Madhvi Gupta, Head of Marketing, Communications & Social Impact at IIFL Home Finance, dwells upon influencer marketing:
Ravi Lalwani: Is the company using influencer marketing? For how long? Which customer segments are you targeting?
Madhvi Gupta: IIFL Home Loans has been using influencer marketing for a year now. Our home loan caters to first-time home buyers from the EWS/LIG section of society and our secured business loan targets small business owners.
Which social media platforms is the company focusing upon?
IIFL Home Loans is active on all social media platforms with a different agenda for each platform. LinkedIn is majorly used to talk about the culture and vision of our company, different CSR initiatives that we have introduced, etc. It acts as a medium to interact with various stakeholders. It also allows long-format organizational branding communication.
For Twitter, we make sure that our page is updated with the latest industry as well as company news, regulatory updates, and trends. Also, it majorly acts as a customer redressal platform as many customers on Twitter post their queries/feedback.
We have a team to handle and address the same meticulously. Since most of our TG is on Facebook and Instagram, both platforms are used for reaching a wider audience with a core objective of brand awareness and engagement.
The strategy includes educational content that informs the audience about our various products and services. Inorganic campaigns are also run to achieve our umbrella objective of reaching a wider audience beyond organic performance.
YouTube is used for our event videos and also as a host for DIY/training videos for internal use.
Have you used vernacular language for this activity?
Yes. Having a customer base spread across the country in tier 2, 3 & 4 cities necessitates the use of vernacular languages. It is not just limited to influencer marketing, but we actively use it across our brand assets and marketing collaterals on our websites, apps, banners, flyers, etc.
Who are the influencers and what customer segments do they connect with?
The influencers range from content creators and dancers on Instagram to finance and loan educators on YouTube. They connect with similar customer segments like ours, including first-time home buyers from the EWS/LIG section of society and small business owners.
For our 100+ branch launch campaign, we used influencer marketing to reach our customer segments. The content creators on Instagram made comedy sketches that informed the audience about our quick home loan and secured business loan approval in 25 minutes. What made these videos stand out was that they were in the language that our customers speak. Similarly, finance and loan educators on YouTube like Manglesh Rao and the channel, Grow Your Money prepared videos like ‘Five effective ways to get your loan approval instantly’ and ‘Fast Home Loan’ to promote our product offerings.
What are the other methods being used to target the same customer segments?
We consider Google Ads and especially its various platforms like Discover, display & YouTube based on various factors. First, the reach of these platforms is not just limited to search but the user’s interest and their online behavior as well. This gives us an option of reaching out to the masses who reside in tier 2, 3 & 4 markets. We want to focus on hyper-personal targeting and hence we target using pin codes, which is done at the regional level leveraging platforms like YouTube, display & discovery to penetrate the core message deep into these markets.
Facebook/Insta ads, Moj/Sharechat, and several ATL marketing methods like TV, radio, newspapers, etc, are also used to reach a wider audience. Whenever we pick ATL methods, we keep factors like reach, language, channel effectiveness, and TG geography in mind. We also use several BTL channels like branding, merchandising, sponsorship, public relations and exhibitions.
What are your key criteria for selecting an influencer? What are your criteria for avoiding/minimizing the risk associated with any influencer?
The selection of an influencer majorly depends on whether the influencer/content creator communicates/engages with our customer segment. For the quality/audience base of the content, we refer to previously collaborated content of the influencers and metrics like their total follower’s base, average views, and engagement rate.
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