Advertising alone is not the answer to all sales problems

Some brands often commit the mistake of thinking that advertising heavily or anyhow will solve their problems. However, what they forget is that aggressive advertising alone does not suffice. Let us take the example of Quikr. Currently, Quikr is advertising heavily in the hope that it will draw mileage from the IPL fever. Personally, I find it one of the most meaningless ad campaigns in recent times. The campaign is picking on those players who did not have any takers in the IPL auction. It is claiming that if the same player was a commodity and put up on Quikr for sale, it would have sold easily and quickly. Need I say how disgraceful an ad it is and how desperate an attempt it is to regain its market share?

What Quikr needs to understand is that it is not advertising, rather meaningless advertising that will help it. It is the product itself that will fetch it the much needed customer traction. While we talk of Quikr, it is imperative that we talk of its nearest competitor, Olx that might soon surpass it. 

Let’s draw a little comparison between the two.

In India, Olx was launched in 2006 whereas Quikr in 2008. However, Olx re-positioned itself in 2010 with a massive ad campaign – “Bech De” promoting the idea of selling old items in a hassle-free manner.

Performance

·         User base – Quikr currently has 24 million visitors each month whereas exact stats of Olx are not available. However, the company claimed to have 8 million visitors per month a year ago – 3 times more than what it had in 2010

·         Search results – For a two-wheeler (both motorcycle and scooter) in Mumbai: Quikr – 4,132 results; OLX – 11,919 results

·         Relevance of results – Both sites offer a search bar on the top. On both sites, one can filter the results on various parameters; however Olx offers more criteria that further helps in deriving more relevant results

·         Mobile Apps – Google Play as of May 10: Quikr – 4.1 (with 1,652 reviews) and around 500,000 installs in the past 30 days; Olx – 4.3 (with 15,870 ratings) and around 1,000,000 installs in the past 30 days

There are more parameters on which Olx appears to be performing better. However the point is not who is performing better, but why it is performing better. At this stage, you may also note that my intent here is not to prove one better over the other. Olx and Quikr are mere examples. The key message I’m trying to communicate here is that aggressive advertising alone does not solve all sales related issues. There are many other factors that contribute to increase of market share. Continuing with the same example, let me tell you why I think Olx is better and poised to overtake Quikr.

Reasons for better performance of Olx

·         Better user interface – it is much easier to post an ad on Olx than Quikr

·         Instant gratification – as soon you submit your ad, you can actually view the ad, which gives you an immediate sense of gratification and something tangible to see, whereas on Quikr, you wonder where your ad is. You have to navigate to identify your ad

·         Premium services – Quikr constantly pokes you to subscribe to its premium services during and after the posting process; which quite frankly is annoying for the seller as well as the buyer

·         Junk listing – while searching for ad listings on Quikr, one often observes a long list of premium ads on the top of the page. This long list is generally of premium ads by traders of new commodities than actual sellers of used commodities. Need I say how annoying it is to find traders on a site wherein you are looking for real sellers of used commodities?

·         Chronological listing of ads – another downside of the premium services is old ads featuring on the top of the list, thereby leading to more confusion than clarity on Quikr. Olx on the other hand has little such ads and mainly maintains the chronological order of ad listings

There would definitely be more reasons than the ones mentioned above behind the success of Olx. However as mentioned above, the Quikr – Olx examples only goes on to prove that you need something much more than mere aggressive advertising to re-gain your share or develop it. Olx identified the challenges, consumers were facing with Quikr. It simply worked on those and ensured its consumers do not face the challenges and re-launched itself with a decent ad campaign. The results are for all to see.

As marketers, we need to see what is it about our product that can help the consumers accept it. Ask your product team, what specific features offer a better value to the consumer that the competition doesn’t. Once that is identified, developed and implemented, position it with a great meaningful campaign. That is when advertising will help you address challenges and achieve results.