India: Digital Market Overview

We're an online retailer and unsure about how to enter the Asian markets online. Looking to build email lists ourselves and then market through those groups. What role should advertising on Indian websites play, and how else can we use the web to enter this market?

Comment from Danny Meadows-Klue:

This is the number 1 test-and-learn media channel. Try testing within your email marketing for different subject lines and offers as well as different creative designs. Routinely test the first 5% of the database and then based on the open rates refine what you do for the rest. Use your website analytics and Google analytics to learn about how the sites and microsites are performing and look for patterns of traffic that correlate to marketing activities in each of your channels – this starts to show how TV or print may be driving audiences to the web. In terms of taking small steps, if you reduce the frequency of exposures in TV or print and move some of that budget to online, then it will help start the transition.

Our clients mainly have youth brands so we're looking for ways to get cut through. Is there a way we can test this without leaping out of TV and going online.

Comment from Danny Meadows-Klue:

Professionals have switched to the web in India. They have the highest density of connections and are focused business users. From finance and law to medial and legal, this is looking like the strongest channel for professionals in their 30s and 20s. Older age groups do score lower on internet use, so depending on the nature of your target consumers there is likely to still be a mixed channel strategy in place.

In terms of process, look for ways to get the customer insight from learning about the audience today. Media diary studies and simple focus groups can be powerful ways of quickly uncovering the new picture. We have some notes on setting up customer panels that I can share with you – another useful technique for long term low cost research. Then look at the website traffic data that the publishers and the research panels can provide. They’ll quickly give you a sense of the big players within any one sector – and as an agency you’ll be able to read the data quickly to figure out what will give you the right coverage in a market. If you need more on media planning then email through to me.

We're an agency marketing professional service like legal and financial advice in India. Print media and direct mail have worked well for us until the last few years but I think our audience is moving. The problem i have with the internet is knowling where to start! There are millions of sites and no certainty my clients customers are really there.

Comment from Danny Meadows-Klue:

Even in a marketing industry gripped with enthusiasm for social media, there’s still a real need to get the Web 1.0 stuff right. Learn from the customers what the existing web presence is missing and what it could deliver. Look for quick wins in lead generation and building eRM programmes. Follow the customer’s journey through to purchase to uncover where the sites fit in the current model and look for industry best practice to see what the potential is. Powerful web marketing can work for budgets of any size and not just the global corporations that have strong marketing models and strategies in place. Try some of the hints and tips in the reports on www.DigitalStrategyConsulting.com/insight.

One of the biggest problems for marketers is that their own websites are simply not good enough. I am working in internet industry for long long time and most companies have no idea of how to use internet effectively outside global corporations. This is causing much problems.

Danny Meadows-Klue comments:

With the web mainstreaming among professional classes, and firmly established as the must-have tool for international business, its’ playing a radically different role in integrated marketing to what we’ve seen in the US or Europe. The big watchout for global brands is the need to flex their digital strategies significantly by country based on how developed the national market really is. Having reviewed the campaigns and media in both the consumer and professional services sectors it’s clear that many brands have a one-size-fits all approach to marketing across Asia. That’s a massive mistake: Asia has the most diverse levels of internet use in business and the home to any continent. Our take? Research your customers, understand their media habits, and create the strategy that’s right.