With Facebook deploying constant tweaks to its news feed algorithm, the reach of organic Facebook Page posts have dramatically dropped over the last 6-8 months and is going to drop further in 2015, as per Facebook’s announcement on the News Feed.
What this means is that Business Pages will need to constantly innovate to provide interesting and engaging content to their users in order to reach their News Feed. That being said, advertising and boosting posts is going to be a more significant aspect of every brand that wants to leverage FB. To aid in battling this scenario, we have compiled a list of lessons learnt that includes certain targeting techniques which can help you make the most of your ad campaigns, reaching more number of potential audiences with relevant messaging.
Building Custom Audience
Using a Landing Page to run Website Conversion Ads
Behaviour
Demographics
Interests
Creative / Images used in the Facebook Ad / Post
Indians seem to have become increasingly comfortable making high-value purchases such as apartments and plots of land online – if the stats of the recently concluded Great Online Shopping Festival are anything to go by. The GOSF turned out to be a big hit amongst real estate developers, as can be seen in this story on the NDTV Property Show which has Social Beat’s Rohit Uttamchandani featured in it:
Real Estate at GOSF 2014:
Here are some of the key stats from the shopping festival which indicate that real estate seems to be well on its way to becoming a mainstream ecommerce commodity:
For more information on the changing landscape of real estate, read our complete guide for digital marketing for real estate.
Stats Source: The Times of India
Marketing real estate online is known to have shown a phenomenal increase in the number of leads(by~ 300%*) that property sellers have opportunities to convert as current buyers or as potential buyers for future projects. Since, buyers want a more personal buying experience on high monetary value purchases, B2B businesses or even businesses selling higher value products achieve greater impact on branding and lead generation from marketing than directly on sales. This is true to real estate selling, where all the marketing is directed towards generating leads, than on direct conversion
Lifestyle patterns of Key Demographic segments: Property buyers are now relying more on online, than on newspapers and other mediums to gather any information that can help make their purchase decision. This a definitely a true phenomenon when it comes to the metro cities where the target buyers are all hooked on to their smart phones, laptops and tablets. It’s more the “Pull marketing” than the push that seems to be working for this new generation of home buyers.
Cost Effective: Most of the push marketing strategies such as “full- page” advertisements in newspapers, previews in TV and advertising in movie halls cost a lot of advertising rupees. Although they do capture some mindshare and help in brand awareness, they completely fail in executing an immediate “call-to-action”. Also, there are no clear measurable outcomes of the advertising money spent, to keep the ROI to the optimum. Online marketing strategies on the other hand, are more cost effective- they are both targeted and measurable. Both social media outreach and online paid adds reach the right category of target audience- age group, tastes, geography etc. with a dual intent of creating brand awareness and driving prospective buyers to make inquiries
Branding Online is Personal: Reaching out to the target buyers and building an emotional connect on a one to one basis, especially when it involves high value purchases such as homes is imperative. social media serves as a potent channel where the prospective buyers can be educated about the brand, as well as guided through the process of purchasing a home. The emotional connect develops by having a mix of both formal and informal conversations with buyers, thereby creating a brand image that understands the sentiments of its buyers, rather than just hard selling the property
Burgeoning Third Party Platforms in Real Estate Domain: There are various third party platforms today that cater to helping the property buyers and sellers to make prudent purchase decisions by facilitating comparisons or serving as one-stop shop for educating the buyers and sellers about the various trends, pricing and newer developments in the domain. To name a few of them- Magic bricks, 99 acres, India Property, housing.com, etc. Integrating existing robust digital presence (website & landing pages), including an active social media presence with third party platforms, is making conversions much faster and easier.
Measurable conversions: Digital marketing allows to measure the value derived from each peny spent on the advertisements and on digital assets such as websites and landing pages. The key / basic three measures are
An uplift in the first two measures is indicative of the success of the digital campaign and the last measure “Path of traffic” allows to understand where the targets are arriving coming from. This measure allows modifying and enhancing marketing plans to achieve maximum ROI.
* Results from Digital Marketing Activities of Social Beat Client
According to a recent Adobe survey, more than 50% of businesses spend less than 5% of their marketing budgets on optimizing the campaigns. Though it is important for all businesses, it becomes critical in case of an ecommerce business. When an ecommerce business spends more than 90% of the marketing budget to drive visitors to their website, isn’t it really important to make the most out of these visitors coming on to your website.
In today’s rapidly changing marketing landscape, digital marketing has become an indispensable part of a business’ overall marketing strategy. Most marketers today have understood the importance of digital marketing and the mammoth difference that a well-executed, result-oriented digital strategy could make to the overall growth and profitability of a business. Going by the Marketing Budgets 2014 Report, 71% of companies surveyed are planning to increase the amount they invest in digital marketing this year.
Crafting a Result-Oriented Digital Strategy
Crafting a winning digital plan entails understanding the business in and out, clearly defining its goals and drawing up a profile of its target audience. All these differ from business to business and hence there is no one size fits all strategy. However, there are certain key ingredients listed below which must be effectively incorporated into every digital strategy to successfully drive business growth.
1. Website Design
The website is, and should be, the focal point of every digital strategy as this is where traffic from every other digital marketing channel would be directed. A poorly designed website can ruin most of the effort being put in on the other channels. Listed below are some key questions to ask, while checking if your website is optimized to convert maximum visitors into leads/customers.
2. Search Engine Optimisation
Amongst all other components of a digital strategy, SEO plays a major role in customer acquisition and sales. Almost every customer begins their search for a product/service on a search engine and ranking high in search results, for the right keyword, can drive a large volume of organic (un-paid) traffic to your website.
With paid advertising getting increasingly expensive across channels, it is essential that every business invests in SEO to attract a good percentage of organic traffic, reduce the overall customer-acquisition cost and boost profitability.
3. Blog
Maintaining a blog which constantly shares valuable, informative, engaging and relevant content plays a pivotal role in attracting the right kind of audience to your website. Apart from this, it also establishes your business as an expert or thought leader in the space and builds trust with prospective customers. Apart from the fact that a good blog can be an excellent source of inbound traffic and leads, the content helps your SEO efforts as well.
4. Social Media
Social media is an extremely effective medium for branding as well as lead generation and developing a cutting-edge social media plan should be a major part of your digital strategy. The plan would entail clarifying business objectives for social media, putting together a content plan (audience analysis, content categories, post frequency, post timings) and determining the main metrics and KPIs that would be used to consistently set targets and measure success
5. Paid Advertising – Google Adwords/Facebook Ads/LinkedIn Ads/Retargeting
Paid advertising is essential, especially for businesses that are in the startup stage, to help get the word out and extend their products/services to a greater audience. It can help get consistent and valuable traffic to the website while SEO and offline efforts are yet to begin showing results. For established businesses too, paid advertising is an excellent customer acquisition and branding channel and should be given due attention while drafting the digital strategy.
While paid search campaigns on Google Adwords offer the benefit of being highly targeted - displaying ads to people actively looking for your product/service, retargeting campaigns as well as campaigns on the Google Display Network, Facebook and LinkedIn offer a wide range of targeting that could help you reach out to the right audience with ease. Promoted posts on Facebook and sponsored updates on LinkedIn too help get the message out to a larger audience.
Each medium’s relevance and effectiveness for the business in question must be analyzed and ad spends allocated accordingly. Spends can then be re-allocated to the medium that is performing best and delivering the best results.
6. Email Marketing
With the growing popularity of social media, email would seem to be losing out on its sheen as an effective digital marketing channel. However, this is far from the truth and email marketing is still as effective as ever. If statistics are anything to go by, 95% of consumers use email and 91% check their inbox at least once a day. Also, a recent study by McKinsey found that e-mail is still a significantly more effective way to acquire customers with the rate at which e-mails prompt purchases being at least three times that of social media and the average order value too being about 17 percent higher.
7. Analytics & Reporting
As the digital strategy is being executed, it is of paramount importance to constantly analyze results and compare them with the set KPIs to check if all campaigns are on track to yielding the desired results. It is therefore essential to draw up a list of key metrics, for each of the channels listed above, that will be monitored and measured at pre-set intervals.
Keeping a close tab on analytics data can help drive the strategy in the right direction and correct any errors early enough before a considerable amount of money has been spent.
Right Integration is the key
Each ingredient in the digital plan has its own unique benefits and, in order to gain real value, they will have to be perfectly integrated keeping in mind the broader long-term goals of the business. It is this seamless integration that will eventually determine how successful the strategy will be and how quickly it will begin showing desirable results.
Offline Integration matters too
Digital Marketing definitely has its benefits but it still cannot replace offline marketing in entirety, at least for now. Forward-thinking marketers have understood this and are working on integrating offline and online marketing efforts into one synchronous campaign for a powerful lasting impact. Things as simple as on online check-in help customers communicate their physical interaction with your business, to the online world . Ensuring that your digital strategy integrates seamlessly with your offline efforts will go a long way in enhancing the bottom line of your business and boosting your ROI.
Is your digital marketing strategy working for your business? Contact us is you are looking for the best digital marketing agency in Mumbai and digital marketing agency in Bangalore.
Today, approximately 60% of Indians are shopping online and it is anybody’s guess on what would be the future of ecommerce in India. As the Indian e-commerce industry grows, practices such as dynamic pricing will gain significance and give strategic advantages to the e-retailers who use them.
What is Dynamic Pricing?
Simply put, Dynamic Pricing is the multiple price changes in a product at different times of the day. These price changes can be based on the consumer behavior on the website, the browsing patterns, etc.
Amazon changes its price every 10 min on an average
The most notable proponent of dynamic pricing is the airline industry – the sheer range of variation of ticket price can surprise even those who are in knowledge of this widespread practice. The airlines have been able to maximize their profits using this. The e-commerce industry statistics point out that Amazon changes its price every 10 mins on average1. They have been intelligently using dynamic pricing for more than a decade to undertake empowered business decisions. Offline retailers like Walmart have also followed suit in recent years.
Not leveraging pricing as a factor to drive sales? You are missing out on a big chunk of your revenues.
With technology as its backbone, the e-commerce retailers have the complete information from the pages browsed to the time spent on each page to the past purchase data. Moreover, you cannot simply change the price tag once a customer steps into the store, but in an-online counterpart you can change the prices for every customer who logs in using a plethora of information including browsing history.
Just think of a case where you browse through a product category for a long time and yet does not carry out a purchase transaction. In such a scenario, the e-commerce retailer has the data available and can roll out an immediate 24-hour expiry coupon for the purchase within that product category. This not only sounds interesting from a user point of view, but also makes business sense for the retailers.
If a number of e-retailers offer a standardized product, then in that case, price becomes the differentiating factor. Consider the following example for Samsung Galaxy S5:
Is dynamic pricing alone going to win it for the e-retailers?
Though many would want to differ on the importance of pricing, citing other factors like shipping, products on offer and customer service as equally important. Of course, these factors are also important, but in a price-sensitive market like India, dynamic pricing is going to play an important role in shaping the future of e-commerce.
1Amazon price changing machine http://www.retailwire.com/discussion/17222/amazons-price-changing-machine
In a recent report by Assocham, it was reported that Real estate firms throughout India spend about Rs 2,500 crore annually on publicity across different media and digital marketing apparently accounts for about 25 per cent with a share of about Rs 625 crore. In our experience, this percentage is much lower and is in single digit percentages. That being said, it is on the rise. For instance, Tata Housing expects online home sales to make up for 30% of total revenue over the next 3-5 years.
I recently spoke at ET conference on Digital Marketing for Real Estate Companies and below are they key takeaways from the day long conference that was held in Delhi.
The Indian home buyer has changed over the year’s - younger, tech-savvy but still carry out extensive research
Jogy Thomas, the CEO of real estate firm ATS Greens was on the panel with me and he had interesting insights on how the consumer has changed over the years. 25 years back when they started, the average buyer’s age was over 50. Of course, the financial markets and availability of loans was not easy then and hence the buyers needed a lifetime of savings to buy a house. Fast forwarding to today, the fastest growing segment of buyers is between the age of 30 to 45 and some even in their mid twenty’s. Easy availability of loans and with the ability to pay over a course of 15 or 20 years has driven consumption.
One thing that has still not changed is the fact that home buying is a family decision and not an individual’s impulse decision. Most buyers carry out a lot of research and consult family and friends before taking the big decision of buying a house. This means, it’s a very social process and real estate companies need to take into the mind of the lifetime value of their previous customers and how their social circle can be impacted by the experience they had.
Digital is being used by more than 50% of home buyers
Guneet Singh, Head of Consumer Marketing for Google India pointed out a recent study by Google and Zinnov which showed that more than half of home buyers are influenced by their online research, so it’s not a segment that can be ignored. Another interesting insight from Jogy from ATS Greens was about their affordable housing projects which range between 7 to 12 lakhs. He pointed that more than 50% of the buyers for this project interact with them over email. So, the question real estate companies need to ask themselves is which medium – digital, OOH, TV or print gives them better ROI .
Manish Vij from SVG Group who was also on the panel with me has had experience in ecommerce and media selling. He pointed that the biggest benefit of going digital is the ability to target the right audience and measure the impact. So, depending on the project, one can identify the right digital channels and target the right demographics to get results. So if it’s a premium project maybe Linkedin and display ads across business news sites (Money control, Economic Times) might be more relevant.
ROI can be in the form of lead generation or brand building
Since real estate companies have always spent on mass media, they have never had a ROI approach to their marketing. On the other hand, digital marketing is driven by ROI. As Sachin Kapur, CMO of Groupon pointed out during another panel discussion, culturally Indians have a trust deficiency compared to the West. This means, that ROI cannot be just about lead generation. While digital can give 2.5x to 3x better ROI (read our previous blog post on this), brand building needs to be an important goal for the digital marketing efforts.
Companies need to build a community on social media to create the trust. For example, project updates to showcase that the timelines are being met can be a great way to build trust with existing customers. A 360 degree walk through of the project on the other hand can be a good way to build trust in prospective customers. While consumers research online, they do see reviews of previous customers and this is when online reputation management becomes important. Another insight from the Google & Zinnov study was that many consumers pointed at the lack of accurate, in depth and updated information on the developers and aggregators. Companies need to use their website and social media to communicate the right information on a regular basis to tackle this.
Analytics can make or break the sales funnel
While digital is more measurable than any other medium, it is important for real estate companies to use the analytics for key actionables. For example, using sales and marketing automation systems, the real estate companies can identify what the top leads that the Pre Sales team can follow up with. Analytics tracked over a few weeks (or months) can throw up data on which source of digital marketing is working better for which projects. This can be then be used to take decisions on marketing spends for future projects. In the absence of analytics and data points, it’s difficult to optimise campaigns. Real time tracking now helps in taking quick decisions which can impact the sales funnel.
Messaging needs to vary depending on purpose of home buying
While there are no readily available stats, but home buyers in India can be split into buyers who want to move into the house after buying and buyers who are using in an investment. The kind of messaging and digital channels required for these two would be very different. While a home buyer might need a more emotional messaging of buying a dream house, an investor mindset requires messaging which showcases that it makes business sense to buy the house.
If you are interested in knowing more about how and social media marketing can help your real estate business, please contact us.
Read our comprehensive guide for digital marketing for real estate for a more in-depth analysis.
The Economic Times - Real Estate & Digital Conference in New Delhi, is still a month away (27th June), but the interest has started building among the digital agencies, real estate companies and marketing professionals. And why not, considering how digital media has revolutionised marketing for real estate developers. It is true that real estate is something which you purchase after physical verification, but the first step in the purchase funnel starts with a Google search or a click on a social media ad. In fact, the next step of narrowing down on choices is made online. Digital Marketing has a very important role to play in terms of lead generation. Actually, the ROI for digital media is better when compared to print media for real estate marketing. It has opened up huge opportunities in terms of an efficient leads-oriented ROI-based marketing but the path is not easy in this highly competitive industry. Several challenges lie ahead as the real estate industry goes through a paradigm shift in their marketing strategies.
With this as the backdrop, the Real Estate & Digital Conference – Future Perspective - New Delhi, will be a real eye-opener for everyone associated with the industry. When you want to discuss the digital media and real estate, you don’t get a better mix of industry experts than Marketing Gurus, Digital Marketers to Developers. The speakers’ list comprises the likes of Shailesh Rao (VP-Twitter), Brotin Banerjee (MD, Tata Housing) and Vikas Chawla (Co-founder at Social Beat).
Some of the key program highlights of the conference are:
Apart from the above discussed highlights, you would not want to miss out on the informative discussions around the real estate industry best practices for digital marketing, Real Estate case studies and in-depth panel discussions. If you are in New Delhi for the Digital Marketing for Real Estate India Conference, we would be glad to meet you. Please drop us an email at team@socialbeat.in.
Google Adwords is a powerful online advertising tool that helps people find a business at the precise moment they are searching for the product/service that the business offers. Every business can use Google Adwords to grow their reach and achieve their business goals which may be to generate leads or enhance sales.
Below you can find a slideshare presentation on the basics of Google Adwords and what one needs to know before starting their first Pay Per Click campaign. This has been made from practical experience of multiple team members at Social Beat (a Google Partner).
Ad Types
Google Adwords offers a whole range of ad types to choose from depending on the objective of the campaign. Ad types include plain text ads for the search network on desktops & mobile phones, text or image ads for the Google Display Network (GDN), Product-listing ads and Search, display and In-stream video ads on YouTube. Prior to running a campaign, it is important to understand each type and how they function.
Keyword Research
Keyword research forms the basis of an Ad campaign on the search network. The keywords must be specific and include all possibilities and variations keeping in mind the interests of the target audience. A clear understanding of the keyword types – Broad match, modified broad match, phrase match and exact match and using the right mix of them in a campaign is essential to building a successful campaign. It is also important to carry out research for your negative keywords (not sure what negative keywords are? Watch out for our next blog post on the same)
Ad creation
Similar keywords would need to be grouped together to form different Ad groups and then multiple ads would have to be created for each group. For example, for a dental clinic they Ad Groups could be Dentist, Dental Clinic, Dental Care, Orthodontic Treatment etc. These might seem similar from a business perspective, but from a search and Adwords perspective they need to be broken down into separate Ad Groups.
The quality of these ads is of paramount importance as these will attract the user to click on them and get to your website. There are a number of rules to be followed and techniques to be learnt. One interesting technique, which helps make the ad headline appear longer the 25-character limit when the ad is shown, is to add a full-stop at the end of the first line of the description. The ad must always include the key selling points and adding a keyword in the display URL would help enhance quality score.
Quality Score & Ad Rank
Quality score of an ad takes into account the expected Click Through Rate (CTR), Ad relevance and the Landing Page experience. Keywords need to be optimized to enhance Quality Score which will eventually impact the Ad rank (which is the Quality Score multiplied by the CPC bid). A good understanding of ad rank and quality score is essential to running a good campaign.
Once the campaign is up and running, improving it and optimizing it is a continuous process and involves managing bids, refining keywords based on conversions and adapting ads based on their response.
Are you ready to run your first campaign? Have any questions? Feel free to drop them below and we’d be glad to answer them.
The Team at Social Beat is excited to announce that Social Beat is now an accredited Google Partner for Google Adwords/Pay Per click Advertising.
Our newly acquired Google Partner badge certifies us as a company trusted by Google which is capable of providing the highest levels of service to clients.
We have fulfilled Google’s three main requirements for being a Google Partner
Certifications
Google requires the team handling Adwords to prove their advanced AdWords knowledge by getting certified in AdWords. All team members handling Adwords campaigns at Social Beat are certified by Google to have the required levels of competency and proficiency to run successful campaigns.
Best Practices
Google Partners are required to demonstrate that they have mastered the essentials covered in the Google certification exams and are maximizing their clients' performance by implementing Google’s recommended best practices in client accounts.
Google reviews Partner agencies’ client accounts to make sure that their clients are getting excellent service, including the type and frequency of the changes being made, client retention, and whether they're making the most of their clients' budgets.
Spend
A minimum spend of at least USD 10,000 over the last 90 calendar days is required to indicate the state of an agency’s business health.
Being awarded the honour of being in the elite group of Google-approved marketing agencies reaffirms our expertise and ensures that our practices conform to Google’s advertising guidelines and are proven to drive ROI.
Contact us to get your Adwords campaign started or to optimize an existing campaign for better ROI.
