Learnings for B2B Companies from Indiamart’s Digital Dominance
Dear Reader,
The new thinking on B2B marketing has brought the focus back on Brand Building. This issue of LIT is an ode to that.
The perspective that while B2B decision making is logical and process driven, the decision makers are human beings and make decisions emotionally, is gathering steam.
There is growing empirical evidence to suggest that even in the case of B2B, the mental availability of the brand makes a difference to sales outcomes. And that given a choice between various options, people tend to choose the one that they have heard of before, trust and is top of mind.
Therefore, strategies for B2B brand building are also moving towards what were seen to be classical B2C marketing approaches and goals like Wider Reach, Awareness, Emotional Equity, etc.
This issue of LIT analyses a standout performer in terms of digital presence and strategy in the B2B ecommerce space – IndiaMart.
The LIT analysis sheds light on the differential growth in the digital presence of IndiaMart vis a vis 4 other leading B2B E-commerce brands. In addition, we have also tried to share insights on what campaigns and initiatives have helped them grow so much faster.
While this analysis is specific to B2B E-commerce, we believe that the learning from the leading brands of one industry would also be applicable across other industries.
IndiaMart dominates the B2B Online Marketplace Industry.
IndiaMart has been head & shoulders above competitors on Website Traffic numbers over the last 1 year.
So which sources of website traffic are helping them to lead on digital?
Organic Searches – This is a function of SEO Performance.
They have been extremely aggressive when it comes to SEO and rank for every possible keyword. They have a robust keyword targeting strategy which focuses on various Product Categories, specific Products and even Brands.
Direct Brand Sources – This is a function of Brand Awareness.
They have been constantly building their brand over the last few years which has contributed significantly to the top of mind awareness as well as direct traffic to the website.
Some recently launched popular Brand Campaigns of IndiaMart
They have also been a dominant player on Social Media and currently lead the race in terms of the Total Presence and Engagements across all the Social Media Platforms (last 30 days data)
The digital dominance of IndiaMart has resulted in the increase of their Annual Revenues by 41% in the last 2 years.
So what can B2B companies learn from the digital success of IndiaMart?
- It has now been established beyond doubt that B2B companies need to focus on long term Brand Building for growth.
- Given its growing importance for B2B, digital needs to be used for strengthening the brand & increasing the Direct Traffic to the Website.
- An aggressive SEO Strategy can help grow Organic Traffic and is essential for bringing down the blended cost of acquisition.
- It’s important for B2B companies to also stay active on Social Media Platforms to keep building their top of mind awareness.
