In the 90s, the concept of digital
and Internet marketing seemed like an adolescent idea that would soon fade
away. Traditional marketers were extremely skeptical about it, and business
investors and marketing consultants throughout the world proclaimed that it was
merely a Silicon Valley idea that would go bust from boom.
In India, things looked even more
pessimistic. A country of 1 billion people who had grown used to ads on painted
movie posters, cable television and newspaper print supplements about their
favorite products – India seemed like a country that would be least convinced
to go for things like Internet ads, social marketing and digital innovation.
Adding to the cynicism was the fact that in the 90s, most Indians didn’t have
an easy access to the net, and there weren’t as many cyber cafes as there are
today.
Today, things have markedly changed.
India has rapidly become one of the biggest social marketing audiences in the
world. From MySpace to StumbleUpon and from Technorati to SlideShare –
Indians are everywhere – and notice that I didn’t mention Facebook or Twitter.
Indian marketing professionals today have thousands of digital ways to interact
with their audience. An audience that consists of digitally proficient students
who’re accessing their profiles in buses, working professionals who check their
mails on-the-way to office, and even housewives who know how to access their
online profiles.
The demographic advantages of Indian
digital marketing cannot be overstated. Here we have a potential market which
today has access through phones, cyber cafes and personal computers to literally
millions of email/mobile campaigns. The one major aspect of Indian digital
marketing that should shine in the future is virality. Future digital
marketing concepts have the potential to go ‘viral’ as much as Indian
blockbusters that have captured the attention of the Indian public.
The most striking aspect of future
digital marketing in India is definitely its cost-effectiveness and
interactivity. Also, there is easy accessibility – a boon considering that
traditional Indian marketing had to face the huge hurdle of reaching out to
Indian masses in the most resource-effective way. Indian audiences have the
additional difficulty of linguistic differences – something that digital
marketing can choose to stay away from. The future of digital marketing in India
seems bright and beautiful.
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