This year 35% of our total marketing budget for promotions is reserved for digital: Virat Khullar
Virat Khullar explains how customer sentiment is one of the KPIs to measure Hyundai Motor’s performance as he decodes digital marketing for an automotive brand.
In conversation with Social Samosa, Virat KhullarGroup Head Marketing, Hyundai Motor India explains the brand’s overall marketing strategy, the role of metaverse in automotive marketing and how OTT can be the next big thing in advertising.
Edited excerpts:
For an automotive company, how vital is it to be present on social networks and to collaborate with influencers?
Social media has become one of the fastest and fastest means of communication today. Today’s Millennials and GenZ are hooked on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Platforms like Instagram and Facebook are very popular and attract a lot of people.
Over 52% of millennials follow Instagram influencers and other social media platforms to make a car buying decision.
These platforms indicate strong trends in the lifestyle of these individuals and their personalities. Brands often curate content and collaborate with these influencers who spark opinions and create a strong conversation within their brand on social media. Additionally, influencer collaborations work as a bridge for brands to reach the right audience and increase brand affinity through word of mouth.
How would you define your overall marketing strategy and how has your ad spend increased this year? What percentage of your total marketing budget is set aside for digital?
Our marketing strategy is a combination of TV, print and digital media. Based on our audience’s media consumption pattern, we need to be ubiquitous. As India’s most trusted automotive brand, we are guided by our overarching vision of ‘Progress for Humanity’ and ‘Beyond Mobility’ which form the core tenets of our corporate philosophy.
With life back to normal and customers’ strong preference for car purchases, we have used our media budgets accordingly.
We’re almost on par with last year’s ad spend, with a particular focus on getting the media mix right. This year, we kept approximately 35% of the total marketing budget for digital media promotions.
Digital media is changing at a rapid pace where customers have more choices to hover over and we need to perfectly formulate strategies to leverage the customer journey.
As a car brand, what is your goal when it comes to social media marketing? What kind of KPIs do you have to measure performance?
The media landscape has changed significantly, post-Covid, with a focus on simply placing towards engagements or getting CPC/CTR to create LTV for clients.
Social media marketing fits into the full marketing funnel, from outreach to lead generation or sales to customer feedback, and it’s important to us at every step. Engaging the right audience and building a positive brand image with them is our main goal. Therefore, we measure all KPIs such as reach, engagement, views as well as customer sentiment.
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What do you think of the metaverse as the future of marketing? How do you see brands benefiting from this?
The Covid-19 pandemic has revolutionized the way technology works. Metaverse has redefined the virtual landscape and unleashed lucrative opportunities for marketing and user engagement.
Metaverse introduces several possibilities for consumer and business segments. Some of the major consumer applications include gaming, social media, virtual malls, virtual events/shows, real estate tours, immersive online classrooms, and more.
For the automotive industry, Metaverse offers immense opportunities ranging from virtual showrooms to immersive product experiences to fully virtual test drives, the technology can take you miles with the click of a button.
Although currently Metaverse is at a very nascent stage in India, it is expected to take a big leap forward.
To create a great virtual experience for the exciting new SUV, the company has launched the Hyundai VENUE N Line in Metaverse.
What are your plans for the holiday season? What does ad spend look like?
The festive season is looking very promising, we expect a further increase in demand for our cars in all segments during this festive season. We will continue to focus on matching supply and demand. Thanks to the continuous improvement of the supply of semiconductors month after month, our production is now at its optimum level.
As demand always exceeds supply, our priority during the holiday season will be to reduce the waiting period and speed up the delivery of cars to our valued customers. The approximate waiting period currently varies from 3 to 4 months depending on the model. This festive season, we are not planning a specific campaign but yes, our launch campaign for N Line will be around festivals.
In which medium will you invest the most?
The choice of a support depends entirely on the product and its TG. We are extremely aware of the importance of being part of the media where a brand’s audience is present. The media consumption patterns of new age buyers are changing rapidly, so it is imperative to be careful when planning media. Over the past few years, we have seen consumers consume more digital content. The customer decision journey has gone digital and as a result, our digital presence has also grown significantly. As India’s most progressive brand, we believe in being part of the customer’s buying journey, ensuring a smooth and enjoyable shopping experience. Our media choices complement our philosophy for an enjoyable customer decision-making journey.
What is your opinion of OTT as a marketing platform? Have you ever used OTT for marketing? How was the experience?
OTT is the next big thing in marketing and advertising. Customers are exposed to a whole new level of content including national, regional and international content from the comfort of their own home. And it is imperative that our brand is present on them. We can get targeted, measurable metrics that can be scaled up.
OTT advertising has been a crucial part of our digital media mix and will continue to do so to achieve higher incremental reach. We can achieve higher completed view rates by targeting OTT platforms.
We are also exploring regional OTT platforms that can be leveraged in our digital media campaigns.
What brand tone do you maintain on each of the social media channels and how do you maintain complete hygiene control in terms of content?
Our overarching vision of “Progress for Humanity” is reflected very well in the tone of our brand communication. We focus on technology while keeping sustainability at the heart of our technology and innovation.
As a responsible brand, we maintain various hygiene controls to protect content standards globally and make them more suitable for the Indian market. Other than that, we do a regular reputation management audit to ensure the sanity of our traditional and digital content.
