Social Media Marketing Budgets & Marketing Strategy by Indian Companies 2013

According to Ernst & Young's 'Social Media Marketing - India Trends Study, 2013', a 40-question survey of 48 people responsible for the online or digital marketing strategy of some of India's largest companies, including Bharti Airtel, Ford India, Bajaj, Cafe Coffee Day, Honda Cars India, Pepsi India, MTV India, P&G India, Microsoft India, etc. Most of the companies in the survey highlighted that the annual social media budget is a small in lakhs of rupees mostly around Rs 11-25 lakh which is a smaller proportion of the total marketing spends by most of the companies that have marketing budgets in hundreds of crores of rupees. 

The E&Y study highlights that 95.7% of the surveyed social media-savvy organizations in India use the medium to build communities and promote usage of their brands while 76.1% use social media as a platform to highlight brand news. Around 16% of organizations use social media for both the above reasons and most of the Indian organizations utilize it for customer service, lead generation, and research indicate the increasing levels of  social maturity of Indian social media users and businesses successfully engaging with their customers and audience effectively. Facebook is the most important platform for marketers in India for engaging customers followed by Twitter, YouTube and blogging had been used by most Indian companies for the past few years and employ bloggers or online influencers who have authority and strong following for this. Even the usage of emerging platforms such as Pinterest, Google Plus, and Foursquare are also on the rise by Indian corporates. 83% of the social media-savvy organizations surveyed said that they have used social media ads, with majority of the ads being used to promote a contest/promotion or for brand awareness. 88.6% said they find social media ads to be beneficial in achieving those objectives. 76.7% of social media-savvy organizations said they have their marketing department handling social media with the rest being handled by a cross functional team/across functions or by the PR/communications team. Other than marketing, 34.6% said they use social media for thought leadership and 26.9% said they use social media for CSR. 73.8% of surveyed social media-savvy organizations have chosen standalone digital agencies as compared to PR, ad agencies, or freelancers. 

% of Market Budget Spent on Social Media          

Social Media Budget Size per Year 

Source: E&Y Study