Social Media Strategies and Technologies

One of the most successful digital/online marketing campaigns in India was Sunsilk Gang of Girls - which was started with an aim of promoting the Miss India pageant sponsored by Sunsilk in 2002  and later turned into a social community platform (with networking , blogs , message boards & chat etc) exclusively for girls to discuss and share content related to beauty,hair, makeover & random stuff etc.This case study report was released by bcwebwise - which handled the implementation of Gang of Girls campaign.

Key Results from Gang of Girls campaign case study are:

•  Total Registrations on Gang of Girls as on 6th,May-09 – 7,28,461
•  Avg Monthly Page Views – 30,00,000
•  Avg Monthly Hits – 1,20,00,000
•  Avg Monthly Unique Visitors – 97,086
•  Total Number of Gangs as on 6th May-09 – 42,934
•  Average Visit Length – 11.06 minutes

Update after some useful rants from @anaggh: While Sunsilk has done some offline advertisement to support this initiative using their traditional marketing channels to create awareness among their target group/users, the numbers like how much money spent? was not available to me but this campaign related numbers like no of users, communities and page views etc were shared by bcwebwise that ran this campaign for Sunsilk and also gangofgirls website shares these numbers regularly - I feel that the success of this campaign is majorly driven by the community element and platform that encourages young women to share/discuss interesting things revolving around their life stream.My intention behind sharing above numbers was to make a point that Indian consumers are ready and infact use new media platforms :).

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You know this post title is too long [ is i't?:) - I suck in KISS principle ] - but I want to clearly convey, what you can expect before reading the complete post.

Recently , I spoke to couple of friends in digital marketing/advertisement space in India and most of them  already tasted the waters of Social Media Marketing but one thing that I could quickly got to know from the above conversations was - ‘You know these guys (marketing heads at most companies in India) don’t get it?’ and also the below tweet from Atul Chitnis

and a reply from Mahesh Murthy got my attention.

I don’t need to give any intro’s about these two guys because one was always at the forefront of the new technology and other has proved that India too has Whiz kids to create what Madison Avenue offices boast off.

I sent the below question to Mahesh Murthy - who runs seedfund and pinstorm - a leading pay for performance advertising firm to get his perspective.

And his reply was short and sweet.

1.  Start with a Strategy - What is the current perception of the brand in socialsphere(postive,negative or neutral)? and online positioning ?

2. Analyze the needs-  What his rivals are doing in socialsphere and what is their positioning?

3. Find and Engage with community -  Who are  his brand customers/prospects? - What they are doing and Where? - Start  conversations with the brand customers/prospects.

4. Start with low cost and expectations with measurable metrics - Social media marketing is a low cost if not free but it requires a good human capital to drive this initiative in right direction so use metrics to measure success wherever possible for your efforts and engage with social-sphere to share , discuss and create quality content & conversations related to the brand , help consumers in need and connect online prospects with a proper channel to generate leads.

Also one thing remember is social media marketing is not a short life traditional style marketing campaign - it is a commitment to engage with consumers and build a loyal community to share/discuss/create useful content/conversations around your brand -  so you need to be very clear and careful to identify what are the goals(brand awareness,reputation management,customer engagement , loyalty building etc) & targets (leads,sales,customer support) a brand is expecting by using social media marketing platforms, engage all stake holders of your brand including decision makers to track the progress and refine it for better results.

What is your take? - do you think Indian brands are ready to embrace social media?.