Seven questions I would ask as the PM of BankBazaar
The below notes are my thoughts, based on a LinkedIn post by Mr Adhil Shetty respectively.
- 75M is a metric that is like the number of app downloads, which can be influenced by marketing spend. Similarly, Alexa site ranks and Comscore data can tend to fall within vanity metrics, which typically do not help in indicating the health of the product / business.
- 23M monthly visitors is commendable. However, the better question to ask will be how many visitors are unique vs repeat, & how many converted in each bucket & for which category offerings respectively. That would offer a better picture of the acquisition and conversion numbers, & subsequently the revenue generators.
- The free credit score report had recently been offered by CRISIL as well for a short duration. While CRISIL ran a scheduled and limited campaign, BankBazaar is offering the same on a continuous basis (most likely subsidized by Experian through the investments into the company). While this approach could be acting as a huge acquisition channel, but whether it is acting as an activation channel is something to ponder upon. My understanding would be that the ROI of the free credit report would be easier to justify in the case of this campaign driving acquisitions + activations respectively.
- To add to the previous point, which category these users are currently activating and can be activated upon would be an interesting indicator of the company’s positioning and digital marketing impact.
- Internet penetration while on the increase, will require dedicated focus from product managers who can drive offerings for the next set of users coming online to make BankBazaar a true one stop place for financial products. However, a pure digital only approach may not be the best way to acquire these new users, since many are not even aware about such products or their potential respectively.
- Offline sales channels might have thin margins of 10% but can actually act as a strong awareness / acquisition channel. A delicate balance might need to be held over the next 3-5 years in terms of investing in offline vs online channels. While a paperless model and digital business might be projected to significantly increase and bring more revenue (with 80% margins), 10X increase in consumer internet might not be the right benchmark to measure it against. Increase in people actually willing to buy financial products (admittedly a difficult number to estimate) might be a better number to target and move towards.
- Revenue growth numbers would probably be the most attractive number in this article. However, a more important question I did be grappling with is whether 102% increase in customer transactions was in one of the months in the period of Oct 2016 – 2017 or Month-on-Month. Additionally, what factors influenced the spike in growth of respective categories; like stock market downfalls, ad campaigns, industry sponsored campaigns like Mutual Funds Sahin Hain, etc.
The above data, coupled with collecting qualitative information through customer interviews, would help in prioritizing the road map tangentially towards the categories that are the revenue drivers. As a consequence, such vectors will help make users happy and the business healthy respectively.