International Businesses Leveraging Digital Presence In India
Tapping into the diverse demography of India is surely a nodose terrain for international businesses, but time and again, brands have established their digital presence through organic and promotional efforts. International businesses take strategically measured steps that guide Indian internet users into their marketing funnel and branding efforts.
Some of the ideas that make the list of international business ideas to strengthen their digital presence in India are furnished below:
Inviting Dialogue On Social Media
Relationship building influences every human the same way. It fosters a brand’s perception in the consumer’s mind and inviting dialog through social media is one of the best ways to set the foundation stone of a company’s brand image. For the Indian scenario, brands like Nike, Netflix, Starbucks, and Spotify among others have put themselves out there to never miss on customer complaints, offer cordial customer support, and share content that is relatable by their most lucrative demographic.
The Indian population has a behavioural assortment due to its diverse culture, buying behaviour, and purchasing power. Hereby, international brands harness the power of social media to win over the established brand presence through raising campaigns that their followers would voluntarily part-take in. They initiate opinion demanding polls and inform people through infographics that would raise user engagement and offer their content the traction needed to hone the brand image.
Spotify initiating a poll to garner post interaction and at the same time make their users explore their preferred genres on their platform. This is a subtle update on latest playlists that have been updated.
Netflix using influencer outreach and at the same time promoting their shows through a quiz that needs to be answered in comments. Garners all the likes and comments with due visibility for the influencer that has been showcased.
Forbes India sharing regular updates about the incoming natural calamity through an infographic.
Omnichannel Marketing
The value-conscious Indian consumer has entered an era where unchanging verbal expression is expected at every touchpoint of the company that they are willing to frequent as a customer. This has led to companies having a digital presence in every channel - social media, search results, and community groups, however promoting themselves in a manner that doesn’t repel the customers through the continuous bombardment of emails, texts, and targeted ads.
Omnichannel keeps the companies ahead of its competition due to its presence on every digital channel that their target audience would choose to engage with the brand – thus being an important part of community management for the business.
This strategy is best used to attract rather than barraging its consumers with the brand’s marketing efforts. Hence, repurposing content into different formats like a blog to a video, and a video to a podcast, give the customers the content they are most comfortable with, instead of what the company is wanting to offer them.
Adoption Of Parlance
Companies that are culturally barricaded from the Indian consumer lifestyle have adopted a vernacular approach in their marketing communication style. This means – materializing a dedicated team that communicates in the native tongue, shares cultural insights as that of the home country they are based out of, and is able to retain the global standard of product/ service offering in a fashion tweaked just for the local people.
This is an approach that tends to include colloquial lingo of the Gen Z and millennials within the digital brand copy, ad creatives, and other marketing assets as these generations have been yielding a fair profit in the most common scenario for any business.
Winning At The Zeroth Moment Of Truth
A customer planning to make a purchase would associate the drive for their purchase with a befitting solution that a business offers. This phase of researching a product digitally that could curb their need for purchase is the ZMOT that international brands are winning at by establishing smart ways to influence the buying behaviour of Indian consumers.
Take for example the need for you to buy a fabric stain remover - the search begins with flipping out your phone and googling about the best fabric cleaners. At this very moment, the top most search results bag the deal as efforts have been made to rank higher on the search results, thereby initiating a sense of awareness about the product, and driving the point home by elucidating the reviews and ratings as they are the digital word-of-mouth.
To bring around how the Indian market scenario is being influenced at this phase is through user research and defining their Zero Moments. Narrowing down to their pain points and creating content that is not only customized for mobiles but at the same time visual on other platforms that are helping the consumer understand the solution better.
The author is Simrita Dhillon, an expert in the Beauty sector and Founder, Sanda
