Rural Marketing in India has been changed a lot in the last few years. Digitization and social media have played a significant role to shape-up it in recent time. The gap between the urban and rural market has become narrow. Here I am sharing some rural marketing tips which are based on my years of experience of marketing in rural Maharashtra.
In my 13 years of experience, I had worked extensively in the rural market. Significant milestones which I still remember was MTS launch, Airtel 1paisa launch, and rural projects for dishtv.
In the year 2010-11, when MTS launched its CDMA voice services based on cheap mobile handsets cost Rupees 599 and data cards. It was a unique proposition, and a blue market for MTS, but promotion and communication was a challenge. Social media was not where, and Android was taking baby steps. To promote this in the rural towns in Maharashtra was very exciting and full of learning. I will write on this project some in another blog.
My other rural marketing experiences are Airtel – 1 Paisa per second offer, launch when we literally target each village categorically by spreading local announcers followed by distributing sim card the very next morning.
The dishtv rural marketing project is the recent one, which is a case study for any marketing student. This deserves a separate blog post to explain what went wrong in this entire campaign and what becomes a talking point which finally got a trophy for me from the company and I was called – Rural Champ. It’s funny, …isn’t it?
Let’s have a quick look at below 21 points.
1) Excellent Product:- Rural Marketing is not only advertising cheap products anymore, It never works without an excellent product and a decent distribution network. Content is the king – if a product fails nothing from 4Ps – Place, Price, Promotion will work. If the Product is excellent, everything will place automatically. Remember Askmebazar.com they spend millions on a TV ad and hiring Ranveer Kapoor and Kangana Ranavat, but finally, all failed.
2) Awareness & Identification: – Brand should initiate education campaigns to create awareness about the product. Initially, it should be pure awareness without the intention of selling, create a market 1st. You cannot market everyone, so either find your potential buyers or ready for a failure. That’s one of the essential element in the whole GTM strategy. Cost-effective Mobile Vans for a product demo or live-show can be useful for creating awareness and educating rural customers. This can filter the customers from awareness to competition, and leads would eventually close by salesperson for the later stage of the sales funnel – consideration to selection.
3) Never push sub-standard products:– Indian Rural markets are not a cheaper and substandard market anymore, so don’t push the sub-standard product in the market. Rural markets are not always a market of agriculture-based products, and Nirma and lifebuoy are no longer the favorite brands of rural India.
4) Hire a specialized rural marketing agency – who are having the actual presence in the ground, proficient in the local language, geography, and market.
5) No Copy-Paste – Don’t copy the urban strategy into the rural, customization is essential. Customizing as per languages, traditions, demand along with look and feel are also important.
6) Technology-driven:- Entire Go To Market strategy should be based on modern technology of communication and planning. We have to be No1 brand in this particular market that’s the goal but how to get it through a set of actions that’s the strategy.
7) Digital marketing– example for any industrial product – YouTube video in vernacular language is essential to have, people in hinterlands too check youtube for a product review.
8) Association with local festivals, Agriculture fair, Trade shows. Setup live demo and get the financial companies or subsidy related agency and documentation, everything on the venue.
9) Timing is crucial – crop season, important crops, harvesting, off period, seasons like a monsoon are taken into consideration. Dishtv has launched its rural projects in July in Maharashtra, which was the peak monsoon period, and therefore it had a significant impact on overall performance.
10) No Herogiri:- Don’t indulge a super cool urban manger into rural marketing, nor a dumb resource. He must be comfortable in a rural setup and sync with it. He should not look like an alien to rural folks.
11) Invest for the long term, rural marketing is not a short-term affair. It requires time and patience, it takes time to bring people from awareness to consideration level, before making a deal.
12) Focus on the empowerment of women and youth, get them to involve in your projects.
13) References and influencers are critical in rural marketing. Word of mouth publicity which actually works in rural India. Setting up the social influencers group or in other worlds – Fan club or delighted customers club is a great idea.
14) Extend the Loyalty benefits – get them connected with exclusive offers for a product upgrade, engage them with regular communication and activities. They are the local advocates of your brand. They are brand influencers, better than any brand ambassador.
15) Narrate a Logical story:– Your product should be wrapped with an interesting story. Even before the launch of the brand, this story creates expectations and curiosity which will pull the brand. What is the reason of this brand and why it is launched here? these are the questions which can be answered well in this story. PR team and local media can help to propagate this story.
16) Work on the customer network, the distribution network will follow. Great Product + Great network = Success. Fan Clubs and their engagement by the marketing team is a very new idea in rural marketing. I will post a separate blog on this topic.
17) Co-branding – Creating co-branding brand assets are an excellent way of advertisement. It can be free of cost because, in the rural market, no one will ask the money if you provide them co-branded signage at the main gate of a village, or signboard with an arrow or signage with local contacts such as the number of the village head or hospitals.
18) Hiring a celebrity which doesn’t really sync with rural mindset, is a bad idea. It is something like when Farhan Akhtar was selling Intex phone and telling us to buy when we all we know that he uses an iPhone. So where is Intex today? Nowhere. Believe me, you cannot make customer fool anymore.
19) A+A = Affordability, and availability is the key. Companies should invest the product affordable to the rural customer and make them available through working and setting up a network system. Revenue margin should pass to end customer.
20) Competition Tracking:- Don’t focus on competitions only, substitute products are also competitors.
For example, if its OTT brand like Zee5 then not only Netflix and BalajiALT but the users of cable operators, DTH such as dishtv, tata sky users are also the potential customers.
If its tractor then entire trade network whos into fertilizers, seeds, outdoor handheld types of machinery and devices should be tapped. This is called fusion marketing, which I used to practice in my tenure in Arvind Mills. An office automation dealer often passes the inquiry of setting up a new office to the dealer of EPBAX system and vice -versa, and a furniture dealer leaves a card of Syntel telecom EPBAX to his client with a discount of 5%.
In Rural Marketing, Fusion marketing is an excellent strategy to penetrate and acquiring new customers.
21) Blue Ocean Strategy :- Create demand and make a niche in the market. dont get into a price war. Never fight with competitors but make them irrelevant by introducing a product which is really innovating and create value to the rural customer. Today 16% brand which launched with blue ocean strategy having the 62% revenue in the market. Source – google.
Please write your views, you can call me to discuss further or mail me on ashish91@gmail.com. I would appreciate your valuable suggestion and will definitely try to consider it for my next rural projects. Thanks.