanding user base on these channels.
The Internet penetration in India is expected to double by 2020, to 700 million users, leaving US far behind.
However, there has been a lag between companies wanting to expand their digital marketing teams and the availability of suitable candidates. It has been found that the talent in the digital marketing field is very scarce and one of the biggest problems marketing heads are facing.
As per K Start Digital Marketing Survey Report, June 2016, 66 per cent of the surveyed companies found that there were not enough people who understood the digital marketing space well enough.
While most of the IT sector is facing layoffs, management consulting companies in India and globally are seen hiring talent from giants in the industry like Google and even tech entrepreneurs in the digital space, to strengthen their digital and analytics arm.
This can also be a result of how automation is changing the job scenario, an ongoing debate between Musk and Zuckerberg.
eMarketer estimates that digital media accounted for 12.6 per cent of total ad spends in India in 2015 and is expected to cross $1 billion or 14.3 per cent by 2017, and it would only continue to grow.
In an interview, Rajan Anandan, Vice President at Google, mentions, "Digital advertising has now reached scale in India, with over 350 million users on the Internet already, and over 200 million smartphone users. This has opened the opportunity to reach all SEC A and B audiences and an increasing number of SEC C and D consumers."
Whisskers Co-founder Pooja Verma, who also worked at Google and has worked in the digital space for many years, reiterates the point on how her marketing agency is approached by not only tech organizations, but also traditional companies who want to make a strong foundation in the digital space.
"The startup scenario is definitely one with no dearth in cash, and the young co-founders of these companies understand the need to market to the relevant audience. But what's inspiring is that even traditional businesses across various sectors are now understanding the need to go online and make their presence felt amongst the digital consumers," she added.
Like other marketing leaders, Pooja Verma also faced a similar situation where there weren't enough well-trained digital marketing professionals who could be hired.
"At first, we would interview people for digital marketing roles, who had either some experience in another agency or had a digital marketing degree. But what we found was that a lot of them could actually do with some more effective training which was hands-on and which would help them make better use of marketing and advertising channels like Facebook and Google AdWords," said Pooja Verma.
