Tata Nano's Online Marketing Initiative

The Tata people have done some commendable job with regards to the online promotion of the car and have gone beyond the traditional methods of advertising and promotion online.

The Nano's overall marketing strategy will use conventional media in an unconventional manner. Unlike most small cars, Nano won't be big on advertising. There will be no TV campaign, only innovative use of print, radio and other media, particularly the web. The Tata team is working on Nano news in papers, Nano breaks on radio, Nano appearing in the form of messages or ticker news on TV, online Nano games, Nano chat rooms on the Net, Nano pop-ups on major websites and Nano conversation on Facebook, Orkut and blog spaces

 Tatanano.com

Tata has launched an online community based marketing effort to generate pre launch buzz about Tata Nano and build a community around its brand. Tata Nano is touted as the people’s car and building up on that platform Tata has launched a website named www.tatanano.com to direct to an intrinsically social media driven website for the Tata Nano hosted on Tata Motors sub domain.

The website features a

• Blog
• A forum which already has 12000 members
• A dream car configurator which allows you to play with Tata Nano's design and create your own design.
• Booking Nano online,
• You can "build" your Nano on the company website, which means that you can select the color, decals, wheels, fog lamps, seat covers, and dashboard.
• Along with this, there are features like free downloads, contests, and so on.

Tata seems to be actively engaging people by also discussing the ideas being generated in forum including the idea of actually selling the car online. Using this Tata can also actually gauge international interest in Nano

Market Research using website:

If you want to design an innovative distribution/marketing strategy, but are not sure of your customers would react to it what will you do? How do you reach out to your customers at the lowest cost, and in the most effective manner to get fair idea of their reaction? If you are Tata Nano then you would simply, bring this idea on your own personal website, and ask your ‘to-be’ customers to leave in their comments about the proposed idea. And Voila! U have your market research done at 0 costs.

Marketing Head of Tata Motors, monitored the comments posted on the Tata Nano website, an found the interesting concept of ‘online selling of cars’ put forth by one of the viewers. Conventional automobile wisdom says that if a car dealer is any way required to complete the transaction, a web based option is a mere information window. It can never really be an alternative to a 'brick-and-mortar' dealer. So how to gauze the customer response to this idea. The marketing head took forth this point on the Tata Nano website, and asked others to comment on it. Result of this was:

• People from all walks of life ranging from businessmen to farmers, and from city dwellers to rural villagers came forth with their views.
• The comments posted by the customers ranged from enthusiastic acceptance of this idea to a complete denial of the same.
• Some customers even mentioned the areas where Tat would need to exercise caution before undertaking such an initiative.
• All in all it was a wonderful demonstration of using customers as a sounding base for new ideas.

Thus, the Tata Nano has a strong online presence and its novel website is just adding to it.

Ø Social Networking

Ratan Tata has worked out a viral marketing strategy to promote the Nano at the lowest cost.The social networking era has become a great aid for the Tata Motors' Nano sale buzz to flourish in the online world. The Nano campaign, prior to its release, has been intensified through its extension to networking sites like Facebook and Orkut making the 'world's cheapest car' known to a larger mass.

Tata is using social networking sites Facebook and Orkut to help build up a network of prospective customers to virally market the small car.

• While the official Tata Nano Facebook profile counts 4,210 fans as its members — including Vismaya Firodia Bakshi, younger daughter of Kinetic group chairman Arun Firodia, and Vishal Gondal, CEO of Indiagames
• The Orkut site lists 6,906 members.

Tata Nano on Facebook

Tata Motors' sales push on social networking sites makes for smart marketing even with India's low levels of Internet penetration. Given that half of India's online population of some 50 million users is touched by social media platforms.

Problem with use of social networking:

• The only challenge that the social networking can trigger is the miscommunication of facts.
• Information on prices and features of the product if miscommunicated could kill the product itself.

There are several Facebook groups from several countries in the Americas and elsewhere, who are Nano fans.

There will also be a Nano online game; a Nano portal already has received 30 million hits, according to Kant. Search engines will soon have Nano pop-ups encouraging consumers to buy.

Ø Blogs

While Orkut and Facebook are quite ubiquitous when it comes to social media strategies these days, however, media sharing and blogs certainly are more active setups compared to networking as seen from the above example. The discussion on these blogs ranged from various issues ranging from how the cost worked out, to the safety of the car to the markets that it can tap into. Even YouTube videos are filled with comments on these matters.

• Highest View Count on YouTube - 303,006
• No. of Blog Posts - 61,664

The Nano’s overall marketing strategy will use conventional media in an unconventional manner. Unlike most small cars, Nano won’t be big on advertising. There will be no TV campaign, only innovative use of print, radio and other media, particularly the web. The Tata team is working on Nano news in papers, Nano breaks on radio, Nano appearing in the form of messages or ticker news on TV, online Nano games, Nano chat rooms on the Net, Nano pop-ups on major websites and Nano conversation on Facebook, Orkut and blog spaces.

In any case, the online buzz is enough to point out the brand that Tata has already built with this product; the buzz has caught the attention of even regular people in international markets if the forum topics on the official online communities are to be believed. To their credit Tata has handled these touch points pretty well by being active on them. In fact they also have a blog on the official website where they have been discussing quite interesting topics and generally maintaining an active community. This reliance on the online media also will make their advertising budget come low.