The internet happened! It accelerated the use of computers, mobile phones, laptops facilitating the evolution of digital marketing channels both in volume and strength. And India has successfully metamorphosed this medium into a thriving market.
The digital marketing industry in India is growing at a staggering pace. Statistics show that it is developing at a rate of 25-30% annually and will continue to grow for the next few years, spreading its wings far and wide to create a substantial global network. International Journal of Advanced Research Foundation also backs this trend and is of the view that India is experiencing a golden period with regards to digital marketing growth. So, it’s not surprising that global companies across the US, Europe are progressively positioning themselves towards a digitally empowered India to capitalize on the golden period of digital marketing expansion in India. Large-scale companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard have already outsourced services to India.
It all began with the establishment of IndiaMART B2B in 1996. With the launch of e-commerce marketing website, Flipkart in 2007, Indian marketing structure transformed. Internet marketing, online shopping, at-home delivery became the new norm. Indian Government’s initiative to launch Digital India in 2015 further gave impetus to the trend. With the Indian Government liberally promoting Digital India, the internet population witnessed a stark rise, from about 69 million online customers in 2016 to beyond 100 million in 2017. Improvement in online infrastructure, high-speed digitization, social media channels, online portals, all of them enabled a robust market of start-ups and global networking.
India is now one of the leading offshoring destinations for global clients with more than half of the key names in international businesses opting for India. Several factors have contributed to this favorable trend:
- India boasts of a well-resourced and advanced technological infrastructure with excellent internet connectivity and avant-garde tech hubs. Subsequently, 80% of US firms prioritize India for their off-shoring services.
- India has an endless pool of skilled and capable IT professionals. As per statistics, about 75 % of the worldwide digital talent is present in India. Many universities in India run online courses and offer specialization in software development and digital marketing.
- Not only are Indian entrepreneurs skilled professionals, but they also possess a remarkable work ethic. Indian professionals can work well under pressure and deliver brilliant results even with limited resources. They are flexible, will meet timelines and deliver quality work.
- Unlike other Asian counterparts, Indians are English-speaking. After the US, India has a sizable segment of English-speaking people. Consequently, Indians can converse with international customers in clear and fluent English which allows a better understanding of instructions and well-communicated feedback.
- India offers flexible pricing possibilities which enable global companies to save the cost of operations. For example, American Express’s call center operations in India were able to cut their service costs by about 30% while boosting customer satisfaction percentage by 20 points.
- The different time zone empowers India to make available dedicated 24/7 service to fulfil the ever-changing customer needs, thereby providing higher customer satisfaction with direct and quicker contact.
- The Indian Government provides promising IT strategies to support the Digital marketing industry.
India has successfully developed into a software powerhouse of the world. More than 500 global firms including Samsung, Cisco have their second headquarters based in India. With India becoming the hub of modern technologies like robotic process automation, machine learning/artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, the world is also recognizing India’s technical prowess.
Indian entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are fruitfully tapping into India’s potential and advanced infrastructure to carry out software-related services for global enterprises remotely. The present-day Indian software experts are focussed on building platforms for global markets by adopting advanced digital technologies. The Indian digital marketing industry also has optimized its costs, delivered quality work, created job opportunities and pioneered global business models wherein spread out teams can impeccably work together to execute complex software projects. No wonder big companies like Accenture and IBM have invested heavily in India. Companies are also extending their demand in India to include services like sales, customer success, product management.
There is no doubt that the emerging technologies in India offer a gamut of opportunities to global clients especially when it comes to digital marketing. With more and more companies opting for formulating an impactful brand image online to widen their reach, the numbers of digital marketing tools have also increased.
Let’s first understand what does Digital Marketing mean?
Digital marketing is all about influencing the online audience with content to enhance the brand’s effect on the audience. Presentation of ideas via videos, images, texts have a lasting impact on the minds of the online people, eventually defining their living. When people increasingly spend time on the internet, it enables digital marketers to form powerful strategies to impact consumer behaviour. And the right strategy leads to conversion of the audience into sales.
In the ideal business world, a business should not only be able to understand its customer’s needs but also possess the ability to fulfil those needs. Here, marketing strategy plays a crucial role. It should stimulate solid leads and bring forth new customers to keep the business growing. But the painful truth remains that developing a robust sales funnel is the top-most challenge for any business. About 63% of the B2B companies believe so. And more than 61% of the companies do not own the right measure of time, staff or funding to do so.
But India is placed at the enviable position to deliver it all. The internet boom has completely revolutionized the marketing scenario in India. Furthermore, changed lifestyles, increased use of gadgets has positively swayed the level, quality and pattern of consumption. The budding use of gadgets has expanded the horizon and size of digital marketing in India. Entrepreneurs are now looking at innovative digital marketing strategies using advanced digital means to generate sales and derive profits.
SMS marketing has given way to more appealing trends like video marketing and social media marketing. Well-aimed email marketing has become an effective way of promoting conversions. SEO marketing which includes Website Designing, online advertising, Application Development, Analytics, Mobile Marketing is some of the tactics used to gain influence over customers. Webinars are a game-changer and can create real-time sales opportunities. In fact, webinars are a favorite of marketers and were considered one of the key marketing tools even before working remotely became the new norm.
Again, webinars are not just about making a presentation or setting up a panel of speakers or sending invites to attract attendees. It entails careful planning and curating specific strategies so that existing clients, partners, prospects and new customers can extract real value from it. Let’s take an example.
The sales team is excited about a scheduled webinar as they get the chance to touch base with the customers. But it fails to encash upon the opportunity because the marketing team could not plan or communicate the idea well. The interested customers may still contact the sales team, with the sales team making their pitch around the webinar and requesting follow-up calls to discuss further. Having done so at the crucial juncture, they may reach a dead -end.
Thus, it is abundantly clear that the cutting-edge digital marketing scenario, undoubtedly, demands a well-resourced expert with a deep understanding of the webinar field to cater to customer needs. During my successful stint at building and managing big digital marketing teams based out of India, I had the chance to gain insights for designing efficient approaches to conducting successful webinars. Let’s take a look at these:
- It’s crucial to align with your client’s target audience. Study the customer’s profiles, take help of peers or companies based there to collect data.
- It is equally vital to create a strategy to develop synergies with the VP-Marketing/CMO based in the US and their Head or Director of global marketing operations and digital marketing teams based in India.
- While the marketing automation tool implementation is happening in India, you will still find it easy to plan, build standard operating procedures, schedule and automate the entire webinar campaign across the channels with well-formulated strategies.
- Analyse and manage your integrated strategies including lead generation approach, content strategy, social media and digital strategy daily for optimum results.
Certainly, it has become more interesting to get the best results out of webinars with the evolution of digital marketing, technology and social media. In these highly digital times, my philosophy where I believe that outsmarting your competition is way better than outspending them, where innovating on the marketing strategy can produce better results than merely innovating on the product, has done well for me. I hope to see you benefit from it too!
