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| Online advertising is the new mantra |
| Seema Sindhu / Sep 30, 2009, 00:26 IST |
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Online search marketing allows small companies to target specific customer segments in a focused way, without wasting resources.
Aryan, a Chandigarh-based florist, caters to the floral needs of customers in India as well as people abroad who want to send flowers to friends and relatives in India. To increase sales, he started advertising on Google in 2004 with a modest budget of Rs 200 per day. Today, 70 per cent of those who access Aryan's web site do so through Google, which accounts for 90 per cent of Aryan's business. The search engine is therefore a key reason for Aryan Florist’s success.
Like the florist, many other small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) such as 10paisa.com (a provider of stock tips), Carwale.com (an automotive web portal) and Carazoo.com (a division of Logix Microsystems Ltd) are using Google to advertise their products or services.
Says Tufail Khan, Vice President - Marketing at Carwale.com: “All advertisers in the auto industry should start using Google Adwords, and analyse it to see how much RoI is derived from the online space.”
The online medium is emerging as a preferred platform for SMEs to build their brands, as it allows small advertisers to approach niche target audiences innovatively, by spending less money and compete with the large advertisers on the same platform.
Sridhar Seshadri, Business Head, online sales operations at Google India, says, “SMEs contribute a significant portion of our ad sales revenue. We are seeing a good proportion of incremental spends from existing advertisers and there is a healthy growth in new SME advertisers signing up with us. A wide range of SMEs find value in advertising on the digital medium. They vary from car sellers to coaching institutes, chemical companies and stock brokers.”
Even non-traditional companies, like P Banerji's Telemedicine (a homeopathic clinic), Redbus (a online bus ticketing company) advertise on Google. One key reason is that search marketing through the online medium allows every company to target specific customer segments in a focused way, without wasting resources. For example, a small hotel in Nainital can decide to target customers searching for ‘hill station holidays’ only; similarly, a clinic offering cataract operations can target only those searching for or reading about ‘eye ailments’.
SMEs are finding tremendous value in the online medium for multiple reasons. As this is a trackable medium, the SMEs know exactly what comes out of every rupee invested in it. They have tremendous flexibility in managing advertising campaigns, like changing budgets during season instantly, or targetting new markets around the world in minutes. In addition, SMEs can track business results (like sales) that flow from using this medium. And they are able to focus only on potential customers, leaving others out.
According to Seshadri, the online medium enables SMEs to target precisely, pay only for results, and stay firmly in charge of costs. In many cases, even Rs 1000 a week can go a long way. “Online is also a smart place to be when your customers are price-conscious and doing a lot of research on the web before they make a purchase decision. SMEs are increasingly appreciating the control that search marketing gives them and they are using it to their advantage to drive business growth,” he adds.
Rishi Sachdev, founder of Aryan Florist, explains that “flexibility to change a company’s AdWords campaign budget at any time and adjust the campaign geo-targeting at the country, region and city levels are the two most important features of Google AdWords.” He advises others to start Google Adwords campaigns “with a modest budget, focus the right keywords and ad texts and then scale-up their investments gradually.”
SMEs advertise in various formats, from simple text to more complex gadgets and videos. However, in general, for simple products and simple results, text is the preferred medium. It also takes less than 5 minutes to actually make the advertisement. Hence, many SMEs prefer this.
Seeing the encouraging take-up of online media, Google is looking to tap the vast opportunity in the SME sector. “We are undertaking a number of initiatives to educate SMEs about using the digital medium to drive their business growth. We are doing this through initiatives that include seminars, conferences and reaching out to them through one-to-one phone engagement,” reveals Seshadri.
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