Facebook, Twitter, new ways to lure customers

Indian fashion brands are increasingly using peer-to-peer social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Orkut, YouTube and Flickr to spot the latest fashion trends, find out what youngsters want and keep in touch with their potential consumers. The intent of brands to engage in social

networking sites is not to force a purchase instead they want to just keep the potential customers aware and include them as a part of all brand activities month to month.

Atul Chand, CEO of ITC’s lifestyle retail business says that trends change very frequently, so the real time research on these sites is really helpful. Agrees Gaurav Sehgal, COO, s.Oliver India, “We consider social media a very important part of our 360 degree marketing strategy. Our objective of being available on a social media website is to engage in conversational marketing. We want social media to be a part of our brand marketing initiatives wherein we can come in direct conversation about what we do and get insight from the fan base at the same time.”

The aim is to catch the target audience during their leisure time and when they are most relaxed. Satya Paul has about 4,450 fans as of now on Facebook, a lot of them international. They have even gone ahead and incorporated suggestions dished out by their customers and fans. Rajiv Grover, VP, Genesis Colors, owners of retail brands such as Satya Paul, Tie Rack in India, elucidates, “The whole idea of being active on a social networking platform is to provide all relevant information about the brands and to incorporate the suggestions of customers/fans. We have successfully added/extended product lines after gauging customer’s response for our accessories. We also introduced select styles in slim fit shirts and slim ties (Tie Rack London) as we saw that they were popular among young executives.”

s.Oliver on the other hand has a dedicated and active s.Oliver India official Facebook fanpage. Whether it is a new campaign, collection, store opening, instore promotion, an event or even interesting press coverage, they put it up on their fan page to keep their fans glued to the company’s developments. “We also weave in contests around all the latest s.Oliver promotions and activities for the fans. The winners get to win exciting s.Oliver merchandize or gifts. We present information around the brand in a very innovative manner – even if it is a simple photo or video upload, it is always very ‘s.Oliverized’,” explains Sehgal. Satya Paul holds contests too and most of those take place around significant days like Father’s Day, Friendship Day, Mother’s Day, etc, where the customer is excited about getting a special deal.

Social networking sites have definitely led to increase in brand awareness and recall. Customers get regular updates about the brand’s expansion and product lines. This leads to not only better sales for the brands but also encourages them to dole out better and customer centric merchandize. Grover agrees, “We feel overwhelmed when our merchandize is well received, complimented by most of our fans/prospective customers. This encourages us to come up with exciting offers for them. Genesis Colors takes the virtual space very seriously and we believe that the future potential of the same is strong, especially for e commerce.”