While there is a growing understanding of the space, are marketers going beyond ‘likes’ and ‘trends’ to engage with audiences, asks Sneha Ullal
T here’s no denying that the medium of the future is now that of the present. Marketers, whether for or against social media, understand its power and are analysing how it best benefits them. But now that it’s so buzz worthy, are social-media savvy brands really thinking beyond ‘likes’, fans and followers? And moreover, will social media’s importance ever equate to mainstream advertising in India? While popular and emerging social media platforms have changed the way brands look at targeting the consumer, what are the next set of challenges for them as well as their agencies?
DO BRANDS REALLY NEED SOCIAL MEDIA?
Indian companies are becoming increasingly dependent on social media sites and similar sources, to know how individual customers think, according to the PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ (PWC) Annual Digital IQ Survey in May 2013, which evaluated how Indian enterprises use digital media and technologies. What was once considered a fad is now being used as a tool to study behaviours and interact directly with consumers. “With social media, marketing has moved from communication to conversation,” explains Vineet Gupta, Managing Partner, 22 Feet.
“This means, you need to consider the points of view of the brand as well as the consumer, to allow you to build relevance for the consumer. The moment you start thinking about conversation rather than communication, the task becomes easier.”
So does this mean that all brands must use social media? If you still need to be convinced, consider these numbers. “There are 66 million Facebook users, which is more than the readership of any national newspaper, and over 15 million Twitter users,” explains Rajiv Dingra, CEO, WATConsult. “Movie stars, journalists, politicians and sportsmen are on Twitter, which gets more mainline coverage than any other platform.” What’s also interesting is that today, social media is integral to a consumer’s decision-making. “Today, before we buy something significant or watch a movie, we want to see what people are saying about it on social media,” says Atul Hegde, CEO, Ignitee.
EFFICIENT USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
While the numbers above seem self explanatory and brands seem to be increasingly aware of the medium’s capabilities, proper understanding of how it can be best used to their benefit is the need of the hour. A brand may want to announce a new product or target consumers of a certain age group; and they might plan to do it on a digital platform first. Before they even decide to, say, create a Facebook page or launch a Twitter account, they need to figure out which of the two is better suited, to deliver their objective. Through this exercise, they might even realize that one, both, or neither will give the results they need! So how do you choose a platform that best suits your needs – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, others or all of them?
1. Facebook: Everyone’s ‘Go-to’ place
According to PwC’s Annual Digital IQ Survey, Facebook (75%) seems to be the most preferred platform followed by LinkedIn (43%) and Twitter (40%). Prashanth Challapalli, Head, Jack In The Box Worldwide, which handles social media activities for brands such as Louis Phillipe and Nivea, believes that if a brand has a content-rich website, Facebook can be best used to drive traffic, as opposed to expensive display campaigns. “With a few sites we manage for our clients, we see 30-40 % of traffic to the website coming from the Facebook fan pages,” he adds. “We’ve also realized that this traffic is far more dedicated, and hence, bounce rates are lower and time spent on the website is higher, as compared to display campaign traffic.”
In the case of Bisleri, for example, Facebook was the brand’s best shot during a product launch. “It was a difficult decision,” admits Shraddha Nathani, Marketing Head, Bisleri International Pvt Ltd. “We already had a Facebook page, which had gathered 1,600 ‘likes’ over a period of two to three years. As compared to other brands that were doing interesting activities on their pages, ours was dead. Because of Bisleri’s heritage value, making a connection with the youth was tough and tricky, yet important. So we consciously decided to promote the 500 ml bottle on Facebook first.”
The brand got the agency Flying Cursor on board to do fun activities like a real-time cover photo to attract a total target of 1 lakh fans, and #WorldShabhaashDay contest on Twitter.
Facebook can also be seen as a ‘me too’ platform, though. “Everyone has contests on Facebook nowadays, that have little or no connection to their brand/ context,” observes Debarpita Banerjee, Vice President, Marketing at National Geographic and Fox international channels. “It’s a blind run to acquire fans. While the contests initially tend to work, they have a fade out effect eventually, if the ideas are not well integrated with the brand/page context.”
2. Twitter: More than spammy trends
Unlike Facebook, which is a platform for driving traffic, experts believe that Twitter is the ideal viral platform to launch a campaign. This also means that there’s more susceptibility to unnecessary spamming in the desperate hope of going viral, and trending that doesn’t relate to the brand in question. “We don’t do a lot of hashtag trends, because we don’t really believe in it,” explains Challapalli. “It’s desirable, simply because it means that a lot more people are seeing your hashtag or your tweets. But after a point of time, the hashtag can take on a life of its own. It needs to have a purpose.”
Branded hashtags, however, if well planned and followed through, encourage brand recall and still make sense. Gupta gives an example: “For different campaigns for Myntra on Twitter, we ensured that the brand name was in the hashtag. So people knew what they were tweeting and more importantly, which brand it was connected with. Otherwise, there are branded hashtags that keep trending and no one knows which brand started it, apart from the agency and the brand itself.”
3. Video: The next big thing
Apart from Facebook and Twitter, experts predict that video will be huge soon. “Our bandwidths have improved, and so have our devices,” notes Sanjay Mehta, Joint CEO, Social Wavelength. “People can consume video comfortably. There are no major problems with buffering or real-time streaming. So video for web, as opposed to video for TV or cinema, has to be an independent priority for brands to consider.”
Sabyasachi Mitter, Founder, ibs, who has worked with Tata Docomo and P&G, explains this with an example: “The Cannes-award winning campaign ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ for Metro trains delivered the brand objective the most through a single video. No one remembers if it had a Facebook or Twitter presence. The most common mistake is asking what will happen on Facebook or Twitter, without first addressing what will happen to their brand. If the brand objectives can be addressed without any platform presence in the most cost effective manner, that is what should be pursued.”
4. Emerging platforms: Not ‘in’ yet
In May 2013, Ernst & Young (EY) had conducted a nationwide study on social media marketing trends. It found that almost half of the organizations are already using Pinterest, Google Plus, and Foursquare, and more than half engage with online influencers with a strong following. However, experts don’t see a growth spurt in these platforms just yet. “They neither have the numbers nor the feet on the street to go and capture brand ad spend,” explains Mahesh Murthy, Founder, Pinstorm. “However, we should see a change in the next two years, with more social brands jumping in to take share of the ad spend away from Facebook, if it were to continue its decline. The first two off the block will be Twitter and Google Plus.”
DIFFERENT APPROACH THAN MAINLINE
For most brands, social media is part of a 360-degree strategy which includes mainline media like Print, TV and Radio. What’s different is the way social media needs to be approached, how it needs to be managed in real-time and how one needs to assess its results. “On TV, one can get away with pure image building content,” explains Dingra. “But on social media, one has to back an image with facts, or else the brand will get cross questions or be rebuked on its wrong positioning. All nuances of marketing are magnified on social media, where even the slightest error in communication can lead to a consumer backlash.”
Social media also has the advantage of being an ‘always-on’ medium. “The fan is with you 24/7, whenever he is on that platform, and whenever he chooses to interact with you,” explains Hegde. “Your nature of engagement has to be different: How do you interact with them in the morning? Will it be different from how that’s done by the end of the day? TV and Print ads are the same, be it night or day. It’s time to acknowledge that it’s a vibrant medium, like a living organism.”
THE ISSUE OF BUDGETS AND LIMITED SPENDS
Despite brands encouraging the use of this medium, most allocate only about 1 to 5% of their marketing spends to social media, according to the EY study. Dinesh Mishra, Custom Practice Leader (India), EY, who also helmed this study, believes it’s probably because their ROI on social media isn’t clear. “It’s unclear on conventional marketing and advertising too, but marketers are more comfortable with traditional media,” he adds. “No eyebrows are raised when you have an ad campaign that encompasses TV, Print and Outdoor. But in the online space, when you decide that social media push should be your major front end, that’s when brands ask, ‘Will this work? What will we get in return for this?’”Agency experts do consider this to be a hurdle, of course. Low budgets often mean restricting expansiveness of big ideas and executions. “In our organization, we have a cut-off,” explains Challapalli. “Any client has to bring in ‘x’ amount of revenue in a year. And it’s not just a retainer, it could be production, web development, applications too. If it’s below our cut-off, we have a frank conversation, where we say that this is the business model we work with. If the brand can’t spend this much, we can’t pitch for the business.”
However, Mishra believes that this will improve with evolving mobile technologies. “In India, a big explosion will happen in mobile and mobile devices, which will be far more Internet-connectedand more people will get on to Internet through devices other than laptops and conventional ways. With this explosion, if you want to reach out to the masses, and given the popularity of people connecting to various social media platforms, it is inevitable that people will have to use this medium more and more. They should come up with a standardized, industry accepted ROI model, which will make it easier to understand the spends and returns they’re getting. With more time, they’ll get to understand the space better.”
BEST WAYS TO MEASURE A CAMPAIGN’S SUCCESS
To rake in the numbers, digital experts say the best way is to measure the impact and ROI. “Tracking brand indices for digital viz-a-viz other media would give a fair idea of the scale and impact of any social campaign,” says Mitter. “If the campaign was successful, some indices like awareness, consideration and preference will see a northward movement. The ROI impact is much easier to measure and proper conversion tracking mechanics is sufficient to provide real-time measure of the effectiveness of a campaign.”
As compared to TV, Print, OOH, etc., there is no cookie-cutter formula for social media. However, Atul Hegde of Ignitee, the agency that looks after the digital activities for Thomas Cook and even movies like Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, believes that it varies from brand to brand. “If it’s a new brand, they should look at consumer affinity and brand recall. If it’s an existing brand and they want to promote an activity; they should be promoting different benchmarks, as long as they know what they are going after. For example, a brand might want its target audience to download a new app.
I can actually build a social campaign around it, and measure the ROI as number of apps downloaded. Or, I can conduct a contest where I want 2,500 people to participate. You can measure the success according to how interactive your content has been, and whether people are participating. It needs to be customized, it’s not a cookie-cutter formula,” he says.
It goes without saying that success should be measured beyond standard metrics. “The metric should include engagement parameters, consumer advocacy and some content-related parameters,” says Prasun Kumar, Senior Vice President - Brand, Communication and Insights, Reliance Communications Limited. “Any measurement should be done against objectives,” says Amrita Aich, Assistant Brand Manager, Mother Dairy. “This is because every campaign is different and objectives being met should be the sole purpose of any campaign.”
(Source: EY Social Media Marketing: India Trends Study, May 2013)
SHOULD BRANDS MEASURE ‘LIKES’ AND FOLLOWERS?
This continues to be an ongoing debate. However, digital experts believe that fans, likes and followers aren’t credible measurements. Why? “There is no way of figuring out whether people are genuinely interested in the brand, or simply click the button, move on and forget about it,” explains Challapalli. “How many active followers does your page actually have? There is no way of answering it beyond the PTAC number that keeps going up and down, depending on whether you’re spending money and how good your content is.”
For some brands, however, acquisition of fans, likes, followers or creating trending topics tend to take more importance. “That shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all, though,” explains Banerjee. “What is more important is engagement; so brands should ideally chase numbers pertaining to ‘people talking about it’ and ‘weekly reach’.
Mehta agrees, adding, “A brand shouldn’t measure in terms of ‘likes’, shares, tweets, comments; instead they need to see whether there was a Customer Relationship Management score at the beginning. And after six months or a year, is that score better? Were you doing CRM only on phone and email, and now are you able to service them on a digital and social platform as well? Does that reduce your cost of a call centre? Does it improve service level standards? Are your customers happy that you’re able to respond faster?”
Big Data can give your brand competitive edge
The PwC Digital IQ survey in May 2013 says Big Data, i.e., information collected from various sources, is “growing exponentially and is too large, too raw, or too unstructured for analysis using relational data analysis”. “Big Data is an important factor to consider for both marketers and agencies,” explains Sanjay Mehta of Social Wavelength. “From the context of advertising and marketing, there is a lot of intricate data generated about users, which will affect how campaigns are created and rolled out: what are users doing on the Internet, what do they like/dislike, what links do they click on, and much more.”
Pratik Gupta’s agency Foxymoron, for instance, is working on better ways to target people efficiently, using Big Data. “It’s about gathering live data for intelligence. With proper, analytical numbers, we’ll know what many followers of brands are actually doing, what are their buying decisions, whether they are active or inactive. We can also get to know how our online campaigns are affecting the offline ones and vice versa. With such data, our intention is to make brands efficiently communicate to their target audience in the digital space.”
Challenges for marketers in the social media space
• Get into the space only after you’re completely convinced.
• Focus on engagement, variety and freshness of ideas.
• Integrate social media into business strategy and not only see it as a marketing tool.
• Approach social with the same seriousness as mainline advertising and marketing, in terms of attention, time and investment.
• Think long term to truly understand the power of social media.
• Think about better reach, lower cost reach to your audience, how you can better brand awareness and market share. Depending on what your goals are, start with that and then work towards a solution.
• Figure out what you’ll get out of this medium. In the digital space, spending a lot of money will not get you business, but spending money on creating the right campaign, will.
• Big ideas help better than big budgets. Think emotional route rather than functional route for your brands.
(Expert inputs by Sabyasachi Mitter, Parag Gandhi (Flying Cursor), Shormistha Mukherjee, Sanjay Mehta, Atul Hegde, Prashanth Challapali, Amrita Aich, Debarpita Banerjee, Prasun Kumar)
Challenges for agencies
“The biggest challenge is media duties fragmentation. It is believed that the creative agency comes up with the campaign and social media amplifies it. Most successful global campaigns are born digitally, make optimum use of social media and then amplify across all media.” - Sabyasachi Mitter
“There are 10,000 odd advertisers in India, out of which less than 2,000 are online. For us, the challenge is to grow the category and market, get more and more brands and categories onto the medium.” - Atul Hegde
“We do a lot of content-based stuff, knowing and being clear that content is going to be the future. Almost every category is saying content is what is driving them.” - Prashanth Challapalli
“We are very idea-driven and always explore new ways to connect with people. We will keep seeking different ways to connect to communities and passions.” - Shormistha Mukherjee, Flying Cursor
Feedback: sneha.ullal@exchange4media.com
