Social Media Marketing Strategy for Hero Motocorp

Hero Motocorp is an Indian based two-wheeler manufacturer. The two-wheeler industry in India received a major boost after the liberalization reforms announced in 1991. Furthermore, several cultural and socio-economic factors like inadequate public transport in India, provide immense opportunities for two-wheeler manufacturers.

Commencing its operations in 1984, Hero entered the market in a joint venture with Japanese automobile manufacturer – Honda. It was in 2010 that Hero decided to buy out the shares held by Honda in this joint venture and emerge as an independent fully own subsidiary.

Hero has established its presence in over 37 countries worldwide. Its customer base amounts to a staggering 90 million across the globe. It has set up 7 manufacturing facilities globally – 5 in India, 1 each in Bangladesh and Columbia (Hero Motocorp, 2018).

It holds a leading 36% market share in the Indian two wheeler industry, and is the largest two wheeler manufacturer in the world since the past 18 years (Statista, 2019). Its former joint venture partner – Honda holds the second largest market share of 26% (Economic Times, 2019).

It sold a record breaking 7.8 million units in the fiscal year of 2019, just 1 million below its full capacity of production (Statista, 2019). Boasting an impressive growth rate of 4.4% over fiscal year 2018, it generated Rs. 33.651 crore in revenue in fiscal year 2019 (Hero Motocorp, 2019).

The lack of innovation, i.e. homogeneity as well as the dependence on poor public transportation infrastructure make this a rather challenging market to compete in. Nevertheless, Hero has done well to maintain its market leader position amidst increasing competition. One of its major strengths is its excellent distribution network, which expands across 3000 dealerships and service centers in the country.

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Hero has also managed to build on its brand image over the years. This is primarily due to multiple sponsorships and recognitions through awards over the years. Hero has done well in maintaining a dynamic, yet ever expanding portfolio as well. Releasing a number of new products is not sufficient in itself, rather releasing products that are up to date with modern trends is. Keeping this in mind, Hero launched its first electric two wheeler in 2016 (Bhasin, 2018).

Digital marketing has emerged as one of the most important drivers of purchase decision for modern day customers. Being in an environment surrounded by social media 24×7, it is almost inevitable for social media to influence several consumer perceptions (Economic Times, 2017). Recognizing this, many two-wheeler manufacturing companies have resorted to social media marketing strategy. This involves engaging with your customers, as well as potential customers over platforms like Facebook, twitter, Instagram, etc.

Social Media Marketing has emerged as such an important tool for modern day businesses to reach out to their target audience, that it has managed to form a separate industry of its own. Many brands now are appointing outsourcing agencies to handle their social media. This allows them to integrate professionalism in this domain, while competing with other market players. Hero MotoCorp has too partnered with one such marketing agency – Publicis Media (Economic Times, 2019).

Hero MotoCorp has an active customer engaging Facebook feed, with its page boasting over 2 million likes. Hero uses strategic marketing tools, such as emotional marketing with its target audience. This involves portraying themselves as a positive emotion service provider, and to just a two-wheeler manufacturer. It integrates the feeling of such emotions with its brand with the help of strong and meaningful content on social media. This could be in the form of showing a joyful family in its display advertisements, or even just a happy customer. As of 2014, Hero had the most positive sentiment posts across all its competitors in the industry.

One such platform on which Hero MotoCorp has made its presence felt is Twitter. It has over 125 K followers on twitter, which is more than double of the industry average standing at 51 K. One of the major reasons behind this number is because of how active Hero Motocorp is on twitter, tweeting at an average of almost 9 times per day (Economic Times, 2020). Nonetheless, a mere active presence too is not the stand-alone key to build customer engagement. Modern day businesses need to strategically share content on such platforms, which would drive customer engagement. As of 2014, Hero had the greatest number of tweets – 8.6K+ tweets, with the second highest number of engagement tweets – 426.

Another such strategy that Hero MotoCorp has adopted is yielding the benefits of hashtags. By using hashtags strategically. Hashtags make it easier to give related posts a label, which could from thereon be searched by users as per their preference (Knapp, 2015). Hero has managed to get an edge over its competitors by increasing the chances of its content being visible to the audience. Its most trending hashtag was #HeroUniverse with 188 brand tweets and 8,735 user tweets.

Brands wanting to maximize their presence felt on social media need to be up to date with all such trends evolving online. This involves keeping track of not only what kind of posts, but also posts shared at what time are yielding maximum viewership. Each customer segment has its respective maximum viewership time. For example, a brand targeting business professional would prefer sharing their posts at a time between 6 pm and 8 pm. This is because such individuals have the tendency of being exposed to social media only after working hours. Therefore, tracking such trends becomes key for brands. Keeping this n mind, Hero too has strategically laid out its content sharing time.

Another way Hero MotoCorp makes itself visible to its target audience on social media, is by sponsoring broadly broadcasted sports events. One of the major events Hero has sponsored in the past include the Hero ISL, Hero Asia Cup, Hero Hockey World League, and many more (Economic Times, 2017). This allows Hero two expand its social media presence to pages of these sponsored events as well, thus increasing its viewership.

Hero has also been part of several exclusive auto industry events, such as the Auto Expo. Being part of such industries allows you to give your brand an active global presence. Hero was one of the companies to make full use of this participation. In the 2015 Auto Expo, Hero MotoCorp started a contest wherein it showcased all live tweets with #HeroUniverse its stall at real time. This provided to assurance to Hero’s followers about their voice being heard and provided them with incentive to tweet. This incentive resulted in Hero benefitting in the form of having a trending hashtag. It also helped Hero build a great impression in the minds of the participants of the event, who could witness all the things its customers had to say about the brand.