Growth of Digital Marketing in India: How To Use Digital Marketing For Your Business?

Introduction

Digital advertising in 2019 witnessed a 26% increase from 2018 to reach Rs. 13,683 crore, where the overall advertising growth was 9.4% as per the report by Dentsu Aegis Network. The digital marketing sector is booming and expecting to grow at 27% in 2020 to cross the 17,000 crores mark. In 2020, India has around 700 million internet users, and the numbers are expected to grow to over 970 million users by 2025.

This shows how the market is expanding and how it is expected to expand in the next few years. So, the opportunity is huge and how marketers are going to use it changes everything. 

Advertising in the Pre-Internet Era

During pre-internet days, advertising was carried out via television, billboards, and radio advertisements. Advertising used to be very different than how it is today. Door to door advertisement and word of mouth publicity was playing a vital role in marketing. When the internet happened, everything changed. Now we can easily advertise our product or service in front of millions of people without going out of the office, without even talking to anyone. 

Read: How the role of digital marketing is crucial for business?

How much time do Indians spend online?

Indians use the internet to do almost everything these days. Online learning, posting on social media, watching Netflix, reading e-books, playing video games, paying bills, and everything is possible online, so the amount of time Indians spend online is increasing gradually. India is outgrowing China as one of the leading markets for internet consumption. 

Even though TV is still the most popular entertainment source, with 58.7% of people prefer TV over other sources, Digital is also catching up. Indians spend around 1 hour and 29 minutes every day on average on Digital. Source.

They spend most of their digital time through their smartphone. 

Cheaper smartphones and affordable data packages have increased the time people spend on their smartphones. 

Precise Customer Targeting

Not everyone who watches your ad will end up buying from you. So, why announce your new product to the whole world when you can show it to your targeted, specific users? Big data made this even easier by analyzing past trends and user behavior. 

To keep their advertisers happy, social media platforms and search engines are updating their algorithms to make your ad appear to relevant and targeted audiences. 

This works very well with small companies and companies with a tight budget. Calculating ROI is much easier in digital than in a traditional advertisement. 

Digital Marketing Role in Small Companies

Small companies tend to be frugal at their initial stages due to the limited resources they have. They can’t be able to afford big marketing budgets and campaigns like bigger companies. But so many online advertising platforms providing effective tools regardless of your company’s size gives a chance to smaller companies to stand up and create a name for themselves.

Gartner’s Digital Marketing Spend Report highlighted that up to 40% of respondents claimed to get considerable savings using digital marketing methods of promotion for their products and services.

Smart marketers from startups can also utilize SEO, email marketing to compete against bigger brands and easily create a name for their brand. 

Also Read: Digital Marketing Tutorial

Digital Marketing Trends

Digital is one of the fastest moving topics. A few years ago, AI was a distant future, and now AI is the heart of global business and industry. 

Through programmatic advertising, you can use AI to automate your ad buying, which helps you narrow down your audiences. 

Conversational marketing arranges a quick one-to-one connection between customers and digital marketers. 

Voice searches and smart speakers changing the way people use to search and optimizing your content for voice searches can create new opportunities for your business. 

Browser push notifications, AB Testing, interactive content, and goes on and on. 

Marketers get new ways to effectively target their audiences, which is a primary reason the digital marketing industry is growing. 

Future Growth of Digital Marketing

By 2023, the number of active Indian internet users will reach almost 666 million. Based on the report of GlobalData, the Indian e-commerce market is pushing to 7 trillion rupees by 2023 because of lockdowns.

According to Goldman Sachs report, digital marketing career scope in the Indian market will be worth $160B by 2025, which is three times the current value. 

Digital marketing is expected to create 20 lakh jobs by 2020. 

The number of internet users is expected to reach 800 million by 2021. 

If you are a digital marketer or want to get into digital marketing, your salary growth will heavily depend on your skills. You have to run along with the industry and update yourself to be successful. The day you stop learning, the day you stop growing in this fast-paced industry. 

Prepare Yourself For The Future 

Digital marketing is not going to slow down but accelerate. By implementing effective strategies, best practices, adopting the latest technologies, you can expand your business and gain a competitive edge. 

With Artificial Intelligence, Programmatic advertisement, Chatbots, Personalization & conversational marketing, Micro-moments, the digital industry moves on every day. So, you have to update yourself and your team if you want to succeed in this field. 

Conclusion 

Change is an integral part of life. It’s more applicable to digital marketing. You must strive to embrace new technologies if you want to stay successful in the market. 

If you are interested to learn about digital marketing, upGrad is a great place to start your digital marketing journey.

upGrad’s digital marketing course duration is 6.5 months. The course is fragmented into various modules consisting of theory, case studies, and live industry projects on topics like SEO, SEM, social media/content/email marketing, marketing analytics, campaign management, and marketing strategy, among other things.

The upGrad and MICA PG Certification in Digital Marketing & Communication course take on a holistic approach to digital marketing. By the time you finish with us, one thing is for sure – your horizon of knowledge will expand significantly and you’ll learn to think and act like a true digital marketer. With so many perks and benefits, why should you go someplace else?