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Digital Marketing Analytics & Omnichannel Strategy

Module: Module 2 — Functional MasteryCode: DMACOS (MMI)Faculty: Prof. Manoj MotianiSessions: 3Status: ✅ Drafted

Big idea​

Digital marketing's promise is not "more channels" — it is measurability and personalisation at scale. Prof. Manoj Motiani's frame stacks the modern marketing operating model from the bottom up: business strategy (mission, unit economics, ROI, scalability) → customer-centric STP → the 5As customer journey (Aware → Appeal → Ask → Act → Advocate, Kotler's Marketing 4.0) → channel mix across owned, earned, and paid media → analytics loop. Omnichannel is the discipline of making every customer touchpoint — mobile, web, store, app, social, voice — feel like one continuous conversation rather than disconnected silos. The metric that ties it all together is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) vs Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) — the ratio that decides whether the business model actually works.

Key concepts​

  • Business strategy as the foundation. Mission, unit economics (price minus variable cost positive), ROI, scalability. Every marketing tactic must roll up to one of these — if it doesn't, drop it.
  • The 5As customer journey (Kotler). Aware (do customers know you exist?) → Appeal (are they attracted?) → Ask (do they research and ask peers?) → Act (do they buy and use?) → Advocate (do they recommend?). Each stage has a different channel mix and KPI.
  • Owned / earned / paid media. Owned (your site, app, email list — free but slow); earned (PR, organic social, word-of-mouth — powerful but hard to scale); paid (search, display, social ads — fast but expensive). A healthy mix shifts toward earned and owned over time.
  • The CAC – LTV ratio. Healthy SaaS rule: LTV/CAC > 3, payback < 12 months. If CAC creeps up and LTV stays flat, the unit economics are breaking even if top-line growth looks great.
  • Omnichannel vs multichannel. Multichannel = many channels operating in silos. Omnichannel = unified customer identity, inventory and history across every touchpoint (Zara, Disney MagicBand, Starbucks Rewards). The customer never has to repeat themselves.
  • Digital analytics stack. Attribution (last-click vs multi-touch vs data-driven), funnel analytics, cohort retention curves, A/B and multivariate testing. The loop closes only when insights actually change spend allocation.

Self-check​

A D2C skincare brand reports record top-line growth: revenue up 80% YoY. CMO wants to triple ad spend. CFO pulls one number and vetos the plan. Which number, and what would it have to show to justify the veto?

  • A. Brand awareness — if it is dropping
  • B. LTV/CAC ratio — if CAC has risen faster than LTV (e.g. ratio fell from 4x to 1.8x) the growth is being bought at a loss; payback period has lengthened beyond 12–18 months
  • C. Website traffic
  • D. Number of SKUs
Kotler's 5As customer journey
Aware (knows you exist) → Appeal (attracted) → Ask (researches and asks peers) → Act (buys and uses) → Advocate (recommends). Each stage has different KPIs and channel mix; the goal is to compress time-to-advocate.

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Continue learning​

📖Wiley · BookMarketing 5.0 (Kotler, Kartajaya & Setiawan)The 5As journey and the technology-for-humanity framing — the modern follow-on to Marketing 4.0.📖Kaushik · BookWeb Analytics 2.0 (Avinash Kaushik)The working reference on funnel, attribution, multi-channel, and the analytics decision-loop — still the cleanest framework book.📊Google · ReferenceThink with GoogleSearch, video and shopping insights with India-specific data — the freshest authoritative source on digital consumer behaviour.📄HBR · ReadThe Future of Shopping (Rigby)The classic 2011 piece that coined modern omnichannel — still the cleanest articulation of why digital + physical must be one experience.
🪞 Apply it — reflection prompts
  1. Calculate LTV/CAC for your firm's most recent cohort. Is the ratio above 3, and how stable is it across acquisition channels?
  2. Walk the 5As journey for your top product, and identify which stage has the highest drop-off. Where is your spend currently concentrated — is it on the same stage?
  3. Test the omnichannel promise: as a customer, switch from web to app to store. How often does the system make you repeat yourself? Each repetition is a measurable defection risk.

📝 Going deeper. Kotler, Kartajaya & Setiawan, Marketing 4.0 and Marketing 5.0 introduce the 5As and the technology-for-humanity framing. Avinash Kaushik's Web Analytics 2.0 is the working analytics reference. For omnichannel cases, the Sephora Beauty Insider and Starbucks Rewards programs are the most-studied modern examples.