The Ultimate Guide To Festive Marketing: Leveraging Intent With Content

Here is the ultimate guide to festive marketing on platforms like Quora to achieve campaign objectives by engaging with consumers who are actively researching to make a purchase.

Neha Chimbulkar, Head Of Business Marketing, Quora APAC, and Enakshi Chatterjee, Head Of Agency Partnerships, Quora APAC give us a glimpse into the consumer traits and inclinations of Quora users and underline the various practices brands and agencies can engage in for festive marketing.

Aparna Tadikonda, Executive Vice President, Interactive Avenues; and Aditya Jalgaonokar, Manager - Digital Marketing, Hafele India chime in on the current spends, trends, and the utilization of Quora, to leverage intent with content.

Quora Users

Quora users always have an intent of purchase, as they are actively looking for information on the products on their wishlist and comparing the ones in the similar category, this filters them out before they even reach the funnel's first phase, which is awareness and consideration.

Neha states India itself hosts 100 Mn users out of the global userbase which makes up 300 Mn monthly unique users. This userbase is diverse in nature and consists of celebrities, entertainers, CEOs, business executives, and several distinct users from various walks, who engage with the community-driven content that builds on curiosity.

Consumer Traits

• Quora users do their online research before purchase
• They celebrate the festive season across all cultures
• They show high purchase intent around the festive season
• They start researching smartphones, laptops, and other consumer electronics during the major Indian holidays
• They gear up to make big purchases during this period

Consumer Statistics

63% Of Quora users research products and brands online
60% of users shopped or browsed for products online in the last week
56% of users conduct research on social media

Quora Video Ads

Advertisers on Quora have the option to choose from Text Ads, Image Ads, Promoted Answers, and Lead Gen Forms, but the platform is also developing Quora Video Ads and has introduced them in the beta phase.

Quora is currently inviting an exclusive group of agencies to join our Beta program. Video ads would be available in autoplay in-feed video, and user-initiated sound formats, and would link to third-party landing pages.

Agency Partnership Program

This program by Quora is designed to assist and support agencies for advertising campaigns with the objective of achieving optimum efficiency, top-of-the-mind recall, and a high conversion rate. Agencies and clients looking for solutions on Quora can be a part of the program.

Advertising, content marketing, or full funnel growth, all modules devised to accelerate client success can be amplified with the program. Dedicated expertise, agency success manager, ad review support, ad copy consultations, and direct ad approval support are a few of the benefits of the Agency Partnership Program.

Agencies can customize campaigns and tailor them to achieve goals. Consultations, education and training, complimentary, on-demand product workshops, and feature training for teams and clients are a few of the additional perks of the program. Available metrics for measurement include CPC, CTR, and views.

Partners would also have exclusive access to campaign strategy and performance consultations, industry event/webinars during the year, category insights, and vertical-led insight for client pitches.

2022 - The Positive Festive Sentiment

Both the panelists conclude that 2022 brings in positive sentiment for the festive season after the two years of pandemic stalling spending by dwindling the economy. Aparna shares consumers have been saving to spend, and hold a high disposable income.

Non-metro cities will experience inflated growth, content consumption has changed post-pandemic, time spent on online research is increasing, consumers are comparing prices, looking at reviews, and mobile ads have shot up, adds Aparna, remarking on the current trends.

Also Read: Decoding advertising on Quora with Vinay Pandey…

Brands need to slice and dice data and bank their bullish spends on consumers, tap the right mediums and platforms, build deeper engagement and activate strategies based on 'intent marketing', both deep and shallow intent full-funnel, and invest in ROI-based models.

Aditya states 2020-21 have been the slow years, and 2022 has observed boosted positive consumer sentiment. Malls are flooded, business travel is booming, airlines are running on high capacity,
48% of consumers spend time on social media, and 20% will spend more.

Higher disposable income and 30-35% more revenue are expected, and he shares that this sentiment can be leveraged with an educational platform like Quora, with proper research, and leveraging questions that are getting higher views. A multi-level strategy can be formulated and executed as social media platforms are struggling to give organic reach, and it's not the same with Quora.

The Spends & Trends

Aparna states that e-commerce will be taking out the lion's share, when it comes to ad spends during the festive season, and spends on digital mediums will be proportional to ROI. Beauty, mobile phones, automobiles, and all purchases would be elevated during the season despite the size of the purchase, and Quora can play a relevant role in this marketing play.

Aditya reckons the Indian ad market would grow 16% faster than any other ad market, and Quora is an integral part of this strategy. New entrants would be online education and gaming companies. FMCG will maintain its threshold, auto and travel up and coming, and good funding would translate into higher ad spending.

Leveraging Intent With Content

Aditya highlights Quora is an educational platform, and users would love to learn more, so brands should approach the platform with a full-funnel strategy, and stick to consideration and conversion
with intent-based marketing. They should analyze how consumers are consuming content. "Research, create a niche, and educate them, people will not read salesy content."

Aparna states brands should leverage the power of intent at all levels. "You need to form various segments and build different messages across different ad formats".

Quora helps brands leverage insights generated from the user data points and couple them with native ad formats to build brand trust, and consideration, and drive sales, says Neha.

Users are actively researching the products and their options. Conversations and reviews are something they actively seek while they attentively research the products, states Enakshi.

Ace Festive Marketing

Enakshi states, that the conversation around festive shopping starts in early September and experiences major spikes in Diwali, Dussehra, and Christmas. These users are scouting for deals, to buy in during the festive season, and this makes it the best period for marketers to reach the early birds.

The experts share how brands should approach festive marketing and how they can ace the cluttered season:

• Keep a healthy media mix
• The consumer journey is not linear, so the media mix content strategy should be differentiated
• Go for full-funnel marketing
• Concentrate on consideration and conversion phases
• Focus on two-three festivals over the year, instead of only looking at the festive season
• Define the relevance of festivals
• Create campaigns sustainable for five-six years
• Build an ecosystem and intellectual properties