Three years ago, the mobile manufacturing giant Nokia, came up with a unique treasure hunt. The Treasure this time was a premium handset ( N series). They came up with a virtually zero cost marketing activity across 13 countries that resulted in the sales of 2 Mn handsets in just three months! So what magic did they weave?
The mobile handset giant took the way of leveraging a very popular online activity – Blogging! They tied up with top 5 bloggers in 13 countries, made these bloggers provide clues as to where the new handset will be available and there you go – it just clicked, resulting in whopping sales at extremely efficient costs!
Blogging, in the Indian scenario is gaining great momentum; and third party blogs can be a useful resource for marketers to popularize their offerings. Blogs, nowadays are being seen as a great pull for marketers because of its wide reach and level of credibility. Marketers are increasingly leveraging this as a push strategy to promote their products, of course at much lower costs than any other medium.
Though a lion’s share of promotional activities goes to commercials, consumers are increasingly looking into online blogs and review forums before making their purchases. Many Tech firms seem to be making inroads in this activity to gain that first mover advantage. Blogs offer a lot of advantages right from detailed reviews to product manuals to garnering huge traffic and so on. In fact, online firms like yehbhi.com are looking at introducing an in-site blog to create huge traffic that’ll definitely help the e-tailer.
Trust is the biggest asset for any blog and if marketers want to capitalize on their blogs or the third party blogs then the trust factor has to be considered in a big way! In fact, with thousands of blogs offering counter views, the scene gets a bit messy but those which are popular and most talked about are the ones that will surge forward. So it’s important that marketers deal with responsible bloggers , as the end goal is to provide the right information for consumers to make the right decision.
