Streamlining Marketing
In the spirit of "Sell before you make", I have been testing the market for a few startup ideas I have.
If I were testing my ideas in more cohesive countries - where a majority of the population congregates in a small number of venues - this would not have been very difficult.
For example, if everyone went online nearly every day regardless of their demographic makeup, I could have simply focused on identifying the top 2-3 websites for my needs and driven engagement from there.
India, though, is not like that. Here are a few examples of marketing channels with sizable eyeballs.
Broadcast, non-targeted advertising channels
- Newspaper flyers and inserts
- Billboards (hoardings as they are called in India)
- Wall painting
- Loudhailers on backs of trucks, autos, and rickshaws
- FM radio
- Cinema ads
- Sides of buses and other public transport
Semi- and Targeted advertising channels
- Roadside kiosks and booths (self selecting) - though this is changing, there aren't enough malls in the country to make booths at malls viable as a marketing channel
- Print ads
- Newspaper classifieds
- Online classifieds
- WhatsApp groups
- SMS ads
- Behemoths like Facebook and YouTube
In a country of a billion, you will need to explore a lot of channels to discover which channels best yield your target market.
The flip side of this is that anyone who can create a single unified interface through which startups and businesses can hit even 3-5 channels in an effective manner stands to make a real difference in the field of marketing.