MUMBAI: Placing greater emphasis on growing brand loyalty, integrated marketing campaigns and the returns on investment, Indian marketers are highly optimistic about the expected outlook of their brands in 2013, with 85 per cent confident that their band will perform better than 2012, according to the Ipsos Asia Pacific Marketers Outlook 2013 report.

More than four out of ten, which is 43 per cent Indian marketers, said that their company has performed better than expected in 2012, in terms of sales across India. On the other hand, over three in ten, around 33 per cent said that it was same as the previous year and about 24 per cent believe it was worse than excepted.

Ipsos India head of marketing communications Biswarup Banerjee said, “Understanding target audience and working on a shared strategy were top performing capabilities in 2012 but are less prioritized in 2013; while measuring campaign effectiveness and creative marketing solutions are the top priorities this year for Indian marketers. This suggests that marketers are setting higher standards and becoming more result-driven in 2013.”

68 per cent of those surveyed believed that the key challenge of Indian marketers in 2013 will be improving overall marketing effectiveness and enhancing ROI measurements, followed by building greater brand loyalty at 61 per cent, developing more integrated marketing strategy at 60 per cent and to further develop the potential of digital media platforms like social networking sites, blogs, mobile and more at 57 per cent.

They expect better quality insights and creative thinking from their agency partners. Indian marketers think social media will take up a higher role in marketing communication plan.

While social media and viral videos (21 per cent) are cited as the most effective medium in the next three years, TV (21 per cent) is still regarded as an important medium in the future considering the large number of uneducated population in India who patronize TV.

Company websites at 83 per cent, dedicated brand web pages at 80 per cent and social networking sites at 68 per cent, will be the most important digital media channels to be used by marketers. This will help establish unique positioning in order to differentiate from competitors.

Marketers are highly optimistic about their brand outlook in 2013, but are more conservative towards their respective industry outlook. Meanwhile, retail industry marketers are less optimistic about the outlook of their brands.

“With sectors from automotive to finance, healthcare to consumer products all demonstrating positive outlooks for 2013; we expect to see smarter spending and strategic deployment of always-limited-resources so that marketers can focus on communicating with their most profitable customers. Learning how to tailor content, channel, frequency and message to emotionally engage with key segments will be the difference between budgets well spent and money wasted,” Banerjee added.

The report states that 70 per cent of Indian marketers and 59 per cent Chinese marketers have plans to increase overall budget for marketing investments in 2013. One-third of the marketers will be working on a budget between USD one million to five million. Consumer product companies are likely to have a much larger budget.

Ipsos interviewed 372 senior marketing professionals online from December 2012 – January 2013, out of which 30 per cent respondents were from Mainland China and 19 per cent were from India. More than half the respondents in India came from the consumer products, finance and healthcare industry.