Marketing Through Bloggers – Process
Inviting bloggers to talk about your brand is always a best practise when it comes to Social Media Influencers marketing! People who blog regularly are definitely digital influencers. After all, they are contributing to the digital ecosystem – helping them create & shape identities! In 2009 I wrote this blog post “Marketing Through Bloggers” and I am relating to the process explained there with Ambi Pur Bloggers Meetup here in this post. After a very very very long time I attended Indiblogger’s Blogger Meetup in Chennai (My last one was in year 2009 – sponsored by Univercell). I must say, meeting so many bloggers under one roof is always ‘experiential’ – Unforgettable in fact!
Relating the event organized by indibloggers to 8 Step Process:
1. Define Objective:
- Primary Objective: To promote Ambi Pur Products through bloggers in Chennai.
- To promote Ambi Pur products to the bloggers – highly affluent english speaking/writing individuals of the country (of course, there are few who writes in regional languages)
2. Appoint Resources:
- Ambi Pur appointed indibloggers – platform that capitalize the largest community of bloggers in India and have fairly added the commercial value to it. Yes, this was a wise choice made! Its easy to use a platform with genuine bloggers listed than figuring out one yourself.
3. Define Bloggers:
- Bloggers were not defined in precise here. May be there are not many bloggers in Chennai and hence this event was open to all. You blog about marketing or technology or personal life or philosophy in any regional languages – if you are a indiblogger from Chennai – you are just invited!
- I did notice there were many bloggers who are not really active blogger but still were part of this event. There were few who just started blogging a month back or so and they were still part of this. But, this is still Okay – whats if this event motivates them to blog!
4,5,6. Call for Bloggers / Scrutinise Bloggers / Invite them for Bloggers Meet :
- Since indiblogger platform is so well designed, they have a fantastic UI that allows bloggers to RSVP.
- Emails about this meetup were sent to bloggers from Chennai registered on indiblogger.
- Ambi Pur didn’t have to really work hard in inviting bloggers here as indiblogger helped them doing this job! Wise decision Ambi pur!
- I was given a reminder call from Vineet Rajan (one of the oldest 😉 Indiblogger Patron and a good friend) a day before this event was to happen – which indicates personalised touch to invitees and confirming their RSVP to make seating arrangements accordingly.
7. Experiential Promotion:
This is the most important aspect of a Blogger’s Meetup for Brands! This space is where a blogger is given best of his experience to feel the product and take away some interesting memories with other fellow bloggers for life time. The below mentioned pointers will take you through how indiblogger made it happen for Ambi Pur:
- Interesting cluster shaped seating was arranged. Cluster shaped seating is always the best way to make it a social event than the class room setup.
- The hashtag #AmbiPurFreshnhappy was on display – On a very large screen! That was impressive. However, many didn’t carry their laptops or ipads as the live tweeting activities were not informed. Free Wifi was available and that was of good speed. It did help me place a lot of Tweets on time for Ambu Pur! It did help other bloggers as well. However, indiblogger must ensure candidates carry their smart phones, laptops or iphones to Tweet. In fact, out of 150 bloggers I realised only 40-50 were active tweeters. So they should not just promote blogging but must also encourage them tweeting!
- The event started with sweep stakes contest – random people from different clusters were asked to pick number from 1 to 11. Some weere given stones, one skipped the opportunity to smooch Vineet Rajan (good humor element), few won 500 Rs and few got movie tickets for 2. So, that was a good start! People are always excited about ‘Freebies and Contests’
- Bloggers were asked to shift places to interact with other bloggers – Giving bloggers opportunity to network around and not just spend time listening to the host!
- Participants were asked to Tweet their best road trip ever with #AmbiurFreshnHappy – The best one was to win a Samsung Galaxy S4 (Now thats WOW, isn’t it?) | This excited bloggers to start Tweeting!
- Luckily, Renie’s (Founder of indiblogger) birthday was on same date and the audience was given some vocal chord practise to sing a birthday song for him (oh trust me! this was not scripted it was audience who wanted to sing it for him) – Shows how affectionate people are to indiblogger – For brands, this probably would be the ideal platform to believe in as bloggers trust and love them in abundance.
- On a very randome note, few people were asked to introduce themselves. 30-60 seconds of fame! This was a good way to begin the show. Introductions are always important and bloggers feel privileged. The first intro that got some laughter was to win a gift as well 😀
- Before lunch, participants were asked to experience a space behind curtains in the networking section of the venue and were asked to tweet their experience- The best tweet was to win a Samsung Galaxy S4 as well.
- Experiential Marketing Practise: This was an ultimate “Experiential Marketing” pracitse or I must say smart “Moment of Truth” | They blind folded me and took me behind the curtains, I was asked to sit in the car and the car door was closed for few minutes. I was asked to remove the blindfold and to my surprise I saw some food stuff inside the car, a shoe hanging, french fries and pizza around me and I was only smelling the Ambi Pur Fragrance which was fresh and pure. While I was surprised, I was getting recorded as well – and later was asked to give a testimonial! – This is the BEST THING a brand could earn! You experience it, feel it and then later talk good about it – which is recorded for Marketing records!
- Post lunch, the first winner of Samsung S4 was announced and there was few more give aways for guys not wearing collar less Tshirts, for guys having hole in jeans which was adding to fun element! And as said earlier, Freebies always helps brand create excitement.
- Educating Bloggers: To add further value, Ambi Pur marketing representative explained the crowd about Ambi Pur in detail – how it works and the chemistry behind the product which did raise a lot of questions. Bloggers are responsible to educate the digital ecosystem by sharing interesting contents.. When they are educated with insightful stuff – they educate the digital ecosystem with what they just learnt! Smart practise it to share things that people wouldn’t know about brand! Ofcourse, Ambi Pur justified by showing us the detailed side of Ambi Pur’s making and its availability in 80 countries.
- Distribution of Product: After intro, bloggers were given a free product to use – worth Rs. 190/- – 5 different fragrances were distributed evenly amongst the crowd.
- Marketing Through Bloggers: In this case scenario, usually bloggers are asked to tweet about the product. Write about the product. But, indiblogger guys are wise! They know tooo much of promotion is not good for customers. They really planned it wise I am saying again! They took us back to college days asked us to form five teams on the basis of 5 different fragrances of Ambi Pur (I received a Citrus Light Fragrance so I belonged to Citrus Light Group) – 5 fragrances it is so well positioned in all our minds now! We were given different themes and 15 minutes to produce skits. Bloggers were excited and it was a good Team work and trust me, NONE of the GROUPs were asked to use Ambi Pur Products in their skits.
- Skit Turns into Adzap: 5 groups produced their hilarious acts! It was sooooper fun macha! All the five group ended with Ads or skits that showcased how can Ambi Pur make a difference! For example here is a scene of Deewar that myself, Sandeep Varma and Vid enacted:
Sandeep: Soravvv.. Mere paas BMW hai, Mercedes hai, Prosche hai.. Tumhare pass kya hai?
(Hearing this, Vid who is the common girl between us runs to him)
Sorav: Mere paas tho sirf Maruti 800 hai 🙁
Sandeep: Ha ha ha ha!
Sorav: But, tehero! Usme Ambi Pur Citrus Light Fragrance hai…
(Hearing this, Vid comes running to me)
Vid: Mai ab tumhari hoo…
and I laugh out: Ha Ha Ha Ha!
- Corporate Social Responsibility: Post this, Indiblogger guys allowed people to share Social initiatives to make a difference to society. Which is a very wise decision to showcase Corporate Social Responsibility of both indiblogger and Ambi Pur. The social initiatives by various bloggers were much talked about, tweeted about thus helping them get some quick visibility and volunteers.
- The winning skit team won movie tickets.
- Photo Sessions with Ambi Pur logo in background – Good Virtual Souvenir!
- Participants were asked to pick indibloggers tshirt that had Ambi Pur branding as well – Good Physical Souvenir!
- The event ended with Coffee and Refreshments!
8. Give them a Thank You Call: It is always wise if an Ambi Pur representative call bloggers individually to thank them for participating – Adds personalised touch. However, I did notice them tweeting the same!
Overall, the event was well planned. However, here are few suggestions:
1. The hashtag was not officially launched or announced + the hashtag was pretty long consuming our Tweet space. #AmbiPurFreshNHappy is not a very smart hashtag. It is necessary to encourage bloggers to use Twitter and grow their followers base – This will help bloggers, indibloggers and Ambi Pur.
2. The event started 25 minutes late. We were asked to wait in Hyatt lobby – which is not sufficiently air conditioned in Chennai summers- Respecting and Keeping time is very important!
3. It is suggested to give a kit that hold Ambi Pur product and some brochures about it – helpful for bloggers to blog about it in detail (after all, this event was aiming to promote Ambi Pur – Why miss an opportunity?) – Run a Blogging Contest!
4. So many give aways for Live Tweeting – 2 Samsung Galaxy S4, Movie Tickets etc. I was surprised – Should have encouraged people carrying their laptop, blogging about the event – 30 Minutes of Blogging! Macro to Micro blogging both are distinguished. Macro blogging helps you talk about things in detail + help get search engine visibility and referrals where as micro blogging is instant gratification!
5. A 15 minutes session on New Trends of blogging will help bloggers and indibloggers! Quote trends with examples of what and how can bloggers talk about Ambi Pur – Some best practises from previous meetups.
And yeah! Trust me, this was a great show!
