Facebook has seen rapid growth in India. When the American social networking site set up its first India office in Hyderabad in 2010, it had eight million users in the country. Now, it has crossed the '100 million active users' mark, making India its second biggest user base in the world, after the United States.
And this ascent has been powered by the mobile phone; in no other part of the world do people access Facebook through feature phones as much as they do in India. The company is confident that its next 100 million users in this market will come through the mobile medium.
Kirthiga Reddy, head, Facebook India, was the company's very first employee in the country. Despite the site's success, her team still works with a "We're just getting started" attitude. "We have signs across our global offices that say: '1 per cent done'. So, 100 million out of over 1.21 billion consumers is a small achievement. There is a long way to go," she smiles.
Globally, Facebook works with over a million advertisers. We spoke to Reddy about Facebook's relationship with advertisers in India. Edited Excerpts:
Edited Excerpts
What kind of brands do you work with in India? Does any type of category dominate the mix?
In India small, homegrown businesses as well as the largest brands use our platform. But of course, they all are in different stages of evolution and hence use Facebook differently. We see FMCG brands like Unilever leading the practice of advertising on Facebook in India. Among tech-telco brands, players like Nokia, Tata Docomo and Vodafone lead the pack.
We see great strength in the e-commerce sector; a lot of players from this segment are using Facebook very effectively. This sector didn't come from a legacy of having a lot of traditional media exposure. When they started out, they had Facebook at their disposal. Financial services and auto are at higher stages of evolution regarding Facebook usage.
Typically, what does an advertiser want from Facebook vis-à-vis other media?
Most marketers ask me about measuring the effectiveness of a Facebook campaign. They want to know whether it is the 'likes' or the engagement that matter the most. And we tell them to stick to their understanding of classic marketing metrics and measure us on the same lines.
Agency CEOs, account planners, CMOs... they all often ask us to educate them about how well global brands are using our platform.
Have marketers begun using Facebook for lead generation?
Yes, very much. Consider this recent example: Unilever's Vaseline launched its entire lip therapy range via Facebook, through a campaign called #LipsDontLie. To measure the impact of the activity, we partnered with Millward Brown (a research agency). The results showed that the purchase intent of consumers went from eight to 18.4 per cent. We achieved 99 per cent accuracy in reaching the TG - women.
Here's another example to demonstrate ROI: Nokia recently pushed its Lumia product range through a Facebook campaign. We were able to see a 15 per cent increase in sales among those who were exposed to it. A total of 31 million people were reached.
Myntra uses Facebook as a marketing channel to acquire new customers and to engage with existing ones.
What does it take to do a successful campaign on Facebook?
The parameters of success are the same across media - reach, frequency, placement and impressions. And it's crucial for a Facebook campaign to have strong creatives. There, success demystified! During the launch of Note III, Samsung used different creatives to target men and women on Facebook. Coca-Cola used exclusive videos for its Coke Studio Facebook campaign. Both worked wonders.
Our team called Facebook Creative Shop works towards partnering creative agencies and explaining to them how good creatives work well on Facebook.
Globally, Facebook works with many ad agencies... what about India? Will you offer more user data as you expand agency partnerships?
We work with many media and creative agencies in India.
Facebook is very much an eco-system play. We have a small team and seek partners who can help us better reach our clients' goals. We can never touch all the advertisers that we need to. Hence, we need agencies as 'leverage points' to reach advertisers.
Google has consistently been targeting the SME segment in India. Does Facebook have any plans for this sector?
It is a big area of focus for us. For this, we have a team - led by Sachin Rao, APAC head of small and medium business solutions at Facebook - that makes it easy for SMBs to get started, have a page, generate conversations and build their brand via word of mouth.
Our 'Start to Success' program helps new advertisers succeed on Facebook. This program is free for businesses that invest Rs 900 or more per day on their Facebook ads for a period of four weeks. A dedicated Facebook account manager is there to ensure such companies make the most of their investment. We also have partnerships with industry bodies like FICCI that help spread awareness about how one can best use Facebook for business.
You're expecting your next phase of growth to come from the mobile medium...
We have extended our advertising platform from PCs, to smartphones and tablets, to feature phones. For example, if there is a brand that wants to reach a specific audience cluster, in small town India, that uses feature phones, we have the capability to do that. This product capability has been developed after studying usage patterns in India.
Our 'growth team' is banking heavily on the mobile medium to reach the next 100 million users in India.
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