Excellent Marketing Initiatives by Zomato

Introduction

Companies are only successful in this Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) world if they are solving customer problems. Necessity is the mother of innovation and the reason for the birth of start-ups. Companies that are human and customer-centric always find their way out in the blue ocean or the red ocean markets.

Zomato is one such company that has sailed through the waves of time and cutthroat competition. Zomato today is a household name in the Indian market and a brand that has a reputation for being innovative, having impactful marketing communication, and providing employment opportunities to hundreds of people.

In this article, we will dive deep into the birth and growth trajectory of Zomato and the excellent marketing initiatives by Zomato that bring in sales and reputation to the company.

The Birth and Growth Trajectory of Zomato

Zomato was founded in the year 2008 in Delhi, India, by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah. Zomato was earlier known as foodiebay.com.

The major problem that Zomato as a startup solved was that when Deepinder, Pankaj, and some of their friends were working at Bian and Company, they used to literally struggle for the food menus of various restaurants and their contact information every lunchtime. It was easy to lose track of the paper menus, and that is when it struck them to create a website or an application that would have the menus and contact information for all the restaurants near them.

Later, Zomato expanded into the food delivery system, the quick commerce system (Blinkit by Zomato), the dine-in dining system, and others. Zomato was the first company in food delivery and today has major competitors like Swiggy, Grubhub, Door Dash, Uber Eats, Foodedeliry.com, Postamtes, Eat Street, and others.

Excellent Marketing Initiatives by Zomato

The major reason for the success of Zomato as a brand in today’s competitive environment is its innovative and impactful marketing strategies. Let us discuss Zomato’s marketing initiatives here.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Zomato today, as a brand, drive 66% of its total sales from the SEO marketing that it does. The rest (34% of the sales of Zomato) are derived from social media marketing, influencer marketing, or other marketing channels. Zomato has a stronghold when it comes to websites and SEO searches. Zomato targets more than 900,000 keywords. The keywords that Zomato targets are both long tails and short ones.

Some of the long-tail keywords that Zomato targets are "restaurants near me", "bars to dine in", "pastries near me," and along with these, Zomato also targets keywords that include the name of the restaurant, the name of the dishes, and others.

Zomato has more than 54 million pages in total. Zomato today is registered with 65000 restaurants, and each restaurant has its own page in the Zomato directory. As per the Google authority, the larger the number of pages, the better the hold of the website. Along with this, Zomato also ensures that its URLs are marked on good and relevant websites as backlinks.

Moment Marketing

Zomato uses moment marketing techniques to grab the attention of the customer both in their social media handles and also in the notification pop-up. So every customer who has the Zomato application installed will, on average, receive three notifications from Zomato. These messages are going to be crisp, hilarious, and relevant to the current situation.

For example, on the 1st of every month, Zomato would send a notification like "Salary got credited; let’s celebrate" or "Fun Fridays with Zomato". These are simple ads that come as popups but are really effective in reminding the consumer to order food through Zomato.

Channel Selections for Advertisement

Zomato is famous and infamous for its channels for advertising as well. Instead of just sticking to the traditional channels of marketing, Zomato tried out things or channels that were new and interesting. Zomato, when it first entered the food delivery market, used to advertise its services with mouth-watering videos and pictures of food on porn or adult websites. It used the logic that customers on this website would crave food after they were done with their primal instincts, so it was a good place to advertise.

Morover, Zomato uses YouTube advertising, social media advertising, television, influencer marketing, and sponsorship programs, and also holds Zomaland. Zomaland is another innovative concept introduced by Zomato to raise brand awareness and increase sales. Zomato is basically a 3- to 4-day fair started by Zomato that takes place in various states of India. At this festival, various food outlets set up their shops and their own recreations and fun activities to enjoy, like water rides, dry rides, music concerts, DJs, games, different contests, and others, for youngsters and adults. Zomato also uses email marketing. The subject of the email is hilarious, forcing the users to open the email and order food. Some of the subjects are "Hire now", "Enjoy a weekend to guddu to be true," "Curryculum Vitae of Biryani", and others.

Premium Subscription and Carnival Offers

Zomato, along with Zomato Gold (the premium subscription of Zomato), provides customers with a month full of carnival offers. In this stage, customers can book their slots in various restaurants linked up with Zomato and get discounts up to 50% off on the total bill. This is a great opportunity for Zomato to bring in more users on their applications and for the restaurants to bring in more customer foot traffic. Zomato copied this from Swiggy, but it still plays a large role in the company's marketing.

Social Media Strategy

Zomato understands that the major segment of its customers lies between the ages of 18 and 35, and these people are highly active on social media. With this knowledge, Zomato ensures its active presence on social media as per the liking of the consumers, i.e., in the form of memes.

Zomato’s social media bio also says that it is a meme page that occasionally posts regarding the services because of business and management pressure. Like one of the advertisements by Zomato Blinkit, we can deliver condoms to your doorstep but not partners. The memes are quirky and witty, and hence they get a lot of traction on social media.

Conclusion

Zomato as a brand has done wonders. Not only does Zomato help the customer with food delivery or choosing the restaurant to dine at, but it also provides marketing strategies that are remarkable and fun. Zomato is a brand of today, and so are its initiatives. The brand has a lot of competition to face from the new start-ups coming in, but it can do wonders if Zomato keeps up the same spirit that it had during its birth. Zoom it with Zomato.