Data Analysis in Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a domain where you engage with real people but in the virtual world of the internet. It is not easy to get a “face-to-face” sense of whether you are executing the right plans and if they are gathering the right kind of attention for you. This is where it becomes vital to have hard data on the type of users you want to target, which tactics will work for them, and most importantly, to get accurate feedback on the performance of your campaigns. All of this calls for rigorous, accurate data analysis in digital marketing to help brands utilise their budgets in the most optimal manner. At every stage of the consumer cycle, from brand awareness to product purchase, accurate data analysis paired with wise decision-making is the secret sauce that helps get the success recipe just right.

Data analysis in digital marketing strategies plays a major role for any brand in the following ways:

● Market Analysis: For a better understanding of market dynamics and growth opportunities

● Audience analysis: To create target customer personas for more precise targeting

● User experience design: To formulate marketing strategies for better engagement

● Personalised marketing: To tailor tactics as per user preferences and behaviour

Defying data and not working on rectification of the issues is a major reason for the fall of any business.

Background of PepperTap

Milind Sharma and Navneet Singh founded a grocery delivery startup, PepperTap in 2014. The basic concept was delivering groceries to the customer’s doorstep. It was born when Navneet’s wife asked him to accompany her for grocery shopping. This made Navneet think about how amazing it would be if the groceries could be delivered to your doorstep.

The beauty of the business model of PepperTap was its simplicity. It operated as an intermediary between the local grocery shops and customers. This cut down on material acquisition costs, inventory risks etc.

They launched a mobile app which consumers could use to purchase groceries. All of this was during the phase when Indian consumers were getting used to the idea of buying online and with the increase in internet usage this concept was bound to get more customers for them. This made PepperTap one of the largest players in India in the online grocery delivery business within a year of its inception. PepperTap leveraged various digital marketing strategies including social media marketing, search engine marketing and influencer marketing. One of their campaigns in 2015 even made their brand hashtag ‘Bahut Aasaan Hain’ trend on Twitter.

Why did it fail?

Despite having so many factors in their favour and catching the eyeballs of urban consumers and getting a total funding of USD 51.2 million, PepperTap had to shut down in 2016.

Some of the biggest reasons were:

● High user acquisition cost: Too much of their marketing budget was spent on acquiring customers. If the user acquisition cost is too high relative to the total lifetime value of the customer, then it is not possible to sustain growth. PepperTap had this analysis available via user acquisition and user retention data. However, they thought that they would eventually build a loyal user base. In their opinion, the high user acquisition cost was simply the cost of doing business.

● Technical glitches on the mobile app: The integration of the app with the partner stores was not great. Sometimes the customers were unable to see the entire product list from a particular store. This happened due to the explosive pace at which they platformed partner stores on the app without getting their complete inventory online beforehand. This meant that the smaller stores had to adopt electronic inventory management and billing systems. For the bigger chains and hypermarkets, the data generated by their systems needed to be plugged into the PepperTap systems, as often as three times a day. The data about the sub-optimal user experience was available to PepperTap via the customer behaviour within the app, events tracking, which screen did the majority of drop-offs that happened or even by collecting feedback from customers who dropped off. However, PepperTap failed to remedy the situation fast enough.

● Since PepperTap planned for the long-term, they needed to build buffer capacity from the ground up in their logistics and operations processes. This was necessary to fulfil their USP, a 2-hour delivery promise. Combined with the discounts, this meant they burnt cash on every single order at a high pace and volume. This was something they knew of but didn’t get to fixing before they had burnt through more cash than they planned.

If your brand is either unlaunched or new to the market, prudent decision-making guided by precise data analysis can help you create the biggest splash and register yourself in the minds of your target audience. Visit grocurv.com to know more about how your brand can create the right narratives to connect best with your customer.

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