Why geographical targeting is no longer enough for creating impactful Indic language campaigns

Brands have been advertising in local newspapers and channels for decades now. Leveraging the might of traditional media in specific geographies has helped brands reach the people who speak the primary language of the land there. However, this proven strategy doesn’t work all that well on digital platforms. Brands often focus only on driving incremental reach with leading digital ecosystems. They miss out on hyper-contextualisation at scale and precise targeting offered by language-first digital ecosystems.

With people moving across the country, geographical targeting is no longer enough for Indic language campaigns. Marketers must not use geography as a surrogate for language-based targeting. Showing Marathi ads to a person fluent in Kannada but living in Maharashtra wouldn’t be as effective. It may help with brand awareness, but the impact would be lost on those who live in the target geography but do not have a command over the language there.

Precision targeting based on the language of choice is thus the way to go. A person fluent in Kannada would appreciate content and ads in the language, even while living in Maharashtra. Ads in their preferred Indic language will have a much better impact as the narrative will be more in sync with the culture they are used to, having a much higher resonance. Brands must step up and optimise their campaigns to reach these audiences irrespective of where they reside in the country.

Tap into the ShareChat advantage

At least 76% of ShareChat & Moj users prefer consuming content in their regional language, significantly higher than other leading social media networks. When a user joins ShareChat, they choose the language of the interface. They can clearly indicate the Indic language they are most comfortable in.

ShareChat & Moj today have over 400 Mn monthly active users, passionately creating and consuming content in 15 Indic languages. It’s the third largest digital ecosystem in India, with a stronghold on a vast and diverse language-first user base that forms the majority of the audience base in the country. For advertisers, this choice translates into the knowledge of which language they should craft their campaigns in for high relevance. It allows for intelligent and precise targeting.

ShareChat & Moj see over 75 Mn user-generated content creations, over 40 Bn content shares, over 92 Bn video views monthly and over 34 minutes of average usage daily. The scale of content creation and consumption, and innovative ad solutions, make ShareChat & Moj excellent partners for brands to execute their Indic language-first campaigns.

Here’s how brands can make the most of the ShareChat advantage.

ShareChat Studio Ads: An end-to-end solution, ShareChat Studio Ads allows brands to create hyper-contextualised ads in Indic languages. These are created by specialised ShareChat teams with access to over 22 studios across India. The resulting ads feature top actors, who are selected keeping in mind in-app user behaviour. The ads are mobile-first and native to ShareChat and Moj apps, capable of facilitating brands in driving 3x higher engagement.

Language intelligence tools to drive precise targeting: What sets ShareChat and Moj’s language intelligence tools apart from others is its ability to target audiences based on their UI language preference and serve content in the language they can read and write. This is a game changer as it enables advertisers to confidently serve ads in the users' preferred language rather than resorting to compromises such as writing vernacular text in roman script or delivering ads in a link language which might not be the user's first preferred language. Furthermore, brands can also target users based on their profession, life stage, behaviours, interests and more. Since the targeting is exact and relevant, there is little to no wastage of ad spends — a significant win for brands across categories and sizes.

Copies & creatives in Indic languages: ShareChat enables brands to create static creatives in Indic languages according to the preferences of their target audiences without compromising on the authenticity of the communication. This approach works very well in their favour and has helped some campaigns deliver 2x ROI over creatives where the copy is in English.

Are you trying to craft a language-first campaign that would stand out from the clutter this year? Tap into the best of ShareChat to get started today.