Here is another Case of the Week to test your skills in using Digital Advertising

You are a Digital Marketing Manager for a Localized Business with presence in Delhi & Mumbai. You have to promote a new product launched by your organization through Online Advertising. You have a limited budget and want to target the potential customers in Delhi and Mumbai only. Which of the following options for advertising online will you choose?
a.) Google Adwords
b.) Facebook Ads
c.) An Ad Network
d.) All of the Above

Post your answer in the comments. We will publish the right answer in the coming week!

We hope you find these Cases relevant and useful. If you would like to continuously engage in such cases and similar insights about Digital Marketing, join us and follow us at our Digital Marketing Learning Community on Facebook. Please feel free to share your inputs and interest areas for future Cases of the Week.

Lets open up a new shell of Social  Media Insights with our Case of the Week Series

Case of the Week 3: Facebook Advertising

You are the Community Manage for a large FMCG brand. Your Head of Marketing has given you the job of initiating FB Ads for your community on Facebook. You’ve a limited budget and you want to quickly ramp up the community. Which of the following Facebook Ads metrics/measures will you optimize to fulfill your objectives and Why?
a.) No of Impressions
b.) CTR (Click Through Rate)
c.) AR (Action Rate)
d.) Daily Budget

Correct Answers: b.) CTR ( Click Through Rate)  and c.) Action Rate

Given that the objective is to “quickly ramp up the community” and “there is a limited budget”, it is critical to achieve lower CPC (Cost Per Click) and higher conversions (i.e. more people who visit the page join it). One of the key parameters to reduce the CPC is the CTR (Click Through Rate). Higher CTR leads to lower CPC. And, AR (Action Rate) is the direct measure of conversions. So, optimizing CTR and AR will help you meet your objectives.

And, how do you optimize CTR and AR? CTR is a function of Ad Copy (creative and ad text); having a relevant n attractive image in the ad along with creative text including Call to Action really helps improving CTR. AR is purely a function of quality of the Page including ‘relevancy of the content’, ‘level of engagement’ and ‘presentation – having images etc’.

We hope you find this relevant and useful. If you would like to continuously engage in such cases about Digital Marketing, join us and follow us at our Digital Marketing Learning Community on Facebook. Please feel free to share your inputs and interest areas for future Cases of the Week.

Continuing on my previous article ‘Beware of the Unhappy, Web Savvy Customer’, in which I talked about the importance of managing your online reputation, I would like to leave you with few ways to manage and nurture your reputation in the digital world.

I would like to start by again directing your attention to ‘listening’, which is the most important part of online reputation management, or ORM. Without listening you can’t begin your journey to build your reputation online.

Fortunately, there are numerous tools such as Google Alerts and Twitter Search, which simplify the job of monitoring the conversations about a brand. For examples at Digital Vidya, we track conversations related to us by searching for keywords such as digital vidya, digitalvidya, social media workshop, and Pradeep Chopra using these tools.

First setup the structure to monitor conversations about your brand, your competition, key executives and employees. Then your job is to take timely and appropriate actions according to what you find.

Here is a list of the key tactics to build and nurture a company’s reputation:

1. Don’t be Defensive.

Defending a mistake when someone genuinely expresses his or her dissatisfaction is the worst thing to do. A dissatisfied customer really wants the experience of ‘being heard’ more than anything else. My experience is that the moment we acknowledge our mistake and promise to take action, the person who has expressed that concern gets quiet. If you can’t do that then be prepared to encounter a never-ending war of words. The smart thing to do is respond promptly and take responsibility.

Nestlé was recently attacked by Greenpeace which posted a video clip suggesting the key ingredient of Nestlé’s KitKat Bar (palm oil) is a leading cause for the destruction of rain forests and deaths of orangutans. Nestle tried to curb this video but instead it got a growing number of people who raised their voices against it.

2. Be Easy to Reach:

If you have a clearly communicated and easily approachable channel for your customers to reach you, the chances of them contacting you first for the resolution of their problem is higher.Direct 2 Dell , an online community by Dell to have direct exchange with its customers is a classic example. In the India, ICICI Bank is doing a good job of creating a similar channel through its ICICI Bank Care account on Twitter.

3. Be Involved in Social Media:

Given that more and more people are going to express their opinions on social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, it is important that a brand is actively engaging with its customers on these channels. It will help the brand in fulfilling various objectives like, listening, resolving a problem and leveraging search engine optimization, or SEO.

4. Use Satisfied Customers as Brand Ambassadors:

Your satisfied customers are the best people to help you build a strong reputation online. Although you should always be on your toes to deal with negative conversations about your brand, you also have to encourage satisfied customers to spread their positive opinions. This would include highlighting live testimonials on various social media.

5. Leverage Search Engine Optimization:

SEO is the process of getting your website or other online channels ranked high on search engines when people search for relevant terms related to your organization. A brand can leverage SEO to get better results about it ranked high on search engines. However, please note that SEO can help only when you employ the other tactics successfully.

My friend Arjun Anand , the founder of Verist Labs, captured the essence of SEO in ORM through his recent post on Facebook:

“The difference between SEO guys doing ORM as opposed to ORM guys doing it is that SEO guys try to hide negative comments whereas ORM guys resolve them.”
For a brand to do a good job in successfully executing these tactics, it needs to assign these responsibilities to their communication and PR teams. It also needs a simple but documented process which includes principles and policies on how to communicate with people.

I hope you now understand the importance of listening about your brand and taking care of the conversations so as to continuously transform the experience of your customers. Feel free to share your experiences, post your questions and opinions, as comment and I will be glad to hear and respond to them.

Please keep in mind that your customers will continue to talk about you and your competition, the choice of listening to them is yours.

This article was originally published at WSJ’s India Chief Mentor

I once had a problem with ICICI Bank. I visited the branch three times to get it solved but nothing happened, even after three months. I tweeted about my case and the problem got solved in two days. The branch manager even visited my home to resolve the issue.

Here is the tweet that got their attention:

“ICICI bank’s customer service sucks. 3 visits to the branch and the problem is still there. Worst, they don’t even care about calling back.”

In December of 2007, my Apple Macbook started giving me problems. Plastic was chipping off near the keyboard and the battery would suddenly stop functioning. I gave it to an Apple service center in Delhi. They promised to resolve the issues in three to four days but couldn’t, even after 15 days and despite my frequent follow-ups. They wouldn’t even take responsibility for the delay. Finally, I wrote a review on MouthShut.com and sent it to the head of Apple in India.

Looking at the popularity of the review – today it has a view count of more than 58,000 – he offered me a new laptop. However, even with the new machine the problems persisted. Finally Apple had to refund my money, even though I had been using the computer for two years.

These two personal experiences teach us two things:

1. The consumer really is king today – With the tools like Twitter, review sites and other social networking sites, an ordinary consumer has got many easy options to let hundreds or even thousands of others know his opinions and experiences.

2. Brands can’t ignore their customers – More and more people are going to express their experiences about products and services with the other people in their lives. Brands need to monitor and leverage the new tools and technologies to continuously serve and satisfy their customers. They must start to listen and take responsibility.

According to a report by SMC Capitals, there are over 3.1 crore active Indian users on social networking sites. According to a report on retailing by FICCI’s B2B directory website, over 60% of India’s population is under the age of 30, which means they are more likely to take their thoughts and complaints on line.

As these numbers are only expected to grow, keeping track of and caring about what’s being said about a brand in the digital world is increasingly important. Companies can spend millions of dollars to promote their brands, yet a single negative post can damage their reputations.

Earlier companies only had to worry about bad publicity in conventional media such as print. Today, the power of media also lies in the hands of regular people. The shift from conventional media to social media makes every individual a potential journalist.

The key to transforming customers’ experience in this open world is ‘listening’. With tools such as Google Alerts and Twitter Search a brand can continuously monitor conversations about it. If you really want to leverage the opportunity of social media to transform your customer’s experience, start to listen before it’s too late.

This article was originally published at WSJ’s India Chief Mentor

Continuing with our Case of the Week Series, this week we are focusing on “Online Advertising”, an important aspect of Digital Marketing.

Let’s crack this Case of the Week -2

You are the Head of Marketing of a small IT company. The company plans to diversify and is planning to launch an eLearning product. However, it has only limited time and budget for promoting this product to test the market. If the pilot goes successful, there is a high probability of getting investment for the long term. Which of the following promotion strategies would you recommend?

A. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
B. PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertisement
C. TV Advertisement
D. Newspaper Advertisement
E. Trade Fair Participation

Answer: The correct answer is (B), PPC – Pay Per Click Advertisement.

Answering pattern revealed that some of you would like to use Traditional Advertising modes – like Newspaper, TV and Trade Fair Participation, but remember this was a pilot with limited budget and time span. Cost constraint would be one of the reasons for not choosing these channels.

Interestingly some of you answered Social Media (though it wasn’t amongst probable answers), which is definitely one of the potential tools in this kind of situation. Provided, ‘time & cost’ are considered and one uses ‘crowd-sourcing’ opportunity of Social Media along with some cost effective, targeted Social Media advertising (e.g. Facebook).

SEO could have been a good option considering ‘cost constraint’ but since we have limited time span, SEO is also ruled out.

So PPC would be the best answer as it would allow the company to get prompt responses and that too with option of beginning it at a stipulated time, along with provision of restricting it to a targeted budget.

We hope you find this relevant and useful. If you would like to continuous engage in such cases about Digital Marketing, join us and follow us at our Digital Marketing Learning Community on Facebook. Please feel free to share your inputs and interest areas for future Cases of the Week.