Digital agency ET Medialabs headquartered in NCR, which bills itself as a growth advertising and analytics company, has expanded overseas with an office in Singapore launched in August 2022. The initial team of 5 to 10 people will focus on client relationship and business development, while delivery would be facilitated by the 200-plus team in India. By January 2023, the headcount in India would go up by another 50, said Vibha Singh, Director, Apac, ET Medialabs, in conversation with Medianew4u.com.
She added that the choice was between expanding to Apac and the Middle East. ET Medialabs chose the former with an eye on the opportunity in markets like Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and Australia. Admittedly, a major challenge in the initial couple of months would be to establish a strong brand image.
“Though we are very well known in India, it will take us a little time before we can have the same kind of brand recognition in Apac. We are trying to capture markets such as Indonesia because of the population and volume, and the similarity to the Indian market,” added Singh.
A physical field presence was necessary to enable market penetration, notes the spokesperson.
“Eventually the clients want to have trust; there are a lot of agencies right now serving international clients. The kind of growth which we were looking at that wasn’t possible just by sitting back in India and trying to serve the clients, because it’s a lot of trust also which needs to come in,” she elaborated.
Through referrals, the outfit already has on board two clients in Singapore.
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A major chunk of ET Medialabs’ work is in performance marketing, but other areas like branding, programmatic, marketplace management, SEO and retention have grown in recent times, avers Singh. As on date, 60pc of the business is from performance marketing.
“In branding also a lot of clients are spending heavily to make people aware of their brands, but ET Medialabs brings differentiation because we make branding also data driven; are you running an ad because 100 people are watching or are you running your ad because out of these 100 people you can ensure you are making the most relevant 100 people to watch it with the help of data? Then the chances of them eventually liking, considering and converting on the brand is higher. We always feel that data can be the backbone of every decision we are taking,” explained Singh.
ET Medialabs, which has been in business for over a decade, has worked with new age brands such as Cred, Blinkit, Grofers (Blinkit), Urban Company and Licious, among several others.
Singh added, “We were part of their growth journeys when these were growing and before they became unicorns; we are still working with some of them.”
