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Social Media Plan

e-Marketing assignment
Group 12 6/16/2012

Submitted By: Anirudh Kunjal (PGP-11-103) Chirag Heda (PGP-11-020) George Thomas (PGP-11-022) Rahul Raghunathan (PGP-11-145) Shanoop Krishnan (PGP-11-069) Swati Koul (PGP-11-081)

Marketing Goal of the Social Media Strategy


Context The Ministry of Tourism is concerned that Indians are increasingly likely to vacation and travel abroad than in India, thus exporting the tourism revenue which could have remained domestic. Marketing Goal This Social Media Campaign aims to increase awareness and knowledge of beautiful but lesser known tourist locations in India through a Word of Mouth movement. An outcome of the same would be the inclusion of these destinations in the decision-making set of abroad bound tourists.

Social Media Goals


The campaign intends to induce Word of Mouth behaviour on the campaign website and on other social media platforms. Below are the details of the campaign: Campaign Name: Reclaim India The Reclaim India campaign revolves around users unlocking lesser-known but not less beautiful locations in India through location based quizzes thereby getting to know more about them. Below are the essentials of the campaign: The campaign encourages Indians to unlock tourist locations to free them from a foreigner overdose. To free a destination, it has to be unlocked by a minimum number of users, which would be pre-decided by the creators based on expected and desired interest of the location. To unlock a location, a user has to go answer a simple 10 question quiz on the location having questions on its culture, history, food, prominent tourist spots and so on. The idea is to get the user to search to find the answer about the location which would increase his awareness and inclination to go visit the place. On successfully completing the quiz, the user can post about it on Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites. This would result in a posts which could incite other users to participate such as : Raj has successfully unlocked Chintpurni from the foreigners. Join him in Reclaiming India The campaign would run on a standalone website www.reclaimindia.com. The home page would have a big map of the country with key tourist locations being highlighted. The number of people who have unlocked the city and the number of people required to free the city would be displayed against each city In addition to this, there would be pages for different destinations having details about locations, ways to get there, places to visit & eat etc. Further, registered users would also have the opportunity to upload photos and videos for listed locations. There would also be an option to recommend locations to other users.

The social media marketing sales funnel below details the concept: Awareness: The campaign would begin with a TVC having a Pondicherry fisherman walking through tourist attractions of the city which are all flocked by foreign tourists. Frustrated, he laments about his city being taken over by foreigners and appeals to viewers to go to www.reclaimindia.com and set his city free. 2 more TVCs would be released in a phased manner, covering 2 different locations. Interest: The campaign fits into a users social life as it encourages him to spread the word among his colleagues and friends to Reclaim the country. Further the ability to share photos and videos gives a person the feeling that he is helping others discover locations better.

Action: The campaign would be useful in the users social life as It induces a sense of patriotism giving a person a desired social identity One gets the chance of being a trustworthy friend or opinion leader when one recommends friends videos of locations One gets bragging rights if he is among the first few to unlock a location The campaign goals on other internet applications can be defined in terms of WoM behaviour of those platforms: Social Media Application Blogs Twitter Stumble Upon Facebook YouTube and Flickr Parameter to measure WoM Number of references to campaign website on blogs Number of times a campaign badge is displayed on blogs Number of retweets Number of additional taggers Number of reposts/ shares of campaign posts Frequency of appearance on timeline of friends Number of embeddings Number of times republished in other social media and offline Number of Likes

Why is a social media strategy better suited to accomplish the goals?


To induce the behaviour desired in the target group, the attitudes that drive such trends have to come about organically rather than imposed via a marketing campaign. A social media is best suited to achieve this objective as it does it faster, cheaper and better method than any other means possible. The campaign involves users as content creators which enhances credibility and creates a sense of contribution.

Who is the plan targeted at and why?


We envisage that India is heavily influenced by western culture and is a deep rooted sentiment among many young audiences that vacationing abroad is a much more pleasing experience than visiting places in India. Tradition and a feeling of promoting the rich heritage of our country has taken a backseat and this is the primary reason why travellers end up going abroad for vacations with locations of the likes of South East Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand being the usual destinations since they offer specialized cheap packages for Indian travellers. There is also a large proportion of travellers who visit Europe. USA is also a favourable destination especially for families of those who are studying and/or working there. Other locations like Dubai, Maldives, Sri Lanka, etc form a set of locations that young people and engaged/married couples look to travel. Over 50% of Indias 1.22B is under the age of 25. Hard numbers are not the only criterion in a marketing campaign but this hits you in the face and the fact that inevitably a vast majority of the young population is on social networks; the market segment has tremendous potential. It so happens that the campaign we have in store was conceptualized keeping in mind the affluent youth, the upper middle class and upper class who seek to travel abroad for vacations. Another point to note is that the propagators of viral marketing are primarily in the age bracket we have identified to target our campaign. Males and Females in the age bracket of 18-35 years, belonging to socio-economic classes A1,A2 and B1. Drilling down to a more granular level for focussed campaigning would be the below TG: Males and Females in the age bracket of 18-35 years, belonging to socio-economic classes A1,A2 and B1, who have travelled abroad either on study or for leisure or own expensive cars or have visited tourism websites of south east Asian countries or have commented on social media sites for #cheap #holiday #abroad #honeymoon #Singapore #Malaysia #Thailand #backpack #beach #mountain #vacation #holiday #trip #getaway It would also be helpful to note that the segment of individuals aged between 18-24 years of age play a significant role in influencing the choice of holiday destinations in case of families in the country. Another core set of target segment population would be people who have already travelled abroad for holidays. They could be found out by using the Facebook app Cities Ive been to. The campaign will run on a website and integrated with social media platforms like blogs, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Flickr.

Approach
The social media marketing campaign will provide value to the target audience in ways of entertainment, facts & information and bragging rights. These will be discussed in greater detail in the following sections. Primarily, the campaign will avoid boasting or epitomizing about India and

will run just based on the viewers' reactions. The viewers will have complete control on the information that goes on the networks and signalling is almost zilch. The primary approach to this marketing campaign will be to use whacky videos that target different sub-groups that we intend to target. This will be followed up with interactive games to keep the interest high. For instance, a general first video would be about a bunch of foreigners revelling in a virgin land, claiming their stake over the place because the Indians have deserted the place. The video covers the most pristine parts of the location and will send out a call to the young Indians to reclaim this part of India. This teaser video will be housed on various media like a campaign website, youtube channel and facebook page. Integration with Social Media The viewers will have the following options after entering the website. 1) Play an interactive game that will allow them to explore that place and uncover many interesting facts on the way Progress of the game can be shared as status on Facebook, tagged on stumbleUpon, tweeted on twitter and photos pinned on Pinterest 2) Add more photos of the place and tag on Pinterest 3) Comment on the videos 4) Share/embed links on other social media like facebook, blogs, twitter, Pinterest, etc. Continuous engagement will occur by the website responding to the viewers comments wittily, either in form of a comment or follow up video. The Interactive Game The website hosts the interactive application which presents before the user media rich content which almost replicates the place. The players will navigate through this game to reach hidden places by cracking puzzles. The game will then unleash a wide array of content about the real place (such as videos, photos, blogs, fun facts, etc). They will then have the option to brag about this exploration by sharing it on facebook and tweeting about it in twitter using links on the website (e.g I just reclaimed Palolem in Goa). The explorers can also pin these pictures and videos on Pinterest or other applications to express their interest in visiting these places. Follow-up campaigns This previous campaign might be targeted at a broad group. We will then run multiple campaigns which will involve different kinds of places targeting different sub-groups within the broad group. A video might be targeted at honeymooners while another might be targeted at the adventure seekers using local dialects and funny messages. One other campaign that we intend to use is the 'Is This India??' photo challenge where we post a picture from a famous tourist spot abroad and ask followers to put up pictures from India equivalent or better than the originally posted picture. Engagement will occur by the viewers themselves rating these photos. The best picture will be granted bragging rights.

Conditions under which plan will succeed The videos that would be put up on platforms like Youtube and Facebook would be vital in capturing the attention of the social media population. A well-made, humorous video with the right cast would pique the curiosity of people and encourage them to check out the link provided. Ensuring that the teaser videos are displayed prominently on all the major social media networks in the initial phase of the campaign is crucial. The visibility of these videos would in turn determine the exposure that it would gain from potential viewers. Another significant aspect to be taken care of would be the timing and rotation of the teaser videos, as it would go a long way in reaching out effectively to the target group defined. Once the campaign is successful in leading viewers to the standalone website for the campaign, then the quality and innovativeness of the game would be the next major factor in the overall success of the initiative. The underlying idea behind the game would be to engage all site visitors laterally and keep them hooked on to the concept of reclaiming all major tourist spots in India. The interface should be simple and easy to use with user friendly navigation features. Adequate measures would be put in place to ensure that no explicit connection to the Department of Tourism can be elicited from the teaser videos and the interactive game. This would ensure that no explicit signalling happens in the course of the campaign, as we would want to want the viewers to evolve the tone and direction of the discussion on their own. The campaign ought to start in the lateral space and should remain so. Conditions under which plan will fail The campaigns success will be extremely doubtful in case of a failure in generating and sustaining the buzz around it in the lateral space. If effective measures for developing and encouraging the lateral engagement initiatives are not implemented, then it would end up being a major deterrent in the path to success. If the target audience is not provided with enough means to contribute and drive the discussion such as contribution of original content of videos, photos and blog entries, this might hurt the ambitions of the campaign to expand its reach. Ensuring that the content of the teaser videos as well as the interactive game is innovative and attractive is essential for the success of the campaign. If the target audience is not able to connect and relate with the content and tone of the campaign measures, then that would be a sure recipe for failure. The cast of the teaser videos, the ease of use and visual features of the game are more features that have to be up to the mark.

Measurements
While measuring the effectiveness of the plan, primary focus will be given to the extent of reach Reclaim India campaign has been able to generate. It will be based on the volume of people talking about the campaign and the number of channels used to generate the conversation. Measuring the social media success depends on the channels used for the social media campaign. The Reclaim India campaign propagates over different social media viz. facebook, twitter, Pinterest etc. Therefore, measurement of the impact of the social media campaign depends on the various metrics which are used across these social networks. Facebook: The teaser videos that are launched in Facebook can be monitored using metrics like the number of shares, likes and comments received. These metrics can be used in turn to check the

effectiveness by mapping it with the number of people who are currently using the application. This would give an indication about the extent of adoption of the application through the teaser video activity to kick start the campaign. Analytical tools like Real-Time Analytics can be used to acquire these metrics and also filter based on parameters like organic impressions, virality etc. Twitter: The Reclaim India campaign can be monitored on twitter using monitoring the hash tags, retweets and followers. Tools like the archivist can be used to measure the extent of tweets v/s retweets and statistics specific to the hashtags showing the extent of activity following the Reclaim India app on twitter and its effect in creating more followers. Pinterest: The Reclaim India application gives the user the opportunity to pin photos and videos on pinterest which will be monitored using different tools like Pinerly which can be used to monitor the pins based on the places being showcased as part of the Reclaim India campaign. Also, metrics such as repins per pin can be used to see the amount of lateral activity and the extent to which the campaign is effective. Youtube Channels: The exclusive youtube channel hosts videos specific to the places which feature in the campaign. The popularity of the videos can be measured using the number of hits it receives and the number of shares done on the video which can be monitored using tools like Insight which gives a snapshot on views and popularity. All these metrics which are generated post campaign would give an indication on the success of the Reclaim India Campaign.

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