Paisabazaar – Digital-first Marketing Practices
This week on Outside In, we try and build an interesting story on Paisabazaar using my notes from a couple of compelling sessions that I had attended at last year’s ET Martech Event and IAMAI Marketing Conclave. As most of you will know, it is India’s largest marketplace for Lending, Banking and Investment Products. What caught my keen interest then was its ‘Digital-first’ approach towards Marketing driven by a robust Data & Analytics backbone – that can serve as a fine template for many other organizations out there. Needless to say, I have added new findings from additional reading and am hoping this will be a richer read. Let’s go…
Quick Snapshot on the Paisabazaar Journey
INR 10000 Crore Annualized Loan Disbursals
~3.5 Million Product Enquiries per Month from 1000+ Cities & Towns
> 25 Million Online Traffic
129 Partners and 300 Products covering all Lending, Banking and Investment Products
Acquiring a Customer Every 3 Seconds
Running India’s Biggest Credit Awareness Initiative
ET Best Fintech Brand 2016 and 2018
Brand Challenges
Building a Consumer Fintech Brand can be tricky on 3 counts as compared to Traditional Banks and FMCG Players:
(Limited) Physical Presence
(Little) Distribution
(Nascent) Consumer Trust
However, they took heart from many global Fintech Brands like Credit Karma and Money Supermarket
Focus: Product
The focused first on creating a meaningful and relevant product that had the following attributes:
Ease of access to Credit
Ease of Comparison
Convenience to Choose
Paperless and ‘Presence-less’ Processes
Instant Approval
End-to-end Assistance
And, they ensured that the key consumer pain points are solved in an innovative fashion:
Information on “Who offers the best rates for loans?” - Check the marketing campaign here at:
Answers to “What’s my credit score?”:
Clarity on “Which bank will give me a loan?”:
Marketing Strategy: Use Digital and TV Mediums Proficiently
1) The Advantages of each were mapped out clearly
2) The KPI was clear: Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
3) Media Approach – Every dollar spent on Marketing was seen with the lens of ROI
Digital Media: Pure performance – CPL (Cost per Lead) or CPA (Cost per Acquisition)
TV: Performance – CPL (Cost per Lead) or CPIV (Cost per Incremental Visit)
Mediums with weaker correlation to immediate ROI realization were not covered in their Plan – Radio, Print, Branded Video Content, Outdoor
Communication Approach
Their communications emphasized on “functional messaging” – largely focused on the consumer who was in the market for a financial product. Thereby, the communication was centred around Moments of Truth (MOT) and kept Short in length, but played with a higher Frequency
Paisabazaar’s Formula for Success
Combining the pointers above, this is their suggested formula for success i.e. Perfect ROI Campaigns
Correlating the Digital and TV Marketing Performance Together
The existing metrics to determine pure TV Campaign performance did not invoke much confidence in them – GRP (Gross Rating Point), CPRP (Cost per Rating Point), Brand Consideration Index, Reach and the like. This was due to opaque processes, reliance on 3rd party data, smallish (maybe unbiased) samples and most importantly, inability to correlate with actual business Impact. However, as a Digital-first Organization, they decided to attribute ROI from TV with the following steps:
They tracked Online Performance – which showed a clear spike in Traffic after an Ad aired on a TV Spot
And, they could measure the effectiveness of TV on a consistent basis via a clear correlation between Online Traffic spikes and Ad Slots on TV
They could also measure CPIV – an important aid to effective media planning
Giving granularity by Time and by Day
It even helped them measure their Creative Effectiveness
Key Takeaways
Short-term: Impact within 8 minutes (consumer insight) and incremental leads for business
Long-term: Sustained increase in free traffic and brand searches
Performance-led Digital Journey: They realized that eventual goal has to be CPA for all Paid Channels – moving away from lower funnel channels and other sources of acquisition like Display Ads and Natives
Build Own Data Lake for 360 Degree Customer View: To control costs by optimizing Paid Media and mine own Data acquired through Google Search and Free Sources
Brand Investments: Clear Leadership in Traffic, Brand Searches and Reduced Dependency on External Paid Platforms. Paisabazaar conversions from free/organic traffic are higher by a factor of 1.5X over paid traffic. Organic traffic analysis is a very scientific process (Search terms, Key words, Sources), whereby a large team builds Content using these triggers (Catalog as well as Video) and links to business objectives (Sales)
Future Moves
Build More Free Traffic: There is a direct correlation between Traffic and Sales for them. A Typical mix is 60% free/organic traffic and 40% paid traffic while in the pandemic times it is nearly 85% free/organic traffic and about 15% is paid traffic. They are trying to determine how to make this mix the new norm going forward?
Content Creation: People looking for Loans and Credit Cards > They are trying to build content that addresses these Queries directly – meet the demand side expectations, while supply side deliverables are already in place. They believe that if one builds good content, one will automatically rank higher. A single wow blog and sporadic campaigns will not help organizations build the brand. They need to it consistently over many years, the way you would build a brand in the old days. For example, the Free Credit Score campaign has been launched by Paisabazaar across multiple geographies and multiple languages. It is a national campaign, but has been executed with regional nuances
Cross-sell: For Paisabazaar, Cross-sell is a very important measurement (Un-secured loan customer buys a Secured loan at a different point in time), Propensity Modelling which crosses Communications with What They are Buying, Etc.
In Conclusion
If you try hard, you can measure everything. – Sai Narayan
One can’t help, but agree convincingly…
References and Sources
1) My Notes from ET MarTech Summit and IAMAI Marketing Conclave
2) Paisabazaar Session by Sai Narayan