Social Media Marketing – India Trends Study 2013

Introduction:

According to media reports, Indian organizations use social media much more than the global average and those of their counterparts in emerging economies.While we have a number of case studies, awards and online tools to gather insights, Ernst & Young LLP wanted to explore how social media-savvy organizations in India are using the medium.

They wanted to understand social media objectives, tactics, departments that manage social media, how do organizations use social media ads, social media measurement, budget, and the agency environment among others.With this objective in mind, in the last quarter of 2012 and early 2013, E&Y reached out to various organizations in India.

They received a total of 48 participations from professionals who are responsible for managing the digital outreaches of their respective organizations or brands. As they expected, the study has thrown up some good insights.

This study represents the views of several organizations in India that have comparatively invested more in terms of money, resources, or initiatives than their counterparts, and E & Y thinks it will help in creating standards across the industry and in promoting the medium among many more organizations in the country that want to scale up on using the medium. They have also added their perspectives and secondary research to augment the findings and provide depth and context.

Agency Name:

Ernst & Young LLP

There are key findings across nine categories and seven popular practices that the study highlights:

Objective:

Most social media-savvy organizations in India use the medium to build communities while others use it to highlight news.

Platform:

Facebook is the most important platform for marketers in India for engaging customers, followed by Twitter, YouTube and blogging

Integration:

Social media-savvy organizations in India have conducted campaigns where social media is the leading component, they tend to speed up processes or show special favor for online fans

Ads:

Majority of social media-savvy organizations use social media ads to promote online campaigns and brand awarenesss, and find them beneficial

Measurement:

Majority of social media-savvy organizations in India measure social media efforts through platform-specific parameters but some are increasingly measuring through leads, sentiment, brand visibility and have seen increase in revenue from social media efforts

Budget:

Almost half of social media-savvy organizations surveyed spend 1%–5% of their marketing budget on social media, most social media budgets are below INR10 million

Ownership:

Majority of social media efforts in India are managed by marketing teams.

Agency:

Majority of social media-savvy organizations in India use standalone digital agencies as compared to PR or ad agencies

Future:

Social media-savvy organizations in India are very optimistic about the future

Some of the popular practices are:

• Generic updates instead of brand updates.
• Multiple updates day, reply to fan queries within 30 mins to a few hours.
• Pictures contests are the most popular contests, most contests organised monthly.
• Social media guidelines and monitoring programmes are common, though more need to create crisis manuals.
• Tools for online monitoring, response management, or managing social media platforms are popular.
• Social media research are done to get customer feedback and understand behaviour.
• Many have created mobile phone apps and more plan to create.