[Interview] Crocs India's Bhavna Tewari on the brand's social footprint

Social Samosa speaks to Bhavna Tewari, E-Commerce and Digital Marketing Manager, Crocs India on how the brand endeavours to engage with their audiences with the right mix of content, catchy visuals and interaction with their followers.

Crocs have been on a remarkable journey, from a walk on the beach to the runway, it is a brand synonymous with comfort and fun, and Crocs India's marketing strategy keeps true to the brand's personality with campaigns and content, #FindYourFun being the latest.

Bhavna Tewari, E-Commerce and Digital Marketing Manager, Crocs India

We find out Crocs India's approach towards social media marketing, and their preferred channels of marketing along with what to expect from the brand this year.

#FindYourFun comes across as the central theme followed by the brand. What is the core idea behind it?

Crocs as a brand has always been about fun. The tag line is designed to encourage people to find the fun in everything they do. It is to engage consumers in ways that celebrate our iconic clog and the unique, fun-loving nature of the Crocs brand, while also highlighting our broad portfolio of other colorful and comfortable styles. Crocs has even appeared on fashion ramps and on celebs like Chef Mario Batali.

How would you define your brand voice?

The brand has always focused on being fun yet casual and focuses on four main pillars – Fun, Colour, Comfort and Innovation. It is a constant endeavor across all functions within the brand to excel in all these.

As a footwear brand, what is your objective from social media? How successful have you been in achieving it?

Our objective is multifold:

To build a network of brand loyalists.

To break the notion of Crocs only being about clogs and flips

To showcase Crocs in a new light - a fashion-forward brand seen along the likes of premium fashion brands.

To engage with our TG and share insights of responses.

Increase awareness about www.shopcrocs.in

We now have a very relevant fan base which is very closely aligned to our buyer persona - which has been possible through effectively targeted boosts and ads. Our relevance scores of 7-8 and average cost per click reaching 0.2 is a clear indicator of the relevance of the fan base we have built.

We are promoting new styles every month through new arrivals, product of the week, shop now ads, look of the day and more social media properties.

Which has been the key format of communication in your content strategy and why?

The key format of communication has always been short, snappy and yet conversational which helps the brand to increase engagement with the followers across social networking sites.

Is social media useful in generating leads? If yes, what per cent of leads are generated by this medium?

The objective of social media is to increase brand awareness however strong CTA's, contests and social media properties we have been able to direct traffic to the website. We have also explored pixel ads with the CTA of Shop now to increase conversions and significantly bring up the number of purchases.

What kind of strategy do you have in place to deal with Facebook's limited organic reach?

What is organic reach on Facebook? It’s a measurement of how many folks see your organic content and as a strategy there are some key areas that we focus on :

1. Finding The Right Content Mix For the Audience

If your content doesn’t click, your fans aren’t going to engage with it. If your fans don’t engage with it, you’re going to struggle with growing your reach. It’s important to choose the right mix of content and post it in the right order. In other words, you want to post the right content to the right audience at the right time.

2. Get To Know Your Facebook Insights Inside And Out

Test your content often. Dig into your Facebook Insights like crazy. Get to know each page of your Insights inside and out. But don’t just read the data. Learn from it. Learn what each metric means and how to interpret the numbers.

3. Use of Visual Marketing As Eye Candy To Stand Out In The News Feed

I’m talking about using visual marketing to tell your story and to communicate your brand’s message. Visual marketing has become a force to be reckoned with on Facebook! It’s no longer an option to post visual content on Facebook. It’s become necessary for marketers to at least learn the basics of image creation.

4. Respond when your fans mention you

When someone takes the time to interact with your page, acknowledge it. Even if all you do is “like” their comment, you’ve still acknowledged it.

Final Thoughts On Facebook Organic Reach

Increasing Facebook organic reach has gotten tricky—but it’s definitely still do-able!

No matter how you look at it, you’ll need to be savvy and agile to get seen more in the news feed and noticed by your fans.

How do you measure ROI on your social media initiatives? Please take us through the metrics.

Social media ROI is one of the most heavily debated topics in the online marketing world. Because measuring the effectiveness of social media marketing efforts isn’t as clear cut as, say, running a Google AdWords campaign. It’s hard to tell how much revenue a Tweet you sent out last week brought in, or if your last Instagram post boosted your bottom line.

Your goals should be quantifiable and linked to a specific campaign. In other words, they should be things that you can attach a number to, with which one can track and measure goals.

How has your tie up with Social Offline worked for you across digital platforms?

We can take metrics from our posts for this question - we did a pre buzz boomerang and a final crocs at work video compilation - both reaching 17k+ views on Facebook. The idea was to make crocs part of people's lives and showcase crocs as footwear that is not only casual but also can be worn to work.

How often do you work with influencers? How has the experience been?

As a brand we work across influencers every month and these influencers are across sectors – be it a Fashion Stylist/Chefs’/Travelers and the overall experience with them has been phenomenal and has helped the brand to get more credibility.

What are the social media trends seen in the fashion and lifestyle space?

It is fascinating to watch how all brands are getting into the live streaming of content. Social media is really breaking down all of the barriers of news reporting. It also further proves how fast-paced and on-demand our society has become.

140 characters is no longer the limit. It has to be right now. People want to know what is happening at this moment. The top social platforms for fashion and lifestyle are the ones that are more visual: Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, and more recently launched Instagram stories.

What are your plans for 2017? Any campaigns in the pipeline?

In the year 2017, the brand is going to be labelled as a Fashion Forward brand and yes there are many seasonal campaigns that we are currently working on, plus there is a surprise waiting for everyone out there! So you have to stay tuned to the brand to get more scoop on Crocs India and its plans.