About Flipkart
Flipkart is an E-commerce website, founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007. When Flipkart was launched, initially the aim was to sell books before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, home essentials & groceries, and lifestyle products. In March 2017, Flipkart held a 39.5% market share of India’s e-commerce industry. In August 2018, U.S.-based retail chain Walmart acquired an 81% controlling stake in Flipkart for US $ 16 billion, valuing it at $20 billion.
Flipkart is India’s answer to Amazon. Flipkart is one of the most visited E-Commerce Websites and just like Amazon, the company has rapidly become one of India’s original unicorns. The company is now owned by Walmart and is one of India’s huge success stories.
Let’s look at the marketing strategy of Flipkart.
Marketing Strategy of Flipkart
The marketing strategy of Flipkart focuses on every single touchpoint their customers are present. It uses the majority of its budget on various digital channels involving both paid and organic marketing. Moreover, since India has recently experienced digital transformation, the efforts of Flipkart are paying off.
Flipkart also invests intensely in celebrity endorsement and influencer marketing. India is crazy over Bollywood and Flipkart uses this to raise awareness about their brand and to market their services. Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, and Shraddha Kapoor have all been brand ambassadors who were predominantly featured in Flipkart’s commercials and digital marketing campaigns.
Let’s unveil the digital marketing strategy of Flipkart.
Flipkart is considered to be one of the best platforms for online shopping. Whether we talk about gadgets or apparel, Flipkart has always shown up their best quality service. Flipkart has mainly grown its business through a digital marketing strategy. Let’s discuss, What strategy do they follow? How do they convert their one-time customers to loyal customers? How does Flipkart manage to increase the number of its customers? This article will help in the analysis of the tools used by Flipkart in their Digital Marketing Strategy. IIDE, Google, & Coursera are a few digital marketing institutes among the top institutions to learn digital marketing.
Target audience
Flipkart targets anybody who surfs the internet and who does not have time for shopping. Though its target audience is scattered over various market segments as consumers from all demographic backgrounds can find products that appeal to their interests, 75% of its audience is between the age group of 16 – 55.
It lays focus on people seeking variety and who prefer to experience a hassle-free shopping approach from home. It tries to expand its services to every location in the country where deliveries are possible. The smart marketing strategy of Flipkart seizes the attention of its audience who hold the purchasing power, to influence that online shopping is better than traditional shopping.
Search Engine Optimization
Flipkart being the largest online retailer in India has worked immensely on optimizing its platform to rank on the search engine. Every time someone searches for a product, Flipkart appears among the top 2 results, and it is all possible because Flipkart has put a lot of effort into SEO.
As per Ubersuggest, a keyword tool by Neil Patel, Flipkart has monthly organic traffic of 3,90,246,762 and a strong domain authority of 90.
The domain has a total of 66,547,531 backlinks, These stats are really amazing.
The graph below shows the monthly search volume of Flipkart. As per the latest results, Flipkart had a total of 55.6 million searches, out of which 11.3 million were mobile searches and 44.3 million were desktop searches.
Ubersuggest gives an idea of keywords for which Flipkart is being searched over the internet. The graph below shows different keywords and their search volume.
As you can see, smartwatches have a search volume of 1.8m which is followed by the Flipkart sale which has a volume of 1.5m. These are the top keywords that people search on the internet.
Keywords in URL
Flipkart checks the top searches of people, it then takes the top keywords and creates web page URLs for them. This is a very good marketing strategy for Flipkart to make sure its website ranks.
Below is the list of keywords for which Flipkart.com ranks.
Backlinks of Flipkart
Flipkart gets backlinks from over 66 million unique domains, which is simply amazing. All these backlinks work as a backbone for Flipkart in ranking number 1 on the search engine. Ever wondered how backlinks help in search rankings? Read this blog on what are backlinks.
Backlinks for Flipkart have increased rapidly over time. The graph below shows how from December 2019 to August 2020, backlinks have grown from 73.3 million to 98.7 million.
Site Speed
Another important aspect of Search engine optimization is Site speed. Site speed is crucial to your SEO health. Every additional 0.5s it takes to load your site drastically increases the % of visitors that will leave your site.
Below you’ll see the time it took for Flipkart to load on desktop and mobile devices using a 4G connection speed.
Keywords on the web pages
Keywords that include products’ names and phrases like ‘Best price’ tell the search engines that these pages have content related to these search queries.
Collaborations & Celebrity Marketing
Flipkart is known for its collaborations. It also invests heavily in star power and celebrity marketing. Flipkart keeps collaborating with various famous figures from time to time. One of the notable and more recent collaborations is with Ranbir Kapoor & Alia Bhatt on “#IndiaKaFashionCapital.”
Under this campaign, the company invites fashion enthusiasts from all over the country to upgrade their style with the latest trends from Flipkart. Via a meaningful media mix, using styled fashion quotient and targeted communication towards their consumers, Flipkart Fashion’s brand ambassadors, Ranbir and Alia, educate consumers about always being ahead in their style game by ‘Wearing The Next.’ The pair were seen in a variety of engaging and interactive formats, ranging from short digital content to traditional TVCs discussing the benefits of shopping on Flipkart Fashion.
Social Media Marketing Strategy of Flipkart
Flipkart is very much active on all social media platforms. As of August 2020, Flipkart has –
-93,96,244 followers on Facebook,
-1.7 Million followers on Instagram,
-2.4 Million followers on Twitter.
When it comes to Instagram, Flipkart has several accounts for different things, like a proper account dedicated to Tech, Clothing, and others. When it comes to businesses, be it for a product or different services, the key highlight point for the customers is Feedback and Customer Reviews. Flipkart has given special attention to that by having a separate account that just focuses on Customer Stories named as FlipkartStories.
Twitter Strategy
You’ll be surprised to know that out of all the platforms Flipkart pays special attention to Twitter. Flipkart is known to follow a fixed pattern for communication for all the platforms but when it comes to Twitter, they keep running mini-campaigns from time to time like #SareeTwitter
Apart from fun campaigns, Flipkart has a 24*7 available Customer Support System on Twitter where they address complaints and queries of their customers. Next time you face a problem with Flipkart, you know what to do.
Youtube Marketing
With YouTube being reached as the world’s second-largest search engine (behind Google) Flipkart completely leveraged this platform to advertise its marketing campaigns. Flipkart launched a targeted marketing campaign for the fashion segment known as “India ka Fashion Capital”, focused on featuring video ads on youtube as most of their audience is present here.
Covid Marketing Strategy of Flipkart
The COVID-19 crisis has put everyone in a fix. During this time the demand for online services was high due to obvious reasons, so Flipkart along with other e-commerce platforms had to deliver products keeping their safety as well as their customers’ safety in mind.
To ensure the safety of their customers Flipkart started a no Contact Delivery process #FlipkartForIndia, where products will get delivered after proper sanitization and health & hygiene checking.
To appreciate and support the frontline warriors, Flipkart in collaboration with its parent company Walmart, donated medical supplies worth Rs 46 Cr to fight the battle against CoronaVirus in India. That’s not all to get the essentials delivered to its customers safely and as soon as possible, Flipkart partnered with Uber and Meru Cabs in various cities across the country. Along with all this Flipkart #SmartBuy also launched hand sanitizers and surgical masks to ensure there’s no shortage in this battle.
Flipkart didn’t do all these just for their Brand Promotion and that’s clear by the way they have promoted common people who were out on the road as support for the needy and the warrior on their Social Media Platform and labeled it as #FlipkartBrightSide. Flipkart shared stories of common people doing their bit, for example :
1. To aid the strenuous efforts taken by policemen in Kerala to enforce the lockdown, Anand and Sivan Macro offered them a tea break! The father-son duo set up a makeshift tea kiosk in their car, distributing nearly 200 cups of tea every day.
2. Renowned ophthalmologist Shibal Bhartiya in Delhi assembled a team of volunteers and has distributed over 2,000 packets of biscuits, 4,600kg of dal-chawal (uncooked), 2,000 soap cakes, and 500kg detergent to the needy.
Marketing Campaigns of Flipkart
Frequently Bought Together
Flipkart loves to understand and study customer behaviour and keeping that in mind they have started a series of ‘Frequently Bought Together’. In this, Flipkart, based on customer behaviour and purchase pattern, shares the items which are frequently bought by the audience from the app. Check out the image below
Don’t you think it’s a great marketing strategy of Flipkart to market products by having a psychological effect, where they tell you to opt for other products?
Flipkart Kidults
A discussion on the marketing strategy of Flipkart is incomplete without the mention of their campaign Kidults. It was launched way back in 2014 and it’s yet to end. Well, that itself speaks about the success of this campaign. Right? The reason behind such an impressive track record is the refreshing concept where Kids act like adults.
#Flip Girl
Flipkart launched a new campaign featuring actor Alia in the role of a ‘FlipGirl’ superhero to convey the ease of shopping and trust for customers. The campaign aimed to highlight the brand’s commitment to making premium brands accessible through faster delivery and establishing itself as the go-to destination for online shopping.
#MultiPurposePurchase
When it comes to merging two products or telling how to fully utilise a product, Flipkart is a master at it. Check this out
This is how you can fully utilize a slipper brought from Flipkart. Isn’t it an appealing and catchy way to market products?
All Cookie lovers here would totally relate to this. We Indians have a thing for boxes especially the food boxes, we tend to keep them once empty and utilise it for different purposes. This is how simply Flipkart is connecting with the masses.
Special Occasions
The brand follows a Social Media Calendar and makes the most of the Special Days, right from universally celebrated occasions like Father’s Day, and Sleep Day to days of national importance like Gandhi Jayanti and Independence Day. Usually, e-commerce platforms like Flipkart and Amazon have special discounts and offers on such occasions, so these posts are not there to drive traffic but to maintain a social media presence and act as a reminder to shop.
Flipkart’s VR Campaign
We all are stepping into the world of artificial reality and virtual reality slowly and we have already seen the impact and use of filters by brands for Instagram Stories. Flipkart is always up and ready when it comes to adapting to new technologies. Flipkart discovered the right opportunity to make the most of VR technology by adding it to the Big Billion Sale Campaign. No doubt that the Big Billion Day campaign has massively contributed to Flipkart’s marketing success and they were able to attain the goal much more effectively with the advanced VR technology.
The campaign was launched when Full Moon Day was nearing as it is viewed auspiciously and closely associated with the festive calendar in India. Their ad campaign ran on days when there was no full moon, but Flipkart privileged its users to see a full moon shaded by clouds. Gamification prompted the users to blow into the microphone to move the clouds away revealing both the full moon and an exciting new offer. This campaign was like something never experienced before and it left the audience thrilled and excited, earning Flipkart 5 million views and a CTR of 2 %
Fun Engagement Activities
Flipkart keeps their audience engaged with different types of fun activities and with that being said they don’t forget to mix it up with something which is trending. For example, during this lockdown many things have gone viral and trended, one such thing was Dalgona Coffee, remember? This is what Flipkart did
Apart from these, Flipkart is not behind when it comes to Current Affairs. Flipkart released this logo during the Pride Month
With months of lockdown and everyone in their house, there was a desperate need for some products, see what Flipkart had to say about it
During the lockdown, the online delivery rate was on the rise, but at the same time safety was a concern, considering that the brand delivered a perfect message for No-Contact Delivery.
Paid Advertising by Flipkart
The marketing strategy of Flipkart also includes another important component which is paid advertising:
Google Adwords
When it comes to Search Ads, Google Adwords is the go-to option. Being an e-commerce platform, Search Ads on Google play a key role in both sales and bringing in traffic to the site. Today users just go on Google and search for the product and if you’re not in the top results, you’re missing out. Thus, Google Ads are a must. Flipkart runs display, search, and shop ads the most, by carefully studying and targeting the right set of keywords. Here’s an example of how Flipkart is running ads on Google for random searches and driving traffic and a potential customer.
For E-Commerce platforms, Google Ads is a medium to drive attention toward their platform by appearing on the search results of other platforms. With Amazon giving neck-to-neck competition, getting your Google ad copy is crucial. Flipkart uses 3rd party platforms to run ads and advertise on different websites, majorly to remarket to those customers who add products to their carts or just wishlists. Once a user clicks on any of their Google ads, Flipkart re-targets them across social media platforms using the Facebook Pixel via ads.
Flipkart’s Affiliate Program
Affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing by which a person can earn rewards in the form of a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products. Flipkart delegates the responsibility of marketing its products to third parties known as affiliates and shares a part of the profit on the sale of the products. Affiliate programs of e-commerce portals like Flipkart and Amazon are some of the legit ways to earn money online during this lockdown.
Flipkart portal offers almost everything needed by a commoner. From beauty to baby care products to fashion to electronics and beauty to baby care products, everything can be found on this online portal. All you need is decent traffic on your website or blog. You can then join Flipkart’s affiliate program and market a range of products in your niche. Flipkart offers one of the best affiliate marketing programs through which people are earning around Rs.25,000 to Rs. 80,000 per month. -15% of the product’s price. To know more about the commission percentage for each product category, you can go here.
Flipkart Affiliate Marketing Commission
Below we are mentioning a few product categories and their commission percentages:
- Books and e-learning (10%)
- Gold and silver coins (0.1%)
- School supplies and toys (10%)
- Baby care products (10%)
- Fragrances and Beauty products (10%)
- Household supplies (10%)
To know more about the commission percentage for each product category click here Affiliate programs are perfect for larger stores and eCommerce sites, and this is one of the highly successful marketing strategies of Flipkart.
Remarketing
Remarketing is any marketing and advertising strategy that re-establishes a connection with potential buyers after they visit the store’s website. Remarketing existed before the arrival of the Internet, however, its usage has shifted from offline to online and it is highly beneficial and inbound. Usually, visitors visit the online portals and leave the site without completing the purchase. Remarketing is done by displaying ads to such potential customers across the digital platforms urging them to convert.
Flipkart has a huge customer base that does window shopping and checkout for specifications for the products. Yet, not all products viewed are bought by the customers. certain products are even revisited by the customers several times after hours of viewing them. It indicates a strong intent to buy when customers leave products in the cart.
The survey says, out of 100 customers who shop online, 30 of the customers add products to the cart.
That’s 30% of customers who are interested in buying some product! That’s a huge number. However, only 3% of such customers buy the product at a later stage. Around 27% of such users leave those products just like that. Remarketing is employed for targeting such an audience via ads.
Conclusion
So be it billboards, tv commercials, or digital ads, Flipkart has always been on the front seat in developing marketing strategies around existing trends. Its smart yet emotionally woven ad campaigns leave a strong impression in the hearts of Indian audiences. Equally giant competitors might threaten Flipkart’s business but it will definitely continue to rule the E-commerce industry for decades to come. All this is because of the brilliant marketing strategy of Flipkart.
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I believe every business student and professional should read this insightful flipkart marketing strategy case study