5 ways to get 100,000 fans on your Facebook public profile

If you thought you could just create a Facebook profile for your brand and expect your fan base grow overnight, think again. Here are five tips to help you build a community there.

The power of Facebook has garnered more than 100,000 fans for Gary Chaw, a Malaysian singer, on his official public profile within a short period of time.

But before you create one for your brand and expect your fan base to grow organically like Gary’s, think again. Here are five tips to point you in the right direction when it comes to building a community on Facebook.

1. Strategise and re-stratagise

Like all traditional marketing campaigns, you need a strategy when executing a campaign on Facebook. However, do not be too ambitious and plan for a one year campaign. With Facebook, change is the only constant. New features and applications are frequently updated. You will have to be prepared to change your strategies every now and then to keep up with Facebook’s changes.

Furthermore, Facebook is not a one-way communication tool. You need to monitor your fans’ feedback — find out what they like or dislike about your public profile — and refine the content you share on your profile. As a general guide, plan a three month campaign and get to know your fans before refining your plan for the next three months. Having said that, be prepared to be in for the long haul as social media marketing is about building relationships. If you do not have the resources, engage an external team to manage your campaign for you.

2. Drive awareness of your public profile through a media heavy-up campaign

Many brands think they can replicate the success of the “Beautifully Imperfect” and the “Asian Youth Games” campaigns just by creating a public profile on Facebook. In reality, most of the profiles have less than 1,000 Fans even after six months. It is a waste of precious resources to maintain a page with such a small audience. To grow a Facebook public profile organically without any marketing or promotion is almost improbable.

It is extremely crucial to build up a core audience for your profile in the first seven days of launching a campaign on Facebook so that your content will be organically distributed with social actions. Make use of the various engagement ads available on Facebook to help you promote your profile.

3. Relationships take time — Start small, learn and scale

Do not assume that once users become fans of your brands, they will become your evangelists. Share content that you think will interest your fans rather than just posting what you want to say about yourself. Otherwise, your post could feel like spam and after a while, un-fanning may occur. Make the effort to nurture your relationship with your fans and gain their trust, and see what happens from there.

4. Keep fans interested and engaged with your public profile

Feature new content, events and promotions continuously, and use status updates to keep your fans informed of new content. Write in a way that encourages fans to respond and respond to their comments so that your fans know that you are listening.

5. Rethink how you measure success

Measuring the success of a campaign on Facebook is no longer as straightforward as measuring the number of impressions or the click-through rates. There are many more ways to measure the results of your campaign, including organic impressions, engagement actions (comments, ‘likes’) and re-postings. It is often these latent effects of your profile that are the most effective in spreading your brand message.

Tata Aria : Luxury That Thrills

Game Changer, New Breed, Super Luxury, Most Awaited, Eagerly Awaited, Flagship ... These were the terms that were used during the much publicized launch of Tata Motor's luxury offering - Tata Aria. Aria was launched in 2010 - touted as the most luxurious, sophisticated and most expensive offering from Tata Motors in the passenger vehicle segment. After a year of the launch, Aria is struggling to reach the position where the brand expected it would be.


Tata Aria was publicized as India's first 4x4 Crossover. Crossovers are those vehicles that combine the attribute of cars and SUVs. Tata motors aimed to create a new segment of luxury crossovers with the launch of Aria. Tata Motors has been trying hard to create new niches in the Indian automobile market the last attempt was through the brand Tata Xenon.


Tata Aria which was expected to create new market and a new image for Tata Motors however is now struggling hard to create volumes. According to news reports, the brand is finding it difficult to convert the interest and good reviews to sales.
Tata Aria was launched with an expensive price tag of Rs 12 -15.5 Lakh making it the most expensive model from Tata's brand portfolio ( excluding JLR). To compensate for the high price tag, Aria came with many features, attributes and gadgets which was available only in super luxury segments. Many gadgets was even not present in those expensive sedans. But even with this heavy loading of features and goodies, consumers were reluctant to accept the high price tag.


Blame it on the Positioning.


It is easy to put the blame on the pricing strategy of Tata Aria. There are critics who argue that Aria could have priced at around Rs 10 lakh and blazed the sales chart. To a certain extent the argument has lot of validity. But I feel that more than the pricing , there is a larger issue of positioning. Not only with regard to Aria, but it points out to the luxury foray of Tata Motors as a corporate brand.
First let us look at the positioning issue. Tata Aria wanted to position itself as a pioneer of a new category - a Crossover between a sedan and an SUV.
Positioning theory talks about Points of Parity and Points of Difference as the two main focal points of positioning process.Marketers use Points of Parity to establish a membership in a category and also to establish parity with competitors. For brand launches in existing product category, category membership is automatically established because of similarity in product form, pricing, attributes etc. For example a new soap brand need not establish category membership since consumers know that the brand belongs to soap category just by seeing the product. Category Points of Parity is important for "really new products" where consumers are not able to connect any existing category to the new product. In such cases, marketers try to tell the consumers that the new product is related to an existing product category.


Here Tata Motors failed to understand the perceived points of parity of Tata Aria with brands like Innova and Xylo. It is obvious to any person that Tata Aria looks very very similar to Toyota Innova which is the market leader in the premium Multi-Utility Vehicle segment. So just by looking at Aria, consumers establish its membership in the MUV category of Innova. Whether Tata Motors likes it or not, Aria's category membership is with Innova and not as a crossover.


What Tata Aria did was to ignore this obvious similarities with an existing category products and tried to establish a new category which it called a Crossover. The brand wanted to use breakaway positioning strategy where by Aria will be positioned as a new category vehicle different from the existing category of MUVs.
The first launch campaign was expected to identify Tata Aria with the new category - Crossover

Watch the ad here : Tata Aria Crossover


For a brand that aims to create a new category that too a luxury one, the launch campaign failed miserably to communicate the concept of a new category. A sedan and an SUV colliding ( mating) to form Tata Aria crossover was too basic , too amateurish communication strategy. The brand initially had the tagline " A New Breed ". The campaign managers failed to understand that just by labeling the product as a crossover does not make it a crossover. The brand should produce sufficient evidence that it belongs to a new breed. In the case of Aria, the campaigns failed to provide a significant reason to be called as a new category pioneer.


For any product aiming for breakaway positioning, the acid test is to differentiate itself from the category from which it is moving away. A classic case of breakaway positioning is that of Swatch brand which successfully positioned itself as a fashion accessory rather than a watch brand. For that the brand created strong identity interms of design, price , distribution etc which convinced consumers to consider Swatch as a fashion accessory rather than a watch.
Here there was no significant WOW factor in Aria which made consumer think that Aria belonged to a different category distinct from MUV brands like Innova. So when consumers checked out the brand Aria, they began to compare it with Toyota Innova. Innova had established itself as one of the most reliable and comfortable MUV in India. Innova was priced at around Rs 12 lakh. When consumers began to compare Innova and Aria, Aria was perceived to be expensive despite the presence of many new features and attributes.
Sensing the mood of the market, Tata Motors launched a lower priced version of Tata Aria in the form of a 4x2 variant. The brand priced the product at par with the competitors and launched it with a different positioning.
Watch the ad here : Tata Aria Spy ad


Here again Tata Aria was unsure about the positioning. The brand discarded its Crossover positioning and began to focus on features. The tagline was changed from " A New Breed " to " Luxury that Thrills". Within one year of launch , the brand had to make significant positioning changes which again proved to be a disadvantage for establishing a consistent brand image. The plot of the repositioning ad which shows foreign models with an unbelievable storyline and an attempt at humor creates a confused positioning to the audience ( my personal opinion). Along with these campaign in TV, the brand also ran a series of print campaigns highlighting the 36 new features of Aria. Those campaigns helped the brand to create a positive image of a fully loaded premium MUV. But the steep pricing dampened the enthusiasm over the features.


If Tata Aria wanted to be perceived as a new category pioneer it should have looked very distinct from the pack. But since it looked exactly similar to Innova, the brand shouldn't have ventured into creating a new category positioning.
The brand had a better chance of survival had it accepted the similarities and competed with Innova using the features and goodies and a competitive price. Still fighting Toyota's reliability is a uphill task but with better value offering, Aria could have raked up enough volume to keep the enthusiasm up in the market.
If at all the brand Aria wanted to create a crossover category, it should have created a design which had no similarity with any of the existing product categories in the Indian passenger vehicle market.
Tata Motors always nurtured an ambition to compete in the luxury segment in the Indian automobile market. It tried with brands like Estate, Safari, Manza etc but couldn't find huge success because Tata Motors was perceived to be a value-for-money brand and consumers were never comfortable with paying a premium for Tata cars.
A radical move for the company can be to create a separate identity and a division which is not endorsed by Tata Motors. Honda , Toyota and Nissan used this strategy successfully for entering the US luxury car market. Honda used Acura, Toyota used Lexus and Nissan used Infiniti as separate brands ( divisions) and found success in the US market. They used this strategy to tide over the perception that Japanese car brands are utility vehicles rather than luxury vehicles.Likewise Tata Motors can create a luxury division which will not have the Value-For-Money baggage of the parent brand Tata Motors.

I love the Tata brand and always wished that its products met with success. But these brand launches were disappointments because very obvious , fundamentals are overlooked and valuable time and brand equities are lost. But Tata Motors are know for perseverance and resilience. Hope that Aria will clean up the positioning mess and reach its rightful destination. It needs to redefine its identity by answering this simple question - What exactly is Tata Aria ??

Tri-Activ : Anti-Bacterial Protection

Tri-Activ is an anti-bacterial soap from Piramal Healthcare. Piramal Healthcare has been increasingly active in the OTC and personal care space. Tri-Activ was launched in early 2011 and will be competing against the like of Dettol and Lifebuoy.

Tri-Activ is positioned as an anti-bacterial soap with germ killing property. The brand is claiming to be India's Grade 1 anti-bacterial soap. The brand belongs to medicinal soap category of the Rs 8000 crore toilet soap market.

The medicinal soap/ hand-wash category got lot of attention in the Indian market recently after the outbreak of H1N1 epidemic. Marketers cashed in on the opportunity by scaring the hell out of consumers and presenting their products as the ultimate protectors of humanity against such epidemics. The medicinal personal care products which was a niche category before these outbreaks suddenly began to be a part of the mainstream category.

It is in this context that the launch of Tri-Active become significant. The brand is a pure medicinal type soap with strong clinical positioning focusing on germs, protection, doctors etc. The brand is currently available only in medical shops further reinforcing its medical positioning. This restricted availability will reduce the scope of sales of such a product .

The brand will be initially looking at consumers who are too worried about getting sick. Over these years , such kind of consumer segment is increasing in size. Despite the economic growth , Indian cities are prone to such outbreaks. Take the case of my state Kerala which boasts about high human development index and 100% literacy, the state is now reeling under frequent outbreaks of epidemics like Dengue fever, H1N1, hepatitis etc. The fear evoking coverage across media about these diseases force the consumers to scramble for whatever protection that they can avail of. Products like Tri-Activ will benefit from this hysteria.


Indian soap market has always accepted these germ killing soaps wholeheartedly. India's largest selling soap Lifebuoy is ruling with its health positioning so is the mega brand Dettol. Tri-Activ will be vying for a respectable position among these big players.

Having said that, the challenges for Tri-Activ are many. First challenge is the distribution. Piramal Group is well known in the pharma market but its distribution expertise in FMCG market is very limited. This may be the reason for Tri-Activ 's initial retail strategy being done through medical stores. To reach the vast Indian market is not that easy and Tri-Activ may have to leverage its strength in pharma segment to fmcg segment and that is not easy.

Second challenge is the value proposition. Tri-Activ being a specialist is expensive and it will take lot of effort to convince the consumers to accept premiumness of this soap. Consistent brand promotion is key to such convincing and going by the current promotional strategy, Tri-Activ has gone silent after the initial launch campaign.

Tri-Activ with in a few months of launch, introduced a brand extension - liquid hand sanitizer. That was surprising move since the parent brand was not even well established to support an extension.

The success of Tri-Activ will largely depend on the brand's ability to garner the retailer support and the investment it makes in brand promotion. Infrequent campaigns will not help for such a product if it wants to fight brands like Dettol and Lifebuoy.

Alternatively Tri-Activ can thrive as a niche brand which is positioned as a specialist. Such brands thrive on positive word of mouth and attracts that segment of consumers who either is affected by problems or are too concerned about health issues. In a highly competitive market like India, such niche strategy often makes more sense than going mainstream.