Festival Marketing: When heartshare trumps mindshare
By : Flytxt
It is Navratri-Dussehra, Diwali, Christmas and New Year that turn in maximum sales for the year for most consumer-oriented companies. People go out of their way to splurge themselves and their loved ones. Be it sweets, clothing, jewellery, silver articles or general goods, most of the consumers are tuned in to the marketplace – mobile, online and in-store.
The tradition of shopping also has a number of social, economic, and personal dimensions which can be harnessed by businesses today especially with more sources of data coming your way. Most manufacturers and suppliers launch their products or announce attractive schemes to attract the people and people are willing to spend during the festive season. Amidst this shopping and gifting spree, marketers should keep a few things in mind to make the most out of the upcoming festive season.
The success mantra for marketers to drive festive sales – understand and sell to consumers emotions, stimulate the infectious festive spirit, choose early on products you wish to promote, stay ahead and advertise early as well as be prepared to go big in offers to have customers spend more with you.
Sell to emotions!
Festive buying is driven by emotions than the actual needs. Whichever part of the country you live in, the festive shopping happens to accelerate the feeling of love, bonding, prosperity, achievement and appreciation. People express these feelings by buying goods for themselves and their dear ones. Not just individuals, even the companies are on a buying spree for the purpose of gifting to customers and employees.
Now marketers need to understand that these emotions of different consumer segments to attract their attention well. Emotions that can tickle a teenager or housewife or a busy business executive to shop could differ. Certain products/services invoke specific emotions – premium gadgets and automobiles (aspiration), gifts for children and family (joy of sharing), holidaying and fine-dining (self-indulgence). With right creative messages and channels, marketers can tap into these emotions to win hearts and wallet share of the customers.
Stimulate the infectious festive spirit
The digital and connected bandwagons have literally made customer actions infectious especially if they are a part of larger social network. Festive spirit can further accelerate the rate at which this spreads out. Marketers need to make use of this infectious nature of festive spirit and influence consumers to convert to their marketing campaigns. So be prepared to reach more of these influencers with aggressive offers so that they turn as your brand advocates and spread the positive word of mouth around. Don’t forget to link events of local importance connected to a festival in your campaigns that may act as a booster to get a heart share of audience you need the most.
Location based targeting mobile advertising campaign focused on influencers is an ideal solution for brands to get the highest bang for the buck.
Choose the products wisely!
Things get tricky when you may have a plethora of products to sell. It is important that you choose the products you wish to promote among the consumer segments early and start putting in teasers early. Beware of competition in this digital world as consumers have plenty of options to choose from at the click of a button. One of the key input which could help a marketer is the historic data of festive sales to see products in demand during different festive seasons. Even these could vary for each segment and for even the urban and rural divide. Insights into psychographics and buying preferences of consumer segments can help you in choosing the right products to promote.
As the festivities begin, there is a string of ‘Shubh Mahurats’ (auspicious occasions) to buy big important things like automobiles and even jewellery. A car is still a big-ticket item for a majority of Indians. Coupled with good rains, the pay commission and new military pension implementation, automobile demand is likely to get a boost this festive season. Some festivals like Diwali tempt people to have more sweets, which in turn could surge demand for food items. Tune in to similar insights on consumer preferences during different festive seasons to choose products wisely for promotion.
Behavioral targeting of consumer with personalised offers is an ideal way to get the attention of your consumers at right time.
Stay ahead of the demand and advertise!
Car buying in India is still an once-in-a-lifetime experience on an average and buyers eagerly look forward to get the best deals and the right occasion to buy. Economic prosperity notwithstanding, they like to plan their festive automobile shopping well in advance. Depending on the car manufacturer and the model, festive season discounts can offer savings for the buyer with discounts on prices and loan interest rates, or with add-ons such as car insurance or accessories. For businesses, this means that the businesses need advertise much before the festive season kick starts – at least a month in advance. This may also give enough time for them to get the messaging and offers right iteratively on time before the real season begins.
The decision to buy a consumer durable product is also a planned one. The middle class, which drives the bulk of festive season consumption in this segment. Goods such as refrigerators, washing machines, microwave ovens, LED televisions and premium smartphones also entail a higher ticket value. It is imperative for the businesses to start advertising their value offers and bumper discounts bigger discounts sufficiently before the festivities begin.
Multi- channel advertising campaigns are the ideal solution to engage and influence customer buying behavior.
Traditionally, impulse buying has been a key growth driver for the FMCG industry. With festival bonuses that the employers provide, there is a considerable increase in impulse buying of the FMCG commodities. While it is important to understand the art of instant gratification, FMCG marketing campaigns can be implemented closer to the festive season.
Mobile is the most personal medium of advertising and best suited to trigger impulse buying.
Keep the engagement on where it matters
In emotional buying, it is always important to keep engagement intimate. Mobile is a personal ubiquitous device that can invoke the expressions and emotions better in an intimate manner. Hence it makes sense to reach consumers over their mobile devices with these offers and deals using multiple channels. Choice of channel need to be made based on what you are selling and where you are selling, for example Out Bound Dialer or OBD channel works well in rural areas for sectors like FMCG and Rich Content Messaging or RCM can be effective for urban area for sectors like entertainment and automobile. SMS is still a widely useful channel for mass appeal for varied industries like food, apparel, education, banking, transportation services, education, banking, and so on.
Mobile banner is another channel that can be used during the festive season, especially in e-commerce. Similarly, rich content media could be handy if you wish to create teaser videos to invoke such festive spirit and emotions with larger mass.
Go big in offers to make it big
It is a golden opportunity for marketers to make it big during festive season and translate the consumer’s good spirit and festive mood to big sales. On the other side any failure on part of marketers in cashing on this is clearly an opportunity lost too. Hence be prepared to go all out to create big buzz on the promotional offers making use of all possible channels to reach your audience segment. Since we are talking about an opportunity to bank on consumer emotions and influence to translate them to sales, you need to engage with consumers without being too intrusive and irrelevant.
So in addition to ATL campaigns, digital channels are key touch points to reach and influence consumers right through the cycle starting from creating awareness, to engagement to purchase. Hit with teasers and keep building the excitement with the consumers who express interest in your offers.
Thus, the festive season provides marketers with an opportunity to deeply engage with their customers on an emotional level and build trust and credibility to make it big for themselves and brand. However you need to choose on right promotional plan and right partners who can help you in execute the plan to turn festive spirit to big sales!