Learn about the Trade Marketing & evolution of marketing from expert Bhuvan Thaker

Marketing is a reflection of market economics and market economies are shaped by consumers behaviours i.e. needs and wants, like and dislike, and this in-turn is shaped by brands influencing the minds of the consumers with marketing.

Do you see the endless loop of illusion?

Bhuvan Thaker, Strategic Partner, Thoughts2Connect

With changing times come changing marketing plans. The birth of social media as a competing media channel for advertising has changed the narrative of digital marketing. 

Bhuvan speaks about the fundamentals of digital trade marketing, the new marketing labels created by marketers and how businesses should adapt their marketing strategy accordingly. 

Read on to know more

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1. What is trade marketing and how is it different from normal marketing?

Trade marketing as the name suggests is about connecting with trade partners within an industry. 

Trade marketing is not different from normal marketing; the same principles apply here too, but the way we think about strategies and conduct our marketing activities within the trade circles is a little more personal when compared to non-personal marketing done within the FMCG industry. 

E.g. A battery manufacturer would select the top 10 dealers and their families and fly them to luxurious weekend holidays to strengthen loyalty.

Another example is an FMCG brand that would incentivize high-value rewards either in cash or credit for distributors or retailers who help them achieve their annual sales goals. 

Trade marketing is an important element within the overall B2B marketing because it helps the business to acquire and engage with high-value buyers. 

The unique thing about trade marketing is that although every B2B business has to engage with high-value buyers the engagement method and degree of engagement will differ from one industry to another. 

Digital B2B trade marketing is a little different from B2B marketing in general and I believe non-digital B2B trade marketing can benefit from this new approach to grow. 

Let me explain, first up, in Digital B2B marketing, trade marketing is called partner marketing, and here identifying and scouting potential right product partners is critical and curious to the growth of a Digital product after it has achieved gained a certain market share within a certain market. 

For a Digital B2B business i.e. SaaS, to grow in adjacent markets or find new opportunities in different market segments it becomes important to find the right product partners that complement the growth and it’s a win-win for both the partners involved, here both are aligned on a common goal. 

Partner marketing is also done in B2C marketing. For example, two complementing products/brands coming together — toothpaste brand and toothbrush brand.  

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2. So, how has marketing evolved over the years? What has changed significantly?

I will touch upon the philosophical side of marketing, I think it is important sometimes to not see things purely from a commercial perspective to understand how things are evolving and whether it is evolving for good.

Marketing is a reflection of market economics and market economies are shaped by consumers’ behaviors i.e. needs and wants, likes and dislikes, and this in turn is shaped by brands influencing the minds of the consumers with marketing. Do you see the endless loop of illusion?

This illusion loop expands and shrinks, when this loop expands we see a lot of new categories of products emerge, some are useful to humankind and many are useless which is pushing us to consume mindlessly. 

We have only seen the loop expand in the last 100 years, it seems like the bubble needs a little correction because it has pushed us to create artificial consumerism.

Check out the example of the topic.

A brand has two functions: 

(1) to help products to differentiate themselves, 

(2) and to build trust in the minds of the consumer with the superior product offering or quality.

And branding helps in achieving these two functions by influencing the minds. 

Over the years marketers have become sophisticated and with so much competition, thanks to the prosperity engine i.e. consumerism and the model of economics that we follow in business, we have created a force i.e. loop of illusion which makes us want to push the boundaries of influencing the minds of consumers. 

This has given birth to Neuromarketing, which is nothing but a sophisticated way to say that marketers have figured out a way to influence consumers without them realising they are getting influenced aka manipulated. 

Do you see what has happened? We have forgotten the function of a brand and are only focusing on branding.

The fundamental concept of marketing and its framework has not changed; only new labels are created every passing decade. 

E.g. Now that HubSpot has grown sufficiently big, they have yet again coined a new term “Flywheel” aka customer buying decision journey. 

It was first articulated by John Dewey long-long back to understand different stages of customers’ decision journey. 

It was created in the shape of a funnel. As time passed, management consultants, like OxfordSM and McKinsey refined it and made it into a circle, it was a meaningful contribution to turn the funnel into a circle to drive the point of the “continuum”. 

With “Flywheel” HubSpot has recreated an energy-efficient wheel for B2B marketing geeks.

I am sure for many purist marketers like me, it is crazy to keep up with so many new labels. Yet can’t help but admire the creativity in packaging! Like this Flywheel, this will also keep happening endlessly! 

Who else can sell old wines in new bottles if not a marketing company? And this is the truth of every industry whether it’s digital, non-digital, or legacy.

3. How businesses should align their marketing department in future?

“I believe marketers create the future and that future is created now”. 

What I mean is, that when we make a change now, we create our future. 

We live in a world that has empowered us beyond our imagination, it is allowing every one of us to disrupt legacy industries e.g. Ather Energy an electric two-wheeler startup started by two freshers from IIT Madras.

In this context, the field of media is being constantly disrupted with new products that eventually become new media channels — The birth of Social Media as a category is the result of this. 

This has put pressure on organisations to align their marketing army to tackle this change; the immediate way to align is to add to the stack of the army. 

But eventually, businesses would ask themselves, How many human armies can they add to the stack? Businesses are limited in the resources they can purchase, and hence they have to reorganise themselves to make sure they remain aligned with any new changes that are happening at an uncatchable speed. 

And let’s face it shareholders and stakeholders both want stability in an unstable market environment, and stability can only come from having control, businesses can only control themselves the best way by putting structures, systems and processes in place, and this brings a need for reorganising the marketing department which helps the business run efficiently.

As a marketer, I would consider a couple of methods, that is, “First Principle”, “Identifying Patterns”, “Divergent Thinking”, and “Inference” as some of the ways to come up with a possible solution to a problem of finding a common structure that would align marketing with changing business needs of now and future. 

The result is the “3 Pillar of Marketing framework”; it is flexible to accommodate various shapes and sizes of organisational structure and industries.

If the readers are interested they can listen and read about it here.

4. What are some Video Marketing tactics that startups and SMEs should adopt in recent times?

I think Shoppable videos would become a big trend because of the convenience they offer both to marketers and consumers. 

With compression technology being improved massively with AI, this will explode and make an impact creativity will play the biggest role. 

About Bhuvan (in his own words)

My fascination for marketing ignited when I started working as an intern with a startup in Chennai called “Student Concepts” it was built by young professionals for the student community. 

We were in the business of helping brands connect with young audiences at colleges and schools. 

Since I had learned multimedia during my summer holidays, this designing skill came in handy while working on creating promotional material at Student Concepts besides doing many other things for the next 3 years. 

This was the time when I experienced the power to influence people with design and communication. This was the start of my journey in the field of brand and marketing. 

Then I took up a Masters in Marketing from LIBA, one of the top B-School in India to understand the framework and concepts. You can see some of my early works in designing documented on Behance.

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