WELINGKAR INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT & RESEARCH

SUMMER PROJECT

ON

Digital Marketing and conceptualizing social Media Strategies for Brand Awareness

BY

Kamaljit singh

PGPM+MBA

SPECIALISATION: MARKETING

CERTIFICATE

TO WHOM SOEVER IT MAY CONCERN

1. This is to certify that Mr Ankit Patil, a student of Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research and pursuing two years full time Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM e-BIZ), underwent two months of internship with us from 1st May 2012 to 30th June 2012

2. During the internship, Mr Ankit Patil has successfully completed the project titled Digital Marketing and conceptualizing social Media Strategies for Brand Awareness under the guidance of Mr Nitesh Salvi (Director)

3. The Students performance during the internship and comments on his project work are as under:

_______________________________________ (Signature of the Authorized Company Official) Name: Mr Vivek Gupta Designation: Director Date: 16/7/2012

Contents
1.INDUSTRY ANALYSIS: ........................................................................................................... 4 2.Social media marketing.6 2.1 Facebook ............................................................................................................................. 6 1. Facebook page ................................................................................................................... 6 2. Facebook Insights .............................................................................................................. 8 2.2 Facebook Ads.................................................................................................................... 11 2.3 Blogs and Twitter .............................................................................................................. 13 1.Blogs ................................................................................................................................. 13 2.Twitter ............................................................................................................................... 14 3. Online Marketing ..................................................................................................................... 15 3.1 Online Marketing Sites.....15 3.2 Online Press Releases ...................................................................................................... 15 4.Content Development for Company website ............................................................................. 16 5.Summary and Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 17 6.Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 18

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS: Online Education Industry (E- Learning industry): Education Market in India Education has long been receiving the major wallet share of the Indian middle class. The education market is generally regarded as the only market towards which Indians are not pricesensitive because it has helped them reach their present standard of living and promises better earnings and prospects for their children. India has one of the largest higher education systems in the world. However, still there is a lot of potential for the development of higher education system in India. The country is targeting a high economic growth of over 8% in the coming years. The system of higher education in India has seen an impressive growth since independence. The total enrolment increased from a meagre 0.1 Million in 1947 to phenomenal 10.5 Million in 2005-06. The education system in the country saw a revolution with the emergence of a whole new class of education providers, including private institutes, distance education providers, self-financing courses in public institutions, foreign education providers etc. Despite the fact that enrolment figures in higher education system over the years have been rising, it varies widely across different states in India. These differences are not only linked to variation in government expenditure on higher education, but also to the per capita income, percentage of people below poverty line and the extent of urbanization in different states. Generally, states with a higher enrolment in universities and colleges are those with higher ratio of urban population and a lower percentage of population below poverty line.

Traditional Coaching Institutes Trend in India:

Indian education sector is considered to be recession proof primirarily due to the willingness among consumers to spend on this sector. Across the board, form the upper classes to the bottom most stratum of the social hierarchy, expenditure on education accounts for a sizable portion of family incomes. Coaching classes segment, though unorganized and unregulated, boasts of high profit margins.Due to changing economic scenrio, need for extra and supplement education is urgently felt by both students and their parents. Known as the world of shadow f education, coaching classes have grown phenomenally in India and is only to proliferate further in fututre.

Video lecture series and E- learning: E-learning market in India was valued at INR 18.41 tr in 2010-11 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20%. Increasing internet penetration, low existing coverage and rising demand are expected to develop this market strongly in the near future. This sector has attracted large investments and is slated to lead to strong growth opportunties for the education sector. In the era of technology and science, when the distance of miles is just a few clicks away, these IITians decided to take full leverage of technology and came up with newer tools using the concept of Virtual Classrooms and branded themselves as Plancess. Plancess Edusolutions Pvt ltd. provides a feasible learning opportunity for the students starting from RS 150 RS 15000 DVD s. The different types of packages can be brought by the students that may be chapter wise, subject wise , basic level i.e for board students, advanced level i.e for engineering aspirants, can go for notebook+, IITian mentor at RS 45 per hour. Thus is economical to an extent.Thus here we show the copmarision and advantage of video lectures over the coaching institutes :

Coaching Institues V/S Video lecture series and E- learning:

There are many reasons to choose video lecture education system over classroom lecture by top coaching institutions. The benefits of taking video lectures in comparison to classroom programs are as follows: 1. Easy to concentrate on topic as compared to attend the same in class due to noise and disturbance. 2. These e-learning lecture softwares are fully internet facilities enables, so student can ask their doubts or problem on chat with experts provided by institutes or can send double email directly to associates faculty and get detailed reply. 3. It saves round-trip time of a student i.e. the time duration spend between home to coaching institute and coaching institute to home. 4. It is most productive because a group of mutual-understanding students can study at a single place with discussions and much efficiency. 5. It reduces hesitation from the students to ask questions those who are shy in nature and do not feel much comfortable in classroom. 6. Students can increase their learning potential up to maximum level because under this education pattern, they feel classroom environment as well as distance learning experience.

2. Social Media marketing

2.1 Facebook 1 Facebook page The objective of company was to achieve awareness through social media sites one of them is Facebook.com. Inorder to do that we planned to increase the awareness of the page. The more likes the page of facebook.com/plancess generated by target audience. We can serve better market the product and services offered by company to large audience. I was the admin for official facebook page of the company and design various strategy for the increase the reach and increase the user interaction and commenting on various post. One of the them was launching the IPL quiz for the aspirants that can be generate new likes and can generate helps educational purposes as content was educational, entraining and enlightening.

This concept was run during the days of IPL as the target audience get better connected to it during the same period

The other concept were launching of plancess preparation tips, did u know??? And posting of trolls which were compartively lower in terms of reach The overall reach for the page is gives below

2 Facebook Insights Who are the target audience in terms of Demographic and locations

Sources of likes

Social stories

Page views

 Reach and Frequency

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2.2 Facebook Ads

In order to increase the reach and Event campign called Shiksha Planner ,we started using facebook ads. Facebook ads campagin which was focus on reach, that I initally started was focus on pan India location and biding for each ads was quiet high and initally the campagin was making impression but average pay per click on the ad was high and traffic generated on the website was low where the ad was link. Where as Event ad was shown in only Jaipur and pune cities where the Events where supposed to be held. So I firstly went on detail analysis of the ad campign which was taking place on pan india location. While doing that I found out that it will be cost effective, If we start campagining on city level rather than pan india. So we analyzed target audience i.e. age group of 16-20 in a particular in 26 cities in India.Run a indiviual customized ad campagin to every city. Due to these the average bidding budget decreased and we got a better impression of our target audiences and increases clicks on the ads. Eventually generating reasonable amount of traffic at lower cost. In case some city pay clicks were not upto the mark, we tried to change the ad content or removed the ad as it wasnt effective. The detail report about the cities and the ad reach is given below. Campaign Mumbai Pune Nagpur Aurangabad Jaipur Udaipur Kota Chennai Coimbatore Patna Banglore Surat Ahmedabad Social Impressions imp 1714026 170514 965369 26020 279313 14447 74080 2811 494699 66143 105827 9822 347564 40980 1311644 37631 243305 4217 290761 11515 804430 15403 364785 13246 415167 17594 Social Social % Clicks clicks CPC CPM Spent Actions 9.95% 340 47 8.62 1.71 2930.67 204 2.70% 216 6 9.36 2.09 2022.05 19 5.17% 92 5 7.1 2.34 653.27 13 3.79% 23 0 6.59 2.05 151.55 0 13.37% 130 12 8.58 2.26 1115.65 87 9.28% 34 2 7.16 2.3 243.41 0 11.79% 200 21 4.6 2.65 919.55 57 2.87% 239 3 9.79 1.78 2339.99 24 1.73% 54 0 10.47 2.32 565.21 148 3.96% 124 5 6.39 2.72 792.31 11 1.91% 150 5 9.63 1.8 1444.67 1 3.63% 106 4 7.65 2.22 811.25 7 4.24% 82 1 9.71 1.92 795.84 7

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Campaign Vadodara Chandigarh Jalandhar Ludhiana Indore Bhopal Hyderabad Vijaywada Lucknow Ranchi Calcutta Kanpur Varanasi Allahabad

Social Impressions imp 206878 425447 254162 268707 549979 340829 1163147 207456 296289 137524 680638 269012 129335 134169 2338 8949 6619 1772 39992 21643 67406 9848 7866 8545 20393 25021 10125 5720

Social % 1.13% 2.10% 2.60% 0.66% 7.27% 6.35% 5.80% 4.75% 2.65% 6.21% 3.00% 9.30% 7.83% 4.26%

Clicks 53 104 54 69 175 107 215 56 96 43 151 99 53 56

Social clicks 0 2 3 1 13 7 12 4 2 1 7 4 3 2

CPC 8.9 7.42 8.99 6.95 7.83 6.84 9.27 8.48 6.21 8.41 8.61 6.85 5.96 5.76

CPM Spent 2.28 471.54 1.81 771.49 1.91 485.46 1.78 479.55 2.49 1370.41 2.15 732.33 1.71 1994.1 2.29 474.85 2.01 595.73 2.63 361.74 1.91 1300.77 2.52 677.94 2.44 315.94 2.41 322.76

Actions 0 10 0 0 26 18 5 0 5 6 7 192 8 4

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2.3 Blogs and Twitter Blogs Blogging is a social media tool to be added to an organisations modern day repertoire. As a objective of creating brand awareness, I personally think writing blog plays a key role. There are regular user who visit blog everyday. They Read it share it and comment it.During my internship I design the official blog page and started writing blogs on daily basis which were related to the customer interest in E-learning and educational field. A blog allowed healthy interactions and provide a more personal experience for customers. It allowed two way communication with an audience through the ability for a viewer to comment on it. It was one of the thing that will set business apart from its competitors. It allowed us to communicate the value of our product and share valuable information about the related industry. I personally observed Information type articles will attract more visitors, and as long as it has all aspects of social media implemented within it (i.e. a link to the our own Facebook and Twitter pages), leading to brand awareness. A blog with constantly changing content will push the website up in search engine results which will also enhance brand awareness. Having a blog alongside the usual social network pages creates a community, which is one of the first steps towards brand awareness. Snapshot of www.blog.plancess.net shown below :

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Twitter Twitter is a micro blogging site that allows you to speak small and simple, something which is definitely appreciated in todays world. Twitter improved my ability to be brief. Its not easy summarizing your thoughts into 140 characters, but at least I know it helped me to be brief and to state my point. If you want to buzz on, use the Facebook Page account (320 characters) or use a blog. We also used mix up promotional or sales-related tweets with other messages that would be of interest to customers. I regularly tweeted about the latest happening and ground breaking stories about the company. I felt that twitter is very powerful tool which allows you to provide superior customer service, and in a few different ways like customer support is through eavesdropping i.e. it gives you the freedom to monitor your customers conversations, unlike other social media sites. I tried checked in on their conversation streams at least once every couple of days (if not more often) and reply with helpful information when warranted. And when someone said something positive we thank them! Tweet us on http://twitter.com/plancess

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3. Digital marketing
I also leveraged other sources where free ads can be displayed, which were generally online information sites or classified ads sites. As Plancess Edu Solutions Pvt Ltd. is a start-up from 3 years back, comparative advertising budget was low so we found this way of publishing our ads. Generally traffic generated towards company website is low from these sites. Following were the few sites were we published our ads

4. Online Press Releases An online press release is simply a traditional press release that is distributed through online channels. Online press releases are a fantastic way to share company news with a wide audience, gain inbound links back to your company website, and generate overall awareness about recent events involving your business.

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Even though the media are more fragmented than ever, with many newspapers going out of business but online news sites flourishing, press releases can and should be a major component of your social media marketing strategy. During internship I observed press releases online draw not only the media, but also general readers, potential customer to your websites and also helps to give the valuable feedback. During my Internship I wrote three press release article which were submitted to more than 50 online press release sites , most of them where free which allows to upload your article for free and then editor reviews the article and decides whether to be published it or not. Generally article which I wrote where centric to one product and creating awareness and how the product was efficient and create ease to most of the customer using it. Feedback from editor is still in process but one of the interesting thing that I observed is that they also generate substantial amount of traffic to your website through the viewer which are the potential customer and also existing customer provide the comment and valuable feedback that allows company to understand the perception of the product in the market place. And is the great place for customer query and after sales service of the product.

Content Development for Company website (www.plancess.com)

During Internship I also worked as a content developer for website. Content development plays huge role when website deals with online educational website. Most of the product selling takes place from website. As the website support online payment option and shipping of product is done at backend.

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So clarity of each product and offering were clearing define to target audience on the website. I had to make sure that product is clearly mentioned and marketing is done as per the target user. Latest buzz and discounted rate and flash content were also created by me for the website as per the project requirement. This also helped people to understand the role of each product offering and services making user friendly atmosphere for the visitor. Snapshot of the website is displayed below

Summary and Conclusion - Education sector is always in demand and also very important, so it became comparatively easy to make customers aware about our product. - The online education sector is still at nascent stage in India, and It has huge potential in terms of reach i.e. in urban as well as rural India. - Social media strategies can be useful to create the awareness for the product and services offering because target group presence is high on social sites

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As the sector is attractive and growing phase new competitors and substitutes arise in the market. So understanding competitors strategies and designs new ways to attract crowd from the social sites Understanding the perception of the product in the market place and designing the website content in such a manner that can generate maximum sale. Lastly, it was an absolutely elevating experience working in a confined time frame with the company and learning different and unique way of marketing a product and creating brand awareness for the company by way of digital media and social media.

Bibliography Books Social media marketing strategies by Liana Li Evans A Text Book of Virtual Marketing by Sameer A Kulkarni

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Websites http://www.slideshare.net/jacoborquin/online-marketing-strategy-1918646 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_marketing http://marketing.about.com/od/internetmarketingstrategy/a/internettips.htm http://www.pluggd.in/internet-marketing-branding-strategy-for-indian-software-players-297/

References http://www.facebook.com/help/ [Facebook Help Centre] http://support.google.com/blogger/?hl=en [Blog Support] http://support.twitter.com/groups/31-twitter-basics [Twitter Guide/Help Centre]

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