Founded in April 2015, 1mg is a healthcare platform based in Gurgaon, Haryana. Just like we order electronics, food, and clothing online, 1mg is an e-commerce site that delivers medicines to your doorstep.
Apart from selling medicines, this platform offers various other services like lab and diagnostic tests, consultation by top doctors, subscription-based care plans, and healthcare partnerships where they tie up with insurance companies to provide affordable checkups and medicines.
In this blog, we will be acquainted with the marketing strategy of 1mg, but before we start, let us have a brief understanding of what 1mg is all about.
About 1mg
Founded by Prashant Tandon, Gaurav Agarwal, and Vikas Chauhan, the website initially was started to provide information on all kinds of medicines to people. Over the course of time, the site became so popular that the public requested the company to start delivering the medicines too.
As of today, 1mg has more than 5 million app downloads and more than 3 million monthly visitors over the platform. It partners with certified pharmacies all over the country and delivers health products in more than 1000 cities in the country. A while ago, Tata Digital acquired 1mg, making it a 450 million LegitScript-certified company.
1mg has bagged several awards like ‘Winner in Health and Being Category’, ‘Best Mobile Innovation for Health Award’,’ Best Online Pharmacy in India’, and recognitions such as ‘The only company for SD#3 Health & Well Being for all’ and recognized as the Top 50 venture in The Smart CEO-Startup50 India 2017 program.
1mg’s Competitor Analysis
In today’s times, there has been considerable growth in the online pharmacy sector. Big players like Medlife, Netmeds, and PharmEasy are a huge competition to 1mg. Here is a detailed analysis of them-
1. Netmeds
Acquired by Reliance, Netmeds is 1mg’s biggest competitor. Being called ‘India Ki Pharmacy’ it has become a household name. Some of the places it is better at are the discounts and tracking. It offers a flat 15% off on all medicine orders and up to 50% off on mobile wallets for cashback. Besides that it provides a real-time order status tracking facility, By having MS Dhoni as their brand ambassador, they have surely aced in their marketing strategies.
2. PharmEasy
PharmEasy is one of the top-rated online pharmacy apps that has been delivering medicines for several years. By offering medicines in more than 22,000 pin codes, they ensure delivery within 24-48 hours. One of the other advantages is that they stock up over 1 Lakh products including medical equipment and OTC products.
3. Medlife
This award-winning medicine app is said to have excellent reach among online pharmacy players. They have over a whopping 10 million customers to date and remain a pioneer in adding value-added services. It has a record-breaking time of 2 hours in which it delivers its products and over 25,000 deliveries a day which is the best feature of this company. They also have tie-ups with 1000+ doctors across various fields.
Now that we saw a few competitors of 1mg we know that it has to continually work hard and stay updated with the changing trends. It is very much crucial for 1mg to have a strong marketing strategy. Further in the blog, we will now have a detailed study of the marketing strategy of 1mg along with its marketing mix.
Marketing Mix of 1mg
A marketing mix consists of the 4 Ps of marketing – Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. This concept explains a company the ways it can use advertisement to engage with its target audience, ensuring they have a visible in-demand product or service. This helps in planning the marketing strategy of 1mg. Let us now take a look at 1 mg’s marketing mix
1. Product
1mg provides services like lab tests where you order a lab test, one of its representatives will come to the patient’s home, collect the sample, send it to the lab testing, and will charge a minimal fee for it.
Online medicine delivery – 1mg provides medicines that are not available at local pharmacies. They deliver products like diabetic medicines, fitness supplements, support and braces, adult care diapers, healthcare devices, ayurvedic and homeopathic medicines and superfoods.
Doctors Consultation– 1mg has partnered with top doctors for consultations where you book an appointment and ask them anything you want without stepping out of the house.
Healthcare Partnerships- They have a tie-up with insurance companies to provide affordable checkups, healthcare plans, and medicines to employees of their organization and other companies.
Subscription-based care plans- This is the newest addition to their services. They provide a Diabetes care subscription plan in which they offer benefits that save the patient a lot of money than they usually pay for their regular visits to the doctor.
These were the products and services offered by 1mg, now let us take a look at their pricing strategy.
2. Price
1mg focuses on providing medicines and services at cheap and affordable prices. The prices will vary depending on the product. For example, the medicine and consultation for a diabetic patient will be more than a usual patient with flu. They have various discount codes like a 25% discount on your first order, on allopathy medicines, and 50% off if you use a visa card. Despite all coupon codes, 1mg has had a 77% rise in revenue lately.
Now that we have taken a look at the pricing strategy, let us take a look at how 1mg distributes its products and services to the target audiences.
3. Place
As of today, 70% of 1mg’s orders are being placed from top-tier cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, etc. They are focusing on increasing their reach in Tier II & III cities as well. Cities like Indore, Lucknow, Jaipur have seen considerable growth lately.
One of the founders recently said that they work on a model that allows them to set up operations quickly in a city. Initially they tie-up with distributors but when the demand for their products increases, they deploy their own team for seamless operations.
Now that we’ve got to know about the place and distribution strategy let’s acquaint ourselves with the promotional strategies undertaken by the brand.
4. Promotion
1mg has several marketing campaigns, the most recent one is a rebranding campaign featuring Pankaj Tripathi in which the sole purpose was to draw the attention of the customers to the features like delivery within a few hours unlike the discount campaigns followed by the competitors.
Another campaign is the Grandmasters Series which aims to praise the using heroes in the field of medicine nowadays people think that this is a money-making business, so to instill trust and faith in its customers, 1mg demonstrated doctors who showcased selfless service and dedication towards their patients.
Another initiative undertaken by them is the Sehat Ke Sathi. It is a franchise opportunity in the pharma space where each “Saathi” is a lead generation partner of Tata 1mg and they would be responsible for empowering patients in their territory to avail their services.
With this, we reach the end of the marketing mix. Let us now take a quick look at the marketing strategy of 1mg.
Marketing Strategy of 1mg
The company has made use of its app to spread information on medicines. In order to increase their awareness among the residents of the particular city, they are using push notifications and emails to expand their reach. The company also uses offline advertisements depending on the city such as newspapers, billboard advertisements, and health camps to spread information. They do not use TVCs as they believe in ‘word of mouth. Most of the marketing strategy of 1mg includes the use of digital platforms.
The result of the digital marketing strategy of 1mg is a weekly growth rate of 1% on social media and a weekly growth rate of 5.13% on website visitors. In comparison to roughly 1.7 million startups on the internet.
Content is KING for them thus the marketing strategy of 1mg mostly focuses on content marketing. They provide knowledge on the healthcare industry and offer trustworthy medical advice on their website through writing various articles and blogs. Because these articles are read by people around the globe, they focus their articles on Ayurveda in English and Hindi. Thus their content game has helped 1mg build consumer loyalty and trust and reduced consumer acquisition costs drastically. 1mg provides high-value content to attract search traffic to their website. These users are then converted into potential customers by offering discounts, coupon codes, and first-time buyer promotions.
Conclusion
Due to the pandemic, there has been a rise in purchasing medicines online and thus now it is the perfect opportunity for 1mg to increase its reach throughout the country and provide more services at great prices. Despite the cutthroat competition, Tata’s 1mg continues to remain one of the most trusted pharmacies to purchase medicines & drugs online in India.
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