Digital Marketing for Indian Startups

The Indian startup ecosystem has really taken off in the recent years. India has paved its way to

secure the third position in the world in terms of the number of startups. According to a recent report by NASSCOM-Zinnov, India is one of the first five largest startup communities in the world with the number of startups crossing 4,200, a growth of 40%, by the end of 2015! It's indeed fascinating to see the startup boom in India. Gone are the days when Silicon Valley used to be considered the "only place" for startups!

That said, Indian startup ecosystem faces quite a few challenges - from scaling up, to marketing their product & services. 

'Great marketing starts with a great product!'

Today, consumers have such a strong voice through social media that they can either propel a product to stardom or obsolescence! As Sorav Jain rightly pointed out during the #SocialPowWow Twitter chat, it's imperative for a startup to pick the right medium and put together a competent marketing team at an initial stage. 

"While building a great product is the key, marketing is the keyhole which opens doorway to customers" - Sorav Jain

Most Indian startups put money in product, processes, people etc. but do not allocate the right budgets for marketing. Startups must plan and know how much they can spend and over what time period. Poor marketing strategy can lead to a failed startup.  

With the evolution of social media over the years, digital has become the go to medium to attract and engage consumers. 

According to EY’s second annual social media marketing India trends study, about 90% of organizations reached out to in the study planned to spend as much as 15% of their annual marketing budget exclusively on social media, up from 78% organizations in 2013. 

Indian startups should invest in smart custom audience based marketing on Twitter, Facebook and Google for brand recall. Digital marketing not only helps in getting leads and sales conversion, but also helps the brands to understand consumer behaviour.

Analytics in fact, play an important role in understanding consumer's journey. While social media lends itself to creating communities, social analytics helps with engaged communities.

"Make community building and audience development a primary goal of your digital strategy. A startup can't make it with out" - Kelly Hungerford

So if you are a startup or an upcoming startup OR an upcoming unicorn: Be nimble. Experiment with social media strategies. Be willing to change strategies or tweak if not working. Don't be rigid!

Note: Digital marketing & marketing challenges for startups was discussed during the #SocialPowWow Twitter chat and the full transcript of both the chats can be read here: http://sfy.co/c0nCK / goo.gl/ExBLvn 

#SocialPowWow: Share, NOT Save Knowledge

I have always believed in the power of community and over time have formed a community of like minded people who share similar interests.

“Power is gained by sharing knowledge, not hoarding it”

That said, I recently started a Twitter ch #SocialPowWow. The idea behind the chat was to build a community:

• For Indian Entrepreneurs, Marketing, PR, Advertising and Digital professionals
• To exchange ideas and start discussions around topics to explore endless possibilities that are transforming the world of business

Till now, five chats have been successfully hosted on Twitter and the response has been superb! Here’s a list of topics we have covered so far and in case you haven’t check out the chat as yet, please do give a read to the re-cap:

• Social Media for Public Relations & Strategic Communications

With our special guest Vikram Kharvi, Senior Group Head, lead B2B & Tech Practice @AdfactorsPR, the chat received a great response from the PR & digital marketing professionals in India and globally. The chat focused on the role social media plays in strategic communication, especially for those in PR, how social media can be beneficial in PR crisis management and best practices for PR teams in managing brand position on social media. Here’s the full transcript of the chat: https://goo.gl/E8x7WH  

• Content Marketing for Businesses

Olga Andrienko, Head of Social Media at @semrush spoke about content marketing. We all say content is the king and rightly so! How do you create scintillating content for the readers, align content marketing with your business objectives and tools you can use for content creation is what was discussed during this chat. Here’s a quick re-cap: https://goo.gl/Jeppsc

• Digital Marketing for Startups

The chat with Sorav Jain, Thinker in Chief @echovme was focused around digital marketing for startups, how much should one invest in digital marketing, tools which can be helpful for marketing for startups and much more! Catch the full transcript of the chat here: http://sfy.co/c0nCK  

• Social Media Analytics

Social media analytics with Shonali Burke, CEO, Shonali Burke Consulting, Inc. was a fun and engaging chat. The chat covered how social media analytics could benefit businesses and clients, how to develop strategies and measure KPIs, challenges faced to get buy-ins from the upper management and the tools that can help in social media measurement. Check out the chat transcript here: https://t.co/jHtasg6zjW

• Storytelling & Social Media

After an engaging chat with Shonali on social media analytics, we had another insightful chat with her on storytelling & social media. The topic covered the importance of storytelling in social media, focus of brands on storytelling in their campaigns, best practices in storytelling and how customers’ perception play into effective storytelling. To read the full chat transcript, click here: https://goo.gl/gTsZAn

I’m thrilled to have such wonderful and powerful #SocialPowWow community! Always around to exchange knowledge, share ideas, examples and enticing case-studies. Let’s strengthen the community and learn from each other’s experiences. Join us for #SocialPowWow, every Thursday 9PM IST; 11:30AM ET. Look forward to your participation.