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Virtual to Real

June 23, 2016

"How social media is helping brands to market and connect with their shoppers better and is the effect visible on the brick n mortar space”

India is becoming a tech-savvy nation with the rise in the internet and mobile population, which accounts for 20% of urban population, of this approximately 8% are active social media users. With 70% mobile penetration, while 15% use social media on mobile, mobile is still not considered very friendly for shopping, as found in a research done by a leading mobile marketing firm across six leading markets across the globe. Average time spent on social media by active users is more than 120minutes per day. As per an IAMAI report, India would have more than 300 million mobile internet users by the end of this year, thus mobile is looked upon as a major touch point in the future.

Brands targeting the millennial generation use social media for communicating to their target group. They essentially do this through Facebook pages and classifieds, blogs and microblogs, and through other virtual engagements like games developed by the brands to engage the customers. Other form of unpaid engagement is also happening through public groups on facebook, like 'Foodaholics, Shopoholics, gadget-savvy, wherein like-minded people come together and generate WOM for the product or services of their interest.

"Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, BUT STORIES YOU TELL"  Seth Godin

With brands using social media to connect with its TG, it helps them in creating awareness by generating over million minutes of brand engagement in some cases. Online games developed by some of them are habit forming. With virtual communications, whole market is a public space. Consumption is thus no more an individual activity. It has crossed boundaries of home, town and country, word-of-mouth spreads across the world, where products and feedbacks are discussed, customers interact with other customers and with the companies. Still each customer wants to be felt special, and thus comes the importance of the content. Integration is the key word.  The message needs to be  integrated, across touch points and across various connected devices.

In 2011, a leading softener brand, not doing well at the store, launched a social media strategy, taking the help of bloggers and linking their social media message to the informative videos, thus pulling in a lot of customers to the shelf. Shopper Marketing has been used by the brands to create awareness and interest through social media, which ultimately leads to action at the store. Few years back, an eminent agency developed a campaign for a menswear brand. The campaign was run on social media,  wherein the customers were asked to give a missed call on a number to get an additional discount on an already running promotion. The brief given to the agency was to increase traffic and sales at the store, from their online fan base, with a budgetary constraint of  less than a lakh of rupees. The concept used was m-couponing,  and the idea was to minimize the effort put  in by the customer. In  a conventional process, the customer visits the classified or an FB page and clicks the like button.  The brand gets the data, and asks them to register. On registering, the target customer gets an introductory coupon, sent as an sms to their mobile. But as in any marketing process, a large chunk of the potential customer gets lost at each stage in the process. Hard work doesn't pay off in such cases, and the companies need to work smarter, and capture the customer at each stage. The agency for menswear brand  simplified the process to minimize the stages, and directly giving a missed call from the online advertisement made it easy for the customer. The customer got an additional discount of 5%, which can be availed showing the m-coupon on their mobile. This can be verified by the store manager in the store. In this case, the online ad became the medium as well as the message. While the online ad promoted a mobile number, other than the discounts, it also increased the traffic to the  store. This campaign was a win-win situation for the customer and the brand. Customers got additional discount, at no additional cost or effort inputs and brand got consumer attention and consideration in the overcrowded media space with minimum dropouts. Redemption of more than 30% of coupons was a success story for brand. This campaign was a hit as the revenues generated out of sales during the campaign was 27 times the spending on the campaign.

Another case is a DTH company, which used digital marketing, specially blogs and cricket sites to mobilize the sale of their upgraded setup box, during IPL matches. All cricket enthusiasts were hooked on to sites and blogs during the matches. The brand capitalized on the frustration of these enthusiasts stuck in traffic on the days, when the match was going on. This became the moment of truth for the  agency to work on for the DTH brand. IPL schedule was focused for the case. Google GPS was used to map the highly trafficked areas in the cities represented in the IPL, during the peak hours. Customers checking on the scores across various platform, on their mobile were targeted. A message was floated on these sites and blogs, in these areas to touch on their moment of truth or pain points. This message directed the customers to upgrade their DTH so as to record the matches and watch them at their own convenient time and place. Message was also linked to the nearest distributor of the service, wherein customer can call and enrol for the upgrade.  This campaign ran for almost a month during the IPL season,  across many traffic zones, covering the ten metros. This campaign moved customers from the desire to action stage quickly using this medium.

Conclusion

Facebook has revolutionized the marketing communication industry and has been existent for almost a decade now. Linkedin, Instagram, Googleplus followed suit. If a marketer is not present in any of the social media platforms, they are too behind the trend. It is almost mandatory for all brands to have a customer base on social media. But the key lies in integration, as it  should be integrated  with instore communications and all virtual touch points. They ought to tell their story and encourage customers to interact and engage with their brands.

While social media seems to be coming cheap, thats not the case and  it must create a win for the customer as well. Some kind of sales promotion must be used to hook the customers. This also helps the brands to know their customers better. Measurement is a major plus for this media, as  it helps the brands to measure conversion at each stage. This being a dynamic media, insights could be generated on an ongoing basis, and message modified accordingly.

Content being the king in this media, direct sales pitch messages wouldn't really be helpful on social media. The brands need to associate it with a trend,  be it political, social, economical or just a fashion trend. Integrating messages offline and online is essential. There is no thumb rule for marketing on social media. Some brands have been very successful in generating traffic to the store, while those missed on the key elements could not.

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