Marketing in Digitalized India
Digital marketing is rising in India at a faster pace. With government support to infrastructure and schemes introduced in India, digital world has gained its roots in India. Success of marketing campaign cannot be solely achieved by traditional marketing. Blending the right marketing mix with digital marketing is a must in today’s digital world.
Companies are searching for skilled content writers, digital marketers and even in some cases they are hiring SEO manager. Digital world is dominating each business. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Web Analytics etc., are some of the rising field in which digital marketing is dominating. As per the data published by eMarketer, total digital spending and mobile internet ad spending is expected to reach 11.93 Billion USD by 2019. Marketers are forced to think in a way which covers the target market of both traditional consumers as well as the potential customers which are being targeted via internet.
In 2016, Government of India announced demonetization. The impact was seen drastically increasing the amount of users using net banking and mobile banking. Mobile wallets started to dominate the markets soon. India’s biggest m-wallet PayTM witnessed a hurricane growth in their business. According to an article published in Business Insider, PayTM witnessed over 7 million transactions worth 120 crores INR within 12 days. The result of such an immense growth was a smart marketing technique which was applied by PayTM on field. Marketing team targeted every single business houses, there was a no exception that even a paan wala was been the targeted consumer for PayTM. Soon PayTM became an m-wallet on which everybody wanted to keep their money in. There were cash-backs and rewards which were offered in order to keep the customer loyal to the brand.
The advantage that the marketers have now-a-days as compared to the earlier is that the base audience which can be targeted via internet is increasing day by day. Gone are the days when people were forced to watch an advertisement on the television sets. Mobile penetration has increased tremendously in last couple of years. Data which is used by Indians have drastically gone up. Thanks to intense competition in the telecom industry, availability of data at a very cheap cost is made available by the service providers. More data means more people are accessing the content over the web. Flipkart, Amazon, Netflix etc. uses the data analytics tool to identify the buying pattern of the individual and also they eventually give suggestions which are a sort of reminder for a person whenever that person visits a website on which they purchase ad space. Data is becoming the new currency in the market. Company who are not able to market their products in this age of digital India, are shown back doors by the customers. Marketers are able to segment, target and position their products in a much mature manner as compared to earlier time period. This factor has helped the companies to earn a better Return On Investment (ROI).
Since, there are always two sides of coins. Procter and Gamble’s recently slashed $140 MN over brand safety. According to the company, Digital marketing doesn’t have the ability to target the right amount of audiences. In some official statements given by companies’ top executives, they believe that advertisements are created by bots and seen by the bots. Going into deeper understanding, there were only few handful amounts of people who would like to go to YouTube and who don’t skip the advertisement which is played before the videos. Everyone searches for skip button in order to save their time from watching the YouTube ad. These are also some of the issues with which companies now-a-days have to deal with. Data analytics is playing a crucial role in deciding the outcome of the businesses but there are instances where the marketers have shown their concerned from using digital marketing as one of the techniques in order to increase the sales of the products and increase the revenue.
Taking the example of globally recognized Mirinda’s ‘Release the pressure’ campaign which earned silver under PR Lions (Integrated); conceptualized by BBDO India. The marketing of this product was a near perfection one. There were influencer bloggers and digital portals which were hired in order to make this emotionally driven content reach maximum number of people. Not only the company was able to increase the sales but also was able to grab the attention globally. The campaign was a hit because of two factors and marketing methodology which were blended properly. Viral Marketing and Digital Marketing was properly blend which led to wide spread the product and also led to gain positive word of mouth.
Another classic example of Marketing in digitalized India would be that of “Ching’s Desi Chinese”. Being one of the most costly advertisements made in India, Ching’s was able to dominate the market by its unique marketing concept. Launched its first campaign in 2014, Ranveer Singh starrer which was made on an estimated budget of 75 crore was able to create right buzz in the Indian market. Other such example includes Philips LED magic, Tata Sky HD, Make My Trip and Ambuja Cement marketing. The outcome which can be interpreted by such campaign is that marketing is changing at a much faster pace than ever before. One of the reasons is increasing of the number of people which are using the digital medium in a much extreme manner.
How marketing is been affected and rather is changing in this new and digitalized India can be seen from the recent update by IT major IBM which has announced its launching of Bluewolf, which is a Salesforce consulting agency. With this partnership, IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein will enable a new level of intelligent customer engagement across various verticals. Domains like sales, service, marketing, commerce and more will get impacted by this move. Salesforce will not only change the marketing function of a business but will also lead to generation of new ideas and innovation by using AI.
Bots are being used by the marketers to analyse and understand the market. Automation is the new driving factor in order to integrate new product line and depth in the company’s product portfolio. Many companies have to rely on the automated data analyse by the computer software, thus making the decision of marketing at the right pace and blending it with perfect marketing mix a concern for both the companies and the consumer’s.
It will be interesting to see how companies like Unilever, Tata Group, Reliance Industries, Mahindra and Mahindra etc; will market their products in this era of digital revolution. People have started studying and making themselves understand about the artificial intelligence and automation impacting almost every decision on their buying habits. The benefits of changing India in this digital era will positively impact the consumers. Consumers are always the driving force of any business which is being carried and hence the modern decision related to product design and innovation will only positively impact the consumers in the right manner.
