Campaign Effectiveness Techniques
Marketers of rural India believe strongly about the advertising media. They think about advertising to create awareness about the product. Various strategies are used to advertise and various methodologies are applied in rural advertising. While doing all this, few important factors should be taken into account and those factors are critically important to make the campaigns highly effective. The branding and the placement needs a perfect resonance in order to optimise the results. The brand definitely needs a robust retailer support in order to reach the masses. The advertising and branding activities are required not only for brand visibility but should be focussed on liquidation as well. The customer connection is the foremost activity in any campaign but for any brand to survive the customer retention is always a challenge. We can use the customer reference for a better reach. With more and more usage of internet by the customers, the use of Artificial Intelligence and interactive marketing could be the key in the coming days. The data collection and using it for the demand generation could be of great importance for success in Rural Marketing.
Branding and Placement Resonance:
Another important activity after appointment of distributors or retailers is placement. Placement means transporting the product from the company’s warehouse to the retailer’s shelf where a customer can see or get the product when he or she demands it. Any campaign without proper placement leads to a wastage of money and effort leading to low ROI. Even if the customer enquires about the product after being influenced by the advertisement campaign and the product is not placed, that will lead to dissatisfaction and bad reputation for the company in the eyes of the customer as well as the retailer.
All the activities should be done after the placement is proper and the product is visible. Some advertisers or marketing strategists do use a teaser campaign to raise the curiosity levels in the consumer’s mind. In this case the data of the interested customers can be collected and they can be contacted after the product is available. It may help to make the brand to become the talk of the town but the company will surely lose sales as these days a lot of options are available and the customer does not like to wait.
Retailer Support
The distributor retailer network development is the most crucial phase for any company and this phase is a continuous development. The company has to build proper retailer network for the distribution of the product so that the product is readily available at the doorstep of the rural populace. Success of any advertising campaign directly depends on the strength of the retailer network of the company. So selection of the distributors and the retailers is most crucial for any campaign’s success. The selection process should be based on multiple criteria. The experience of the distributor in the business, the brands he has already handled, his financial health and his reputation in the market, the retailer network he owns, etc. can be useful criteria for appointment. Even the area of campaign should be selected on the basis of the distributor’s team in that area. The first and the heaviest campaign should be done in the areas where the company has the best retailer and distributor presence. Such activities will give highest ROI and the expense will be much lower. This strategy will help the brand to achieve a place in the customer’s mind. Many companies focus only on the distributors, but the real liquidation happens at the retailer level. So the details about the retailers should be captured and the sales happening at his counter should be monitored closely. The detailed strategy for the selection of area is already given in the chapter 14, 360 Degree Marketing and Sales Model.
Liquidity Oriented Branding Activities:
Advertising is a balance between clear communication and creativity. Sometimes the advertisers in the pursuit of creativity lose the real communication behind the advertisement. In my view, the communication should be very clear in the case of rural advertisements. As the customers are very simple and straightforward, therefore, they like straight forward communication. Creativity can be inculcated only after considering the culture and the target audience.
Real branding activity is the sale of the product, so the most important job in any advertising campaign is that the campaign should be liquidity oriented which means that the element of sales or the capturing of leads should always be there. The rural campaigns should be designed in such a way that it leads to direct liquidation of the product. There are multiple examples for such activities like lucky draw coupons at exhibitions for the prospects converting to customers, lead generation during the vehicle campaign, and many others.
Customer Connection and Retention:
The acquisition of the customer has always been very important but the retention of the customer is much more critical for the growth of the company. The focus on the retention is increasing day by day. In urban markets, loyalty points are given by many retail stores and credit card companies to retain the customers. But in rural markets, because of its vastness and colossal size, it is difficult to keep an eye on the customer retention numbers. Still some campaigns for the customer retention are done by many companies. Some seed companies focus on the customer farmers in the fields to show their seed’s performance through field days. In the field days they honour the farmers who follow best practices, leading to retention.
A strategy can be used for the retention of the customers for rural markets. A unique code is printed on every pack and a communication is printed that a lucky draw or a prize is awaiting for him if he sends the code to a specific number. That specific number is used to collect the mobile numbers of customers using technology. Even we can calculate how many packs a particular customer has bought. We can analyse the data and categorise the customers. This data can be used for the next campaigns and cross selling. A loyalty program can be used as well. We can pitch for the complete kit of products to the customers leading to cross-selling and up-selling.
Customer Reference:
Reference is the best advertising and prospecting. In the advertising campaigns, the reference campaign should always be an important part. The reference will lead to much higher lead generation. The incentives on reference generation can even improve the brand loyalty. The reference can be generated through a technological strategy where every customer is sent a message asking reference numbers from him for which he will get the loyalty points. In order to do so, first you have to find out the numbers of the real customers who have already bought your material. I have given that strategy in the previous paragraph. Once the customer has the trust that the loyalty program actually works, then he will be excited to give reference numbers. Contacting the references using the customer’s name can do wonders. Improving the customer base using these strategies can be very helpful.
Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI):
In computer science, artificial intelligence, sometimes called machine intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans and animals. This is the general definition of artificial intelligence. The use of machine learning to convert the data into knowledge is the Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI developers are working on areas including manufacturing, logistics, supply chains, urban transportation, business processes, healthcare, asset management, and more. The use of AI in rural marketing and other operations will be visible in the next few years.
In the marketing perspective, interaction through bots have already started but still many marketing companies have to start using such technologies. The use of bots where the bots will interact with the customers by identifying their questions and answering them in person will be a reality very soon. As the AI takes over the technology or digital avatars will start answering the most tedious questions with such ease when fed with knowledge. The day is not far away when the digital avatars will start interacting like experts in the field. As an agency, we are working on it and will be able to give a solution by the end of this year.
Digitalisation of the Outdoor Campaigns:
The outdoor campaigns have always been the back bone of rural marketing. But the campaigns are now becoming more and more monotonous. The improvement in the effectiveness of such campaigns is seriously required. The outdoor campaigns like vehicle campaign, hoardings, shop branding, mandi campaigns, wall paintings etc. are many ways to reach or influence the rural customer. But now the time has come when we need to digitalise them and connect them with technology. The vehicle campaigns can be connected with the web servers through which vehicle tracking, data capturing and virtual interaction can be done from remote places. We can also use an AI avatar to interact with the customers and answer their queries through knowledge management. Similar digitalisations can also be done for the interactive boards or kiosks in the retailer shops or in the mandis.
Data Collection and Analysis:
Prospect data collection is done in almost every activity and most of the companies have collected good amount of data. The method used for data collection is normally manual where the field staff collects the mobile numbers of the farmers, village wise. In such collection methods, many errors happen and around 80% of the data is incorrect due to human errors. This data collection can be changed from manual mode to digital mode. We can use the missed call on a particular number which is noted on the server where all the calls are logged. The logged calls can then be called back or a WhatsApp message sent or SMS for data capturing.
We can capture the data via WhatsApp where the person will get a WhatsApp message instantly and the bot will start interacting and will start collecting the data which will be submitted by the farmer himself. Such activities will improve the efficiency and reduce the errors. The data collected can be analysed instantaneously and the customers can be categorised. This categorisation will decide to what extent each customer can be pushed for conversion. Such campaigns are possible only through digital technologies.
We can use digital technologies in many ways where the virtual interaction and customer loyalty programs can be propagated through technology. There by using multiple techniques for campaign effectiveness whereby we can improve our efficiency multi fold.
Rural India is calling, “Come with us let’s grow together.”
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