Tag Archives: ROI

Why we seem to only be measuring our lack of understanding of this medium ???

8 Oct

 



I stumbled upon this interesting video recently this indeed is extremely relatable on several accounts! It completely captures the scenario most brands would find themselves in- trying to define why they are here, what they should be doing and how should they be measuring it?

The need to be online,it seems, is driven more due to a practice being commonly being adopted rather than a pre-defined business objective. It is more about giving your brand a face on Facebook rather than clearly defining and building a social identity.

This becomes important to understand as because of this, it seems we end up measuring for the sake of measuring.

The ability of this medium to generate the minutest of details as far as the metrics are concerned is thrilling for brand managers who for the longest time have tried to accurately arrive at ways of determining the ROI on traditional media.

At the same-time, the nascency of this medium within the domain of branding in general, leaves many clueless.
We’re able to define the ‘how’s and the ‘what’s’ with the ‘why’ missing or vaguely addressed within our social strategies. To add to the mayhem, we have come up with a set of standard metrics for ROI,  which seem to be the be-all and end-all of a brand’s existence within the social domain.

In a nutshell, Facebook/Twitter Presence= likes, fans, followers and followers.

Yes metrics are good, they help build, structure and evaluate. But they can be awfully misleading and myopic.

Let’s take an for the sake of clarity.

A very base metric, ideally found at the lowest rung of any branding proposition is-reach. In simple words, to say how many people have you been able to approach?

A million fans seems to be an ideal benchmark for many brands (infact it often marks the season for festivity on platforms like Facebook and Twitter)

Let’s take a step back and ask, what do a million people on a page really mean?
A million new customers? 30,000 more customers or a mere 100 actively engaging fans? In each of these varying scenarios, what is the cost of acquiring every new fan? For every campaign/contest run, what have you achieved in the end? And at what cost?

Cheers!



“Some went to marketing schools but probably didn’t clear their exams”

28 Apr

Jason and Sabir, two of our very smart boys, went on to an expensive tour to IAMAI – 7th Marketing Conclave. Let’s find out a bit about why they actually went and see if they did anything remarkable there.

Our very special inquisitive employee, Kavita  was put onto this task. Questions thrown at them were simple and what they said was something on these lines…

Why did you go?

Jason: The objective was simple…learn, network, develop a perspective and communicate ours

Sabir: To understand their perspective of our business, internet and digital marketing…

Who all were there?

Jason: Speakers like Vivek Bhargava – Communicate 2, Rameet Arora – McDonalds India, Abdul Khan – Tata Teleservices, Salil Kapoor- DishTV and Bobby Pawar – Mudra. That’s a non exhaustive list… :p

Sabir: …and us, Drizzlin reps ;)

What was our learning?

Jason: We got a deeper understanding of what the industry perspective is… A few CMOs like Ronita Mitra – ICICI Bank, Sanchita Ganguly – Asian Paints, Aditya Save – Marico Industries had a strong opinion of the power of internet, changing markets, evolving businesses and most importantly perception.

Sabir: Yeah, I agree…

a)    We gauged, there is lack of confidence and a sentiment of fear of investment in this medium of marketing…the constant question is around is ROI.

b)    People’s understanding of this medium is very basic, which restricts them from opening up to it, hence considering it very naïve and new.

The effort gone into organising this event, bringing all CEOs, CMOs together is highly commendable. It made the audience think and discuss the impact of internet.

Jason: To add to it…

a)    We realised its very crucial for marketers to understand, that engagement with the customer is an important aspect for brand building; now there’s an opportunity for the same via mediums like Mobile, Social Media, Interactive Television, etc.

b)    We also believe the internet offers the most valid customer data but the challenge lies in choosing the right agency or tools and understanding the power of that data.

c)    Some brands do understand the importance of empowering their employees to talk on social media. We appreciate that kind of collaborative attitude of businesses towards the medium.

The event was a good starting point for marketers like us to understand the things not to pitch to our prospective clients :p

Demonstrate these opinions –

Giriraj Bagri, Castrol India – “Mobile is a medium and good content is what needs to be created”.

Rameet Arora, MC Donalds India – “Creating properties with good content, Mobile analytics will be the focus, QRD Technology looks interesting for experimentation.”

Hitesh Oberoi, Info Edge India Ltd. – “I prefer to start early rather than sitting as spectators measuring the (digital advertising) medium.”

Those were just some insights on our visit at the conference…stay tuned to know more about what we’re up to.

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