Mahalaxmisthan, Laitpur , Nepal

A brief write up on Social Media Effectiveness in Marketing

Submitted by Satyendra Mani Tripathi Brand Officer Khajurico Nepal Pvt. Ltd

Khajurico Nepal Pvt. Ltd

Date: August, 2011

Introduction of Khajurico: Khajurico Nepal was established in 1990 as a family owned cottage industry with a brand name of Khajuri Foods. Khajuri Foods has started with single product, baked bread (Pauroti) but now produces different customized product in different heading like Bread, Bun, Cookies, Biscuit, Pastry. Its vision is To become a leading world class baking food products manufacturing industry of Nepal Advertising medium and channel to reach customer: One of the things which is most important is to reach the customer through the appropriate way which channels the intended message along effectively. It can be categorized in two way i.e. Above The line (ATL) and Below The Line (BTL). ATL consists of those medium which is targeted to the wide range of customer irrespective to their nature and taste. It is uniform message deliver to the wide range of people. E.g. advertisement through national television, national radio, national broadsheet newspaper , etc. whereas BTL consists of mainly to particular people who may be of certain place, strata, class, location, etc like hoarding board, Pamphlet, local FM station, local newspaper , word of mouth (buzz marketing), events and road show, display of the product etc. A basic idea of Social Networking sites: Social media networks are websites which allow users to communicate, share knowledge about similar interests, discuss favorite topics, review and rate products/services, etc. The impact of social network sites are increasing with the time and people tend to give more time to social networking then tradition online activities. The situation is such that simple headaches to major problems are been shared online due to nature of attention seeking attitude. The social media has already challenged the conventional journalism where the things are posted and in real time (as it was case Sohab Akthar a software engineer who tweeted the live telecast of the Abottabad raid of Osama Bin laden then any main stream media) and with the handy tool people has more powerful than in any era of civilization. There are many social networking sites like facebook, twitter, YouTube, orkut, myspace, etc. which are used by millions of person all over the world. Nepal and Facebook: Nepal is the 70th position in the world facebook user population with 11.89 lakh user of august 18, 2011 up from 5.5 lakh as of August 10, 2010. The total facebook user as of total population is 4.11%. The top 2 Nepali brand in facebook are Ace Travel and Ncell with 1.17 lakh and 73 thousand respectively. The highest groups of users are from the age group of 18-24 which is 45% followed by 25-34, 28% and 16-17 to 10%. That the population is quite young as below 24 year age there are 55% of user. The Nepali male population of the facebook is 69 % and female is of 31%.

Social media and Advertising: Social networks are popular places for people of all different backgrounds and experiences to meet. Furthermore, they can be powerful tools for businesses to establish brand presence, build brand awareness, as well as save advertising costs in economically dismal times. There are opportunities for businesses to grow public awareness and get involved in the communities, as well as continue to research for other ways to advertise on social platforms, such as incorporate mobile handset devices into the marketing model. Social network marketing can be very advantageous for businesses. According to study social networking, if approached correctly, can help find talent, build brand awareness, find new customers, and help conduct brand intelligence and market research. The communication in social network gets shoppers to listen to one another, review ratings for products and services, and provide product knowledge and personal information. Social networks protect users from interaction with the outside world, and keep information and interaction away from strangers. In addition, social network marketing is the wave of the future, Marketer throughout the world are looking for innovative ideas to reach the customer and social media can be one of them. The main advantage of having a social network presence is "the amount of information an organization can gain about its customer base." Furthermore, since social networks provide a wealth of word of mouth information regarding the brands and products, the businesses must approach social media the same way they treat other media.This is easy to do online because the traditional communication barriers of physical locations no longer exist. Beside the huge potential and advantage it also can back fire too. when it comes to online social network advertising. Issues such as aggressive advertising, lack of e-commerce abilities, invasion of user privacy, among others, can be major disruptions to social network advertising. As it is well known fact the only a handful people in Nepal has actually privileged to have infrastructure of internet which is mere approx 5 percent of total population it will be difficult to launch aggressive marketing same is true with the ecommerce abilities and invasion of privacy of user information. Beside this Social networks are user-generated content where end users write about their experiences with products, services, customer service, etc. The content in such networks may be critical to the product and companies have very little control in what end users share in their social network.

Khajurico and Social Media: How can Khajurico actually be beneficial from social media when the country internet penetration is low and target customer or say buying decision is mainly with the women especially mother for some product is a thousand rupee question. The success of the product which is offered by the Khajurico lies much more in the availability of the product in the nearby kirana shop, departmental store, tea shop and quite good visibility. Same way the country three geographic region are quite different in nature and taste and different other media should be useful to cater the need in different terrain. These is are quite necessary for the success of the Khajurico. Actually Social media is not a replacement of traditional marketing tools such as visibility, local newspaper, TV, or radio station, but another tool that is able to reach the community which prefers electronic media. Unlike other traditional marketing tools, the advantage of this new electronic channel is that it is able to communicate globally and enrich the marketing to the personal level. Khajurico can be beneficial with the viral marketing like lets says the people who will like fan page, among them some of the lucky winner will get Khajurico T-shirt and some other prizes too actually pull marketing where the internet presence will increase same way it will be helpful in Promote products and services, Facilitate internal knowledge sharing, Increase brand awareness, Increase product and brand awareness, Increase web traffic, Increase customer loyalty, Increase success of new product launches. Even though social network marketing is still in its infancy, it holds a potential success for businesses if it is carefully integrated in the marketing mix. It is categorized to word of mouth marketing medium where people tend to recommend the product at the same time it can work as a viral marketing to attract the visitor to the site and to create the teaser. Social networks make viral marketing and word-of-mouth marketing much easier than before. So, It is quite obvious that Khajurico not to ignore the opportunities to jump in and expand their customer base Conclusion: Social medias rapid and widespread growth does not need to occur at the expense of traditional media. From the consumers perspective, this enhances and reinforces communications and provides much needed credibility for the brand in an online environment. In light of this finding, social media could be effectively leveraged off traditional forms of media to foster attitude formation and enduring feelings, as well as enhancing consistency in brand image through highly integrated messages. With this in mind, the objective must be to create a dialogue with the consumer, rather than purely using the media as a promotional vehicle to drive return on investment (ROI). The notion of integrated marketing communications through multiple channels must be inherent in the planning and execution of any strategic social media marketing,

and measurement of the success of social media campaigns must be assessed holistically from a brand building perspective, rather than ROI way. In particular we often hear the question what is the value of a Facebook fan? We believe the right way to approach these questions is something else. For each of the types of impressions enabled by social media, we should ask, how many people do those impressions reach?, how effective are they in changing attitudes and behaviors?, how many people loved this content enough to pass it on, how many people saw the content. A successful social network marketing program is not determined by the number of fans or friends. Success is determined by the quality of the conversations taking place. However, for conversations to occur there needs to be a population within which to spark conversations.