Social Media Strategy Review: Two Wheeler Brands

Two wheeler brands on social media seem to be confused, trying to ape each others strategies and unable to figure out the right way to market their brand. Ofcourse there are exceptions in this sector too. However, the sector is lagging behind in the larger frame where other sectors are progressing leaps and bounds.

I have analyzed 8 two wheeler brands in the study duration between 1^st February 2014 - 28^th February 2014.

1. Hero Motor Corp
2. Suzuki Motorcycle
3. Yamaha Motor India
4. Mahindra Motorcycle
5. Royal Enfield
6. Mahindra Scooters
7. Harley Davidson India
8. Vespa India

Community Building

On Facebook, Harley Davidson India has the most number of fans and the highest growth rate among all 8 brands. There are a total of over 1.2 million fans and an average growth rate of 11.8% which is incredible considering it’s a new entrant to the market. In fact, in the last week the brand ramped up its fan base much faster than usual.

 

Hero Motocorp, Mahindra Scooters and Royal Enfield all have above 1 million fans, marking a major milestone for all brands in India.

Yamaha Motor India, followed by Harley Davidson, has a growth rate of 7.88%. All other brands are equal to or fall below the growth rate of 5%. Such low growth rate can be attributed to the content of these brands.

On Twitter, Royal Enfield has the most number of followers at 18K+ and a growth rate of 3.2%. Mahindra Motorcycles has the highest growth rate at 7.76%. Very close to Mahindra Motorcycles is Hero Motor Corp at 7.43%.

This is especially important for Hero Motor Corp because they reported a hike in sales in the month of February.

Content Strategy

Yamaha Motor India had the maximum number of posts in the month of February (104) followed by Harley Davidson (101). This is an average of 3 posts a day.

Mahindra Scooters and Royal Enfield posted the least number of times (24) which is not even 1 post a day. If good interactive content is posted on a daily basis, the engagement of a page tends to go up. If brands don’t follow this basic rule, their strategies can fall flat on social media.

 

It is believed that posting at a particular time helps fetching more reach. On Twitter, on an average, 45% of the tweets were posted between 12pm-6pm.

 

Auto Expo 2014

In the month of February 2014, the Auto Expo took place where all the brands participated. While some used social media effectively to spread word about their installations, others did not show any interest.

Hero Motorcorp ran a contest #HeroUniverse and integrated it with its stall at the Auto Expo, showcasing all tweets live on a wall. This was an effective campaign because there was simplicity within the approach. Though there was nothing too innovative about the contest, it was plain tweeting slogans about the new model but integration of the offline experience at the Auto Expo made all the difference.

It created a great image of the brand within the minds of the consumers attending the expo because they witnessed what so many users had written about the brand.

 

Harley Davidson used the Facebook Milestone feature (which very few brands do) to showcase its new entrant at the Auto Expo. This ensures it encourages fans to visit the offline event too but is not as effective as what Hero Motorcorps did. As mentioned above, the sharp increase in the fan base in the month of February cannot be because of the mere post updates. Since the brand was launching a new model and promoting it extensively, there was almost certainly some paid promotion happening on Facebook.

My social media instincts however, suggest that paid promotion should be backed by content creation which Harley lacked.

Use of Hash-tags

None of the brands make use of hash-tags on Facebook. Though Mahindra Motorcycles uses them on images, they do not use them on the post. This lessens a brands chances to be found while searching a particular topic.

For instance Mahindra Motorcycles has done interesting posts with varied hash-tags like #KnowYourMachine, #OnlyInIndia etc. but it’s not in the text which kind of defeats the point of hashtags.

 

Old is not always Gold

Some brands stick to the nascent years of social media marketing. They have put up amateur quiz contests on the wall, copied what other brands have done and repeated several times in the past and portrayed a very childish image.

 

Trying to persuade fans to like and comment are age old techniques as opposed to a little smarter and an informative way of putting them up. For instance Mahindra Motorcycles has used #RidersQuotient and tried to bring awareness among bikers.

The Riders Quotient encourages users to comment by creating competitive content among biker community. However, there is still room for improvement to create the much needed engagement.

 

One of the most effective ways would be to create some kind of a connection between the offline bikers and online users. Tying up with the biker’s community and uplifting their passion and showcasing this online could be one way to appreciate their efforts as a brand. Such initiatives can boost the brand image and engagement simultaneously.

Sometimes pictures do not speak a 1000 words

Merely posting good pictures of brand products do not always help increase engagement. Vespa India does just that, along with a little tagline. This might be nice once in a while but continuously doing only one thing will soon get users to skip your posts.

 

Mahindra Motorcycles also posts pictures but in a different way that engages its users. They used it to build curiosity about an upcoming bike at the Auto Expo 2014.

However, product pictures can be displayed effectively when original content is built. Take for instance Amul and Oreo. They use their product images to create brilliant content. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to see bikes within images and derive meaningful content out of it? I just imagined a brand posting an update where they have showcased evolution of their bikes from ancient times to the modern day.

Now that would interest a fan or a follower.

Announcements

Brands are also using this as a platform to announce various details regarding new launches, service camps, accolades and activities.

 

 

Applications

Though most of the brands have an average of 10 apps, most of them are not making good use of them.

I say this because all the brands are below the 500 mark when it comes to average monthly users of these applications. Harley Davidson is an exception though because it has 8,000 monthly users and a total of 9 applications.

 

Though most brands have the Test Drive application on Facebook, Harley Davidson’s comes across as extremely professional, serious and well designed.

 

When creating an application, brands must make it user friendly and viral. Else, no application will be used.

Engagement

Harley Davidson best engaged with its fans, which is a given since the brand has the highest growth rate and highest fans too. The brand has an engagement score of 653, considering it has the highest likes, shares and comments per pots.

Creating interactive content will ensure that your engagement score remains at the top. At 566 and 511, Royal Enfield and Yamaha Motor Corp are close behind.

Harley also has the best PTAT score of 7.53%. Mahindra Motorcycles and Mahindra Scooters have below 1% people talking about score, owing to an inconsistent and non-effective content strategy.

Harley Davidson and Royal Enfield are way ahead of most brands in terms of likes, comments and shares.

 

Harley Davidson does not have an exceptional content strategy. In the month of February, it has been promoting the launch of ‘The all new Street 750’ and 90% of the posts are about this. Therefore as mentioned already, it is possible that the brand has been doing rounds of paid promotion to enhance its reach on Facebook. In the process not only has it been growing its fanbase but also ensuring growth rate and a good engagement score.

I say this since the below post has struck a chord with its audience bringing the brand maximum engagement in comparison to all posts done by the remaining 7 brands. And for obvious reasons, it is a post promoting the launch.

 

This is also the reason why the brand ramped up its Facebook engagement much faster than usual in the last 10 days as mentioned above.

On Twitter, Harley Davidson is not present since 2009. The brand handle is inactive.

Hero Motor Corp had the maximum tweets with a total of 8.6K+ tweets, proactive tweets from the brand being only 105. However, its engagement score was second highest (426) and it was beaten by Mahindra Motorcycyles whose engagement score (542) was the highest in the sector.

Hero Motorcorps engagement has already been attributed to #HeroUniverse. Mahindra Motorcycles has been using Twitter to its advantage by interacting with its followers very regularly with respect to customer service topics. The brand understands the importance of a good customer service strategy and therefore is capitalizing on the potential of the platform.

More the customer queries are answered by a brand, more interaction will take place, hence increasing the engagement.

Brands hardly initiate Twitter campaigns nor do they put an effort in interacting with users. Infact, most of them merely copy paste the same content buckets as Facebook.

 

A drastic rise in Hero Motor Corps mentions is because the company has not only been leading the news with its price slash but also its venture in Turkey.

 

#HeroUniverse was also the top performing hash-tag with 188 brand tweets and 8,735 user tweets.

Customer Service

Two Wheeler brands on Social Media are definitely not taking customer service seriously.

 

Royal Enfield has the best average response rate of 7.61% but takes upto 11 hours to reply.

 

Royal Enfield caters to customer service on Twitter exceptionally well. They clearly do not use template lines.

 

How important is it for two wheeler brands to execute customer service on social media though? Basic queries about the brands and its models can be answered like Royal Enfield is doing but major servicing/part requirements and queries have to be taken up offline.

Therefore brands should concentrate on building some effective content and launch real activations that will help achieve real business goals like Hero Motorcorp successfully hiked its sales.

Sentiment

On Facebook, Hero Motorcorp has the most positive sentiment (349 out of 637 posts), double of other brands.

 

On Twitter, Mahindra Scooters and Vespa have the most positive sentiment. However, these are associated with only 4 tweets of Mahindra scooters and 2 tweets of Vespa India.

Hero Motorcorps which has a total of 8,463 tweets gets 238 positive sentiment tweets out of it. Therefore Hero Motorcorps should be weighed as a brand that has more positive sentiment.

 

Conclusion

Two Wheeler brands need to improve their strategy in all aspects ranging from content to customer service. Running innovative campaigns and addressing customer issues on social media will give a tremendous boost to these brands.

Analytics Support Courtesy : Unmetric