Virtual Consulting:
Soaring Local Digital Strategy Consultant
among Foreign Consultants
Its clients are leading national and multi-national companies. Virtual Consulting is a highly respectful Digital Marketing Consultant that is widely acknowledged for its online strategy that contribute meaningful effects to clients’ business, strong research, strong teams and extensive comprehension on local online culture.
Low Budget High Impact, Web 2.0, Social Media Marketing & PR and the kinds are now becoming the new mantra in the marketing world. Many companies are trying to learn and find the best way to apply this new mantra either for their companies’ needs, products or brands, mainly from the marketing perspective. While they are still busy doing so, Virtual Consulting (www.virtual.co.id) has assisted its clients to combine social media marketing and PR into their integrated marketing strategies since more than two years ago. One of them is PT Toyota Astra Motor (TAM), which has also won New Wave Marketing Award from MarkPlus in June 2008 for its Web 2.0-initiative that was designed by Virtual Consulting.
During the launching of All New Corolla Altis, TAM integrated its offline and online marketing communications by involving bloggers in any related activities, starting from the test drive up to the bloggers’ conference. As the result, the coverage of traditional media was enriched by bloggers through their more lively articles and photos. TAM was awarded for its achievement as the first company that implemented Blogger Relations strategy. As the online consultant for TAM, Nukman Lutfie, the founder and CEO of Virtual Consulting, was also invited to address his comment during the MarkPlus Gathering.
Social Media Marketing & PR Strategy
Following the success, Virtual Consulting developed online strategy – mainly on social media marketing – that was integrated with offline marketing communication strategy for other clients, including Evalube, Centro Department Store and Soyjoy, by using brand-new approaches.
Evalube, for instance, increased its oil awareness brand by developing motor fan community, both through Facebook and Gilamotor.com portal that was integrated with frequent gathering. Within one year, the GilaMotor community in Facebook had listed 75 thousands fans who were actively involved in online communication, either through photo sharing, adding status, comments or participating in forum discussion. Tremendous amount of fans also participated in each event, — either those who joined a gathering event or touring. Meanwhile, Gilamotor.com portal had shown tremendous response as seen from its escalating traffics, even exceeding the earlier target.
Centro is another example. For this client, Virtual Consulting did not only strategically re-design the website to make it more user friendly, but also developed buzz campaign strategy to create shopping rally via Twitter and Facebook that is – again – integrated with offline activities. Through Centroholic program, Virtual Consulting could successfully increase the awareness for Centro’s new website, at the same time inviting Twitter users as part of the targeted market to visit and shop at the department store. Involving many influencers in Twitter, the Centroholic program was geared up for a month, and the peak was the shopping rally at Centro Plaza Semanggi.
It did not only buzz in social media (thousands of postings and comments in Twitter, Facebook and dozens others in blogs) but also successfully attracted 600 participants within two weeks only. Even Centro’s website, which was formerly “unknown” by Google, was then found on three first pages in Google search engine. Consequently, the traffic to Centro.co.id was increasing during the program implementation.
Through web development strategy that involved communication consultant, Architecture Information expert and research on online user behavior, the visit at Centro.co.id was qualified. One of the indicators was the bounce rate that reached 40 % only, which meant 60 % of the web visitors intended to open more web pages and spent more time there. Only 40% who left the web in less then 30 seconds. That was great regarding that the average bounce rate for Indonesian websites were around 70%.
Another example is Soyjoy. For this campaign, Virtual Consulting developed an integrated online strategy and social media marketing & PR. The program was developed to support Soyjoy campaign that was big enough through television about “healthy snack that won’t make fat”. During the writing, the program was still running in the form of competition to live healthy life for three months that involved many participants in social media with main prize a flight to Japan.
Although the program was on its run, several Key Performance Indicators have been measurable. For instance, the number of participants that reached seven thousands social media users. “Seven times folded from earlier target!” Managing Director Virtual Consulting Iim Fahima who was responsible for all online strategy clients of Virtual Consulting said.
Online Crisis Management
Besides being potential for marketing, social media could also possibly trigger crisis. The dispute between Prita and OMNI hospital that involved hundreds thousands of bloggers, Facebook users, Twitters and even non computers users was a real example on how social media could trigger crises against companies or brands.
Without depth comprehension on social media, if crisis happen, it would even get worse and uncontrolled so that it could potentially deteriorate company’s reputation. It would consume much money to recover the reputation.
Realizing such risk, Virtual Consulting further sharpened its skill in the field, which have also been implemented when Tehbotol Sosro suffered from spreading hoax saying that the products contained poison since May 2009. The issue started spreading from a leak from a hoax simulation forum. The hoax was then published in blogs and spread through emails. In short time, the hoax kept on spreading through online social media and offline (including SMS) and led to anxieties among communities, mainly Tehbotol Sosro consumers. Some of the consumers then decided to temporarily stop consuming the Indonesian leading tea products.
Working through nights and days with management team from Tehbotol Sosro, Virtual Consulting developed an online crisis management strategy to prevent further spreading of the hoax, and then to recover online public trusts to Tehbotol Sosro.
Supported by online strong research on the cause and the path of the circulation, the team of Virtual Consulting and Tehbotol Sosro could find the fittest strategy to overcome the problem. By optimizing the use of Wikipedia as reference source to explain that the circulated news was only hoax, writing a quick and brief explanation at the official website of Tehbotol Sosro, building cooperation with online and offline media, as well by doing guerrilla through a number of social media, the crisis management team could successfully stop the hoax from spreading further within two weeks, at the same time correcting the messages and recovering the trust to Tehbotol Sosro.
Online Culture and Online Research
Why Virtual Consulting is able to develop Social Media Marketing & PR Strategy for various companies and brands? “They keys are on our company’s culture that is ‘very online’ and strong in research,” according to Nukman Luthfie.
All employees of Virtual Marketing from all ranks, starting from drivers, office boys up to specialists, management and directors have strong online lifestyle. All of them, despite all the ranks, have self-discipline in browsing, writing blogs, doing activities in social media actively through Kaskus, Koprol, Plurk, Twitter, Facebook and others. Many of them have their passion to carefully monitor the data movement that could be obtained in Google, Yahoo, Twitter, and Facebook. At the same time, they observe research results from the internet to comprehend the behavior of internet users in the world, mainly in Indonesia.
This special team understands well what the key words are mostly sought by internet users within certain period in Indonesia. They also keenly paid attention to interesting topics discussed intensely by social media users.
It is the data analyses– which is supported by online lifestyle – that became the base for wider Social Media Marketing & PR Strategy as well Digital Marketing Strategy for the clients of Virtual Consulting.
“We are local company that understands well local online culture, every time we are dealing with local online community,” Nukman Luthfie said. This fact becomes strong capital to compete with foreign digital consultants operating in this country. “Foreign consultant could possibly be trapped in foreign mindset so that they would face difficulties in understanding local online culture. This will also lead to difficulties in developing proper strategy for online market in Indonesia,” he added.
Digital Marketing Strategy
Social media is getting hot nowadays. However, Social Meda Marketing & PR is only part of elements in Digital Marketing Strategy. Company may focus to this trend, but they cannot neglect other digital marketing strategies as Online Advertising, Search Engine Marketing, Website (Landing Page), Online Sales, Email Marketing, and Online CRM.
During its earlier operation seven years ago, Virtual Consulting has even started its business in Web Strategy, how to develop website that could fulfill the objective of company/brand by integrating behavior online knowledge, Information Architecture, Creative Design, and Information Technology as well strong online infrastructure. Through this approach, Virtual Consulting has developed hundreds website nationwide.
In the next phase, Virtual Consulting extends its skill to Online Advertising, designing strategies for clients so that they could build their brand awareness effectively through various online advertisements. As they have been accustomed to work with research and online data, Virtual Consulting knows well the best online media for advertisement. With its special team, Virtual Consulting keeps on monitoring the performance of online advertisement and works to improve the results through various approaches. This is the reason why online advertisements managed by Virtual Consulting could result in higher clicks then the average.
Besides that, Virtual Consulting also works on Email Marketing. Although considered traditional, this email marketing remains effective.
With more than 50 staffs in Jakarta and Bandung, Virtual Consulting provides integrated digital marketing solution, starting from Web Strategy and Development, Online Advertising Strategy, Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, Online Sales, Online CRM up to Social Media Marketing & PR. Virtual Consulting could even integrate all Digital Marketing with Offline Marketing Communications of a brand, as these could be seen from the cases of Toyota Astra Motor, Evalube and Centro Department Store.
“Social Media Marketing & PR Strategy that have been successfully applied to our client actually could be successful because they are integrated with other digital marketing as Web Strategy and Search Engine Marketing,” Iim Fahima said.
Digital Marketing Education
Ballroom A Hotel Intercontinental Jakarta were fully occupied by marketing managers, PR managers and even a number of CEO from various companies, including from traditional advertising bureaus on Thursday, 29 April 2010 . They were attending seminar “Social Media Marketing & PR Strategy with Nukman Luthfie”.
They fully paid attention to the explanation addressed by the founder and CEO Virtual Consulting about the framework of Social Media Marketing & PR Strategy. Iim Fahima then shared original case studies of companies in Indonesia that have used social media as the new marketing media. All audiences were actively involved in discussion that was led by the founder of Virus Communication that has merged with Virtual Consulting earlier this year.
Realizing the importance of the seminar, most of audiences left the ballroom when the seminar had been closed.
“We indeed educate the market seriously. This seminar is one of the examples,” Nukman Lutfie said. Virtual Consulting held strategic seminar frequently, at least once in two years.
Besides seminar, Virtual Consulting often served inhouse training for managers level and up for major companies about Digital Marketing Strategy. “With managers who know well about Digital Marketing Strategy, we expect more companies would be successful in using internet, including social media as part of the company/brand communication marketing integral,” Nukman added.
Virtual Consulting – Soaring Local Digital Strategy Consultant among Foreign Consultants
Nukman Luthfie – Climbing Up The Ladder