The size of the online consumer market in India is huge and the untapped market online is almost three times larger than that. Now that you know the size of the retail industry it is easy to understand just how many people are willing to purchase online.
How do you reach out to customers online and more importantly, the relevant ones looking for your products?
First and foremost, you need to sell online/ have an online presence. Next, you need to dabble into the concept of digital marketing, the online version of marketing.
What does digital marketing include?
Digital marketing includes promoting through channels like social media, Google search (online search engines), websites, and email. Advertising through online marketplaces using their pay-per-click mechanisms and display ads to promote products is also a part of the digital marketing spectrum. We have already covered advertising through the marketplace and its effectiveness. In this post will are looking beyond advertising options available through retailers.
What does this mean for marketers?
Every business that is looking at generating revenue, needs to be known to its potential buyers. Unless you market your products, your potential customers will never be aware of your business offerings. Marketing exposes your product and brand to people. Advertising, public relations, promotions, and sales – all of these are covered under the marketing umbrella.
Even when it comes to e-Commerce, the same need for marketing arises. Your eCommerce business needs to be known to your prospects. Since most people these days shop online due to its ease and convenience, marketers are increasingly looking at deploying digital media to market their products.
Having said that, we also need to remember that even traditional methods of marketing like TV and radio ads, print ads, newspapers, etc. can play a major role in the success of your business. Using a multichannel approach where both traditional and digital marketing strategies are combined, the e-Commerce industry can market its products, raise brand awareness and boost sale conversions.
Why Digital Marketing for eCommerce?
Simply put, Digital Marketing is the use of digital channels to advertise your products. It allows you to run and manage your campaigns quickly and track results on a real-time basis. Digital marketing is also cost-effective compared to traditional marketing methods. It offers greater reach as people can view your campaign from anywhere in the world, irrespective of your location.
Web Analytics makes it possible for businesses to track conversion rates and help business owners know if their website is delivering optimal ROI. As compared to traditional methods, Digital Marketing is known to generate 2.8 times more revenue.
Be a startup or a small business, these platforms are appropriate for any industry. However, the conversion rate highly depends on the audience segments, intent, targeting, and campaign effectiveness. Thus, we suggest you try as many of these advertising platforms to see which out of these are generating the highest ROI for your spend.
Several channels are available for advertisers to place ads and include tools to manage campaigns for each channel. Each channel supports different types of digital media and placement options for catching the eyes of potential customers. Different channels also have varying metrics by which advertisers are charged. In short, advertisers have a lot to think about.
To simplify it all, here we take a sneak-peak into the 07 best advertising platforms in India.
1) HOTSTAR
Hotstar is India's largest online streaming platform that hosts a huge variety of tv shows, movies, sports, and much more. As of April 2020, Hotstar has 300 million monthly users.
Hotstar is a great target for companies wanting to digitally promote themselves. You can run in-app, in-stream, and in-chat ads with the help of Hotstar's own “Hotstar AdServe”.
The procedure is the same as Facebook ads. With this, the advertisers can not only choose where and when to play the ads but also, can target users based on age, interest, and language.
2) SPOTIFY
Spotify is rapidly becoming the favored way to listen to your music. Therefore it makes sense to devote some of your marketing to Spotify. Spotify has become the most popular global audio streaming subscription service with 271m users, including 124m subscribers, across 79 markets. They claim they are the largest driver of revenue to the music business today. Luckily for marketers, Spotify has recognized its potential for marketing success and now has a well-organized advertising market.
Like Facebook and Instagram, Spotify has a formal advertising marketplace. This makes advertising on Spotify a simple process. They opened Spotify Ad Studio in 2017 to streamline the advertising process and provide a range of options to potential advertisers.
3) ZOMATO
If you own a restaurant, café, or bakery, you need to advertise your business on popular food delivery apps (if you haven't done so yet). Zomato is one of the most popular food-delivery apps in India. So you must advertise your dining business on Zomato for the sake of marketing. Moreover, if you advertise your business, Zomato offers you a 'track performance' feature that can be used to analyze how your advertisement campaigns perform on Zomato. More than 12,000 restaurants have already advertised on Zomato. Why should you be left out? Before you understand how to advertise on Zomato, you should know why to use the food delivery app.
How to Advertise on Zomato?
Go to the Zomato website.
Scroll down and find the 'For Restaurants' column.
Click on 'Products For Businesses'.
Under 'Advertise Your Business, click on the 'Learn More' button.
You'll see 'Advertisement On Zomato' and click on the button saying 'Yes, I'm interested.
If you haven't yet added a restaurant, you will be asked to add it. If you have added your restaurant, go to step 7.
Add Media To Dashboard'.
You will now be able to customize your advertisement using filters. The first filter is the 'Placement page' where you select your advertisement's display location (such as the homepage). The second will ask you to choose the dimensions of your advertisement. The third filter is 'Banner Type' which has options such as 'Banner Website', 'Banner Collection', etc.
Select the start date and end date for your ad campaign.
Upload your artwork that will be displayed as the advertisement.
Make payment for the advertisement.
And that's it. Your advertisement will appear on the website within 24 hours after the start date. After your advertisement campaign starts, you will receive a screenshot of your advertisement which will confirm the start of your ad campaign.
After the ad campaign has been completed, you will receive a report of the campaign at your email address.
4) INSHORTS (NEWS APP)
Inshorts is a news app that selects the latest and best news from multiple national and international sources and summaries them to present in a short and crisp 60 words or less format, personalized for you, in both, English or Hindi. It is rated as the best app by more than 2 lakh users on Playstore. Advertising on such a platform can give massive reach as Millennials believe in Inshorts for their daily dose of news.
Inshorts is currently the most read English news app in India. Inshorts over time has developed a lot of innovative concepts in advertising that help deliver the advertiser’s message in the most unique way possible. By innovating Ad formats like Fact Cards, HTML Ads, Inshorts has aimed to create a unique and non-intrusive format of advertising.
5) AMAZON (FOR SELLERS)
Are you selling a tangible product that consumers can purchase online? If the answer is yes, then the answer is yes, you should be advertising on Amazon! Amazon will just supply you with another way to get more eyes on your products and likely more buyers.
With 300+ million worldwide active customer accounts*, Amazon has a deep understanding of how shoppers engage with products and brands as they discover, browse, and purchase online. Advertising with Amazon Advertising can help you reach customers at every stage of their journey. Our offerings help you achieve your advertising goals while helping customers find the products they're looking for.
6) PAYTM INSIDER
Digital events are booming as the world continues to deal with the ‘remote working situation. An Event Outlook Report suggests 93% of event marketers plan to invest in virtual events moving forward, even if they can hold physical ones. So whether you’re planning a conference or a concert, there’s an upside to hosting it online. Now, that sounds interesting and all – but how does it happen? Let Paytm Insider and Paytm Ads take care of it for you.
With the ability to laser-target the ideal TG, using the Geographic, Demographic and Transactional data, Paytm Ads is a must-have in your marketing media mix. Paytm Ads is here to transform the way you reach out to your perfect audience! With deterministic user data, Paytm Ads helps form the ideal segmentation mix and custom cohorts. This targeting necessitates leveraging Paytm Ads and Paytm Insider’s enormous consumer and valuable base, to build digital events and boost your business. All this, while getting a comprehensive solution for your brand.
As part of this collaboration – Paytm Ads provides your brand with Insight, Reach, Brand PoS, and Utility – while Paytm Insider recognizes and delivers brand personifications via owned or sponsored associations. Thus, with this collaboration in place, you can be sure to deliver the perfect blend of reach and brand-led engagement by building shared experiences between brands, artists, and their fans.
Paytm Insider is India’s leading event ticketing platform, and with massive triumphs in 2020, it has now emerged as a pioneer in the digital events & experiences space. Take a look at some numbers from events hosted under popular categories like Music, Comedy, Workshops, Theatre, Entertainment & Lifestyle.
7) SNAPCHAT
If you’re a brand that wants to advertise online, Snapchat is probably not the first channel that comes to mind. You are more likely to think about the more popular platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or Twitter, first.
However, your choice of the social network depends on the nature of your intended audience. There is little point in restricting your advertising to the big social networks if your target market uses another platform, such as Snapchat.
This is particularly important for youth-oriented brands. Snapchat and Instagram are the platforms of choice for Generation Z and the Millennials. Sure, they may have Facebook accounts, but they rarely use them – that’s where mom and dad hang out. Today’s youngsters would rather send a Snapchat Snap or Instagram Story, which will disappear within a day.
Did we make you think? Are you aware of the importance and need of advertising for your brand? Well, what are you waiting for? Contact us now for consultancy!