eBay’s proactive approach to win social marketing during festive season

Heated e-commerce battles across social platforms have redefined the dynamics of social media marketing constantly. Taking contextual marketing to a completely new level, eBay India took over the diwali sales’ campaigns by competitors in its own unique way.

To counter Flipkart’s mega sale, The Big Billion days from the 13^th to the 17^th of October, eBay decided to initiate the Big Bang Weekend. The core proposition being - Before a billion days could exist, there was a big bang.

eBay created buzz around the initiative with #BigBankWeekend. The posts revolved around products available on the site during the festive season.

Extending this further, eBay created #AcchaKiyaKhareedLiya and #KalKareSoAajKar.

#AcchaKiyaKhareedLiya

The idea was to troll Flipkart’s ‘Accha Kiya Nahi Khareeda’ campaign from a while ago. eBay wanted to communicate that instead of waiting for the Big Billion Sale, it’s good that people already shopped on eBay and the amazing deals that it offered.

#KalKareSoAajKar

The hashtag was created to reiterate the fact that instead of waiting for the 13^th, people should simply shop on eBay.

A contest hurl

As a push to the hashtag buzz, eBay created contests to keep the users engaged. The contests probed users to explore eBay’s large inventory, thus creating recall value.

For instance, tweeps were asked to share three things that make their weekend a big bang. The best answers were in for a surprise.

The second contest encouraged Twitter users to shop at the moment rather than waiting for the big sales. Supported with #KalKareSoAajKar, the campaign asked users what were the things that they did and regretted later.

Additionally, the brand interacted with popular Twitter handles to create a higher reach.

Rather than being one off e-commerce players fighting to leave a mark during the diwali sale wars, eBay chose to set itself apart. The brand resorted to competitive marketing, driving users towards their site, while their arch rivals still prepped up for the big day.

The proactive approach worked well for the brand which managed to attract a lot of tweeples.