Just last week our internal office discussion hovered around how PR heavy strategies don’t really work in India, because PR channels like live events, blogs, niche tv, industry publications are not well developed here. People also don’t seem to talk about new products without seeing some major advertising. To get a brand off the ground in India, BIG advertising is needed.
Yet another issue in India appears to be user get user marketing in the early days of a website. What’s the biggest social network in India? Its Orkut. How did you get on? Did someone invite you? No. You got on because you had a gmail id and simply used that to sign into Orkut and after that you searched and added your friends. If you look at Orkut’s fortunes (as reported by Alexa), they really took off after Gmail id allowed Orkut access.
This week we have an example that substantiates my theory. Minglebox has been struggling for a year to get any major traction and giving it company is Fropper.com. Out of the blue comes BigAdda.com and Reliance style plasters billboards all over town. Suddenly BigAdda’s reach (as ranked by Alexa) is the same that of Minglebox and just shy of Fropper, both of which are good mature products. Click here for Alexa’s graph
India is probably the only country in the world where a social networking site has been launched through big money mass advertising. Does it bring about a drastic change in web 2.0 fundamentals which are anchored on user get user and PR? Yes it does. It also spells trouble for start-ups and good news for big boys, which is quite the opposite in the rest of the world.
However there can be exceptions. We have seen Gmail successful adopt in India to large numbers with no ad spend even in the face of advertising (Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Indiatimes Mail, Zapak & Rediff all advertise). But then Gmail is an exceptional product, or like my CTO said “its the only damn mail that’s working all the time”.
So there is hope yet, all you gotta do is build the next Gmail 😉
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Perhaps it is time that startups started upping spends on such things. While TV ads may be ridiculously overpriced (for only 85 lakh internet connections) avenues such as flyers, conferences, billboards, direct mail, paper ads (think magazines not newspaper) etc. are underutilised by most SN sites. IMHO.
You can even use these ways to pull users with an in-your-face attitude (such as scratch and win stickers on a flyer where you have real random prizes, like Rs. 100 or a gift voucher at Crossword/Lifestyle/Your advertiser etc.) It’s not as expensive as one might think and frankly all these things are going to some five major cities max.
SN sites are the FMCG of the internet world. They should use the mindshare strategies that FMCGs use – though not the expensive ones like TV because every rupee you spend going behind a person without an internet connection (and who won’t get one in your VCs investment timeframe) is a wasted rupee. Somehow I only see TV or expensive print ads. No flyers or posters at Barista types. No posters at concerts. No inserts in papers (it’s not expensive). No direct mail.
Money talks, perhaps. Right now I either hear loud noises or silence. There are other intermediate tones too.
Not sure if I agree to that completely. True, you can get initial traction with some lavish advertising spend, but its not sustainable if the product isn’t good. If you look at the most successful Internet companies in India (e.g. Naukri, Shaadi) they were launched silently and have come a long way before they became really popular and start advertising on TV, billboards etc. One of the reasons is Internet penetration. It still hasn’t reached the critical mass, esp. broadband. But once that happens the traditional PR methods will be as effective as they have been in other markets (of course as long as the product is good).
“One man can bring a horse to water. One hundred can’t make it drink.”
Ads help marketing communication. It’s the experience of the user that counts in the end.
May be it’s an offline parallel that I draw, yet it’s a good working metaphor to our context here. Coca Cola, Pepsi, Kellogs have all failed in India despite huge ad spends.
But isn’t it the old fashioned Nimbu Pani (fresh lime juice) and Lassi that won us over in the end…? How many of us eat cereals for breakfast…?
This is a good insight about the role of advertisement in web 2.0. I think that all web 2.0 products can benefit from big money advertising or mass promotion in some way (Skype through Kaza) but to get sustained benefit out of the money spent depends on two things: the product itself and the whether or not there is viral nature to it. The product has to be great, no matter what (Gmail is, I think). But the bigger question that has to be asked is, “would a user benefit if there are a lot of other users using the product?” If the answer to this is yes, then it makes sense to spend a ton of cash (or build a promotion partnership) to get the initial set of users. All social networks fall in this category and hence big advertising dollars would help. Other examples are Skype, YouTube, LinkedIn, PayPal etc.
Skype: More friends have Skype, easier to talk to them.
LinkedIn: More people I can find, more connections I can make.
Youtube: More content, more I can watch.
PayPal: More buyers and sellers with PayPal, easier for me to send and receive money.
About Gmail, I think it didn’t need paid advertising because of the brand image, “Oh, Google is bringing the e-mail killer, with unlimited storage”. E-mail in my mind doesn’t have the viral nature to it though.
Gmail: More users (or my friends) using Gmail, easier or better for me? No.
So the bottom line, in my mind, for a successful Web 2.0 venture:
A great product that brings clear value to a user.
Built-in viral nature of the product (more users, better for the users)
Promotion/Advertising (for the initial set of users)
Does Social networking itself work in India, is a story all together by itself. But lately I have been sensing a very strong drift from Orkut to Facebook, and there has been nothing new that has been going on in facebook to initiate that drift.. and yet it is going on… I see a fair bit of my friends leaving their last words in Orkut and switching completely to facebook. That is a good phenomenon to study as well.
I strongly disagree that you need to spend big bucks on advertisement to get the name of your product out. At the sametime, as my mentor says “It was those days when all you had to do was build a better mouse trap and they’d come looking for you”. In a day and age when brand equity is worth more than your tangible assets, a lot can be said.
Gmail comes with Google’s brand. There is almost a cult status that is going on. So, Gmail, in no way launched anything without a brand either. It would also be my reason to say that studying Orkut would be a good case, as Orkut does belong to the big G as well.
The answer is in the balance. You need a good product, which addresses a great pain point and a solution that isnt complicated or makes the user jump through a million hoops to get a cookie. You get the balance right, and then the viral will take care of itself… In India, we have a very small subset of internet users and they are all connected anyways… a wise marketer would make good use of it.
V.