Social Media Marketing (Digital Marketing) for Indian businesses: Complete Guide

Last Updated on September 29, 2022 by DesignerPeople

When you sit with your grandparents or even with your parents and discuss how life was during their era. You will always be thrilled to know how they used to communicate with long-distance friends and family, for a phone call they used to walk miles and then while talking on the phone the attention was always on a billboard which will be running as if there was a race.

They were sending the invitation card, searching for many answers of various questions, sending messages through a postcard and much more all this consumed lot of time, patience and effort. People were used to such a slow and lazy lifestyle because there was no other alternative for them.

Looking at the present pandemic situation due to Covid-19 we all are trying our best to avoid going out, and we are ordering every single thing online from grocery to medicines we prefer it at our doorstep. Companies are also making use of social accounts to communicate about their sanitisation and safety norms which their delivery process and boy performs.

Social Media plays a very crucial role in this as web-based online tools and techniques that will help people to learn new information, share ideas, interact with new people and organizations. When a brand is available on social media platforms, it communicates with its customers, especially in a crisis like the situation today we are facing.

You can keep them informed about all the safety measures you are adopting to make sure their delivery is safe and virus free. Various empathic message and brand can extent their care towards their customers through social media posts. It has changed the lifestyle of people living today, and it has made communication much easier while adapting for new normal.

It ensures the exchange of user-generated content like data, pictures, and videos. Social media platforms may come in different forms such as blogs, business forums, podcasts, microblogs, photo sharing, product/service review, weblogs etc.

Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube are few prominent platforms of social media. It is essential to any business because as an entrepreneur you own a brand and with the help of social media networking companies keep in touch with their customers and provide them valuable information about them which may increase their brand value.

What is social media?

Social media is platform which is computer based on technology where it provides the facility of sharing of thoughts, shares, and information through the building of virtual communities or networks.

Social media is internet based medium which gives users prompt electronic communication of content.

The potential to share opinions, photos, events, etc, in real-time has transformed the way we live and, also, the way we do business.

• Today more than 85% of all Brands have a dedicated social media podium as part of their strategic marketing plan.
• Around 58% of businesses that have used social media marketing for over three years have gained numbers in sales.
• Almost 60% of marketers are ensuring to provide full workday to social media marketing for development and maintenance.

3 Killer benefits you get from Social Media marketing

Social Media is the fastest means which has become one of the most vital parts of digital marketing, which ensures an incredible value proposition by reaching millions of customers globally. If you are still not on these platforms, then you are missing out a valuable source in marketing opportunity, which ensures the natural spread of word about your product and mission.

1. BRAND BUILDING

Social media marketing is an excellent tool to build your brand. There will be millions of users from your target audience and market who are socializing and are eager to establish new brands. By enhancing the personal brand, you can take new companies to six figures in a few months if you do it correctly.

For building your brand, you will need to put in lots of effort on social media by staying consistent. But, once you see the benefits, it is always worth it

2. WEBSITE TRAFFIC

4 out of 5 claim that social Media increases website traffic. Social Media is that it also increases your website traffic. By sharing your content on social media, you are giving users a reason to click-through to your site.

On your social account, the more quality content you share, the more inbound traffic you will generate while making conversion opportunities.

3. LEAD GENERATION

It is said 92% of consumers value recommendations which comes from their friends and family.

Hence Social Media is one of the most popular ways to recommend products and brands. Thus it leads to an increase in brand awareness, in turn, more leads and sales.

70% of small businesses have gained new customers through the social media platform. Hence an active social media campaigning and activities will enhance your lead generations.

How much various digital marketing elements cost in India?

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

It is a technique of growing the quantity and quality of website traffic by expanding the visibility of web pages or website to users of a web search engine. SEO improves the unpaid results and excludes direct traffic and the purchase of paid placement.

Irrespective of the size of business SEO is a mandatory and integral part of your overall digital marketing strategy.

The average cost of SEO is 12000-35000 INR per month 

2. Social Media Marketing 

It involves the usage of various social online platforms which can be Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest many more to connect with their audience. The motive here is to increase sales, build your brand, keep your customers engaged and entertained, tracking results v/s investment and many more.

It increases the sense of belongingness quotient among the target audience.

The Average cost of SMM is 20000-35000 INR per month 

3. PPC (Pay-Per-Click)

It is a model where the advertiser pays a fee based on each time one of their ads is clicked. It is the best way of purchasing the no of visits on your website instead of doing it organically, which consumes a lot of time and effort. Search engine advertising is the most popular form of PPC.

If your brand wants to run a creative campaign for a specific period, for instance, New Year Sales, Independence, Diwali Free Gifts, then PPC is a viable option to get instant results.

The Average cost of PPC is 22000-25000 INR per month. 

4. Website design, Development and Hosting 

1.Static website: It cannot be changed as the name suggest it will remain static

Starts from 30000-40000 INR 

2. Dynamic website: Here it is all editable along with technical advancement you can also add and remove as per requirements.

Starts from 70000- 90000 INR (subjective as per requirements and number of products)

3. E-commerce website: Here, the technical background is made secure so that customers provide with payment gateways where they can go and make the payments.

Starts from 120000- 180000 INR (subjective as per requirements and number of products)

5. Content writing 

It is a kind of marketing which will include developing and sharing of online elements which can be blog on website, videos, static posts, social media messages and posts.

The purpose here is not exactly to promote brand but aligned to stimulate interest and engagement in its products or services.

Creative content will connect customers emotionally and will communicate message as per latest trends and updates.

Starts from 5000- 15000 INR per month (depends upon the number of words and industry type)

6. Email Marketing

Here an email sent from a business motive to one or more prospects. A successful email marketing campaign will get the recipients to take action, engage with your business, and help you to get more leads

Starts from 15000-25000 INR per email design and setup (email services charges are extra)

Above listed are only a few of the services that digital marketing companies offer you and they can customize it per your needs.

Also Read: Face Mask, Sanitizer and other COVID Care Packaging Design

Before you contact any social media agency, you must know:

Choosing the correct social media agency to manage your social media accounts is vital; looking at present situations. But before finalizing you should also g through a self-assessment where you should answer yourself a set of few questions which will help you to track where you stand before yourself investing money. Hence you need to consider the following questions:

 

1. WHAT ARE MY BUSINESS GOALS?

The first thing which you should analyze and is the foundation of your business is to identify your brand objectives depending on that you should check out required services. Even the size of the company will also help you to understand your needs and pain points.

Below are a few objectives: Brand awareness, gain leads and increase profit, increase customer service, interact with customers, reach expansion and many more.

2. ARE MY GOALS MEASURABLE?

The goal should be the precise, clear and highly-specific endpoint. If your goal is too out of the box and vague, it won’t be SMART enough to achieve it.

You need to be able to accurate in tracking your progress, so you can judge when a goal will meet. If your goals are measurable, then it is easy enough to measure your success here, since money is all numbers, and there are various associated metrics you can track.

3. ARE MY POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

Identify your target audience on social platforms once you are aware of them then half battle is won. Analyze their problem your product or service solves. What language would a customer use to identify the problem? What is the best technique to engage with this customer?

Because it is vital to see the presence of your set of customers on digital medium or else, there is no use of your activities. You can search that by relevant hashtags, keywords and influencers which will help to check on this.

4. DO I HAVE THE RESOURCES TO INVEST IN A SOCIAL STRATEGY?

You should also identify what resources are required to manage social media marketing, scale them and most important do I have them all.

Ensure you need to find answers to the following questions:

• Do I have the skilled manpower as per required job roles?
• Aligned processes are present?
• What are your KPIs, and what resources do you need to measure them?
• What tools are required to manage your social media plan?
• How do these resource demands change in the next few years?

Social Media marketing boon for Indian business

Indian internet population as of 2020 is at over 550 million users. The digital marketing industry is growing with the industry showing enormous projected growth potential.

Hence an expected lack of trained professionals, many students, graduates and young professionals are looking to get on the digital marketing bandwagon. Irrespective of size if it’s a local store or large scale company, having a strong social media presence is significant.

They are looking at the situation in Covid-19 Social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram. With social distancing norms in force, even the officials are finding social media best and effective form of communication with people.

Yet who have suffered from the virus are sharing their experience of recovery on social platforms which leads to motivation to others and reduces its fear among people.

It will help you to reach your customers and ultimately increases brand awareness and sales. It gives a massive marketing opportunity to expand business exposure and spread a word among the masses across the world.

Few reasons listed below which answer you why investing in Social media marketing are a killer idea for your brand.

With the evolving crisis, we all know till the virus exists and after that te customer behaviour gets transformed their interest in services or products, needs, pain points, their safety and hygiene expectation and spending pattern will all get change.

Hence digital marketing will help to identify those needs by directly interacting through social media and work on strategy as per feedback of customers.

Social media trends keep on evolving each day; there is something new to explore. It is platforms often launch new features so it can be daunting for some business holders to develop and build a solid business strategy.

In this case, you just need to plan new ways to connect with your audience. For instance, you can post a series of your behind-the-scenes on Instagram stories. Putting your business insights on social media platforms regularly can help to increase customer engagement.

How will you identify the correct digital marketing agency?

1. Observe if they are making an effort to understand your brand objectives

When you invest so much, you should be 100% sure if the agency is keen to help you to build your brand or not all companies who just focus on monetary terms are not the right ones. The correct agency will always invest time on understanding your core values, brand guidelines and brand story to align activities accordingly.

You should hire a social media agency which that honestly develop an effort to learn your business goals and objectives and creates a custom strategy tailored to your business.

Notice carefully how they answer your queries and how they plan to adapt your business model. The social media agency which will ask you a series of questions by one surveys, one to one discussions and business assessments is a more favourable company to consider.

2. Check on their Portfolio, Clientele and Case-Studies

Go through the digital marketing website there you will get a lot of informative brief about their projects done, what thought process goes is understood through case-studies.

Looking at the clientele list, you can analyze what types of customers are associated with that agency which will help to measure the idea of its market value and quality of work it provides due to which elite brands have collaborated with them.

3. How do they track your success

The agency finally you hire to manage your social media should be able to define the key performance indicators which ensure the plan of standards and achievements ratios at various intervals. Regularly, you should be able to evaluate their efforts based on different metrics.

Few essential elements which they should cover in a detailed report every month are as below:

• Increase in reach
• Increase in Engagement level
• Website traffic expansion
• Lead generation from Social Media
• Social media growth

4. Check on their experience.

The most precious advantage is to have practical experience as an agency in your industry, and then it is more likely that people will approach you to develop the results you are looking for. Even if they do not have experience in your industry, ask them if they ever worked with a similar business type.

More experience is also a sign of more exposure towards the various set of industries, their target audience and target market.

5. Mode and how will they communicate with you 

Where will they keep you informed about all on goings and its outputs will it be on Whatsapp group, emails or directly through calls or it can be a combination of all.

The company you hire should ensure consistent communication on all mediums. Before you finalize a company, get to know how often they will communicate with you to discuss progress and goals.

Make sure by just receiving a monthly report via email is not enough. The company should take an effort of arranging conference calls to have actual conversations about your campaign.

6. Do they outsource any work 

Understand if the employees work alongside them at their office, or do they outsource their work overseas? You need to know who is behind your brand and how they are being monitored.

If a company is getting work to outsource, then it’s a “danger sign” because that shows there are middlemen and they are also charging which is piled on us in the quotation.

It also results in low quality, no proper communication and delay in work.

7. What are people talking about them online 

Today when we plan to purchase any new product, the first thing we do is check online, its reviews and ratings on various platforms. Same way while you plan to hire a social media agency is a big deal hence be firm with your research.

Read through their Google+, Yelp, and Facebook reviews and see how people feel about them. If you find something alarming, ask the agency about it and see how they respond.

Conclusion

The year 2020 will go down and will be remembered in history as the year the world changed, but yes the companies who accepted the reality and planned business according to the situation and its need will survive for long.

If your brand is one of those that still rely on the old marketing tools, now it is the right opportunity for you to plan and get online. Years wasted just planning or hoping to start, but now is the time to start planning your digital marketing strategy. DesignerPeople is a professional digital marketing agency who understands this field is continually changing, and it is inevitable hence we ensure that our techniques and strategies will vary as per the type of online medium, latest trends and events.

Prepare yourself today for doing business in the new normal, virus-conscious environment, for that you need to adopt a new culture and modern techniques which will make sure that your brand stands out in the crowd and build its competitive advantage.

Better brands start with meaningful conversations

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Author: Megha Malik

As a passionate entrepreneur and creative brand consultant with experience of 14 years in digital, branding and packaging industry, it is my honest effort to put my experiences and knowledge of industry towards readers. A chartered accountant by degree but a marketing personality in blood has motivated her to take in designing industry as a career. With her fun-loving personality and sharp branding skills, she is a great motivational speaker on her YouTube channel, an active member in various business channels offline as well as online. Do connect me personally via my LinkedIn and I love to share my expertise with you.