Is there a single day you do not Google? With the advent of digital marketing in India, 2018 has been quite a successful year for India from a marketer’s perspective.!

Since 2016, it has seen a rapid rise in the usage of Digital Marketing in India. The growth is estimated at around 50 %, thanks to digital marketers knowing what and when to present to the customers.

updated :-  Scope of Digital Marketing in 2020

Digital marketing has especially been a boon to companies with overseas clientele. Digital marketing serves as an immediate and direct tool for these companies. They use their brand to make a secure, real-time and instant connection with their clientele with the help of Digital Marketing. This method also saves a lot on cost production so it’s a win-win all around.

IDC predicts that by the end of 2019, the digital marketing industry will be worth over $102 billion! The digital marketing trend in India has been mounting for years now. It has led to the present era to become sophisticated by becoming more responsive. It enhances the frequency and depth of its users.

Emerging Marketing Trends and its opportunities

As a Digital Marketer, it can be argued that the most important phenomenon that happened in Digital Marketing scenario in India, in the past few decades, is the “Jiofication”. On September 6, 2016, Reliance Industries launched Jio to the public, thereby creating a new meta. With dirt-cheap pricing and several free offers, it molded the average Indian mindset with a craving for more data.

People with no access to the Internet were given access and existing Internet users were given more data which provided them with a wide array of browsing possibilities. This meant more eyes viewing the content you put out on the internet.

T series is a shining example of the phenomena. As of 1st December 2018, the T Series YouTube channels stands at over 72 million subscribers and is well on its way to becoming the top dog of youtube. The channel which was established in 2006 had about 30 million subscribers in 2016. This rapid growth can be attributed to Jiofication. Now imagine the same scenario with your business. More and more Indians are getting Internet savvy and are watching the content you put out online. So the Indian digital landscape is a great place to invest, as it full of new opportunities.

Demonetization has also had a huge impact on the Indian Digital landscape. After November 2016, there was a severe shortage of paper currency in everyone’s pockets. This is when digital payment gateways came into play. Even small-time merchants were forced to look into alternative ways of payment. This is when companies like Paytm flourished.

Digital transactions became the new meta for the average Indian consumer. Those vendors who had no digital alternative for payment suffered dearly. Paytm wallet was a simple application that was essentially a wallet for your digital currency. Customers flocked to it and vendors to adopt this alternative because it looked easier and was much more efficient.

In such a scenario where most Indians have the power of the high-speed Internet at their fingertips, it opens a rather wide avenue of opportunities. Let’s see how we can utilize them.

Utilizing the digital medium to kick-start your Marketing Transformation

Digital marketing kickstarted in 2016 and evolved faster than ever. Marketing charts show a 50% increase in the digital marketing budget compared to 2016 based on their study. This is because a marketing strategy is incomplete without addressing the potential digital channels like social media, content, SEO, video, and much more.

Valuable marketing strategies are vital to create, fine-tune, and maintain the ever-evolving landscape of businesses and consumers. This involves a series of actions to achieve the desired goal. For instance, the goal could be to generate a 25% more increase in leads via the Email Marketing channel. This depends on your business. This requires you to gather personal information like whether the business is B2B or B2C. Also, it requires to know whether the product is high cost or low cost.

Social Media, Website Design, and Contents are the other three effective channels of the lot that can help you generate leads by making their content shareable. For instance, sharing it via personal social media profiles is effective. Website Design can be done by increasing traffic to the target audience by supporting your content access via Blogs. Content helps convert your website visitors into leads. It also boosts your brand online around the search / organic traffic.

The content needs to be outlined correctly to hit your marketing goals. This is tied around the targeted title, format, promotion channels, and priority levels.

Studies have proved that better content can drive up to 2000% of traffic!

Industrial Marketing Budget Trends gaining a Breakthrough

In 2018, social media usage showed a 58% increase as compared to 2016. SEO with an increase of about 55%, Email marketing using in-house lists with about a 50% increase, webinars with 43%, Internet banner advertising networks with a 35% rise, company websites, and content creation with about 58% increase individually.

The mainstream Industrial marketing budget trends that showed reputable breakthrough and still continue to are with the following channels :

*Website Design
*SEO
*Email Marketing
*Social Media Marketing
*Content Marketing
*Advertisements
*Mobile Marketing
*Public Relations
*Search Engines(paid/ unpaid traffic)
*Trade Shows
*Internet Banner advertising networks
*Online newsletter sponsorship/ ads
*Telemarketing
*Native/Programmatic advertising
*Podcasts
*Online/ Printed Directories and websites

Spending in India has grown by 15.5% since 2016 to Rs 5846 crores with digital marketing. Stretching fast to 4.5% as media office GroupM stated in its 2015 and 2016 reports. With TV and radio showing much slower development than in 2015, mobile advertising income development rate tends to increase by 27% gaining as $27 billion income in 2017!

Digital marketing originates from web-based social networking. This is because individuals focus more on online networking. There are more than 82 million dynamic clients on Facebook. The studies state that India will have the world’s largest Facebook population by 2020!

Key Factors that affect Digital Marketing Trends

India’s proficiency rate is 74.04%. There are many key factors that affect digital marketing development in India and are as follows:

*Technology – Technology should be updated on a continuous basis. The in-house internet marketing team needs to have a firm grip over technology-related concepts.

*Channels – A business will be able to target its potential populace and generate leads based on the channels decided on. A cost-benefit analysis needs to be performed and the various mediums should be frozen.

*Target Market – Deciding the target market is crucial for digital marketing. There are millions of internet users available and blind advertising to merely all the users would be futile. This would result in more costs for the firm. Hence the content to be published and shared should be tailor-tuned and the right target market needs to be addressed.

*Social Media – Businesses these days have to maintain healthy and active social media accounts. This enhances customer engagement. It also helps in attracting new customers while retaining existing ones.

*Budget – Digital Marketing is cost-effective. When compared to the traditional marketing techniques, a well-defined budget helps you save costs. Paid promotions can also be considered. Remember. Every penny counts in the long run!

*Content – Your target market should be filled with content like pictures and reasonable search keywords, curated by you, that attracts the targeted populace. Studies show that good content brings in 2000% more viewers than otherwise.

*Offline and Online Integration – Individuals are prone to visit websites for more information. There are plenty of times they do not come across relevant and helpful data. Individuals might look up your brick and mortar store, online for reviews or maybe just for directions. So it is important that you integrate your offline and online market.

*Scope of constant improvisation – As digital media is dynamic, the choices that viewers have can change from time to time. Content needs to be constantly monitored/updated. According to the feedback and response, the content can be reviewed. Changing trends can also be included to bring in more audience.

*Good Branding Proposition and Experience – A good branding experience is essential to be credential in today’s market. Data tracking, brand monitoring, and product analysis demographics are hence essential elements while considering the brand proposition.

Scope and Opportunities for Digital Marketing in India

With the advent of several monumental events during the past half-a-decade(as mentioned earlier), digital marketing has really kicked off in India.

WARC Survey suggests that 35% of sponsors build their advertising spend by half or more by 2020 in India! Web-based sites give everyone an online entrance. This explains the expanding number of internet business sites. The money spent by Indian youth on mobile is the highest among any medium. This number keeps mounting each day. In 2014, 58% of the populace had smartphones. This leads to an increase in the rapid consumption of digital information. Hence the scope and opportunities are tremendous.

A typical example that illustrates this rapid increase shows that “More money shall be invested in digital advertising than even in TV ads by 2020!”. And 22% of all media spending shall be via digital means!

Other key factors that increase the demand for digital marketing include:

*Flexibility – An internet connection and a smartphone or a computer make digital marketing location unnecessary. Hence, there is flexibility for people entering the digital marketing domain.

*Small Starting Cost – The starting costs are low compared to other mediums.

*Measurable – Everything in digital marketing is measurable. Starting from the granular level, improvement factors can be measured.

How to utilize the scope of digital marketing

Businesses are always keen to know how they can get visible online and introduce their product or services online. This also requires a special set of skills, technical know-how, strategy planning, creating, executing, and measuring digital marketing campaigns. This can be done in varying capacities, whichever type of digital marketing you depend on.

Domains of Digital Marketing

The domains of digital marketing channels especially email, social media, and search engine marketing contribute to the growth of an organization. This will create, accelerate, and transmit value from the provider to the terminal customer. They are also helpful in achieving trust, utility, and user experience with the customers.

The different domains of digital marketing include are:

*Organic Digital Marketing – This is where you promote content to reach the audience for your product or service without having to pay for the platform, website, or a particular application.

*Inorganic Digital Marketing – This requires you to pay for the platform, website, or audience to promote your content, product, or service.

The specific domains of digital marketing and their vital roles include the following :

*SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Expert – This focuses on ensuring that a particular website ranks well on search engines. The role of SEO is to increase traffic to your websites. By the increase in traffic, it is to be implied that, through SEO the aim is to bring in the right kind of traffic. The right kind of traffic is your target customers, SEO helps to bring them in and convert them into leads.

*Content Expert – The role includes to find out what kind of content is required on digital assets. This could be on websites, social blogs, and so on. The roles are of a :

*Blogger
*Content Writer
*Copywriter

*SEM or PPC Expert – An SEM(Search Engine Marketing) or PPC(Pay Per Click) has a role to manage advertisements on various search engines.

*SMO(Social Media Optimization) – The expert has to generate traffic to a product or a service through various social media channels.

*Email Marketing Expert – The role is to market via emails.

*Conversion Rate Optimization – The role is to identify areas on digital campaigns and areas around visitors and potential customers.

*Web Analytics – A technical role that requires understanding numbers and reports involving various statistics concerning digital marketing performance. Also to suggest relevant strategies to improvise.

*Youtuber – The role is to create and maintain videos. This helps in building your brand or product. Hence passing relevant messages across to the audience.

How to choose from the available digital marketing channels

Ensuring the use of the latest tools for digital marketing is necessary. Using the latest and most productive tool in digital marketing that is apt for your business is vital.

Current scenarios in business require strong and effective digital marketing tools. Choosing from a wide variety depends on opportunities and the targeted audience. This helps in bringing you closer to your business success.

Primary considerations in choosing the appropriate digital marketing tool include:
*Defining primary goals for using digital marketing tools. This involves brand awareness, sales and lead generation, traffic generation, and educating potential customers.
*Defining your budget allocation.
*Identifying the available talent that includes development, creative, search, and social skills. This enables engaging potential customers through social media.

Thus choosing from the wealth of tools is necessary. For instance, ChuChuTV, India’s third most subscribed Youtube channel became a global brand. It made use of Interactive Content Marketing. It made a platform for parents to engage and interact. They created high-quality content to build trust among the audience. They included puzzles, content, Live Facebook, Meme style, and product-based posts for this. Their effort brought in 1.9 million likes on Facebook and Global Audience Reach of 34,084,746 as of June 2017!

Growth and Future Scope of Digital Marketing Industry in India

The digital marketing industry in India is worth $68 billion! Additionally, advertising via mobile phones and tablets rose to 200 percent, which is $6 billion. This market is estimated to soon touch $7.8 billion!

Digital marketing has proved and is continuing to be different and the most effective medium available for businesses. It has shown a drastic change in increasing :

*Traffic
*Rankings
*Conversions and
*Revenue.

Moreover, India has 110 million mobile internet users of which 25 million are in rural areas. 70% of this number access the web via mobile phones. With these numbers, it is clear that marketing objectives based on creating and maintaining a network of people through digital marketing are the most powerful method. This is because personalized marketing activities targeting their set of an audience has shown tremendous success over the years!

As per the requests in the comment sections, our next blog on the Scope of Digital Marketing in India – 2020 (Post COVID) has been published. Don’t forget to check it out.