From Unsocial Media Promotions to Social Media Marketing - It's High Time!

Would you believe that most, repeat most brands and organizations indulge themselves in something called Unsocial Media Promotion in the name of Social Media Marketing?

Yet, it’s not hard to believe because :

1. We are so used to selling / promoting products for so long that we can’t think beyond it

2. Not many people know what Social Media Marketing is actually!

It has been our experience and observation that while social media opens up a brand new, dynamic and revolutionary strategic marketing process, most social media practitioners are using it as an extension of old, conventional, tactical marketing tool – simply as a Promotional tool with excessive one-way dialogue. And so, there is nothing social about it nor it is Marketing!

Therefore, though we see a very high page likes (sometimes) – through paid ads – we hardly see any engagements happening.

And as you know, in social media, engagement is the only measurement criterion.

They don’t realize that social media engagement measures the activities of their fans and friends – likes, shares, comments, tags, etc - and has almost nothing to do with their posts and pictures? The more they talk, the less is the engagement!

So, how do we move from Unsocial Media Promotions to Social Media Marketing?

Concentrate on the “Social” and the “Marketing” part - that is put emphasis 

• on multi-way communication - between you, the brand and  your fans, friends, customers, end-users, influencer and brand advocates.
• don't forget your elementary marketing lessons of 4Ps and 3Cs of Product, Price, Place & Promotion and Customer, Competition & Competencies.

In your social media marketing planning, implementation and analysis put a lot of emphasis on in-depth market research (on customers, targets, competition, market trends, etc) and have a structured content management process in place. This should be reviewed every week to see that you are reaching the desired engagement level.

All the best.

(C) Susmita Das Gupta

The Brand Relationship ...

“In pre-internet days, the buyer’s process was fairly straightforward: stimulus, shelf, experience. A stimulus sparked a buyer’s interest in a product, they went to the store or called a salesperson to buy it, and then they experienced the product. There were very few places where a brand could intersect with the buyer: an advertisement, which may have been the stimulus; the packaging and display, which spurred the purchase; and, possibly, after the sale in customer service – though if it came to that, it was inevitably because something had gone wrong.

Today’s purchasing journey, whether for a consumer product or complex business purchase, has infinitely more touch-points where a brand and buyer might intersect.”

The more interesting thing here is that – while brands used to be the “property” of the brand owner (product / service) since the beginning of the concept of brand, it is no longer so. Now the brand belongs to the person who uses it, recommends it, advocates for it or slams it openly. Therefore, while the brand custodian has changed in the post internet period, the brand association has certainly increased, with those who use or refuse them.

When a customer talks passionately about a brand whether loving or thrashing it – there is a sense of ownership involved. And that ownership is something which the brand should leverage on. And perhaps, that is what brand friendship is all about.

Ultimately, if the brand and me are not friends, how do I care what happens to it?

www.thesmartideas.in

Who is The New Young India?

It is very interesting to see that while the average age of India (read buyers) is just about 29 - all the marketers are well into their 50! Not only there is a huge generation gap, there is a complete lack of understanding about who these youths are and what do they exactly think.

Just pretending to be youthful won't help. Youth today are very different than what we have ever experienced, so no amount of extrapolation of old experience would work at all.

So what is the way forward?

Smart iDeAS has been continuously undertaking India Youth Study. At the moment 5 Bschools in India are working with Smart iDeAS in understanding the Next Gen Indians. We have identified 23 parameters on which we are researching and we are looking at young Indians between the age of 15 to 20 years and 20 to 30 years. 

The research is also trying to understand how they differ from their parents and on which parameters they differ most.

Once completed this is would be one of the largest empirical studies on Young Indians done recently.