Hyderabad’s Digital Marketing Landscape

The world is changing. The way people are perceiving and analysing things is changing. Everyday more and more people are getting online, changing the dynamics of Marketing incredibly. Marketing is not about Billboards and Television Ads anymore, it is about being visible to the your customer in their research phase. In pursuit of achieving these objectives, Organisations around the world have realised that Online Marketing (also referred to as Digital Marketing) is the most powerful and effective way of Marketing. Digital Marketing has found its Rightful place in the Western and the European markets but in India it is still at a very nascent stage and is a very undervalued form of Marketing.

WHY is it that every small firm in the West has a presence online but the biggest organisations in India still don’t have a Facebook page? A layman’s response would be “Perception and the Attitude of the Organisations in the subcontinent should change”,  if we analyse extensively, this is absolutely true. It is a well known fact that big Organisations have shut down as they were not able to reach the right customers due to ineffective and unplanned Marketing Campaigns. But slowly and surely the shift from conventional marketing to Online Marketing is happening as the firms are understanding the value of Digital Marketing. In Hindsight, companies are going to spend more on Online Marketing Vis a Vis Conventional Marketing as they are realising the true potential and reach of Online Marketing.

A few Metros in India like Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi have been among the early adopters to this paradigm shift and have contributed hugely to where Digital Marketing is placed currently in India. The early bird Digital Marketing Agencies from these cities have made inroads into MNC’s and have to an extent transformed the way Organisations have looked upon Marketing for Decades. These inroads have opened a huge potential market for Digital Marketing Agencies and have resulted in a huge splurge of these agencies in other Metros like Hyderabad and Tier1 cities like Pune.

Although Organisations and Marketing Heads have come to realise the importance of Digital
Marketing for their survival in this competitive world, in Hyderabad most of the firms still undervalue this platform of Marketing and in Reality they treat it like a minute part of Conventional Marketing. The reason being they are still not completely aware of the widespread reach and the effectiveness of Digital Marketing. Let’s look at this case study about a Big Organisation and how initially they were very sceptical about Digital Marketing but in due course of time they realised its potential and currently spend 10 fold more than what they initially started off with:

SMR Holdings Case Study: A 25 year old Infrastructure firm known for building some of the biggest projects in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Every year they spend heavily on conventional Marketing like Billboards and Paper Ads. They signed up with Infinity Reach a couple of months back and initially gave us a meagre spending budget, and we completely revamped their website, created new landing pages, new Facebook page, started smart SEO and spent wisely on Google AdWords, which in just a few months time started showing quantifying results. The Firm started recognising the impact of Digital Marketing on their business and completely transformed their Marketing strategy. They have seen a considerable increase in the number of sales and as they say the rest is history.

Organisations, CEO’s and the Marketing Heads located in the pearl city are yet to recognise the true potential of Digital Marketing. So will they do that in the near future? Well only TIME can tell. But one fact is very certain that current Organisations should learn from the past debacles of big Organisations and realise the potential of Digital Marketing and give its due credit.

-Shiv Reddy
S&M Head
Infinity Reach