Mykarma.in

This is what I was talking about when I wrote my previous post on branded online communities.

In the netherlands ABN Amro has started a social networking site called “Flametree”

I think now Indian companies also should take cue from what is happening on the internet and what are brands doing. They should adopt these international inititatives as soon as possible and not wait 3-4 years to give it a thought.

Flametree offers solutions to share knowledge and information to entrepreneurs and SME’s and will also launch other new services this coming year.

Flametree is free, and ‘open’ to non ABN AMRO entrepreneurs. This creates a great acquisition opportunity for ABN AMRO. As per my previous post it’s great to see that ABN AMRO has listened to it’s customers and is willing to facilitate and help them by getting them involved in the brand.

Do read my previous post on brand online social communities to know more about my thoughts.

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Companies spend crores of rupees every year to market their products and services online. Getting the user on the site and then persuade them to use their services or buy their products is a tough job. Use of banner advertising is also not giving us as many clicks as it used to give before. It may be due to the user being accustomed to seeing the ads at those particular spots. So the ad position becomes a blind spot… Then there are other ad blocking tools for internet explorer and Firefox that removes all the advertising when surfing the web. So what is going to work online? What should advertisers do? what are the new tools that can be used to make online marketing and user engagement effective ?….

The WEB 2.0 revolution as people call it has the answer.. The new revolution of blogs, wikis, social networking, folksonomies (collaborative sites) and content aggregators has to be leveraged for brand awareness. Right now, Offerings of all products are almost similar with other products. In order to create brand loyalty, a company looks at the online space to develop value that is different from other brands. A trend that is picking up from the international scene is that of building communities online through social networks.

We have heard about Sunsilk gang of girls, Beinggirl.in, Spillurdil.com etc. Brand Communities give consumers an online platform to express opinions, views, and exchange information based on the brand, its features or any other related experiences. International brands had realized the power of online communities’ long time ago. This is how the LEGO, Harley Davidson and Coca-Cola communities gained traction. The trend starter in India was Sunsilk with their gangofgirls… then one more popped up beinggirl.in…… You know that a brand community helps the brand to connect and engage with its target audience but what next. I still haven’t seen any community use the platform to get more customers effectively.

When I was doing a campaign for a major international bank… I used to plan media spends of crores of rupees just to get the user come to the landing page and fill up their information and go away… I ask why..? Why aren’t companies engaging the audience that it has spent so much money on to get in the first place…? Why just after filling up the lead capture form, the user is shown a page with a big thank you or is sent to the company’s homepage where finding information about a particular product or finding help is a hell of a task. I feel financial companies especially banks can use this thank you page to take the user to the next level of engagement.

For example take products like Money remittances or any financial product… In Indian context getting an NRI lead for the Remittances product is very costly….. Comes to around Rs. 500-1000 per lead and the final conversion ratio is around 50 – 1 i.e. Out of 50 leads 1 gets converted so that’s a final conversion cost of Rs. 50k…. If you give 50k directly to the user he will readily open an account at the bank…. No questions asked. There are lots of products in the market that are trying to get customers by spending millions of Rupees.

The only way a product can differentiate itself is by engaging with the audience….

Instead of showing them a Thank you page and waiting for the call center guys to follow up why not involve the user with the brand and company because any potential customer has lots of questions before buying a product or service. Creating a community that has a discussion forum and a Support ticket system is all it takes to involve the user.

The forum can be used by the user to ask questions about the product and clear his doubts till the time a representative contacts him. The forum is also a great place for existing customers to discuss about the products with other members along with interests like movies, music etc. All grievance settlement can be done through the support system. Moderators should be assigned to each and every section so that no customer can discuss about any problem they are facing and the moderators can direct such customers to the support system.

This will lead to greater customer satisfaction and brand engagement which is the ultimate goal for any company. Customers will voluntarily refer their friends and family to the forum to clear any doubts about the products and services. This activity will eventually help the bank to get more customers…. and don’t forget good link backs and SEO.

This strategy is not applicable just to banks but can be used by any company to get the best ROI on their Internet marketing campaigns.

But not every company or agency can do such activities. A specialist agency is required to handle such an activity as it has to be properly executed to be successful or it can take a wrong turn. Quasar is one of the agencies that I know of that has started a special service called Quasar talk to execute such activities related to social media which can effectively execute a Internet campaign with a community driven approach.

I would like to have a critical analysis of this marketing strategy. Please do leave a comment.

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