How would a company that wants to target a certain kind of rural consumer go about doing so? Given the wide spread of mobile phones, the current trend is to ask him to give a missed call to a certain number, and then call him back taking that as a sign of interest. The call takes the form of a joke or a jingle that contains the brand message. But this exchange does not yield any more information except for the number, says Deepa Bachu, Director of Product Management and Innovation, Intuit India, which runs a free SMS service providing farm rates to farmers called Fasal. The cost is recovered from advertisers who use Intuit’s database of farmers.

The service is intended to make farmers quote competitive rates when they sell their produce in markets outside their villages. Often, they end up selling it for very little as they have no idea what the going rates are. Fasal’s list of 13 lakh farmers, claims Bachu, is rich in detail – the region, the crop(s) and the seasons in which they are cultivated and harvested, the acreage, the income and such. A company that markets a pesticide for cotton crop, for instance, can target only the cotton farmers in a specific area by using these details.

Nokia too, under its Life Tools service, offers a similar service to marketers. But it’s not free; the user has to pay for it, Rs 60 per month for agriculture and Rs 30 for health and education or Rs 3 per instance for a demand-based service. Nokia does not monetise its database with advertisers, says B. V. Natesh, Director, Nokia Life, Emerging Markets Services, India. However, it leverages it for specific projects in collaboration with Government, industry and social organisations. Some of these services are made available free of charge.

Recently, Nokia partnered with NABARD and Vegetable and Fruit Promotion Council in Kerala to improve yields and incomes for farmers there. It also worked with IGNOU to impart English language skills to students using the regional language as the medium. On the health front, it is involved in a project with Emory University and other partners which involves sending diabetes awareness and prevention messages to over one million users. Since launch, five crore consumers have used Nokia’s services.

No-spam technology

Using Fasal’s database is a more refined approach to rural marketing than using “Spam SMS players” who don’t have anything more than a pin code and a phone number, says Bachu. One reason why marketers are reluctant to try mobile marketing is because their messages seem to go nowhere, she adds. With a well-defined list, if the lead generated by the first step in the campaign cycle reveals the target is not interested or has already used the information (taken a loan, used the fertiliser), they will not be bothered again.

She says there are two trends in rural advertising: going farm gate to farm gate and missed calls. The first, a one-to-one strategy, is very effective but difficult to scale, especially when there’s an outbreak of disease in the crop. The missed call does well as a polling technique, but the advantage ends there. With Intuit’s method, farmers can be helped, for instance, to close loans quickly. A campaign among 40,000 farmers conducted by a tractor company for its ‘low-cost’ tractor elicited 25 per cent qualified leads and had about 45 per cent going for a demo, and about three per cent of this turned into sales, she claims. There were incremental sales of 15 tractors and a three-fold rise in awareness.

Rural spending

According to a Crisil report dated August 2012, there is an increasing shift in rural consumption from necessities to discretionary goods. About one in every two households has a mobile phone. Nearly 42 per cent of them owned a television in 2009-10, up from 26 per cent five years earlier. Fourteen per cent had a two-wheeler in 2009-10, twice that in 2004-05, although this is little compared to the 33 per cent of urban households that had them in 2009-10. In fact, more than half of India’s stock of consumer durables such as television sets, electric fans and two-wheelers is now in rural India, says the report. Between 2009-10 and 2011-12, rural India spent Rs 3.75 lakh crore, much more than urban India’s Rs 2.99 lakh crore. However, Intuit does not provide information on such economic indicators such as ownership of consumer durables unless the advertiser requests it.

Every farmer that joins the network brings in at least two or more, says Bachu. She claims Fasal generates 3-7 per cent ‘warm’ leads through its SMS communication. Intuit’s clients in this quarter include companies such as the Godrej group which market agrochemicals, FMCG firms such as Procter & Gamble as well as automobile companies that sell farm vehicles/equipment, light commercial vehicles and two-wheelers. Banks too, as RBI guidelines mandate that a bank has to ensure 40 per cent of its lending is to the priority sector consisting of advances to certain categories, namely, agriculture, micro and small enterprises, education, housing and export. Out of the 40 per cent target, 18 per cent is the sub-target for agri-finance.

So what does it take to maintain and correlate this database with advertisers’ needs? Intuit has set up call centres in all the languages to conduct a pre-campaign survey to gauge awareness. After the campaign breaks, it collects leads coming in on Intuit’s toll-free number. It also conducts a post-campaign survey to measure efficiency. Shailesh Goyal, Group Product Manager, says a call centre handles the response for the advertiser. Banks have to educate consumers about the loans, as has an agrochemicals firm about its fertilisers or insecticides. “We have seen a variety of advertisers work on our platform. There’s 90 per cent viewership for every SMS,” he claims. The call centre also tracks conversion results of the leads thrown up.

Bachu says new-age advertisers are very open to working with Fasal. Intuit cannot reveal the names of most clients but she claims “we have several advertisers in different phases of the cycle”. It plans to scale up the service which is now restricted to Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka.

A matter of pride

R. Seshadri, Managing Director of Anugraha Marketing, the Chennai-based rural marketing specialist, says businesses will definitely take to mobile marketing in rural areas as ownership of mobile phones is growing. Literacy and language can be deterrents, especially to older rural audiences, he says, but points out that in those markets, there’s a certain pride attached to being marketed to. He cites past cases of a direct mail campaign where rural consumers told their friends and neighbours that major companies had approached them personally. Also, rural consumers receive only a few messages on their mobile phones, unlike urban ones, and so may not ignore them, he adds, pointing out that they have the time and the patience. Novelty also plays a role if their mobile phone is a new acquisition, he adds.

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