Social Media has become the new frontier for marketers, who are focusing their strategic artillery on winning consumers. What is different in this marketing battle is that the medium itself is evolving – and that too at such a fast pace that by the time brands take notice of a certain pattern or trend, it becomes redundant. The weapon that every marketer needs to implement in order to tame this medium is to unlearn current practices. IMPACT takes a look at the current patterns of social media engagements undertaken by brands and draws out the key challenges and opportunities to be kept in mind while engaging the medium.
In order to look at the patterns of social media marketing we need to first understand how users are consuming this medium. We are seeing bullish numbers for brand engagement in terms of significance of social media in India and the usage patterns. According to a study on social media usage by The Nielsen Company conducted in collaboration with AbsolutData, nearly 40 million Indians are using online reviews to inform purchase decisions – 67 percent of Indians who are on the web use online reviews to help them make purchases. Adrian Terron, Vice President, Global Communications and Marketing - India Region, The Nielsen Company says, “For the estimated 30 million online Indians who use social media, 78 per cent spend more than 15 minutes during each occasion. The activities performed also cover a wide spectrum that goes beyond status updates, sharing content and being in touch with family and friends, into a host of activities that fulfil other purposes like entertainment, discussions on products and services with other like-minded consumers, leisure like playing games and, more interestingly, researching both prospective partners and future employers.”
As per I-Cube 2009, there are 43 million Internet users in India that access Internet at least once a month; almost 90 per cent (i.e. nearly 40 mn) of these users access social media websites. “These numbers are quite large when compared to all the different kinds of online services that are available over the Internet in the Indian market. Our estimates are that there are more than 60 mn active Internet users by March 2011. Considering such a high growth, the numbers are expected to swell for social media usage too,” says Tarun Abhichandani, Group Business Director, eTech Group, IMRB International.
According to Web Audience Measurement (WAM) an initiative of IMRB International of the 43 million active internet users, there are 18.0 million users who are in the age group of 15-24 and 25.4 users who are in the age group of 25 and above. “The usage of social media websites is high among 15-24 year old age group. More than 90 per cent of this age group use social media websites against 83 per cent among 25+ year age group,” adds Abhichandani.
Brands today want to reach out to consumers and engage with them directly. The insights gained from social media usage enables brands to further customise consumer outreach as per usage patterns. Hari Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India says, “Brands in India are still new to marketing their products in the social media space, but companies like Volkswagen and Jet Airways are increasingly using LinkedIn’s Company Pages to engage with their customers and showcase their products and services to specific audiences among professionals.” LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking website with over 100 million members globally and over 9 million in India.
Stages of social media
Social media marketing is today divided into two spectrums. On one hand there are brands who have really understood the medium and gone beyond acquiring fans on Facebook page or number of Twitter followers. They have reached a stage where they are looking at providing value to the social media community that they have created. Brands like MTV, Coca-Cola, Fastrack, Nokia, Ching’s Secrets, Axe, Cafe Coffee Day etc have really done some amazing work in engaging with their community and adding value to consumers. Whereas brands in the other spectrum are still trying to accumulate numbers on various networks.
Gaurav Mishra who co-founded the social media agency 2020 Social and now heads the digital and social media practice for the MSL Group Asia has come out with a model of six stages of social media maturity that most companies go through. “The framework is rooted in one important insight: when asked what their social media strategy is, less mature marketers tend to talk about tools and tactics, whereas more mature marketers talk about integrating platforms, programs and processes,” notes Mishra.
The first stage is about creating a campaign microsite. “These microsites were heavy on experience but light on content and had the same shelf-life as the TVC (typically eight to twelve weeks), after which they were either preserved for award entries or taken offline. I’m relieved to see that most marketers have moved beyond the campaign microsite,” he says. After this companies get to a stage of creating Facebook/ Twitter pages in order to set up their social media presence; however, brand engagement hardly takes place. In the third stage marketers seek to increase engagement on social media platforms by starting practices that are specific to the platform, like a Facebook contest or a Twitter influencer programme. “While these tactical programmes are successful in engaging fans and followers in the short-term, they fail to exploit the full potential of social media. Most marketers are still in this stage, but some are ready to move beyond,” adds Mishra.
At the fourth stage marketers begin to integrate social into their web platforms by adding content creation features like blogs, wikis, photo-sharing and video-sharing; content-curation features like commenting, voting, reviews and ratings; and connection features like profiles, groups, activity streams and leaderboards. Marketers are also integrating websites with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn by adding social sign-on, sharing buttons, profile boxes and activity stream widgets to their websites.
In the fifth stage marketers integrate social into their marketing programmes and move from TVC-centric 360-degree campaigns to community-centric 360-degree campaigns. This happens when marketers begin to realise that their marketing programmes are most effective when they don’t only use social platforms, but also become social at the core. And the final stage is when marketers integrate social media to their business processes. “The most sophisticated marketers know that social media is most effective when they leverage it for doing the right things, instead of merely saying the right things. Companies like Dell, Starbucks and GE are using social media as a tool for business transformation by integrating it with their sales, support and innovation processes,” says Mishra.
According to Mishra while most companies go through the six stages of social media maturity, they realise meaningful results only when they move beyond tactical experiments in stage 1, 2, 3 and integrate social media into their platforms, programs and processes in stages 4, 5 and 6.
Also, there is a pattern in the kind of categories that are active in the social media space. Automobiles and technological products tend to be more written about because of their high personal involvement in purchase decisions. Balaganesh, Director - People and Culture, www.IndiBlogger.In says, “As brands, blogs based on technology and automobiles are seen more active and competitive. However, there are equal number of blogs on literature, poetry, and humour in the case of non-brand segment. What needs more focus in the blogosphere are health care, tourism industry, and FMCGs.”
According to Sanjay Mehta, Joint CEO, Social Wavelength, like most things, brands also move in herds. He says, “In the early stages of social media adoption, we had the low-hanging fruit categories like telecom, media and entertainment, online businesses, automobiles and such, most of which started interesting social media engagements. In the second stage, we found categories like retailers, FMCG, lifestyle, celebrities, sports, and such getting into the space more or less in the same period of time. And now we are seeing pretty much everyone else starting to dabble – healthcare and pharmaceuticals, industrial brands, insurance and finance sector, banking, and even professional service providers.
There are certain categories which are natural for social media interactions but they are yet to leverage the medium in a big way. “I personally wish travel companies would do much more social media marketing because travel is such a natural say for social media. Tourism boards can do some amazing work on this medium. They end up spending so much money on other media but there is nothing much happening in this space at all. Sports is another category that can be promoted a lot more here. And lastly consumer electronics and automobiles can do a lot better in this medium. Consumer electronic companies have a broad range of products to talk about from TV, ACs, etc while we are not seeing the Hero Hondas and Bajajs of the world on this medium at all,” says Nimesh Shah, Co-founder, Windchimes Communications.
Misconceptions of social media
A recent study by Regus states that social media is now actively used by between half and three quarters of companies worldwide for various networking functions, with 52 per cent of the companies surveyed in India using it for acquiring new business. However, there is no set method to measure success on social media. And therefore marketers should be clear about what they should expect from the entire exercise and clear the misconceptions.
A major misconception for brands which are just starting to get onto the bandwagon is achieving a certain number of fans or followers in a very short period of time and changing the brand perception. Yashraj Vakil, Chief Operating Officer, Red Digital says, “Marketers believe results will start showing up from the day we start and in two months time social media will change the brand perception with over 50,000 fans on the page. For something like this to happen organically is highly unlikely. In our opinion the gestation period for brand to show significant organic growth is 27 months. Marketers also believe that having thousands of fans is a significant achievement and they own that audience. The fact remains that it is only a number with no significant value, unless constant engagement in various forms is initiated.”
“Most of the wrong expectations that we hear from marketers, when they approach us, is about social media being the quick, cheap and easy way to getting a lot of sales,” says Sanjay Mehta, Joint CEO, Social Wavelength. The reality is that community building is more like brand building and takes a longer duration to become effective. “The other misconception is that social media is a second cousin of SEO or SEM. Since social media comes from the same digital legacy, the expectation of social media (like SEO / SEM) is one of intense measurability. Down to the last cent. Social Media is digital, but it is very different from an SEO or SEM campaign. It is not measurable in the same way, and must be given a different set of parameters to evaluate,” adds Mehta.
However, certain evolved brands do understand the medium and are clear about their expectations from the medium. Simeran Bhasin, Marketing Head, Fastrack says, “Although there is no set method to measure success on social media, a brand page, at the end of the day, is created for consumers to interact one-on-one with the brand and if these interactions are high, most of the objectives of a brand page are met.” Anindya Datta, President & Chief Marketing Officer, Yes Bank says, “Currently we measure success on the basis of the number of our followers/ hits, and qualitatively evaluate feedback and engagement. Going forward we will measure success by the number of increased positive posts on Yes Bank.”
Challenges of social media
Although social media is an evolving medium, it has multiple platforms and is a highly fragmented medium. The biggest challenge for any brand is to identify their relevant space on the web and work around that by bringing out relevant messages in the space. Also it is important that social media is not looked at separately. It has to be integrated to a brand’s overall marketing strategy. P Balendran, Vice-President, General Motors India says, “Social media cannot work in silos within an organisation. It is imperative that social media communication works in tandem with rest of the communication piece – public relations, marketing communications, below-the-line activities, etc as well as functions such as customer care, etc. Aligning the different functions and practices to draw upon each other and leverage social media effectively can be a challenge, especially for large brands and larger cross-functional teams.”
He also adds that the ‘one size fits all’ approach does not work in social media marketing. “Unlike the principles of conventional mass communications, which tends to centre around one to many communications with the use of carefully crafted messages, consumers have shifted from passive consumption to active participation. Individualisation is not only expected put important.”
Ramswaroop Gopalan, Country Manager, SapientNitro lists out some of the other challenges of social media marketing saying, “One of the biggest challenges is to remove our traditional ‘campaign’ mentality. Today across the world – and India is no exception – brands and agencies are used to working around campaigns. All advertising and marketing calendars are based on campaigns but social media is not campaigns. One has to be active on it all the time. Another challenge is that there are not enough people who understand the social media space within their teams. Today if you ask a marketing manager how many people they have within their own team for social media, the answer would be very few. Agencies can be hired but one should have these skill sets within the team to utilise this opportunity.”
Lakshmikant Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer at LG Electronics India reiterates, “The challenge is that this medium changes dramatically and instantaneously, so we always need to be on top of it. One should continuously learn and keep re-visiting the strategy. You need to have a dedicated team of young and passionate people who belong to this medium and relate to the social pulse. Old wisdom and elder managers may not necessarily have all the answers here. Have internal processes and structures in place so that all insights, learnings of failure as well as success are shared instantly with all the stakeholders and acted upon.
Infrastructure and internet penetration have always been listed as one of the challenges for the digital medium, but its expansion will bring in a larger audience for brands to target on the social domain. Samiir Halady, Senior Manager Business Development, Customer Centria says, “Today in India a limited TG is active on social media. To make it broad-based and be accessible to the masses, internet penetration, broadband usage and internet literacy has to increase. Today, we are talking about very few brands that can interact with their exact TG on social media. But with increase in penetration more and more brands will be able to create meaningful engagement on social media with their TG.”
Also, as the medium evolves like other mediums, brands will start having their own niches and dependence on numbers will come down. Karthik Srinivasan, Head of Digital Strategy, Edelman says, “In the next couple of years the dependence on numbers will definitely come down because at some point brands will start asking what we are doing with so many followers, fans and page views. So eventually the focus will actually become content itself. How does one engage with people based on what they need and not on what you want to tell them? That is going to be the whole change that will eventually happen. Another thing that social media evolvement will lead to is niche networks. For instance, closed user groups will be created by invitation only and it will not be about likes, fans and ads. So people will actually bring context and content back into the big reckoning.”
Simple rules
The biggest rule of social media is to create value for the consumer but there has to be a way in which one can manage the madness. Vineet Gupta, Managing Partner, 22feet lists a few rules of social media marketing, the first one being, “Get the basics right in terms of creating platforms on all relevant channels available, eg Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc; own what is rightfully ours – the online conversations about your brand – this could be on review sites, website, etc. be part of that conversation; differentiate. Just because it works for other brands, does it mean it may work for you; monitor and scale – to consistently monitor is the differentiation is working in your favour or not and look at the key insights coming out of it and accordingly scale up and down.
However at the end of the day it will be about how genuine, honest and consistent the brand is. As Gaurava Yadav, Lead- Social Media Marketing- Tulip Telecom Ltd puts it, “Unlearning is the biggest learning for us. We do not go and approach any campaign or property in the same manner as we used to. Social media is unlearning all the time.”
Case Study: B2C: Hippo
The brand’s chirpy and talkative personality gave it an edge; Hippo could talk like a person, like a friend, rather than a brand talking to its consumers. And just like a person, Hippo also had a humorous opinion about almost everything, endearing him to everyone he communicated with. Hippo signed up on Twitter, Facebook, Blogspot and even created a fun, friendly website: www.hippofighthunger.com.
In the market Hippo exceeded everyone’s expectations and the packs sold like hotcakes, leaving the shelves across 200,000 stores empty. Being recently launched, Hippo had a nascent distribution system, which was unable to identify empty stores and restock packs.
Rather than let this affect the brand, Hippo asked Twitter followers to tweet about locations and even specific stores where Hippo packs were unavailable. As people began to see that their tweets actually succeeded in making Hippo available at their neighbourhood store, word of mouth and social media took over and Hippo became a rage.
Case Study: B2C: Ching’s Secret
Ching’s Secret fanpage www.facebook.com/chingssecret generated more than 165 million pageviews last month. 45 per cent of the advertisement budget of Ching’s is allocated to digital. Most of this is on social media – Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
The brand has used a mix of content about Chinese food, contests, giveaways, cookery recipes, food secrets, market research n quizzes to build connectivity and empathy with their fans. To drive traffic they used offline pushes, online advertising and the organic growth for viral spread of content. For any customer feedback on the brand page or anywhere else on Facebook, Twitter or blogs, the company has setup automated alerts using various tools. These feedbacks are all responded to between 7am and 11pm within maximum 10 minutes. In a lot of cases Ching’s is able to get back in seconds.
There are now 6.5 lakh people openly advocating using Ching’s products and endorsing them out of which 6.1 lakh are active weekly (the largest in India). Besides, the company has also gained immense knowledge about their own products from people using them. The Ching’s Secret YouTube channel www.youtube.com/chingssecret is the largest online cookery show in India.
Case Study: B2C: Adidas
Adidas consumers live highly digital lives and social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are crucial vehicles in their digital marketing strategy. The brand approach on social media was to continuously introduce interesting content that can fuel a conversation with its fans, rather than to actively market the brand. Adidas developed unique applications and campaigns specifically for digital platform. It created adidascricket fan page where its fans have access to exclusive content on adidas and our athletes Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Suresh Raina, Kieron Pollard, Lasith Malinga and others.
Besides establishing the adidascricket fanpage on Facebook and the YouTube channel adidascricketiin Adidas invested on a cricket specific mobile WAP site during the 2011 Cricket World Cup. This is now a permanent feature and one can visit www.adidascricket.mobi and install adidas launcher on the phone.
Case Study: B2B: UTStarcom
As a global leader in the manufacture, integration and support of IP-based, end-to-end networking and telecommunications solutions, UTStarcom’s customers include the largest and most respected service providers in emerging and established telecommunications markets. However, beyond a B2B offering, products and services include Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), Next Generation Networks (NGN) and Broadband which connect with consumers, so the company also wanted to create a direct customer engagement programme.
UTStarcom’s objective on social media was to create a platform for professionals who are interested and/or are working on any of the technologies associated with ‘triple play’ in India.
1. Proactive Online Listening and Engagement: Monitoring news portals and sites, blogs, microblogs, videos and photograph sites, forums and groups, and public pages of social and professional networking communities. This helped it identify the relevant platforms where stakeholder groups are active, and identify conversation threads and communication angles.
2. Social Media Activation: After three months of content insights from the listening programme, the company identified its engagement platforms as:
(i) IndiaTRIPLEPLAY blog (www.indiatripleplay.com) – a brand-agnostic platform.
(ii) IndiaTRIPLEPLAY Linkedin group: Serves as a collaboration forum for professionals.
(iii) IPTV India Twitter channel (@iptvindia): Helps to track realtime conversations around IPTV, address queries, share information around IPTV and engage in conversations with key stakeholder sets.
Case Study: B2B: Tulip Telecom
With their social engagement plan, the company considered two things: a) To create something for external parties (prospective set of customers) b) To create something for employees. So they created a social media platform www.greygambit.com as an exclusive platform for technology leaders, and a platform for employee engagement called www.tulipcafe.com. Grey Gambit currently has 1500 members which include CIO, Head-IT, Director-IT, Manager-IT’s etc and Tulip Café has about 1200 members currently.
The entire exercise has helped the company increase its brand value amongst its customers and gain an entry and start a dialogue with them. The company has also set itself a target of converting a certain business from the platform annually.
