“The success of any digital campaign is best judged by its ability to meet its objectives. Unfortunately, a large number of campaigns are initiated without clarity about the intended objectives and that’s one of the reasons a large number of brands are not able to achieve the desired success on Digital Medium especially Social Media.” Said Pradeep Chopra, co-founder and CEO of Digital Vidya, a Digital Marketing training company.

In an interaction with MediAvataar.com, Pradeep stated few remarkable revelations about building a profitable campaign online, which numerous marketers are looking for. Here is this veteran offering food for thought to the countless of us....

1. How Digital Media has evolved today as a tool which enables organizations to gain a competitive edge?

At a fundamental level, Digital Media has created level playing field for every organization. Thanks to this medium, every organization has direct access to its customers independent of their location and time zone. Digital Medium also enables real time competitive research. The fact that today customers can be part of product or service creation to consumption, Digita Media especially Social Media is continuously empowered organizations across sectors to differentiate and grow at an unprecented pace.

2. What is your idea of a perfect conversation online?

In my view, a conversation which flows naturally and genuinely addresses the concerns of the people who are communicating is the perfect conversation. It could happen between individuals or between a brand and an individual. Unfortunately, brand managers are yet to leave their baggage of advertising which prevents them to initiate and nurture true conversation with their customers.

3. How B2B conversations differ from B2C on social media?

At a fundamental level, every conversation is same whether it’s in the context of B2B or B2C. At the same time, there are multiple aspects which makes managing conversations in B2B different from B2C. For e.g.,  while decision making is impulsive in B2C and it relies on large volume of conversations, the decision making process is rational in B2B and conversations are quality oriented.

For the same reason, it’s relatively easy to outsource conversations and engagement in B2C vs in B2B.

4. Is ‘10000 likes on Facebook’ a strong criterion to judge a brand?

Not at all. While number of Facebook fans are necessary they are not sufficient. Even more important than the number of fans is engagement because Facebook uses engagement as the key parameter to decide what % of fans will receive the message posted by brand.

At the same time, number of fans is also a function of size of the brand and it’s objectives. For a large consumer brand, 1 million fans may be a special number but for a B2B brand, few thousand fans may be sufficient.

5. Few media publications, despite of their strong Social Media presence are struggling with profit, what should they do to help that?

A number of businesses are struggling on Social Media because they’ve aligned their expectations with their actions. Event worst, a large percentage of brands on Social Media are not even clear about their objectives.

Once the objectives are clear, it’s about creating presence and taking actions consistent to the objectives. For e.g., in case lead generation is the objective and the brand has limited time & buget, rather than investing in building a community on Facebook, it should consider leveraging Facebook Ads to target relevant audience and drive them directly to the site, where lead can be generated.

6. Facebook and other social networking sites are now getting on to arrange some newer ways to generate revenue lately, how far will it go you think?

It’s important that Social Networking sites generate revenue. The ones like Facebook that have gone public are under presssure to generate revenues and profits to reward their investors and to better serve their users. LinkedIn has been pretty successful in timely monetizing and has been able to serve its investors interests while Facebook is struggling to prevert further slide in its stock price. Twitter is also working hard on monetization and has been able to create initial success to monetize its users presence on mobile.

The race to monetize will continue and mobile will gain increasing attention by everyone.

7. Segmenting the TG has been a very crucial part for any brand before imparting any communication. Do you think companies today are not very clear of the suitable TG over the net especially on Social Media?

Digital Media in general offers better customer segmentation opportunities and Social Media is not different. For e.g., one of the prime reasons for initial success of advertising on Social Media is the targeting ability it offers to the advertisers. For e.g., an advertiser can target its customers based on their location, gender, age, interests, education, work place and even more.

In my experience, companies are not aware about the tools and opportunities for targeting on Social Media.

8. What according to you should be the best parameter to judge a digital campaign?

The success of any digital campaign is best judged by its ability to meet its objectives. Unfortunately, a large number of campaigns are initiated without clarity about the intended objectives and that’s one of the reasons a large number of brands are not able to achieve the desired success on Digital Medium especially Social Media.

9. You are doing a wonderful job of imparting knowledge on optimising Social Media usage. How do you see marketers responding to your communication and how the trend of blindly using Social Media changing with time?

Thanks for your kind words! Since Jan 2010, we’ve conducted over 100 Social Media/Digital Marketing workshops for more than 2000 professionals from more than 500 brands across Asia. We’ve experienced increasing awareness and appreciation for Social Media. Initially, we needed to spend a good amount of time in educating our participants on why should they care about Social Media. Today, a large percentage of our workshop participants are clear that they would like to invest in Social Media but they are looking at guidance in best utilizing the opportunity.

10. The lower band of Social Media websites (Pinterest, Tumblr etc.) are getting huge amount of referral traffic. As per you how would these sites progress?

Actually more than they getting referral traffic, networks like Pinterest are becoming popular for generating referral traffic for its users. While its really tough for a general Social Network to enter into the already competitive space, there are still opportunities for niche networks to entery and succeed.

11. What does your next session/workshop holds for the audiences?

Our next workshops in Sep-Oct will continue to be our popular 2-day hands-on Social Media Marketing workshops across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. We are also working on launching advanced Social Media workshops for our existing alumni and that too in multiple delivery formats. You can find more details about our upcoming workshops at http://www.digitalvidya.com.