With Facebook serving as an impulse buying medium by directly overlapping online shoppers and its users, Indian e-retailers are increasingly relying on this social media network to introduce their new products and services to the most apt and captive audience and notch up sales.
“Our focus as an active brand on Facebook lies in informing our customers about the products and offers that we feature on our website. While we use Facebook ads and brand pages to promote our products, it also offers us to target the promotions to specific audience demarcating them not only by geographical locations but on interest base,” says Sandeep Komaravelly, vice-president (marketing) of daily deal platform Snapdeal.com.
Snapdeal, which ships more than 25,000 orders every day to over 4,000 towns and cities across the country, currently has an active community of 620,000 fans on Facebook. The company expects to do Rs 600 crore in revenues this year.
“Right now, the percentage contribution of transactions originating from Facebook channel is not very high, in comparison to the overall orders. Given the pace at which it is growing, it will be substantial in the coming few months,” Komaravelly adds.
At present, Facebook has approximately 995 million users worldwide, including about 51 million users in India. It is estimated that 37 per cent of Internet users in India are Facebook users. Different studies peg the size of Facebook commerce, or F-commerce, at $15 billion worldwide.
In April 2012, the number of Internet users reached to 120 million, of which 45 million were Facebook users. This ratio adds more importance to Facebook as a forum for e-retailers to reach out to new customers, he says.
Agrees Shipra Jain, chief marketing officer of Bluestone.com, an online gold and diamond jewellery retailer. The almost-one-year-old company, which has so far shipped 30,000 deals, currently receives over 1,000 likes a day on its Facebook page.
“Facebook acts as a medium for us to acquire and reach new customers. We acquire almost 1,000 customers a month through various activities on Facebook, which include content marketing, Facebook ads and Facebook-sponsored stories. Also, 70% of our new customers come through this medium. In the next one or two years, we see ourselves as an established brand and our presence on Facebook will always be of importance,” Jain adds.
Echoing similar views is Trivikram Thakore, marketing director of online shopping hub Fashionandyou.com, who says the company embraces any new developments by Facebook and actively look for ways to implement them in its social media strategy.
“The fast pace of Facebook’s updates is a very exciting area for experimentation. The two latest features – Promoted Posts and Offers – are directly related to sales and are a big plus for us,” he says.
In total, 1,124,144 people have liked Fashionandyou.com on Facebook, out of which about 70% subscribers are from India, with the rest divided among Pakistan, Bangladesh, the US, United Arab Emirates and Nepal.
Thakore says that the company gets 300,000 likes a year, on an average, and they believe that more than ‘likes’, it is the interaction which matters. “We structure our communication across the platforms to not only attract them to useful and relevant information about Fashionandyou.com, but also keep their interest alive for other engaging activities like contests, games, apps and videos,” he adds.
Fashionandyou.com offers over 15 new sales to its members, and all of these are also promoted on Facebook. Users coming to the company's Facebook page account for roughly four per cent of its daily shop visits and the conversion rate is almost double of paid marketing methods.
“We have observed a positive trend in the inflow of visitors from Facebook to our site. The Facebook conversion rates are between 2% to 3%,” he says.
Also cashing in on the Facebook opportunity is Sher Singh, a cricket-inspired off-the-field private label lifestyle brand from India. Sher Singh’s Facebook page has over 340,000 members, and this base has reached this level in less than a year.
“We try to use this database very actively. On an average, about 10% of our sales come via our Facebook page. And, these are direct sales. If we take into account the indirect impact of our Facebook page – user visiting our page, coming to our site and registering for our sales, email, and buying a few days later – then this number further goes up,” says Sunjay Guleria, chief executive officer and co-founder of Sher Singh.