What Ayoshmita Biswas teaches about privacy-first marketing

Rather than being very serious, we are taking the other way, taking humor as a route. So that has really worked well for us. So tell me, what are the three don'ts for marketing in the financial sector according to you? Keep educating the customer and don't make assumptions. Don't think that your customer doesn't know anything. But at the same time, keep educating them because they might be coming up with certain ideas about financial services, which may or may not be true. Word of mouth is a tricky piece, be it on the offline world or the online world.

So be very careful who is speaking what about you. So keep a track. So reputation management is very important. So I understand this vertical has basically been, you know, is the most recent addition to the P.R.M.L. portfolio. But in this short span of time, what is the one decision that you've taken that you are proud of? I have been very new in this organization as well because the organization itself is about a little over 12 months old. And I've been in the system about seven or eight months old in the system now.

A few things that I'm proud of is one move, make the digital move. We did not have online presence purely because the focus was on having the operations set up, getting the basics in place. So once we did, we did not go out and about in a very strong way. We took baby steps, you know, getting the basics, your Facebook and Twitter, etc. in place. Now we are slowly moving at a content placement level. Initially, it was the tick boxes, you know, having basic communication, what we are doing, what the various products are, how do you reach out to us?

Why are we here? Why should you come to us? The basics were in place. Now we are moving at a content level as well. So, and moving rather than being very serious, we are taking the other way, taking humor as a route. So that has really worked well for us. How do you equip yourself to kind of adapt to this changing world in terms of technology? It's a constant learning. And from a financial services perspective, we are constantly moving. The physical interaction has reduced significantly. It's a digital interaction that has increased. Right.

But that is only to a point where understanding the brand or understanding the product has come to. The point of purchase still remains offline. Right. So it's a mix of digital and the offline world still for us. So we are present at both levels. And apart from that, usage of tools have also increased. Right. You know, your measurement tools, your advertising tools, having a marketing cloud, all of that are coming into play. And the website itself, which is the basic, you know, for a brand's presence online, that itself has gone so many changes.

Today, the website is not just a platform to give you information. It's also a lead generating platform for us. How do we connect that to the particular customer, whether it is a home buyer, whether it is somebody who is seeking just an understanding or looking at various approved projects, or it is somebody who is coming to research about any kind of wholesale lending that we do. So catering to those different sets of customers is how the website is also getting related to.

So how much of your business today, given that you've given us the sense of the recency of it, is driven by digital as of now and going forward, saying in a year's time, how do you see that increase? From the wholesale side of the business, it is still very relationship driven. It is, if you know, whoever is concerned, that is how the transactions happen. And it is typically repeat transactions. While at the retail level, it is, digital plays a huge role.

So today, we have shifted from a huge dependency of on ground people and channel partners to digital. So today, digitally, we are as old as about five months, probably from a business perspective, driving business. And we are already generating about close to 3% of the business. Right. So in that recency, it has grown pretty fast. And I'm saying the next year, how much do you see this kind of leapfrogging? Significantly. So we are targeting by next March, I'm looking at at least 10% if not more.

So how do you stay creative and innovative when it comes to marketing communication in, you know, the financial services sector? Through, in the last three, four years, we've always been very emotional about it. Financial services has already been associated with emotional communication. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, trust and care. And those are the elements that come out. So this time about, we decided to, if we are talking about products, we decided to stick to the keys of the products only.

So if the product is going to benefit you from a user perspective, we look at that. And anything else apart from that, if at a brand level I'm talking, we use quirky humor. And that is really working well. It's getting leaped up by the consumer really well because it's a huge shift from the traditional emotional care, trust, family to real life scenarios. For example, you know, Monday blues. Do I really want to drag myself to work today? And having a conversation around that and bringing it back to finance. So those are taken up very well.

So that's the change we've brought about. And this is all social, digitally led, right? Primarily socially, yes. Primarily socially, yes.