We are keen to explore voice-based commerce on our platforms: Ayush Agrawal, Seniority

Ayush Agrawal from Seniority.in takes us through the journey of the e-commerce platform, solely dedicated to senior citizens and its marketing strategy for 2020.

Ayush Agrawal, Co-founder of Seniority sheds light on the differentiated e-commerce platform, marketing trends in the healthcare sector and Road to 2020.

Excerpts

Please shed light on the demographics of
your TG. Is social media going to be helpful to reach the TG?

Seniority India's core target consumers are senior citizens and we receive maximum footfall in our stores from them. Having said that, the 25-45 years age group is an equally important segment, as they constitute about two-thirds of the online shopping consumer base for us.

Social media has brought a paradigm shift in the way people interact with technology. Today, there are over 10 million monthly active users on Facebook above the age of 55 years in India. Seniors are becoming increasingly tech-savvy and like spending time on social media to keep abreast of the latest updates. This presents a huge market opportunity for us as social media can help us reach our target audience through customized communication tools.

How do you plan to encapsulate your brand
ethos and personality through your communication? Take us through your content
strategy through media channels?

Our website is a primary point of communication for our customers. Keeping in mind our target audience, we have ensured that our website is slick and clutter-free for a seamless shopping experience. After a lot of research and interactions with our customers, we attempted to create the most simplistic design and layout for the website.

We have enabled shopping through WhatsApp, an easy-to-use platform for senior citizens.

We believe in having conversations with our customers through blogs, which help them expand their knowledge on a variety of topics such as health, finance, lifestyle, travel, etc. Moreover, our social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn – are abuzz with the latest industry updates, product information, company news, exciting contests, etc. which help in creating engagement on our platforms.

Our brand ethos is ‘Live Evergreen’ and all our communication strategies are aligned to this central concept which we strongly encourage among our consumers.

How do you plan to stand out in 2020? Any digital trends you want to leverage in the new year?

There is a growing trend of online content marketing and Seniority is betting big on that. As the Indian audience becomes more comfortable with the use of mobile phones and new technology tools, we are keen to explore voice-based commerce on our platforms. Voice assistants are the next big thing to watch out for and we feel it will help us leverage consumer shopping insights in the best possible way.

Moreover, India’s new internet population is largely vernacular and based in Tier II and Tier III towns and cities. These are people who have recently joined the internet and smartphone bandwagon and are willing to indulge in online shopping. We might consider launching our website in different languages next year to tap into a larger consumer base and expand our reach.

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How do you plan to leverage moments and
festivals through your differentiated/specialized product line across
categories through marketing?

Moment marketing is an incredible way of reaching out to a large audience and engaging with them by communicating the right message at the right place at the right time.

It has tremendous potential for virality and can probably yield better results than targeted ads.

We have picked on popular meme trends - ‘before & after some invention’, ‘Delhi pollution’, etc. as these resonate well with the audience. Our content strategy also includes promoting products related to festivals, special occasions, and popular observances.

Last month, we ran a knowledge series on Breast Cancer Awareness to help women understand the symptoms and take precautionary measures. On World Alzheimer’s Awareness Day, we curated a list of products on our website that could help patients suffering from this disease and give them a new lease of life.

Festive sales throughout the year work well for us as we keep adding new products to our portfolio, and this helps to attract and retain customers’ interest.

Please take us through your marketing mix.
How much percentage of it will you reserve for digital marketing?

As a growing e-commerce firm, we are keen to experiment with our marketing mix.

Since more than two-thirds of our customers are online shoppers, we focus our energies on digital and social media marketing, with close to 90% of our budgets being allocated for the same.

We are investing energies in brand building exercises through content collaborations with pop culture and new age media such as Humans of Bombay and FilterCopy.

One of our key differentiating factors is the focus on exclusive, curated events for seniors and their families. Fun activities like retro karaoke, fashion shows, pet therapy, storytelling, etc. are as popular as informative #AskTheExpert workshops on gardening, baking, healthcare, etc.

We have forged strategic alliances with leading banks and payment networks in the country such as SBI, ICICI, Rupay, AMEX, etc. Our partnerships with healthcare players like Jehangir Hospital and DocsApp, or travel partners like Thomas Cook and Saffron Stays have helped us in large scale promotions to our target audience.

What are the challenges to market an e-commerce brand in the healthcare and lifestyle sectors?

Ecommerce is probably one of the biggest revolutions in the retail industry, as it enables marketers to reach out to a large audience at significantly lower costs as compared to traditional retail models.

Being an e-commerce player in the healthcare & lifestyle space, especially for a niche consumer segment like senior citizens, is an exciting space for us to be in. However, it does come in with its own set of challenges:

• Seniors and their caregivers do not prefer being reminded about their growing age, health issues, mental & physical abilities, etc.
• Seniors are typically looked upon as being needy and disabled. But we are taking a different swing at this, our brand motto being ‘Live Evergreen’.

We engage in several community engagement initiatives where our customers can participate, shed their inhibitions and live life to the fullest.

Which social media channel to do you plan
to focus the most in 2020? How does the marketing calendar look like in the
coming year?

We have close to 4 lakh followers across our social media platforms. Facebook and Instagram will continue to be our mainstays in the upcoming year, and we will look at leveraging our content strategy on these platforms to the fullest.

We will explore designing a communication strategy around it since senior citizens are pretty comfortable using WhatsApp.