[Interview] Takeaways from Nykaa's social media strategy with Falguni Nayar

From content marketing for goodwill to lead generation, social media holds a multi-dimensional role for start-ups. Falguni Nayar, CEO and Founder Nykaa.com shares how social media marketing shaped the website's positioning and what can other brands learn from it.

How does social media help in driving traffic to Nykaa? Please share 5 growth-hacks for start-ups who want to drive traffic from social media to their respective portals.

For start-ups and small businesses, the primary focus should be on building your social community and fan following. Until the community is sizeable enough, businesses should have little or no expectation of visits.

A solid content strategy is a must to create a loyal and engaged community.

Immersive content showcasing global trends, presented beautifully has proven to be a winning formula. People consume content that either elevates their social quotient or broadens their knowledge. The goal is to understand how brands can increase the share value and prompt people to share content to their network.

One of the best ways build your community is by leveraging your core asset. It is crucial that you provide enough sharing options at critical checkpoints in their buying journey for example: Facebook share or tweet buttons on all ‘How to’ articles, WhatsApp sharing on product pages to help customers get opinions on their selections or maybe a ‘Follow’ button on offer pages to help customers know about upcoming deals or offers.

Another important aspect is engaging with customers on a real-time basis. Social media platforms should be used as a medium to connect with the customer directly, making them feel like they are part of a community. You should look to answer their questions, respond to their concerns, listen to their feedback, whether positive or negative and be willing to start a conversation with them.

Last but not the least, watch out for trends in new media. For example, the engagement we receive daily from Snapchat is remarkable and exciting. One also needs to learn how to be able to modify content as per the different social media platforms. What may work on Facebook may or may not work on Instagram.

What kind of content hooks should fashion beauty brands create for high engagement through social channels?

As a beauty vertical, DIY videos and images yield the highest engagement on social media. “Current trending” topics, such as ‘Colour Correcting’ or ‘Strobing’ also have a high social sharing value. Our customers get excited when we build hype and on-board brands that are trending globally, like Kiehl’s or BeautyBlender. They also love visually appealing, inspirational or even promo-related content.

#3- What is the biggest social media marketing challenge for e-commerce sites like Nykaa?

The biggest challenge we face is coming to terms with the fact that social media is more often than not, a part of a consumer’s purchasing journey and not the final outcome. It is extremely difficult to attribute the success of social media campaigns and posts unless there is a direct link-click and purchase. We should treat social media as more of a brand building tool as opposed to a revenue generating medium. At Nykaa, based on a 7-day view through analysis, social media contributes between 21% to 23% of all purchases from non-paid channels such as direct, organic etc. For all purchases through paid medium, social media influences about a tenth of them (9%).

Nykaa is potentially active on Facebook as compared to other social media channels. How do you ace this medium with, especially when Facebook has nearly no organic reach?

Our strategy on Facebook involves using the power of influencers – mainly beauty and fashion bloggers/vloggers that have a strong, niche following to help us spread the reach of our content. We also tie up with our partner brands and post content which help us leverage their fan base. We have close to a million followers on Facebook, so we like to provide our fans with exclusive offers to keep them engaged and shopping! We also do a lot of data analysis to figure out which content peg can be revisited or trashed.

Content marketing is a major challenge for start-ups mainly due to budget constraints. What are your thoughts on the same?

Our leadership strongly believes that content marketing is an extremely powerful tool and has taken a conscious decision to invest in it from the get-go. It is that missing link in a seamless consumer journey in the entire ecosystem – be it offline or online. One may not necessarily see the direct revenue right away, but can study the impact in the long run. The only way we can mirror an in-store experience for beauty shoppers is by creating powerful social media content, YouTube videos and blog articles. The quest for this consumer experience drives my team well.