Auto makers take to social media to tap young customers
23 Jan 2012
With the phenomenal rise of social media, automobile companies are looking to leverage its potential as a marketing medium to tap younger customers as clearly seen in the doubling social media ad spend on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
India's top three auto players by volume, Maruti Suzuki India, Hyundai Motor India Ltd and Tata Motors, are going all out in their bid to tap the potential of social media, which they consider very important to their future marketing plans.
Maruti Suzuk India (MSI) chief general manger (Marketing) Shashank Srivastava says these days more and more younger consumers use the social media to collect information. He added it was also inexpensive and one could get a lot of feedback from customers through it.
According to analysts, social media could no longer be ignored as it was fast emerging as a part and parcel of smart phones as also with the increasing internet penetration across India. He added it was therefore important for any marketer to be a part of social media.
He added the importance of social media was that, increasingly the average age of users was decreasing. He said in 2005-06 it was 39 years and now it was 34.
Echoing similar sentiments, Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) director marketing and sales, Arvind Saxena said they were getting a lot of young cutomers who were active on the social media and were constantly on Facebook or Twitter exchanging information. They added if marketers wanted to tap them they needed to be on social media.
