Indian Jewellers are known to build an emotional connect with consumers. With the emergence of e-retailers for jewellery like Bluestone, Caratlane, offline jewellers have taken notice of the online potential and have been quickly ramping up their efforts to connect with the online consumer. Highly personalised jewellery stores like Gehna in Chennai now provide high quality experience to customers to discover unique jewellery designs or even let them customise their jewelery. In the infographic, we look at the efforts being made by some of the larger jewellers on the social media strategy.
In the next infographic, we shall cover in detail, the leading jewellers in South India and Chennai, and the best practices in their social media strategy.
Buying a home and talking about real estate prices is a popular topic over coffee. The Real Estate Industry in India, and Chennai in particular, is growing rapidly with new developments in the heart of the city and many suburbs becoming a part of the city. Developers and Aggregators provide a lot of information online to increase awareness of their new projects and help us make the right purchase decision. The above infographic provides information on the digital and social media activities of Indian Real Estate Developers, with a special focus on Chennai.
As the infographic points out, almost 49% of the companies are not leveraging the digital media to boost their business and hence loosing out a huge opportunity to leverage their offline business.
Some of the developers covered include Prestige Developers, Vijay Shanthi, BBCL, Ceebros and Akshaya. Watch out for the next infographic in the Real Estate Space, which will cover best practices in online media by Global Real Estate companies. You can also read our complete guide for digital marketing for real estate for more information.
Digital Academy India as the name suggests is a academy that was started recently to focus on training students and professionals for the internet and digital industry. With Digital Marketing Institute, Ireland and Internet Marketing Association, USA being their program partners they aim to develop the skills and knowledge required for a digital marketeer. The focus of Digital Academy is to blend academic and practical learning so that the trained candidates are industry ready.
As part of their initiative, they have formed the Digital Academy Industry Council, to engage with digital agencies, and digital marketing companies to understand the talent requirement in the industry. The Industry Council of which Vikas (Co-Founder of Social Beat) is a member will be contributing to the learning ecosystem of an ever growing community of Digital Marketing professionals.
Social Beat is privileged to be associated with Digital Academy to build the next generation of digital marketing professionals in India. For more information email Digital Academy India.
Cart abandonment has proved to be one of the major pitfalls of ecommerce companies in India over their brick-and-mortar counterparts because there is no stigma attached to dropping your basket at the cash counter in online retail. In a physical store, though there is no one stopping us from dropping the shopping cart at the cash counter but the associated embarrassment or stigma is enough to prevent us from doing that.
In case of window-shopping, abandonment rate is not necessarily an indicator of success/failures of an ecommerce website. The aim may be to just browse through, compare and check out different offerings of various sites. There is very high probability that such customers are going to abandon the basket. Then, it becomes very essential to develop proper metrics for analyzing the behavior and predict personalized offers / deals to attract those customers, through retargeting platforms like Google & Adroll.
Firstly, there has to be an acknowledgement of the fact that a particular basket has been dropped. Generally as an online retailer, we might be tempted to consider an abandoned basket as a case of delayed purchase. That may be a highly optimistic assumption that disregards this fact- there could have been a cheaper deal he/she may have got from a competitor. But it is not the case every time. There has been a fair number of conversions if the visitor has returned to buy the product within a short period. So, we need to consider a timeframe to allow the time for comparison of parameters but post that period, we may take certain steps to push our product.
Retargeting in combination with Email and Sms marketing to retarget the cart droppers via incremental offers & deals can make huge difference; but look out for dupers who deliberately drop the basket to get deals; may go for a cap provision like at max 2 deals every 3 months.
Reasons for Cart Abandonment
Lets look at some of the most prominent reasons that may result in high number of basket abandonments, especially from an Indian context:
Last but not the least, retarget the abandoners quickly as they are more likely to buy than first timers. But there is a need to not overdo it. Analyze the consumers purchase profile to trace any attempts of deliberate abandonment due to the probability of getting a better offer next time.
You can also read our Ecommerce Case Study.
More to follow in the coming days on Retargetting and techniques for digital advertising in India.
Ernst and Young (EY) recently launched the a report on trends in social media marketing in India. They went to about 50 companies across the country to understand how are marketers and digital agencies leveraging social media. While most of these companies are mid to large size, it throws up some interesting insights. As EY calls it, these are the "social media-savvy organisations", who are possibly by and far fewer in percentage terms compared to other countries.
The study interestingly also looks at how does an organisation measure social media marketing efforts, and also what could be the future of social media. Though the report is 27 pages long, we have given a summary of the most interesting insights:
Social Media Usage in India
95.7% of the social media-savvy organizations that were surveyed by EY use social media to build communities (more engaging for the consumers), while 76.1% use social media as a platform to highlight brand news (which in our view, may not necessarily be as engaging as building a community). In terms of generating leads, only 43.5% of the organisations use it to actively help their sales efforts.
Not surprisingly, Facebook tops the charts as the most important and most influential social media channel. There is a wide gap in terms of usage between FB and the 2nd and 3rd ranked platforms Twitter & Youtube. The study also shows that around 29% of the organisations don't plan to use Google Plus in the near future. This is in spite of the fact that Google+ Local is increasingly becoming more integrated with Google Search (we will be writing more on this in our future posts). We agree with Prasant Nair of Lighthouse insights when he says "I believe integrating networks over social media is the future for Indian brands.". This is surely the way forward and even all digital efforts need to be integrated with offline marketing efforts.
Content & Consumer Engagement on Social Media
The study validates a known fact that brands in India show special favor for their online fans and consumers. It could be in the form of prompt customer service or in the form of giving special deals. EY also quotes the According to Lighthouse Insights study, where in the period from 1 January –31 May 2012, out of Airtel’s 34,991 tweets, 33,928 were replies. For Vodafone, out of 1,015 tweets,1,013 were replies.
Blogging and Content will be the driver for social media going forward and the study shows that less than half the organisations actively engaged with the blogger community, inspite of a platform like Indiblogger. So what kind of content is currently going on the social media platforms? A majority of the updates are generic updates as opposed to brand led updates. This increases the connect with the fans. This could be showing the tired cheerleaders after Gayle's 175.
Social Media Advertising & Spends
Close to 83% of the organisations surveyed said they advertise on social media to promote their online campaigns and also for overall brand visibility. 89% of felt the results were achieved. But this is an interesting question to ask as to how do they measure the ROI on social media? Disappointingly 81% said that they measure results on social media through platform specific parameters like Likes, Plus Ones etc. Almost half the surveyed organisations have not measured sales, leads or revenue from social media. This lack of clarity on ROI is surprising because they spend between 1% to 5% of their marketing budget on social media marketing. Inspite of there being no result focussed approach, the surveyed organisations are optimistic about the future of social media. It does brands engage with consumers and create communities but a result oriented approach is required. You can see some of our case studies on healthcare and ecommerce of how an ROI approach has helped achieved desired results for client.
More on individual sections of the report soon.
The recent Havell's advertisement "Havaa Badlegi" aptly sums up many of the changes we are seeing in Indian Businesses today. Entire industries are beginning to get disrupted by technology and innovation. While businesses have been doing things the same way for decades, the drastic changes in the landscape, both globally and in India, have prompted many senior executives to relook at their digital strategy. While some industries have already seen massive changes in the last 5 years, for some industries, the next 5 years are going to be even more impactful.
Sectors where we have seen significant impact already
Offline Retailers: Offline Book retailers have been one of the first casualties of the ecommerce space. With a standardised product and ease of shipping, ecommece players have undercut book prices to take away a large chunk of the book market. Similarly, mobiles and small gadget sales are growing significantly online. Apart from sales, pre-purchase research online now plays a decisive role, where one recent survey showed over 80% of urban consumers now look up for research online prior to buying a mobile. Window shopping at stores and then going online to buy has prompted many large players in the US to shut shop. We haven't seen a similar impact in India as yet, but this shift from offline to online is irreversible.
Travel Booking: Travel booking for nearly all segments - flights, trains, buses, taxis and now even Autos in some cities, have seen significant market share being taken by online players. While holiday booking has some strong online players (e.g. SOTC, Thomas Cook and regional players like Raj Travels), online travel companies are now going aggressively after the holiday market. Expect more people to book their holiday packages online in the near future. As per a report by the IAMAI, over 80% of online commerce is travel related, reaching Rs.15000 Crores in 2012 and growing at a staggering 40% annually.
Recruitment / Hiring: Technology has changed the way someone searches for a job. From mass market sites like Naukri to Linkedin and Referring friends for jobs on Facebook, technology disrupted the way the 1990's head hunter worked. The HR agencies adopted to add value on top of these platforms instead of taking them head on, ensuring profitable growth. Due to the smart repositioning by off-line players, Online portals account for only 3% of the $250M market, while still playing a critical role in the ecosystem.
Upcoming sectors where technology will drive change
Education: Elearning has been a buzz word for a while, but there have been no large education companies which have nailed learning in India. Schools have changes, with smart blackboards, digital media lessons and online report cards, but the fundamental way of teaching and learning has not really shifted. On the other hand, globally, there are companies really breaking out. Successful examples include Coursera which allows anyone to take a virtual class from the best universities in the world on a wide range of topics to Codecademy, where one can learn computer programming. These global companies are seeing traction, even from Indian consumers. Some Indian players like Sikkim Manipal University have started initiatives like the EMBA course. It won't be too long before innovations in elearning change the way we learn.
Healthcare: Hospitals and Doctors in India are being swamped by the number of patients. While the leading hospitals and chains have invested a lot in technology, seamless connect with the patients pre-treatment and post-care is missing. New initiatives like booking a doctor appointment online to storage of reports on the cloud are seeing traction amongst the more adaptable medical organisations. Read our Healthcare Digital Marketing Case Study.
In our upcoming blogs, we shall discuss more about the options you have in your industry to adapt and lead the digital revolution.
It is getting increasingly expensive to advertise online in India, across sectors, including ecommerce, healthcare, education and entertainment. Prices have gone up for PPC and PPM across Google, Facebook and channels such as retargeting. It has become imperative now to optimise the ads to increase effectiveness and make the most of our marketing budget. How do we do that? Simple. Images decide over 80% of the ads effectiveness. Below are 6 of the best ways to improve the effectiveness of your online ads through images:
1. Keep the image simple and clean: Focus on one aspect in the image, which is obvious even when the image size is very small. Acknowledge that the customer is not on a particular page to view your advertisement. Your image needs to be clear to stand out and attract a click.
2. Communicate the USP of your brand: Pick your image based on the USP of your business. Are you showcasing the most desired brands or are you showcasing your unique products or services? Ensure that the image you pick showcases this USP. If you retail a brand people love, ensure that it's prominently called out in the Image. If it's unique products that you represent, ensure that the image clearly establishes that in the users mind.
3. Show images with a model: Your product may be great, but for the customer, she is looking at how it fits into her life. Bring it alive for her by showcasing your product on or with a model wherever possible. Images with models have a significantly higher click through rate.
4. Call out a sale or deal: We Indians love to bargain and in the online world, that's substituted with a deal. Highlight the best deal you are running, with a % off sign.
5. Stand apart from the interface: Any communication needs to breakthrough through the clutter. Ensure that your image and copy stand out from the rest of the ads and the environment where it's being showed. For example, if you are advertising on Facebook, ensure that the image does not have a white background as it will blend into the Facebook interface.
6. Test, Test, Test: Finally, there is no easy answer to optimising your advertisement. Test different type of images and copies on different target segments and track which ones give you the highest conversion rates for clicks and transactions.
Gartner has recently reported that across USA, companies spend 10.4% of their revenue in marketing of which 2.5% of revenue (or almost 25% of their entire marketing spend) on an average is spent on their digital marketing efforts. The more interesting finding of this survey is that this number is expected to rice to 9% this year. The survey was done with over 250 marketing executives from across 6 industries in USA towards end of 2012. The complete findings of the Gartner's US digital marketing spending report can be found on their website.
The largest chunk of digital marketing spend went to digital advertising, possibly with Google Adwords leading on this spend. Such increased spends are increasingly being seen even in India. However this also means that ROI on digital marketing needs to be more specific and tangible than ever before. The digital marketing spends and efforts need to be measured with sales growth, brand recall and actual market penetration.
Gartner also reported an increase in spends on content management and content driving marketing. So while digital advertising pushes customers to the brand, content marketing actually pulls customers and creates a community where brands can interact and excite customers.
Google recently reported that India is its fastest growing market in the small and medium business category for Google Adwords.
Small and medium size enterprises (SME) in India are increasingly using the digital medium to target local customers and generate more leads or sales. Google's advertising platform, AdWords can be crucial in targeting advertisements at prospective customers searching for a product/service. When targetting a specific customer in a specific locality or to a customer searching for a specific product there is no better means to taget than Adwords. Facebook advertising may be a way to build the brand from a long term perspective but Google Adwords is excellent for short term sale and conversions.
Knowing the number of SMEs in India (which Google puts at 47 million) its no wonder that India has surged ahead to become the fastest growing SME market for Google. So have you tried it for your business yet?
