Oakley on Social Marketing and Ecommerce in Indonesia [Video]

It was no easy task to set up an ecommerce store and deliver a digital strategy for Oakley in Indonesia especially when the consignment stores perceive the digital team as competition to sales revenues.

The challenges are plenty from Internet issues in the country to a lack of trust among local consumers in online payment as there isn’t a clear law to protect customers from frauds. There are also many fake products and parallel imports.

Elisabeth Winiartati, digital communications and ecommerce manager from Oakley Indonesia explained that when she headed the digital team in 2010, there were also several challenges internally from a lack of digital knowledge to the challenge of integrating online with offline sales, budget, and product allocation as well as lack of support from headquarters.

Despite the challenges, today its online store brings in sales that are equivalent to revenues of three consignment stores combined in the country, she noted.

Among the actions the team took to address the challenges range from educating employees, creating digital strategies that align with marketing communications, and allocating more budget for digital advertising and activation.

Oakley Indonesia started Facebook marketing in 2010 by appointing a social media coordinator to manage its page but converted the executive to serve as a customer service rep to save cost, Winiartati pointed out.

When posting content on Facebook, she advised to provide “infotaining content” to customers that will engage and not annoy them such as brand ambassador stories or surfing trends in Bali.

In this two-minute interview, Winiartati talks about how she gets buy-in from her boss to invest in digital tools and resources, including advice on how marketers could do social media marketing in Indonesia.