Social Beat's Rohit Uttamchandani, Head of Digital Advertising & Real Estate was one of the speakers at the Real Estate Digital Marketing Conference in Bangalore on the 22nd March 2016, where he spoke on how real estate companies can leverage content marketing effectively for branding and lead generation. The conference was attended by key decision makers from some of Bangalore's leading real estate companies and included talks on social media marketing, measuring digital campaign ROI, driving sales through personal branding, Internet of Things (IoT) and Virtual Reality.
Rohit's talk focussed on how content marketing, done right, can be a powerful tool to help real estate companies build their brand reputation online as well as generate leads in the long-term. To be successful in real estate content marketing in 2016 and beyond, one has to create content that is not only unique but also ten times better than the best content on that topic, anywhere on the internet. “10x Content” has become the new buzzword amongst advanced content marketers and the session talked about the ideation, creation and amplification of content for real estate with a clear focus on delivering business results. You can view the presentation from the talk below:
We are delighted to announce that Social Beat’s Co- Founder Suneil Chawla, received the “Emerging Entrepreneur Award″ from the Sindhi Chamber of Commerce, held on August 28 2015 at The Savera Hotel in Chennai.
Devoted to encourage young and budding entrepreneurs, the Chamber facilitates emerging entrepreneur every year. The 8th edition of the awards was presented by Governor of Tamil Nadu, Dr. K Rosaiah to young and aspiring entrepreneurs. Speaking at the occasion, Suneil said, “It's been an amazing three years and I am humbled to receive an award for our entrepreneurial journey. We have been able to grow only because of the amazing team that we have and I accept this award on behalf of everyone at Social Beat."
Dr K Rossaiah congratulated the recipients and said, “Be it in providing employment, spread of education, establishing industries or promoting trade and commerce, the contribution made by Sindhis is unique and deserves a special mention.”
Social Beat co-founder Suneil Chawla featured in The Times of India coverage on how companies are leveraging the reach of bloggers and influencers for building their brand visibility online. We have also recently launched our new initiative for Influencer Marketing in India which can be seen at www.influencer.in
Social Beat co-founder, Vikas Chawla's article on the advanced ?Facebook? ad techniques to focus on in 2015, featured in the Business Standard.
As the year 2014 draws to an end and we heartily welcome 2015, we bring to you the list of top 5 social media campaigns of the year 2014 that created a huge buzz for all the good reasons. Here goes the list:
When the #IceBucketChallenge was trending across the world, a journalist from Hyderabad, Manju Kalanidhi, had different ideas brewing in her mind. Instead of wasting water in a country where there is a scarcity of this essential life resource, why not do something that attempts to feed the millions of poor and hungry. The challenge put forth by Manju on Facebook required friends to cook or donate one bucket of rice to poor and hungry in the locality and post a picture on Facebook / Twitter doing the same with the hashtag above. Within 4-5 days, the page had more than 40,000 fans and 35000+ mentions. Even celebrities like Priyanka Chopra came out in support of this noble campaign.
When one of India’s favorite noodles brand launched a new, healthier variant – Oats Noodles, they had a tremendous task of spreading awareness about this healthy variant amidst the frenzy for its other cousins. They cashed effectively on the Selfie craze – asking fans to tweet their Selfie having breakfast with the hashtag #HealthyIsEnjoyable. Daily 10 winners were announced, each winning the monthly supply of Maggi Oats Noodles. The campaign reached 2 million+ fans and had an increase in brand engagement by more than 50%*.
Quickr, one of India’s most reputed online classifieds, leveraged content marketing to the fullest for their Diwali campaign “Buyers & Sellers ka perfect matchmakers”. Quickr encouraged customers to blog about their shopping experiences via BlogAdda resulting in immense customer engagement & boost to the traffic to the website. The campaign was extremely successful as it cashed in on the festive shopping season and customers didn’t mind blogging about their experience as they were rewarded with cashback offers and other prizes, resulting in huge buzz creation online.
22nd August, 2014 marked the 375th anniversary of Chennai, earlier known as Madras. As part of the 375thanniversary celebrations, the Murugappa group has launched the #TheMadrasSong to celebrate the occasion & give a fitting tribute to the history, tradition, and culture of this city.
The digital campaign for the song involved a multi-channel campaign, right from evocative content such as Madras Trivia, engaging contests and apps like the Madras Favorite Memory App that asked people to vote for their favorite spot in Madras. The entire campaign was a big success that allowed the video to garner 2.5 lakh+ views on YouTube. You can view the song here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAqtE4KdJL8
Procter & Gamble launched the #MyRoleModel campaign for Gillette during Father’s Day. With the target being men between ages 15-45 years, the campaign asked the father-son duos to put shaving foam and share their Selfie to win exciting prizes. The standout factor for the campaign was the 360-degree approach with even the TV Commericals sporting the hashtag. The blogger partnerships were leveraged in a big way to spread awareness about the campaign, which was endorsed by Mr. Dependable-Rahul Dravid.
Note: Other campaigns could have made to the list and missed out narrowly based on considerations of organic virality created.
Apart from 12th of December being a Friday & the birth day of Rajnikanth & Yuvraj Singh, we all had one more special reason to celebrate this day! It was the second anniversary of Social Beat, the brain child of Suneil Chawla and Vikas Chawla, who dreamt of creating a digital agency that is creative & can deliver strong business results.
In two years, we have grown into a 20-member team handling 75+ clients, keen on exploring new challenges everyday and building a strong-hold in sectors like e-commerce, entertainment, real estate & healthcare. Our journey has been really exciting so far and we are happy to be stepping into the third year of making history in the digital space.
Celebrations at ECR
Team Social Beat headed to East Coast Road, Chennai for a day filled with fun activities and chilled-out conversations. Getting to know the people you closely work with, trolling them, bringing out their hidden talents were some of the most memorable highlights! Not to forget the team building exercises / games that helped us realize our team potential and identify areas of improvement.
Digital marketers at war
Dealing with a client or being in the digital space is more or less like going to war at times. But if you want to know what it really feels like, take your team out for a Paintball game. And guess what, you also get to shoot that annoying team member or even your boss for that matter (Nah, I’m kidding. Or maybe not. *evilgrin*)
After a series of battle rounds, team Red emerged as the winners of that league match. Only to burst their bubble soon enough, they played with paintball organizing team themselves who defeated them in seconds!
Beach Episodes
Post the numerous fun activities which included Ball in the Air, Ping Pang Pong, Tug of War, Paint Ball, etc. we headed to the beach to get some fresh air & relax. The enthusiastic women brigade of Social Beat went on a photo-clicking spree, post which the Social Beat team played some Beach Volleyball!
It was indeed a memorable day for all of us at Social Beat, as it was not just fun-filled but also improved the team’s bonding, co-ordination and brand ownership. We aspire to grow big & better in the years to come and here’s wishing ourselves some good luck for continued success & happy clients!
Marketing real estate online is known to have shown a phenomenal increase in the number of leads(by~ 300%*) that property sellers have opportunities to convert as current buyers or as potential buyers for future projects. Since, buyers want a more personal buying experience on high monetary value purchases, B2B businesses or even businesses selling higher value products achieve greater impact on branding and lead generation from marketing than directly on sales. This is true to real estate selling, where all the marketing is directed towards generating leads, than on direct conversion
Lifestyle patterns of Key Demographic segments: Property buyers are now relying more on online, than on newspapers and other mediums to gather any information that can help make their purchase decision. This a definitely a true phenomenon when it comes to the metro cities where the target buyers are all hooked on to their smart phones, laptops and tablets. It’s more the “Pull marketing” than the push that seems to be working for this new generation of home buyers.
Cost Effective: Most of the push marketing strategies such as “full- page” advertisements in newspapers, previews in TV and advertising in movie halls cost a lot of advertising rupees. Although they do capture some mindshare and help in brand awareness, they completely fail in executing an immediate “call-to-action”. Also, there are no clear measurable outcomes of the advertising money spent, to keep the ROI to the optimum. Online marketing strategies on the other hand, are more cost effective- they are both targeted and measurable. Both social media outreach and online paid adds reach the right category of target audience- age group, tastes, geography etc. with a dual intent of creating brand awareness and driving prospective buyers to make inquiries
Branding Online is Personal: Reaching out to the target buyers and building an emotional connect on a one to one basis, especially when it involves high value purchases such as homes is imperative. social media serves as a potent channel where the prospective buyers can be educated about the brand, as well as guided through the process of purchasing a home. The emotional connect develops by having a mix of both formal and informal conversations with buyers, thereby creating a brand image that understands the sentiments of its buyers, rather than just hard selling the property
Burgeoning Third Party Platforms in Real Estate Domain: There are various third party platforms today that cater to helping the property buyers and sellers to make prudent purchase decisions by facilitating comparisons or serving as one-stop shop for educating the buyers and sellers about the various trends, pricing and newer developments in the domain. To name a few of them- Magic bricks, 99 acres, India Property, housing.com, etc. Integrating existing robust digital presence (website & landing pages), including an active social media presence with third party platforms, is making conversions much faster and easier.
Measurable conversions: Digital marketing allows to measure the value derived from each peny spent on the advertisements and on digital assets such as websites and landing pages. The key / basic three measures are
An uplift in the first two measures is indicative of the success of the digital campaign and the last measure “Path of traffic” allows to understand where the targets are arriving coming from. This measure allows modifying and enhancing marketing plans to achieve maximum ROI.
* Results from Digital Marketing Activities of Social Beat Client
Social Beat is glad to announce that our co-founder, Mr. Suneil Chawla, has won the award for Best Digital Marketing Professionals by CMO Council & World Brand Congress. The award was given at the Mobile & Digital Marketing Summit 2014 at The Taj Lands End, Mumbai on November 14th.
The list of the past winners of the award include Viviene Maguire (Director- Leo Burnett), Aditya Pawan (National digital marketing manager- Red Bull India), Venke Sharma (VP-digital marketing, STAR India) & Omer Syed (Head–digital marketing, Times Group).
This is a huge honor for Suneil and Social Beat as it comes close on the heels of another award earlier this year. He was named the Outstanding Digital Person of the Year at the Digital Marketing Conclave & Awards 2014 by ThinkMedia Inc. in July.
Our co-founder, Vikas Chawla, was recently interviewed by LSE Alumni Echo, the alumni magazine of his alma mater. The complete excerpt of the interview, featured in the Nov edition of the magazine, is as follows:
What do you find most interesting about working in the digital industry?
The digital marketing industry by nature is ever evolving. Be it user experience, social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, or Google – it is an area of constant innovation. This means that our team has to constantly keep learning and innovating so that our clients stay ahead of the curve.
The industry is nascent in India which gives us the opportunity to make a profound impact in the sales and revenue of our clients. The internet penetration in India is just 20 per cent and the digital marketing industry is waiting to explode once the penetration reaches 40-50 per cent.
Do you think there is an area of digital strategy that organisations often undervalue?
In India most businesses are devoting just 5-10 per cent of their marketing spends to digital media. They tend to undervalue the return on investment even though the measurement and tracking of results is more seamless in digital compared to traditional advertising. They tend to still rely on traditional marketing channels that have worked for them in the past.
While large brands and enterprises have started to measure and understand the ROI of digital marketing, smaller and mid-sized businesses are still coming to terms with it. We demonstrate it can help in achieving long term results of building a community and building the brand and also short term revenue and lead generation.
What has been the best and most challenging part of starting your own business?
Undoubtedly, the best part of starting out on my own is the ability to impact our clients and their businesses. We are partners in growing their business and this makes it exciting for us as we need to continuously surpass their expectations.
We have been growing 30 per cent quarter on quarter, though it’s from a small base. As we scale up the venture, the greatest challenge will be to outperform this growth while simultaneously ensuring the quality of solutions, along with knowledge sharing and training our team members. In a market like India, growth is bound to happen and we must capitalise. Currently we are a 20-member team; we want our clients to get the same high quality service even when we are a team of 100 with an evolved organisation structure.
What is the most important asset in your business?
Talent. Being in a creative industry, what differentiates us is the talent we have and the creativity of the digital campaigns we come up with. We have a fantastic team and finding the right talent to join this team is one of the most important tasks we have ahead of us.
It’s now five years since you graduated from LSE: what are your experiences as an alumnus of the School?
Since I left LSE in 2009, it’s been an exciting journey. I worked for three years in marketing and strategy across different companies of an Indian conglomerate. I then decided to start out on my own. What I took from from MG428 (Entrepreneurship) at LSE has served me well. We looked at the need in the market and started out with the idea of providing integrated digital marketing solutions with a focus on creating revenue growth for our clients. It was the best decision I have ever taken and it’s been exciting building our start-up and scaling up the team and client base. The network of LSE alumni that I have developed helps immensely, as they are a sounding board for some of the ideas we have.
What did you learn at LSE that has helped you most in your career?
One of the key things I learned at LSE was to understand concepts in their base form and then try to understand how they can impact various scenarios. This has been extremely helpful in understanding our clients and what differentiates them in the market. Also, the sense of curiosity honed at LSE is something we are trying to build into our team. We have a weekly knowledge sharing session where we encourage team members to learn, discuss and share ideas.
Who is your LSE hero?
Professor Paul Willman from the Department of Management. We had some brilliant professors but Paul stood out. His understanding of the role and the conduct of traders in investment banks was brilliant. He could convincingly speak for both sides of the coin and have a plausible argument for and against the traders. His style of teaching always sparked interest in the minds of students. While class mates and study groups make a big difference, it was professors such as Paul that made learning at LSE fun and interesting.
You are an active member of the India – Friends of LSE alumni group. What do enjoy most about your involvement?
Our alumni are from different walks of life and it’s been interesting meeting alumni who are into fields completely unrelated to the one I am in. Meeting like-minded graduates and reliving our LSE days has been fun. It has been especially interesting to attend the LSE TRIUM evening that happens once a year in Chennai. The diversity of TRIUM students and what they have achieved is truly inspiring.
Describe the alumni group in three words…
Fun, dynamic and active.
According to a recent study by eMarketer, India records the highest social networking growth as the number of active social network users in the country has grown by 37.4 percent in 2013. Even though the overall internet penetration is low in India, the number of active social media users in urban India is expected to cross 80 million this year, as opposed to 63 million in 2013. From being online platforms solely used for social interactions, to becoming a significant part of the marketing strategy for brands today, the growth of social media networks like Facebook & Twitter has been tremendous.
Twitter joins Facebook in offering “Buy” button to directly buy on these platforms
As the pressure is mounting on these social media networks to prove that they are successful sales channels, they are constantly making efforts to modify & introduce new advertising options. The latest buzz is that Twitter is following the footsteps of Facebook in testing a ‘Buy’ button that will now let users shop from their social media sites itself, without having to navigate to the retailer’s website.
Facebook’s Buy Button – Convenience or Clutter?
Facebook officially announced in July about the testing of a ‘Buy’ button that would appear in newsfeed ads and page posts. As of now, it is only being tested with a few small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S.
This is not Facebook’ first attempt to crack e-commerce as they previously introduced the ‘Gifts’ feature which was shut down within a year. Even though the earlier attempts were unsuccessful, the team is keen on working on other commercial purchase features within Facebook, with ‘Buy’ button being the recent result of it.
This button is expected to provide an added level of convenience for online shoppers to buy products from merchants within the Facebook framework itself. The customer can use his credit card on file with Facebook and make purchases directly. The option to save your payment details or just checkout without saving is also available. However, Facebook claims that the entire functionality has robust safety & privacy options and won’t pass on the payment details to any of its other advertisers.
The main objective of introducing this functionality is to increase the conversion rates and the return on investments for its advertisers. Not to forget that this new development will put them in direct competition with e-commerce sites like Amazon, also providing a new avenue for Facebook to gain some revenues through sales and payment processing.
Will Twitter Commerce reveal your identity?
Two months after the announcement from Facebook, Twitter revealed about testing its own “Buy’ button to facilitate sales & increase revenue. This facility to make purchases directly from tweets is available only to a small set of consumers in the U.S as of now. It is now being experimented with selling limited edition merchandises, charities, and concert tickets and is expected to grow with more product options based on the initial testing feedback.
Launching on the mobile platform first, Twitter says the purchase process will only have few simple steps & is completely secure. The user can simply click on the buy button, enter product details, choose payment option, enter shipping details and make a purchase. This payment data used by the user can also help in revealing the real names & details of its anonymous Twitter profiles, a move that can be greatly beneficial for marketers. However, Twitter denied the possibility of this and emphasized on working with Stripe to make the entire transaction completely safe & private.
Here’s how the marketers can benefit
The previous attempts made by these social media platforms to explore e-commerce have not been so successful. Pinterest, the only platform to have topped Facebook in driving referral traffic to retailer sites has made promising developments, but still lags behind when it comes to investment & adoption. If the ‘Buy’ option proves to be highly beneficial for Facebook & Twitter, brands that focus on time-limited offers and on-off promotions have chances of getting high investment returns. However, the performance of direct ‘Buy’ button when it comes to high value products & the ones that need more research & time is uncertain.
Will privacy be a concern for the buyers?
Social media platforms have been playing a major role in influencing the decision making process of its users. These networking sites possess large amounts of data about their consumer preferences which helps them to come up with tailor made posts and promoted ads. The ‘Buy’ option to be introduced will facilitate the quick shift from a promoted post or tweet to a shopping cart which saves a lot of time & effort for its customers. However, privacy & security around financial data is something that these social networking sites are constantly trying to assure its consumers.
Future of Online Shopping is here
For both retailers and social media sites, the objective is to successfully merge online commerce with mobile & social activity of people, without obstructing their user experience with unwanted targeted ads filling their timelines. Hence, if the testing of ‘Buy’ button turns out to be successful, it would open a whole new avenue for these platforms to not only influence our social life, but our shopping patterns too.