Is marketing a scalable function for companies to leverage? Avnish Bajaj, Founder & MD, Matrix Partners India, decodes how marketing is used to “fuel the fire” and why it’s far more impactful for digital businesses. Tune in for more.

Salonie:

In the recent episode we did on the Hack Job you spoke about how marketing doesn’t scale and that’s a bit scary if it’s true but also having the largest businesses been built using marketing.

Avnish:

Yeah. So, you know, I don’t know when we’ll air this but very recently there was this United Airlines plane which was on fire. Marketing is fuel; so imagine pouring fuel into a broken engine, right, so I think people confuse marketing to be the engine. Marketing is the fuel of an engine; marketing is used to fuel the fire not to light the fire. So when I said that it was just more of an extreme statement, the reality is marketing in digital businesses can be far more powerful than marketing offline. Why, because you have your customer that you’re touching directly and can get instant feedback and can change instantly, so it can be far more powerful but only when the engine is working. To use marketing as a substitute for a broken engine it’s called a leaky bucket so whether your viral loops are working, all the stuff you discussed in that episode – growth loops, viral loops, is your product great, is your customer feedback great. When all of that is working, a, b, are you doing it customer backwards in my view. Are you using this data from the customers and refining it or it is I have a hammer in my hand and everything looks like a nail. So thoughtfully targeted marketing is much more powerful digitally than it would be offline but I don’t see it used that way and hence that extreme statement.

Salonie:

Got it.

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