1. In an era of fragmented consumer attention, how do you define marketing effectiveness, and what metrics matter most beyond traditional reach and impressions?
Remarkable brands are built on un-shakeable promises – unwavering “promises”.
Real impact doesn’t happen when a brand says “please trust me”. It happens when the customer says “I trust them”.
That’s when the noise goes away, the trust sits in and you have captured the mind-space. It’s a delight when you hear the customer sing the song you once sang to them. Trust is built slowly, through repetition, but it can be destroyed in a single moment of broken promise.
Reach is what you “buy” and trust is what you “build”.
To us at IntrCity, trust extends far beyond banners and messaging. It is embedded in the ethos of how a product is designed, built, and delivered.
And hence, measuring effectiveness only in reach and impressions isn’t justified. It is rightly measured in trust and prudence which reflects in the users growth, NPS (Net Promoter Score), repeat rates and customer’s LTV.
That’s the right reverb of well implemented brand and performance campaigns.
2. IntrCity SmartBus has built brand recall largely through product and service innovation rather than large advertising spends. How did this approach evolve, and what lessons can other brands draw from it?
Guy Kawasaki in one of his books said:
“It’s hard to market crap. Most marketers take whatever crap is thrown at them and put lipstick on the pig.”
When the market is crowded, there is no room for an average product. IntrCity is built on a strong foundation to make bus journeys hassle-free – that’s our promise to travellers.
The initial years were invested in perfecting the IntrCity product and keeping the promise. We solved real-world problems pertaining to passenger safety, in-bus washrooms, live tracking, building safe boarding lounges, predicting breakdowns and handling crises with the help of technology.
We kept our marketing direct and purpose driven to generate demand. The word-of-mouth travelled further than the bill boards. Today, IntrCity operates on more than 200 routes and thrives at an impressive ~ 60% repeat users rate.
Let’s also keep in mind that great products don’t sell themselves in secret. As we are scaling, trust is working as the engine, and marketing is the fuel.
Lessons for other brands:
The recipe is simple: build an “insanely great” product first, and then use marketing to connect that product to a user’s core values.
3. Many of your category-first initiatives, from women-centric travel features to SmartBus.AQI, started as customer experience interventions. How do you identify which customer insights have the potential to become powerful brand-building opportunities?
Honestly – “You never know!”
We only work with the higher objective in mind i.e. “to make bus journeys hassle-free” and the best way to test the hypothesis during the ideation is to ask ourselves a question – “How much will the customer pay for this?”
If the product has a business sense and aligns to our core promise, it’s highly likely that the product or feature will complement in building a remarkable brand.
But, the real test is at the hands of a user. Sometimes it will work “below” your expectation and sometimes “beyond”. You learn and you lead.
4. In a category where consumers often make decisions based on price and availability, how have safety, reliability, and customer trust become key differentiators for the brand?
In an online world, where there is no shortage of customers and products, the price is often validated against the value the product offers.
In the market of masses, such as bus transportation, safety and reliability have long been ignored by traditional brands. The shallow thinking is probably the reason why a long tail exists in a market. The ones who are ignoring these values are passing away success to others. The ones who are able to make it big, are not there by fluke.
At IntrCity, these are the virtues we live by. It comes from being transparent – the traces of which can be seen at each customer interaction, every system we build, every ticket sold, every communication we do and every refund we process.
It gives a message – we are here for the long term.
5. As marketers face increasing pressure to prove ROI, do you believe customer experience and advocacy are becoming more valuable growth drivers than conventional advertising? How should brands strike the right balance?
Advertising is “you trying to sell” and Customer Advocacy is the “Customer helping you sell”. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Customer Advocacy and Customer Experience are at the apex of marketing engagements. The process is slow and the impact is long-term. ROI shows in customer stickiness, engagement, repeat rates and LTV.
That said, conventional advertising has its own advantages – the reach is higher, time to influence is much shorter, more performance driven, highly measurable and expensive when done at scale. ROI is best measured in conversions, user base and brand awareness metrics.
6. How should brands strike the right balance?
To strike a right balance, early stage organizations can rely more heavily on the customer experience and customer advocacy and with scale, the conventional advertising can be full- throttled.
“When the product is truly remarkable, marketing becomes magical and effortless.” – Nishchal Khetarpal, VP Product, IntrCity SmartBus
