Facetune’s Digital Marketing Strategy – Detailed Case Study

About Facetune

Facetune is a photo editing application used to edit, enhance, and retouch photos on a user’s iOS or Android device. The app is often used for portrait and selfie editing. It’s Features allow users to whiten teeth, remove blemishes, smooth skin, reshape, defocus and blur. Facetune users can also choose from a variety of filters, lighting, textures, contrast, and frame options.

With 10 Million downloads on Google Play, and is #1 In the USA Chart for Paid Apps in 2017 – it has made a mark on the world as being the first editing app to introduce airbrushing.

The Facebook page has about 168,000 likes with an engagement rate of 0.29% while the Instagram page has about 37,000 with an engagement rate of 0.40%.

Pain Points And Competition

What is important to understand is that Facetune has not been able to penetrate the market in India and with a Rs. 100 Cr. market in the Selfie business (according to economic times) – it is very important to make your mark in this country. This is because of the competitors that have formed the market in India.

It’s clear that the competition i.e. BeautyPlus, YouCam Selfie Editor, PicsArt Photo Studio and VSCO – all have downloads of at least 50 million on Google Play, with a high engagement rate on social media platforms. Thus, people are aware of all these apps in India.

Through this, it is understood that the main pain point of Facetune’s digital marketing strategy is an awareness which will then lead to interest, decision, and action

Campaign

The campaign Janya Sindhu and Shrishti Khemka have come up is #PicturePerfectSeason and #FacetuneThisSeason with the tagline “No matter what the Reason, Facetune will make it the Picture-Perfect Season”.

The thinking behind this campaign is that many Indians use the word “season” for everything such as Wedding Season, Party Season, Summer Vacation Season, etc. The team wants Facetune to be the app that will make all your memories from these seasons, Perfect – because selfies and pictures never have a peak Season.

Target Audience And Buyer Persona

The target audience that is being broadly targeting is 13-28-year old females, from Tier 1 and 2 cities.
The first Buyer persona is “The College-Going Student”. She loves going out, is an extrovert, thoroughly active on social media and is interested in Personal and Beauty Care.

The second target audience is “The Excited Teen” who worships Bollywood stars, spends her time scrolling on Instagram and is very enthusiastic. The third group is “The Working Professional Girl” who tries to find the perfect work-life balance and loves attending events and weddings.

Marketing Plan

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is an integral component of every digital marketing strategy. It helps to improve your search engine rankings on the search engine results pages (SERP’s).

For a brand to rank organically high, it is important to perform a good SEO strategy. When researching on

Facetune’s SEO Strategy, certain issues are visible like not ranking high on important keywords, problems with meta tags, meta description, etc.

It must rank higher for a simple keyword like “Free Photo Editor” as it doesn’t rank anywhere. Even for listicles like on DailyDot, it ranks 3 – whereas it should aim at ranking #1.

The Brand must get better Meta Tags as the competition is beating them, and while looking at the Meta description, no customer would think it is very credible.

There is also an issue with Backlinks as the brand doesn’t really have a website as it is just one-page with the link to download the app.

The team has also revamped the blog and the website which features more of what the app is, and includes articles such as tips for pictures, celebrities, and their beauty tricks, etc.

This would lead the Blogs featuring listicles about best selfie editing apps to tag the website which would lead a user to it, which is very important for a digital strategy.

Mobile Marketing

AppAnnie was used to get the data regarding how Facetune performs on Apple App Store and Google Play store. It is seen that while comparing the charts from the US and India, it is constantly performing as the number 1 App in the category for Photography and Video, and Number 5 on the Overall Chart.
Whereas in India it is barely seen even in the top 10 in the Photography and Video Chart. It is also important to use certain keywords in the description so that the App ranks higher up when these keywords are searched in the App Store.

Influencers

Influencers are people who have large social media following, and many people are influenced by them for brands, etc. It is the new trend is social media strategies.

While looking at what Influencers will be best for Facetune, the team wants relatable people like Prajakta Koli, Sejal Kumar, Komal Pandey, and Kusha Kapila – all in the macro-influencer section, who post quirky content.

The team will also use a company called Chtrbox, which has 1,25,000 micro influencers in India, so as to have people relate directly to these influencers promoting Facetune – which will influence people like college students to download the app.

Email Marketing

There are 3 strategies Janya Sindhu and Shrishti Khemka have come up with, which will hopefully create certain conversions.

The database for Email Marketing will come from sign-ups, blog subscriptions and an Offline Marketing strategy which is photobooths in different fests like StyleCracker, Lil Flea, etc. where people would click photos through this.

To access it they would have to Email the photo to themselves thus creating a database for promoting the app through emails.

Online Reputation Management

Online Reputation Management refers to managing a brand’s online image from the customer’s points of views. This is important as it creates a certain confidence factor in potential customers. Strategies for this include:

First being getting ranked on websites that rate apps for androids and iPhones, such as Appszoom, AppPicker and Android Apps.

The second strategy is using Quora to answer questions as Facetune regarding selfie hacks, and best selfie editing apps, etc.

The third strategy is creating a watermark called Flaunt It Facetune, and if people share their pictures on Instagram with this watermark and tag Facetune, they can get featured on their blog and their Instagram page.

This will lead to more awareness about the app and create loyal customers as well, as many people would want to be featured on Instagram with a large following.

Social Media Posts

The social media pages of Facetune need work as it does not feature any relatable posts, nor do they have pictures of people from India. The team thought of was to create content that will make people relate to why they need the app.

Thus, there are a series of memes, with a call to actions and that also explains how a certain feature can help your problems with editing selfies. There are also posts regarding the campaign – #PicturePerfectSeason.

Ads

Every Digital Marketing strategy is incomplete without Paid Ads. Every brand practicing digital marketing should invest in both Social Media Marketing Ads & Google Ads. Gaining traction to your website/business page organically is a long-term process. But with paid ads, the process becomes much faster.

Ads for Social Media, YouTube and Google Search Ads – the budget for this combined is Rs. 10,00,000.

There should be ads promoting the blog, which would then lead to Remarketing Ads for the people to download the ads. The ads should also promote the features of the apps. Bumper ads – which are unskippable, should be promoted on YouTube as well.

Conclusion

The app has the potential to be extremely successful in India as it has already been greatly appreciated in the USA and other countries. Thus, it’s important for the brand to understand their target audience in India and create a good digital marketing strategy that would lead to more conversions, otherwise, they will not be able to make a mark in India.