Social media top priority for brands in customer outreach

NEW DELHI: Social media has become the top strategic priority for brands in India as they look for complete customer engagement, says a study.

According to the annual Marketing Monitor study across the Asia-Pacific by global insights consultancy TNS, marketers across the region ranked social media as the top element guiding their planning process as well as the top metric used to measure performance of campaigns.

TNS India MD, South India & Sri Lanka and Head of Brand and Communications Practice S Visvanathan said: "India's online environment is developing very fast. As more consumers and customers start connecting to the Internet through mobile and start accessing different digital platforms, the amount of data available will explode."

He, however, said businesses are typically overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data generated.

"It is important that marketers devise effective ways of extracting insight from this data before it is too late," Visvanathan cautioned.

As per the study, the other metrics on the top five priority list for the companies in their planning are brand tracking, market share data, what the competition is doing and information from ad agencies.

As many as 50 per cent of the marketers use social media for brand communications, 43 per cent for customer service, 36 per cent for sales channel and 31 per cent use it for providing insights for product development.

The top three platforms used on a daily basis by the companies in India are Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

TNS Digital Director (APAC) Zoë Lawrence said social media has become an intrinsic part of daily lives, with 94 per cent of connected consumers in India using social networks, switching between Facebook, Google+ and Twitter as the top three channels.

"This mass adoption of social (media) provides marketers with an array of sources when it comes to developing strategies and evaluating the effectiveness of their marketing activity," he added.