Social Media Drive: A New social touch

What is social media drive and how it using for social touch? Brands are now using social media to drive deeper customer engagement. A seismic change wrought by social media. The idea was to befriend the youth by touching passion points through cultural moments – festivities, meme, news development, sports, movies, music, or emotions.

Social Media Drive for public touch!!!

Summer is about to set in. And PepsiCo doesn’t want to leave any ground for its rivals. The American food and beverage maker wanted to make a cultural connect with its customers, instead of just promoting its products. For Valentine’s Day, preparations began in September. Rumoured couple Tiger Shroff and Disha Patani was to be introduced on Pepsi. Fashioned around love, the actors said they were in a “committed relationship with Pepsi”.

The impact was instant. The social media campaign got 100 million impressions, and reached 57 million people. Soon, the Web was flooded with articles on the couple with Pepsi’s mention. Pepsi has five such social media campaigns planned annually. “If you do these moments every year for 10 years, you will see the difference in brand connect,” says Tarun Bhagat, Director, Cola & Hydration at PepsiCo India.

What is impactful social media ads campaign?

So, what’s critical? “How do you make each brand interaction real and authentic? Wherever we have found that balance, we have succeeded. As this science develops, it gets smarter,” says Pooja Jauhari, CEO of The Glitch, a creative and digital marketing firm.

Marketing and its role in engaging buyers is seeing a revolution. Social media is increasingly becoming the most potent tool for marketers to engage with the customer. Social media advertising revenue in India is expected to jump from $2.6 billion in 2018, to $6.5 billion in 2023, according to Statista.

Social media advantages

Brands are working on nuanced and targeted engagement. “Each works differently for different brands with different needs. Some brands need targeting and re-targeting to stay on top of the consideration chart, while some may need long-term embedding.

As use of smartphones and the internet increases, there will be a surge in digital advertising, driving the customer to look for trusted voices. “These can be through friend referrals or through influencer recommendations. For both, social media is increasingly becoming the core channel to reach people,” says Manshu Agarwal, CEO of Ponder.

Successful social media campaign

Experts believe that social media is great for entrepreneurs, as it helps in uniquely positioning a brand or a product. The evolution started six to seven years ago. Brands would just have their presence, and users would treat their pages as a grievance cell. That slowly changed as brands started realizing that social media should have a different tonality that requires story telling.

Those stories need to be shared among like-minded people. It’s like going back to the traditional word-of-mouth era. Social media helps in bucketing people with similar behavior and tastes. That is the data threat we have to capture to segment and become relevant to users.

Crux

But there is a catch. Social media works at breakneck pace. When a moment happens, one needs to capture it in the first few hours, otherwise the opportunity is gone.