BTL Companies in India

The increasing scope of BTL advertising in India

In marketing lingo, on-the-ground events and promotions are called 'brand activation', and they generally form the largest chunk of a company's non-advertising activities. Spurred by brand activation spends, called below-the-line (BTL), are gaining share over advertising spends at several leading consumer companies.

With increasing choices, the consumer has become more discerning therefore, ground activations are gaining traction due to the added impact they give beyond the media clutter."

Today, consumers have started saying, 'show me something real. All this is translating into more business for brand activation companies in India and help them with their brand-activation strategies. Clients are questioning the delivery from plain advertising as it has its limitations and delivery from brand activation is almost immediate. It is predicted that, in the next five years, the split between BTL and ATL (above-the-line, or advertising) spends will be equal. Currently, companies spend more on mass-media advertising than on events and promotions but advertising budgets will not fall in absolute terms; rather more of the incremental allocation will be to BTL activities. Overall spends on BTL will significantly rise as people begin to see its impact.

The online marketing and social media conveys details of a product quicker than conventional advertising. The influencing touch points are shifting. The customer comes armed with his own research. So, conversion with demo and explanation has become an area of great focus.
It's also the current tight business environment, where advertising symbolizes 'theme' and BTL representing 'sales'. In a tough market, cash flows are an imperative. Thus people are putting their big bucks on BTL, and money is certainly moving from theme to scheme.
The basic idea is to engage with the consumer despite the higher costs. In case of traditional advertising on television or print, cost per contact is very low. BTL activation is costlier, but it's the quality of engagement with the consumer that makes a lot of sense.

Many big companies have been relying heavily on BTL activities in tier-II and tier-III towns. With rural consumers increasingly moving towards branded products, just leveraging mainstream media is not enough to connect with them.

CRM Channels In India

Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM): Importance of Different Channels

In our previous article we discussed the importance of Customer Relationship Marketing for any business. After analyzing the intellectual usage of Customer relationship marketing, it is difficult to visualize how a marketing division can sustain without it. The potentiality of CRM is literally eternal.

In this article we will discuss about the different channels used in India through which customer relationship marketing can be enhanced. These channels help you to build a brand and an image in the market. As a result of these efforts you will be able to add a list of loyal customers who like to talk about your products or services. These six channels are:

• Customer service

  

• Content

• Social media

• Email

• Customer Loyalty Programs

• Surveys

Here we explain how these specific channels can be used in your business. The businesses that give priority to customer relationship marketing have been fully rewarded for their efforts.

1-Customer Service – Regardless of the advent of technology into customer relationship marketing, the personal support and attention will always form the basis of remarkable customer service. Reciprocity and personalization are two major keystones for an outstanding customer support. To accomplish these objectives, it’s really important to establish a balance that aligns employees with proper demarcated aims and guidelines. Always remember that the businesses who are pioneers in offering in comparable customer service have this aim embedded in their business culture, so you should also ensure that you should also make efforts and invest in employees who realize the importance of customer support.

2-Content – Everyone around is talking so much about Content Marketing. However there is a reason behind this. The traditional paid advertising or marketing revolved around letting the customers know about your products or services or may be getting clicks for your business through online mediums. As soon as you stopped investing money in these marketing channels, the results also stopped.

On the contrary, by the help of content marketing you can make long-term relations with your customers. It should not be viewed in the light of traditional marketing expenditure as the returns on investment made on unique and informative content will be last till the time the information is related and significant.

Although content is just not limited to customer acquisition. You can also use content as a support system for customer relationship marketing. Webinars, support documentation and free resources can promote your content to customers if it is: 


• Comprehensible
• Usable
• Functional
• Motivational
• Enjoyable

Content marketing explains customers why they should do things, how to do and what things they should do.

If your content is not explaining these three points to your customers then you need to re-evaluate your content marketing channel.

3-Social Media – With its far-reach, social media can be a very useful channel for customer relationship marketing.
There can be multiple methods to use social media to develop strong relationships with your customers, all of which are required to correctly display your products’ brand values. You can use this channel to build trust and prestige among your customers and to successfully resolve any issues or problems related with customer service.

At the same time if your business doesn’t serve to professional business requirements then you can even use it to connect with your customers through interactive aids and humor. Social media helps in customer relationship marketing as it let you to identify your target audience and informs you about what services they are looking out for. If your efforts are making you a part of your customers social media circuit then maintain the place by offering them with the apt content that they really need.

4-Email
 Marketing – Since years email marketing has proved to be the strongest medium to build customer relationships. Add in this channel by providing free informative content and product updates through emails. A regular flow of unique and usable content assures that your campaign is meeting its objectives which the companies haven’t been able to achieve through social media and ad displays.

Email marketing can prove a boon for small businesses as an opt-in email list ends up in building long-term relationships with customers and prospects.


5-Customer Loyalty Programs – Generating long-lasting loyalty programs for your customers is not an easy job but the success of these programs makes it more significant irrespective of the efforts and hard work involved in it.
As with each facet of customer relationship marketing, developing an excellent loyalty program begins through understanding the needs of your customers and what they intend to do in turn to achieve it.

Here’s a 3-step sum-up of how to create a customer loyalty program to meet his needs:

1. Come up with an advantageous and useful result. Customers will never entrust any loyalty program till the time they find the results to be useful. Extra bonuses or add-ons for your services or products can help you to achieve Additional access or bonuses for your product can be time-taking but many a time’s freebies perform best.
2. Detect an action customers will repeatedly perform. You can add a reward for simply buying the products for e.g. getting a bonus on a referral.
3. Ensure this program is in line with your business. The loyalty program should be designed while keeping the business objectives in mind and it should revolve around your business’ modus operandi.

6-Surveys – Customer relationship marketing is about helping and informing customers regarding your products or services. Surveys have proved really important tool for this. You can use both standard and targeted micro-surveys to understand needs of your customers.
Market analysts state that customers are far more likely to relinquish details to companies they are familiar with, like, or trust and the information collected can be used to enhance the quality of your business and products. Surveys are the best technique to get feedback's from your customers.

Your surveys should focus on three points mainly:

1. Intention. What is the objective behind creating this survey?
2. Concision. Add questions that are important.
3. Prejudice. Is this clearly communicating with customers?

When you carry out quick surveys on regular basis with your old and new customers, you will end-up with informative data that you can use to assess your products or services.

Customer Relationship Marketing

What is Customer Relationship Marketing?

As techopedia.com defines Customer Relationship marketing is a business process in which client relationships, customer loyalty and brand value are built through marketing strategies and activities.

Concentrating on customer loyalty, client retention and developing long-term relations with the existing and new customers is known as customer relationship marketing or CRM. It is designed to build strong associations with customers by directly offering them customized information as per their requirements, desires and interests. CRM permits companies to build long term associations which helps in streamlining the corporate performance of any business. It encompasses commercial and customer-specific business strategies through advertising, marketing planning, relationship development and employee training.

As contrasted with Transactional marketing which concentrates on direct sales, customer relationship marketing lays stress on enhancing word-of-mouth marketing, repeat business and an eagerness on the client’s side to offer information to the company. This process begins readily through an opt-in by the clienteles.

But is it worthwhile to create a relationship with customers in this manner? As the strategists point out that the actual reality behind the brand loyalty is that most of the customers do not want to be engaged with a particular product or brand but their main concern is about shared values related to different products.

The secret behind customer relationship marketing process is not related to the engagement of customers with products or brands but is linked to the practical usability of the same with your business and clients.

The results of a management study conducted by Robin Buchanan and Crawford Gillies states that the enhanced profitability linked with customer relationship marketing is based on a number of

Customer Relation Marketing

factors:

• Content, happy and long-term customers in any business’ marketing funnel are statistically less likely to change to other brand or product. Price changes also don’t have much effect on their brand loyalty. Market experts say that if customers feels, their needs are taken care of then they are less anxious about the pricing of a product. Effective customer relationship marketing stops customers from switching over to the competition.
• Word-of-mouth activity plays a very important role in customer relationship marketing. Stronger relationships with your customers will help you build your referral promotion as, a satisfied customer will surely refer your business or product to a relative or friend. Your business’ Net Promoter Score gets better with customer relationship marketing.
• Your regular customers form the strong pillars for your business. Regular customers normally buy your products more often and can be maintained with much ease as they are familiar with your business and the processes behind it.
• Long-term relationships with your customers also help in expansion of your business. As per the experts the long associated customers are expected to buy your old products and will also be keen about your new launches. Customer relationship marketing actually reduces the risk of business expansion.
• Customer relationship marketing also helps you to save on the cost of acquisition of new customers. Retaining an old customer will be less expensive as compared to acquiring a new customer. Business or products that have high number of satisfied customer are not affected by the cost of acquisition and have high retention rate.

Experts also point out that businesses which have opted for strong brand loyalty measurements are far more equipped as compared to their competitors and can survive even in turbulent market conditions. Their business doesn’t get much affected by new competing products.

Last but not the least, businesses which have high quality customer retention metrics also makes jobs of their employees easier and more content, thus reducing your workforce’s stress and makes them more competent.