Social Media Strategies for Brands with High Consumer Touch Points

by sanjay on Sunday, February 28th, 2010

A lot of brands have high consumer touch points. Footfalls, if you please. Literal footfalls, like in stores. Or airlines. Or cinema houses. Coffee shops. Etc, etc.
Or virtual footfalls, like in a popular web site.
Or remote footfalls like in television channels, with high viewer base.

When such brands go on to Social Media, as they embrace the new platforms like Facebook or Twitter, they do start from zero. Usually, the approach remains restricted to the Social Media space, and fan base is attempted to be built organically, or through other means, but by staying in the Social Media space, and creating interesting strategies, or spending money there itself.

Why not integrate the physical touch points, and convert them to be your fans?? Would that not accelerate the growth of fans on Facebook? How about converting those Footfalls to become your Fans?!

Here is a presentation that I made to the Social Media Club in Mumbai, India, about this proposition:

Turning Footfalls into Fans,and Fans to Footfalls: Social Media Lessons for brands with large consumer touch points

In case you are unable to view the Slideshare presentation embedded above, in your browser, then you can view the same here.

The interesting element to note is the second part of the story, viz. getting those Facebook fans, back into the stores. That is often forgotten or left to chance. However very little business is actually done on those Facebook pages. The money to be earned is in the stores, and not on Facebook.

The key element is to get the fan from Facebook, back into the stores, spending money. And which is all about converting the Fans back to being Footfalls!

What do you think about this? Do you see a closer integration of messaging in the offline space, and the Social Media space, for a brand? I’d love to read your views. Please share them as comments here!

28.02.2010 Monetization, Sanjay, advertising, campaign, facebook, marketing, retail, social media, twitter View Comments

Billboards on Social Media?? Well, yes..

by sanjay on Sunday, September 6th, 2009

Dear Still-Not-Convinced-About-Social-Media Marketer,

You are happier to keep putting your ad budgets on street billboards like this one, right?

And you even think that it’s fine if few passers by would see your ads on the street such as the following ones, right?

Well, just because you love such large splashes of your brand name, where a lot of people can see it, how about if we offer you the same on Social Media??

“Excuse me?” is what I hear from you now!

Read on, then..

This is how a recent Social Media campaign was constructed for Channel V, as they were relaunching the channel on August 22nd.

Twitter members were given an offer, to allow their Display Pictures (DPs) to be swapped with the Channel V logo.

They were told that if they register and allow this to happen:

- Channel V will ‘possess’ their avatar, for 50% of the time, on a random basis; that way, for the other 50%, they could still retain their own avatar

- if they stay registered for at least 5 days, they would get a neat Channel V T-shirt AND

- they would also be eligible to win an iPod

This was great incentive for many. And it turned out to be fun too. And that is when the “billboards” started to get created on Social Media, like this:

And if you were using Twitter directly from the web, then too, the screen was like a large advertising space for Channel V, as you can see here:

No wonder then, that there were user comments that said that “Channel V seems to have taken over the Internet”!

So dear Marketer, if “billboards” are what appeal to you, fret not. You can get them on Social Media too :)

And if you want “in” on this new advertising option for your brand, you know whom you have to call?!

Yours truly,

- The Social Wavelength team!!

06.09.2009 Sanjay, advertising, twitter View Comments

Twitter – where is the money?? Ok – here it is!!

by sanjay on Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Enough now, about where the money is in Twitter! I would like to answer that question here and now!!

Now, you could be selling bananas in Denver, CO or you could be an agent for printing machinery in New York, or you could be a hot shot investment banker in Singapore or you could be running a play school in Mumbai. I may not be able to answer the question for all of you in just this one post.

But I will take a generic example, and hope you can figure out your hypothesis from this example. And find your own pot of gold from Twitter, if you can :-)

So the most generic example will have to be one, where someone is seeking to sell, and make money as a result. So say, you are a small store selling laptop computers or books or clothes or cameras or whatever! If Twitter had to work for you and make some money for you, you would want it to point you to buyers of your products, isn’t it? Can Twitter do this? It sure can.

As a salesman, making cold-calls, what would be the perfect timing? To be at the right place at the right time! Like you were a salesman of guitars, and you walk into a home, just as the parents have decided that they will get their son a new guitar. Could it get any better for you, as a salesman?

Can Twitter play out this fantasy for you? Sure, if you would only stop and look.

If a person was in the mood of purchasing something, what would she say to herself? Or to her friends? What kind of statements are typical of this stage of buying?

“Planning to buy”, “Thinking of getting”, “Thinking of buying”, “Which one should I get”, “Should I buy”, etc. etc. Isn’t this obvious?

Now, Twitter being nothing but simple conversations of this kind, these are the kind of phrases that people use ALL the time. And you as a seller can simply look up the public timeline of Twitter, and find the people who are using these phrases!

No, you do not need thousands of followers for doing this. No, you do not need to be a Dell or an HP to do this. No, you do not need any programming skills to do this.

In short, this simple trick is available for anyone who chooses to use it. And then dig that one step deeper to find those buyers who are looking to buy what you sell, and perhaps, in the areas, where you sell. And you are on! At the right place, at the right time.

Check out these searches on http://search.twitter.com and once you have got it, and if you are a seller, you will not ask the question again, “Where’s the money in Twitter?”!

Now if you are not selling something, but you are into other activities, you just need to extrapolate the example shown above, for your own area of interest.

So if yours is a medical practice looking to attract patients, you may want to track the phrases, “looking for a cure”, “cure for”, “know a doctor” and such.

So did you find your magic phrases? Is there enough Twitter traffic for those? Good, so keep counting the cash, then! Cheers! :)

25.06.2009 General, Monetization, Sanjay, twitter View Comments