Precise Marketing strategy of Vodafone Idea – With Company Overview

In the previous article we learned about the marketing strategy of Reliance Jio.

This article will elaborate upon the marketing strategy of Vodafone Idea, one of the top telephonic companies in India as well as the world. 

The objective is to help you gain insights on Vodafone being a single company to becoming one with Idea, one of the most recognized and respected brands in India.

Marketing is a part of a company’s DNA that can either make or break it. As users across the world go digital, marketing has followed them to the digital realm as well.

If you are interested in new-age digital marketing, then you should definitely check out IIDE’s Free MasterClass on Digital Marketing 101 by our CEO and Founder, Karan Shah.

We will fully cover our marketing strategy for the Vodafone idea (VI) in this blog. Before we begin our deep dive, let us start by learning how both companies merged together and what is the current state.

About Vodafone Idea – Company Overview 

Source – The Indian Express

Having more than 379 million active users by 13 May 2022 across the globe, comprising 13 million customers in fixed broadband and 10 million customers in cable TV.

Vodafone connects people from different parts of the world and makes communication easy, secure, and more convenient. 

Idea Cellular Limited, known as Idea by the masses was an Indian mobile network operator situated in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Till June 2018, the network operator was a pan-India integrated GSM operator with 220 million subscribers.

Symbolized as V!, headquarters in Mumbai and Gandhinagar. This is a pan-India integrated GSM operator providing services like 2G, 4G, 4G+, VoLTE and VoWiFi. 

In March 2017, it was announced that Idea Cellular and Vodafone India would be merged. In July 2018, the Department of Telecommunications approved the merger. The Vodafone-Idea merger was approved by the National Company Law Tribunal on August 30, 2018. 

On August 31, 2018, the merger was completed, and the newly merged entity was named Vodafone Idea Limited.

The merger created India’s largest telecom company, According to the terms of the agreement, the Vodafone Group will own 45.2 % of the combined entity, the Aditya Birla Group will own 26 %, and the public will own the remaining shares. 

Following the merger, Vodafone and Idea were renamed V!. It was the world’s largest merger of two telecom companies, both in terms of subscribers and revenue.

Quick Stats –

 

Marketing strategy of Vodafone Idea –

Let’s start the marketing strategy of Vodafone Idea with its STP Analysis –

Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

The segmentation services offered by Vodafone are a mixture offered in mobile network services, enterprise services, and broadband services. It makes proper use of geographical, demographical, and psychographic segmentation.

The targeting strategy of Vodafone is concentrating on different sections of societies with their different offerings. It uses a selective and differentiated targeting strategy.

Vodafone Idea is positioned as the fastest 4G network in India.

Marketing Campaigns

1. A campaign in 2019 stated new towers getting added every hour in crowded places thereby strengthening Vodafone SuperNet 4G- The Data strong network. Seamless network experience even in crowded places because a tower is being added every hour.

2. OOH Campaign

This campaign was launched to highlight the 4G experience provided by VI.

Hoardings we install all over in Delhi/NCR to promote this campaign

Dipankar Sanyal, the CEO, of Platinum Outdoor and MRP, says, “Vi checks all the boxes for a stellar outdoor campaign. It has been an exciting experience for our teams to plan and execute such a large campaign. The campaign has already had a tremendous impact on the brand.”

Social Media Marketing

• Instagram – 20.5K followers
• Facebook – 22K followers
• LinkedIn – 2L+ followers
• Twitter – 11.4K followers

VI mostly posts about the offers they provide and campaigns they launch.

SEO Strategies

Source – Ubersuggest

In accordance with the SEO standards, organic keywords less than 500 are bad, more than 1000 are good and more than 10,000 are amazing. And as seen in the image above VI has 278K+ organic keywords which is Impressive.

VI has monthly traffic of around 6.2M which is amazing as above 20,000 is good.

Influencer Marketing

Well, Idea in the year 2009 signed up Abhishek Bacchan for their advertisement and it turned out to be a success as their ad campaign won an award. 

Vodafone Idea launched a new campaign with Shankar Mahadevan for the Vodafone Play app.

Vodafone Play has built a robust portfolio of Bollywood, Hollywood, and regional content by partnering with leading content creators and aggregators like ZEE5, SonyLiv, Hungama Play, SunNXT, ShemarooMe, HoiChoi, Lionsgate Play, and many others. 

E-commerce strategies 

VI has its website on which all packs and offers are available through which we can recharge our mobile.

Mobile apps

Vodafone intends to grow its use of data analytics for designing more personalized experiences for individual users. My Vodafone App and digital marketing channels will become the main customer acquisition and management platform. 

My Vodafone App has ratings of 4.1 and has 10Cr+ downloads on the play store.

Content Marketing Strategy

Vodafone Idea makes wide use of all its social media platforms starting right from its official website, to its Facebook as well as Twitter. They use widely searched keywords in their blog to increase the view count and traffic on their website as well as blogs. 

This brings us to the end of the case study of the marketing strategy of Vodafone Idea.

Conclusion – What’s unique about the marketing strategy of Vodafone Idea?

The engagement level of Vodafone’s promotional activities has remained high, the zoo-zoo ads lasted for longer than one can remember. They were very specifically popular among all other ones and became social media, television, and even newspaper sensations. 

They became famous because they were kept closely related to real-life situations and funny and comical scenes.

The graphics and motion team should’ve surely got a promotion because even after zoo- zoos just were a stick figure- more like a funny character with an egg-like belly, made it to the headlines and stayed there for as long as one can remember.

Making an inhuman figure personate a human, by giving it plain expressions and body moments like stopping, thumping, dancing, or being scared. The non-verbal expressions banged the role. 

During the sports season, zoo-zoo ads were used during television ads as well to drive engagement and brand recall. These entertain well and engage like nothing else.

Vodafone is creating a customer-centric image and that will require it to focus on all aspects of marketing starting right from promotions, user engagement, and customer experience. 

You saw how Vodafone Idea wisely used digital marketing with its popularity within the Indian audience. If you want to learn such amazing digital marketing skills you can go through the Online Digital Marketing Courses.

We appreciate that you read the case study till the end. If you liked the marketing strategy of Vodafone Idea you can check such case studies on the IIDE Knowledge Portal.