Summary
DLF Cares campaign: success story of trust and community engagement during the physical and emotional lockdown An activation driven the first time by DLF on social media received love through 45 authentic testimonials against an expectation of 20. Each video was shared countless times by residents within their circles, which earned referrals of new prospects which resulted in significant sales conversions experienced.
Challenge
1. Engage channel partners during a period of gloom and market downtime to keep DLF top of their recall and to keep their motivation high 2. Train sales teams to embrace new digital-led new forms of prospect and channel partner engagement 3. Drive a healthy top of the funnel with new prospects converting into sales 4. Keep overall marketing spends as low as possible (less than 0.50% of targeted revenue)
Objective
1. Engage the existing community of owners and residents to transform into brand ambassadors and evangelist the brand amongst their friends, family and extended social circles to feed into the top of the funnel 2. Engage with trade channel partners to update them with industry news and forecasts, actions being undertaken by DLF and upskill them to engage with prospects using digital assets given the new norm of remote contact and physical distancing 3. Upskilling of internal sales teams, embrace digital-enabled ways of selling, prospecting and engagement with trade channel partner meets in a virtual manner 4. Invest in strengthening existing and creating new digital assets that could make product discovery and sales conversion simpler through remote access 5. Performance marketing for identified projects for lead generation in the last 1 month of the campaign
Strategy
Initiated #DLFCares, a comprehensive 4 month-long integrated digital and social media campaign starting 1st April 2020. The campaign sought to engage the community and demonstrate how DLF cared for its community, both immediate and extended stakeholders. The pandemic ruled out extensive one-on-one contact between prospects and brokers and physical site visits. The other characteristic has been over-dependence by brands on print media and OOH media for mass communication. We had to solve through innovative and novel ways – never practised in the industry. This involved changing consumer buying behaviour, sales team and brokers selling behaviour and had to be done within a direct, effective yet scalable template cost structure. The use of digital technologies and referral marketing became the cornerstones of our approach. We identified 10 projects and orchestrated 3-step social media campaigns. Constantly engaged with our channel partners. Introduced training sessions for our sales and CRM teams to empower them digitally.
Data
• 70% of the content came from the residents • 100% organic campaign • An inclusive campaign with stakeholders ranging from clients to, vendors, partners, service staff, among others. • The testimonial campaign led to referrals of new prospects which resulted in significant new sales conversions. • Besides creating a buzz in the market that directly impacted the business, the positive word of mouth by the community directly impacted helped further build the brand equity for DLF.
Solution
1. Brand advocacy and evangelism by the existing community of owners and residents a. 3-part content-led campaign on social media - #UnlockIndoors, #Unlocked and #TheNewNormal in sync with various phases of the lockdown. b. Content for all 3 campaigns was only audio-video in format c. While the campaign was to bring social awareness and positivity online, DLF also walked the talk by providing exceptional services to the community of residents during the lockdown period. These included but were not limited to: i. Partnership with premium grocers for doorstep delivery of wet and dry groceries ii. Sanitization and disinfection of common areas, lobbies, elevators multiple times a day iii. On-campus availability of doctor, medical services, and ambulance across identified communities and special care of the elderly and senior citizens with sanitised doorstep delivery iv. Uninterrupted laundry services and food delivery from on-campus club restaurants to residents across identified communities v. ]Golf cart services from tower lobbies to the main gate for both resident and goods movement vi. Temporary housing of all essential services staff on campus to ensure added safety and medical precautions during the initial phases of the lockdown c. As a result, the resident community were generous enough to start sharing the good word and created a testimony campaign that was circulated within and outside the community d. Reactivating 13 community pages on social media taking the total count to 16 unique brand handles where both brand and community-sourced content were shared including various social campaigns and other information updates. e. The campaign created positivity in the community where people came out and revealed their jovial sides, sending positive vibes, discussing their hobbies, hosted talk sessions across age groups and geographies
Results
#DLFCares campaign to be an extremely effective and efficient campaign across the 4-month period, not only achieving but over-delivering on all campaign objectives during an especially challenging period of the pandemic 1. Sales revenue: Achieved revenue of Rs. 280 Crores against a target of Rs. 65 Crores (331%) 2. Cost as % of revenue: Achieved 0.07% cost against a target of less than 0.50% of revenue 4. Resident testimonial videos: 45 testimonials against an expectation of 20 videos. Each video was shared countless times by residents and extended communities, leading to referrals of new prospects and thereafter significant sales conversions experienced. 6. In social media, we had set modest targets for reach, impressions, and engagement. But we surpassed all those objectives by 3 times over! This was especially incredible as the campaign almost entirely was organic in nature. What also helped is that from day one we decided to do only audio-visual content instead of static posts. The format and quality of content played a big role in it proving as effective as it did 7. Finally, the creation of a new website and reactivation of 13 social media pages played a big role in driving engagement as well as sourcing community-generated content. It also brought in much more discipline internally on how to focus and manage our social media assets more effectively.
