What’s a successful company without great marketing strategies?

If it isn’t evident already by the sheer volume of adverts pumped through mass communication channels, marketing is indeed a significant part of any business. And for that matter, possibly the most significant! From manufacturing to selling, the last step in any business process is advertising and marketing the product or service you’ve spent so much time & effort on building. Manufacturing or building a product/service is one thing, but it wouldn’t really reach its maximum potential of sale unless advertised.

A product that your target audience isn’t aware of is as good as a design on paper. There are brands that have established themselves because of right marketing and advertising. A good marketing strategy or campaign needs precision and a good analysis about the demographics of the target segmentation.

A good marketing strategy or campaign should not only establish a positioning for the brand but should also incorporate the product/service USP seamlessly with the brand message. The strategy should establish a strong functional response or benefit the end consumer. It should also induce a change in buying pattern and the consumer behavior of the target audience. And finally, it should stand on a strong consumer insight, based on the needs, wants and desires of the targeted segment. Some of the best marketing strategies from Inc.com are as follows.

Paytm

Paytm is the company that kept the country sane while demonetization was rooting for all the hard cash we had. Paytm is an acronym for Payment Through Mobile and it was established in the year 2010 by founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma. Paytm is a subsidiary of its parent company called One97 Communications. Even though it’s a sub-unit of another company; a major part of its share is also owned by Alibaba Group from neighbouring country China which is renowned worldwide. Paytm has chosen its target segmentation to be each and every person irrespective of age, income, gender or status. From a child to a working professional, all can use Paytm to their benefit; this helps them penetrate into the Indian Market.
 

Major competitors of Paytm are Airtel Money, Jio Money, Mobiwik and Freecharge, nevertheless, it has been doing better than all of these till now and has become by household name in the country. Paytm was launched as a recharge website through a mobile application and the Paytm Wallet was launched in the year 2014. It instantly became the largest service portal for mobile payment in India. By the end of November 2016, 150 million users were established with 75 million wallets.

“Paytm has adopted an aggressive and unique marketing policy to create better brand visibility. They initiated net banking and launched several schemes and offers as part of their promotions.”

The medium chosen for advertising of the company were diverse including radio, television, newspapers, magazines, billboards and social media. Though on a huge advertising campaign, the success of Paytm also relied up on mouth publicity and user reviews. Demonetization of currency notes worked heavily in its favor and garnered huge publicity and an increase in active users.”As soon as we were out of cash, there was Paytm sign everywhere, from local stalls to supermarkets.

Besides good advertising, Paytm is also the title sponsor for every cricket series in India hosted by BCCI for four years since the year 2015. It has also received several accolades and awards like Disruptive Digital Innovator Award in the year 2015 and The Most Innovative Company of the year 2014.

Ariel India

Who doesn’t know Ariel India? It’s been our #1 partner in crime for washing clothes. We’ve seen its adverts on television and radio since forever. It has long established its place in the Indian market and has been enjoying great sales from time to time with creative and innovative advertisement campaigns.

Ariel has been able to meet the demands of the detergent industry by introducing new and excellent products in the market at regular successive intervals. It is a biological product free from any form of bleach and is able to protect the natural colors of the clothes. The company has also re launched many of their own products with numerous novel innovations in order to keep up their pace with the changing times. With its unique ingredients, Ariel assures its consumers of impeccable cleaning of clothes.

Ariel has also adopted the right penetration policy to capture the rural market in the country, by increasing the number of wholesale dealers in towns and other small rural areas. This enables them to penetrate the remote areas and henceforth obtain access to the nearby villages and less populated areas.

The company has various tie-ups in the urban area that has helped it to become a household product, as Ariel can be easily available at every retail outlet because it has an in-store strategy of placement. Ariel products are also available at online shopping stores for the convenience of the consumers.

Ariel also created a buzz with their #ShareTheLoad campaign which focused toward gender equality and emphasized on why the daily chores should be a woman’s job; why not just share the tasks.

On the matters of positioning and differentiating itself from its competitors, like Rin Supreme, Surf Excel and Henkel, Ariel has always given more important and focus to the latest technology used in their methods, techniques and manufacturing of their products. Ariel has also maintained that usual ‘seeing is believing” and therefore it has made numerous advert campaigns to make its product visible and retained in the eyes and mind of the consumers.

GrabOn
 

GrabOn is the leading coupon company in the country and was founded by Ashok Reddy in 2013. It provides its customers with best offers and discounts available on a plethora of online stores, products and services like Domino’s, Nykaa, Flipkart, Amazon, Koovs, Paytm, MakeMyTrip and a lot more. It has over 2,966 online merchants. You can find discount vouchers for almost anything on the website and get it at unbelievable price. 

“We have around 4 million unique visitors a month on our platform. Around 5.5 million coupons are redeemed monthly and every month we have around 1.4 crore page views. We expect to record an approximate of Rs 12 crore by end of June 2016 and start making Rs 1.5 crore a month from December 2015,” says Ashok Reddy.

GrabOn is a user-friendly platform and has always connected with its audience, or target segmentation which makes up a huge range considering the diversity of coupons and discounts offered by them. GrabOn has a really interactive social media strategy and their campaigns tend to involve their customers and in turn help reward them. GrabOn also keeps on introducing fun online games and activities offering big prizes to keep the audience interested. They’ve been hosting ‘Bachat Wali Diwali’ every Diwali season which gets a lot of views and involvement from the customer end.

They also partner up with movie production houses and offer the users to meet the cast and a chance to win free movie tickets by taking part in Facebook and Twitter contests.

GrabOn even came with a survey and a Internet Market Statistics  that describes about Mobile & Internet Usage. 

Zomato

Zomato is an online restaurant search & discovery platform which was founded by Pankaj Chaddah and Deepinder Goyal in the year 2008. The company has become well known in over 23 countries by now, which is pretty commendable. It was formerly known as Foodiebay, the company was renamed to Zomato in 2010 after which their smart phone applications were introduced in 2011.

The company is possibly far ahead in the race, compared with competitors like Just Eat, FoodPanda, Burrp and Swiggy. Their slogan of ‘Never had a bad meal’ creates a deep trust with their target segmentation. This has been proven right by the company’s potential to aid its users find the right restaurants for their diverse needs. Their services include POS Systems, Restaurant Search & Discovery, Whitelabel Apps, Table Reservations & Management and online ordering services.

Zomato is praised and appreciated for being one of the few brands to have become really successful in content marketing. Their main marketing strategy is the vast use of images to promote their products. Such products have been credited for offering pure entertainment. In other words, images are important promotion features. However, one is not just to pick any image but the right one. On Zomato, you will not come across one image that doesn’t make you smile. It is because of this that I will keep waiting for them to post something new.

Zomato engages its consumers and potential customers with fresh and vivid content and adverts. It delivers the same old message, that of its slogan in a unique and engaging way every single time.

There are a lot of essentials about marketing that you could learn from these companies but here are a few of them to get you started:

· Offer entertainment to your target customers. Nobody is attracted toward the boring. If you sit on a road side with a stall and a petty little board saying ‘Pizzas’, nobody would buy from you even if you’re selling very cheap. Presentation matters. How you put your product in front of your customers and how novel and exciting it is makes it worthwhile.

1. · Present one motto repeatedly but in different way so that your customers do not get bored of it.
2. · Make sure the content you provide for advertising or social media marketing is always fresh and unique.
3. · Know how to engage the audience. Keep them involved; make them feel like they’re a part of something big.
4. · Stick to your target market and focus on them. Once you’ve established yourself in your selected segmentation, only then move forward to cover others.