SDM-IMD hosts International Marketing Conference

Mysuru: “In the midst of ever-changing digital advances, ‘marketing’ of products or services has become more complicated and throws up new opportunities and challenges,” opined B.C. Rao, Managing Director, Kennametal India Ltd., Bengaluru.

He was delivering the keynote address at the two-day International Marketing Conference organised by SDM Institute for Management Development (SDM-IMD) here yesterday.

The shift from traditional to digital marketing has witnessed more gain and insights about the customers and to understand, reach and help them to connect with the customers in a more precise manner. The perfect blend of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Digital Marketing can help in managing contacts, leads, opportunities and campaigns, he said.

Highlighting the trends in business-to-business marketing, Rao said “automation – automated way of scoring and nurturing leads with relevant content along the journey of purchase; content marketing – strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience; mobile marketing – Mobile now accounts for over half of the web traffic and hence becoming very important; and Social Media – Social Media is another powerful way and LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are some of the effective platforms.”

The two-day conference provided platform for the industry experts, marketing practitioners and academia to share their knowledge and experiences of marketing in the digital milieu.

Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Global Head, iON, Tata Consultancy Services;  N. Ravi Shankar, CEO, Aim High Consulting; Dr. Bhimaraya Metri, Director, IIM Trichy; delivered talks during the conference. Research papers, concept notes and case studies were presented by the participants from across India, during the technical sessions.

Dr. H. Gayathri, Deputy Director, welcomed. Prof. Jayakrishnan, Conference Chair, presented theme of the conference. Dr. R. Sugant, Professor – Marketing and Chairman – Placements, proposed a vote of thanks. Dr. N.R. Parasuraman, Director of the Institute and faculty members were present on the occasion.