Craftsvilla.com is one of the largest online shopping portals in India. It sells uniquely Indian products globally. Handmade, natural, handcrafted, vintage, ethnic, organic, environment-friendly products are a part of its product range. The enterprise endeavours to become a global leader in the industry, selling Indian handicrafts, apparels, jewellery, accessories, shoes, etc., for women and girls. The website caters to all your traditional wear needs.
Prominently known for providing fair pricing and wages, Craftsvilla has associated itself with glamour and glitz. With Kareena Kapoor and Vidya Balan taking up its cause as brand ambassadors, Craftsvilla entered into the big league from its nascent start-up stages in 2015.
Craftsvilla wanted to project itself as a company that is dedicated to women. Big marketing strategies like Ethnic Day and Miss Ethnic contests helped Craftsvilla.com to take root in the minds of its consumer base as the sole authority in Indian Ethnic products.
Why did Craftsvilla advertise?
For any organisation to grow, it is imperative that its target groups are aware of it constantly. This continuous reminder later manifests in the buying stages as the target groups then give you a chance to prove yourself.
Craftsvilla aimed to become the biggest marketplace for quality ethnic products. Thus, it was crucial for them to get to their TGs. Moreover, they had set a steep target for themselves. Craftsvilla intended to get more than 1000 orders per day. This target was no mean feat and to reach it they needed to advertise aggressively.
Craftsvilla.com’s advertising Objectives
Craftsvilla wished to steer its brand image towards a women-centric organisation which specifically caters to women. Moreover, they wanted to increase the number of products to more than a Lakh on their web store within 12 months with more than 1,000 orders per day.
Craftsvilla wished to project itself as a company which gives women suppliers and artisans a way to make their place in the world. The idea was to make people see how Craftsvilla helps suppliers and artisans to make more money and assist fashion-conscious buyers in getting the latest in ethnic trends at reasonable rates.
Craftsvilla’s advertising Partner
Craftsvilla’s growth has been a successful journey partnered by a dedicated marketing and advertising team. While Craftsvilla was planning to take on the Indian ethnic wear market, releaseMyAd came up with brilliant media plans to make Craftsvilla.com a big name among the women of the country.
Since releaseMyAd is among the topmost online ad booking agencies in India that books advertisements across various platforms, it became the best choice for the organisation looking to propel its ad campaign.
The releaseMyAd team researched the client’s competition, target groups, and main USPs to be highlighted before formulating a media plan.
Our Research
Craftsvilla’s Competition
As Craftsvilla.com began its journey while the online market was booming, it had several competitors. Big names like Etsy and eBay were trying to get the ground in online handcrafted accessories market when Craftsvilla was taking its baby steps. Both these giants had dedicated sections selling ethnic products, jewellery, bags and accessories. But while Etsy has minimum Indian market penetration with ads only in the social media, eBay had several other more popular sections. We decided to capitalise on these to enhance Craftsvilla’s chances in the Indian market.
The Target Groups
We knew the web store will cater mostly to women and since Craftsvilla.com supplies products only for women, their target audiences included women between the age groups of 18 to 35. Anyone tech-savvy enough could buy products from the Craftsvilla web-store and our target was to make handcrafted accessories easily available to trendy women in Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities too!
Challenges for releaseMyAd
We knew the major challenge to be faced was to convince people to buy online products. India is still new to the e-commerce world and thus to persuade people to rely on online transactions was quite difficult. On the business side, another challenge was how to reach out to the local Indian customers.
USPs that we highlighted
We knew in order to overcome the challenges mounted against us we need to highlight the USPs of Craftsvilla.com which were:
1) Combining the Cultural Diversity of India with Technology: India with its amazing diversity is a melting pot of opportunities where handmade products are concerned. No attempt has been made until now to integrate this diversity into a single online or digital platform. Craftsvilla.com has been the pioneer in combining great Indian culture and technology. The Craftsvilla products are handmade by individual designers, artisans and sellers across India and sold online.
2) E-commerce with a Social angle: With a global customer base acquired with the help of a tech-enabled platform, Craftsvilla is the sole platform for Indian artisans to take their products to people who are really interested in buying them.
Since there is no space constraint online so these artisans can showcase millions of products in one e-shop only for women. Craftsvilla wants to portray that they are in support of women empowerment in the sense of enabling women artisans.
3) Strong supply chain and economical products: The Company is associated with more than 100 vendors and over 1000 artisans across India. Their customers get all their products directly from its creators, eliminating unnecessary middlemen expenses which in turn provides reasonable prices.
Media Plan
The Media Platforms releaseMyAd chose
The Craftsvilla.com marketing team had come up with brilliant plans for the company. World Ethnic Day was promoted by Craftsvilla, with actor Vidya Balan to encourage more Indian women to dress in traditional ‘desi’ apparels. Kareena Kapoor Khan was roped in as the celebrity brand ambassador for their Miss Ethnic contest that invited photographs of women across the country in ethnic wear. The lucky girl would also get an opportunity to meet the star.
Such extravagant marketing plans needed strong media support. Only one media could not convey the sheer amount of the ad message, neither could it touch a large number of women Craftsvilla intended to reach.
So, our team of experts adopted newspaper, radio and television ads.
Media Vehicles and how they were used?
Newspapers
Our aim was to reach every nook and corner of India and create a brand name for Craftsvilla.com. We chose the Times of India to take Craftsvilla.com across pan India. Apart from the main Times of India, its sister concerns like Mirror, Navbharat Times, Vijay Karnataka, Economic Times, Ei Samay and Maharashtra Times all carried front-page ads.
As the ad campaign was to spread the word from north to south and east to west, releaseMyAd left no stone unturned. All major newspaper in a state was targeted like Assam Tribune and Asomiya Protidin in Assam and The Telegraph’s T2 in Bengal and other parts of eastern India. Likewise, popular newspapers in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, etc, were used to target Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities in these states. Samaj, Sambad, Ajit, Prabhat Khabar, Deccan Herald, Vijayavani, Saakshi, Deccan Chronicle, Gujarat Samachar, Loksatta, Mid Day, Lokmat, Hindu, Rajasthan Patrika, Dainik Bhaskar and Hindustan readers saw Full Page Jacket ads defining the soul of Craftsvilla.com.
Radio
The Craftsvilla radio ads were conducted to better reach the women of Bangalore. Radio City was used exclusively to reach out to women suppliers, artisans and buyers. A 10 seconds ad was run for 7 days featuring a voiceover depicting the mission of Craftsvilla.com. The ad was played 20 times daily and at the peak time of listenership period from 11 am to 5 pm, when the highest working female populace tune into the radio. Our team also arranged for RJ Mentions to give the brand image more credibility.
Television
Television is undoubtedly the most extravagant advertising medium. It not only assaults your visual senses with pleasing visuals like print ads but affects your audio senses too with great voiceovers, dialogues or jingles like radio. Thus, being a two-in-one ally, television ads tugs at your target consumers’ heart more affectionately. The releaseMyAd team wanted to capitalise on this factor and thus released television ads featuring the companies brand ambassadors on Television channels.
We used the music channels to reach our target audience. Masti, Zoom, Etc Music, M Tunes and 9XM channels were all used for the purpose. For 15 days, M-Tune, M Tunes HD, Zoom, 9XM, 9XM Jalwa and 9XM Tashan played the Craftsvilla ad 20 times daily. The ads were distributed unevenly, though. During the morning hours, i.e., from 7 in the morning to 12 noon only 6 times and later in the day till 11 pm the other 14 times. This was done keeping mind the viewership details of our target audiences.
ETC Music featured the ads for 12 days while Masti for 10 days in the same order as other channels in their genre.
Result
As we were advertising while Craftsvilla.com was concentrating on its Miss Ethnic Contest, it became easy for us to map the success of the ad campaign. The ad campaign was superbly successful as the enterprise reported several entries into their contest.
Also, the website visits on Craftsvilla.com tripled and sales soared as a direct result of multi-platform advertising.
For more information on multiple media platform advertising, call us at 09830688443. You can also write to us at enquiry@releasemyad.com.
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Radio