AgVoice | Your guide to a blockbuster digital marketing campaign!

It’s that time of the year again when people are shopping. And everyone wants a fair share of the festival shopping bonanza. These are critical times for marketers and advertisers. They are aware of the fact that sales during the festive season can make a huge impact to the year's bottom line. Most brands are ready to pay whatever it takes to launch a digital campaign that everybody will remember. But how exactly should they be doing this?

While the general themes such as fireworks, lights, maintaining relationships, and new beginnings are the more common routes brand managers take to get their customers excited about their products and offers during diwali;  there are also a few other lesser know tactics marketers can use to guarantee themselves a successful Diwali campaign:

1. Contests Keep Out the Clutter
Any brand that you see is sure to be carrying out a massive campaign during Diwali. A great way to engage your audience is through a digital contest. Contests help to create a clutter free branded environment, and certain companies like Chevrolet in the US have taken a fairly extreme route to keep ensure they keep the competition away from their audience.  During the Super Bowl season, Chevrolet created contests that were triggered by their TV commercials. Once the commercial aired, viewers could answer a question on the mobile app to win a new Chevy car. This way, while commercials for other brands were being aired, people with the Chevy app were busy on their smartphones. By hijacking the customer's attention, Chevrolet was able to up their game!

2. Build to Scale
Diwali is a fantastic time to launch a big new digital campaign. However what brands forget is that a large traffic also needs a robust infrastructure that can handle the traffic surges. Make sure your digital properties are architected to scale with traffic. We hear this often from leading Indian brands how their contest microsite crashed the moments it started gaining traction. So make sure this does not happen to you.

3. Multiple Diwali Digital Properties
Almost all the digital campaigns we see today have a terribly short life cycle. Certain brands, however, have managed to start campaigns like Young Free Alberta and the Fiesta Movement, which have a far longer life cycle. Under these umbrella campaigns are smaller seasonal campaigns that are based on a core idea. Both of these campaigns have been running successfully since 2009, and have led to an increase in the brand's fan following!

4. Build for All Devices
Consumers in India are increasingly using smart devices at incredible rates. The average Indian today will have either a smartphone, or a tablet, or in most cases, both! To ensure maximum reach of your campaign, you need to make sure it's mobile ready! If it isn't, the rest of your investments in the campaign and its promotion are bound to have a limited impact.

5. Highlight Brand Values Through the Campaign
People behave differently from each other – they have different beliefs and different values. Similarly, brands are built on a set of values that they feel personify their company, and are also echoed by their key consumers. By bringing out key values in your campaign, you are likely to motivate your customers to behave in a certain way. The Risk Everything ad by Nike is a good example of a campaign that highlights the values of achievement, power and self-direction. These are values that they believe their consumers find important. Aligning your brand with certain values in your campaign is a great way to motivate customers and get them engaged with the brand.

These five simple tips will help you launch a campaign for a Diwali that your consumers are sure to remember! Happy Diwail!

About the Author:
Kaushal Sarda is the CEO at Kuliza, the social technologies company. He looks after day to day business and operations. Prior to Kuliza, Kaushal managed the Bangalore office of ‘2020 Social’ – a leading social business strategy firm, which was acquired by Publicis. He was also the founder and CEO of Uhuroo, a venture-backed, SaaS content collaboration platform for SMEs. As the Founder & Chief Executive Officer, he was in charge of the comprehensive business strategy, product vision, and managing the conceptualization, definition and development of Uhuroo, and he managed the launch of the beta version of Uhuroo.

He has also held a consulting position with Capgemini India where he completed a beta pilot with Capgemini and was also advisor to HashCube, a social gaming startup.

Kaushal has spoken at various conferences including SXSW and given guest lectures to students at Stanford and ISB.