Introducing Unit Marketing

Langoor has grown from about 40 people technology startup to around 200 people global agency in the last three years. That growth has primarily been tied to our focus on outcomes for our clients.In the last 12 months however, we have found ourselves driving our conversation to focusing on an unique ways to help brands reach their target audience. With our partnership with Pensaar and introducing design thinking to a lot of brands and helping them reimagine their businesses, we have come to realise that one needs to fall in love with the problem of an individual or a brand. We then shape ideas, come up with creative interventions, messaging and tactics that truly matter to that customer.Being creative technologists running one of the fastest growing agencies we keep thinking about Unit economics or economics of a unit. Unit economics as a concept has been widely used by Fortune 500 companies and startups. It merely means the economics of the revenue and expenses attached to a business, expressed on a per unit basis i.e. per unit profit and loss. The idea is, if unit economics for a business make sense – you should be able to scale it effectively.We feel that concept strongly resonates with what the future of agency should be and where marketing in general is heading. Marketing has historically been “splash” across the board, and hope for the best. Then it moved to some form of targeted marketing but it was still within small universe of people. We believe the future of marketing is one where a brand knows each one of their customers as an individual, their likes dislikes, their intentions and behaviors, their needs and wants, their view of the world and where they stand at current time, who do they hang out with, what influences them, their beliefs and their values.Our success in the last few years has been shaped by our drive to help organisations reach their customers in as precise way as possible. Moving forward, it will be about innovating at the intersection of creative thinking, tools, technology and media to effectively reach a person, a human being that is going to interact back with your brand at a personal level. It is about building relationships between organisations and individuals on a personal level.We’re calling this future of marketing - Unit Marketing.

Unit Marketing is about marketing to a person at a deeper level such that the person almost always responds back to the brand. Unit marketing goes beyond personalised, customised and hyper-targeted marketing. That means – marketing that makes sense financially, for what the message is and how it is delivered.From an individual perspective it is about getting relevant advertising, as opposed to loud, in your face messaging everywhere. The rise of ad-blockers demands that the marketing to individuals be subtle and with the right message, addressing one’s need at the right place in their journey with the organization at the right time. It is about delivering creative communication that individuals are happy to receive.For an organization, this is about tying up your marketing sensibly to unit economics. This requires using your data effectively, setting up complete view of your customers, getting insights on each individual journey, using multiple tools and techniques to test and learn all your ideas and messaging.

Practically, deploying unit marketing has two broad components – building a relationship and delivering the right message at the right time.Again building a relationship requires capturing data, in context. It needs an organization to remember a person, their experience. In a customer journey, it is about communicating beyond transactions and campaigns. It is about building a relationship through the right touch points with messaging that delivers the unexpected delight to the user. It needs to deliver delight, when they want or when they are not looking for it. Period.We are now aligning our strategy, internal tools, technology and the broader organization towards Unit Marketing. We believe the next 5 years, as creative technologists, we need to remove clutter and build long-term relationships between humans and organisations.We will continue to enable and lead the transformation we believe in.