What pops up in your mind when you order food online after a long hard day?
The easy & simple answer is Zomato. Names of other food delivery services arrive later.
According to a report by Statista, in the first quarter of 2022 Zomato’s revenue is Rs. 11.6 million. According to SimilarWeb, as of December 2021, the total visit to Zomato’s website and Zomato app on mobile were 22.83 million. Currently, Zomato has around 12000 restaurant partners and around 1.4 million restaurant listings.
This guide will help you to know how Zomato has emerged as the market leader in the food-tech industry. This guide will talk in detail about Zomato’s digital marketing strategy which played an important part in making Zomato big.
We’ve discussed here:
- About Zomato, the organization
- Business Model of Zomato
- Digital Marketing Strategy of Zomato
- SEO
- SMM
- Online Marketing Campaigns
- Email Marketing
What You Need to Know About Zomato’s Digital Marketing Strategy
Zomato is considered one of the largest food aggregators in the world. They believe in the ideology of offering affordable hygienic food.
About Zomato, The Organization
Zomato started its business in around 2010. During its initial years, it used to be a Delhi-based startup – FoodieBay, founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in 2008. Once, Deepinder & Pankaj, two IIT alumni, observed the long queues in the offices to check the menu card of the foods. That sparked the idea to create the biggest online directory of restaurants in the city.
Today Zomato is a lot more than being a directory of restaurants. It is a restaurant directory, online food delivery platform, and dine-out platform. Along with India, Zomato is now present in 24 more countries including Srilanka, Australia, a few Middle East countries and many more.
Business Model of Zomato
Zomato’s business model is centred on four parameters, including QAAA.
- Quality- Initiatives such as Hyper pure offer hygienic ingredients and kitchen-related supplies to restaurant partners
- Assortment – A wide range of foods from different geographical locations partnered with the right information
- Affordability – Zomato offers affordable food via daily discounts and deals like the Zomato Gold programme, etc.
- Accessibility – Zomato offers table reservations for corporate catering
These four factors are basically Zomato’s successful marketing mix – product, price, place, and promotion.
Revenue Model of Zomato
Zomato has a multidimensional revenue model. Only 2% of Zomato’s total revenue comes from ordering food online while restaurant advertising contributes to 72%.
Target Audience of Zomato
When it’s come to marketing research, Zomato digs deep. The target audience of Zomato falls in the age group of 18-35 years. The age bracket is important as they possess smartphones.
People of those age brackets dine out with colleagues and friends. They look for the best restaurants near to their places.
This makes Zomato a go-to app to discover restaurants. Their third parameter is the target audience. They are mainly college-going students and working professionals.
Partners of Zomato
London & Partners and Uber are two major partners of Zomato. London & Partners does the extending virtual operations in European countries.
In 2020, Zomato bought Uber Eats. Now, Uber has 9.99% ownership in Zomato. This association reiterates Uber’s objective of ‘creating opportunity through movement’. So any Uber rider can quickly look for restaurants on their phone while on the move.
Sustainability
The target audience of Zomato is today’s consumers. Today’s people prefer brands that are focused on reducing carbon footprint. According to net0, around 73% of consumers choose brands that can reduce climate change.
The best thing is that Zomato is aware of it. So when you log into the Zomato app, you get to see options such as Climate Conscious Delivery.
Zomato’s Digital Marketing Strategy
Zomato is India’s first unicorn in the food tech industry. Zomato has successfully registered its presence in the minds and emotions of the Indian youth with the help of its friendly and all-rounded digital marketing strategy.
- SEO
With the help of both organic and paid traffic, Zomato has got great visibility on search engines. It is armed with a strong SEO strategy for its users. So, if you use Moz to do a quick domain analysis of Zomato’s website, you’ll get to see the below-mentioned results.
- Ranking Keywords – 587.6K
- Domain Authority – 87/100
- Top Ranking Keyword – Zomato
- Top Search Competitors – Top is Zomato’s website with a visibility of 46.70, followed by websites like Facebook and Yelp.
- Top Linking Domains – Examples of these are sites like Google, LinkedIn, YouTube, Microsoft and others.
Do a Google search using key phrases like ‘food order online’, ‘online food delivery near me, etc.
On top of the search results, you will get to see the paid ads of Zomato.
If you check the Google Keyword Planner, you will be able to see the above-mentioned keywords have an average monthly search volume of 1K to 100K. Zomato also ranks for keywords that have low monthly search volumes. Examples of these are ‘freshly meals’, ‘best food delivery’, and ‘healthy food delivery’. These keywords clock 10 to 100 searches in a month.
So you can understand that it targets all volumes of keywords.
Keeping aside the above ones, the restaurant in the app has the ability to rank on the search engines. The app itself is mobile-friendly and quite easy to navigate. You just have to decide the type of dish and find the best restaurants.
The results reveal the search intent of the user. One can select restaurants depending on price, deal and discount, popularity, etc. Over 40% of Zomato’s traffic comes from the app.
- Social Media Marketing
Zomato possesses a unique approach to social media. Zomato’s Vice President of Marketing, Pramod Rao, once said in an old interview that he had given to Social Samosa, “We enjoy having fun conversations with our users on social media and it always feels like we are talking to our friends and this has worked best for us”,
On Instagram and Twitter, Zomato has over 606K & 1.5 million followers respectively. This has helped Zomato to bag the Best Brand Voice in 2020. You will get to see posts that are always trendy and topical. These posts can be of any type. It can be from comparisons to mainstream cultural references or something really humorous. Their posts are known for being funny and known for drawing a lot of engagement from the target audience.
But they also make the segregation according to the intent of their posts on various social media channels. On Instagram, Zomato generally shares memes or images of delectable dishes. On Twitter, they run contests. On Facebook, they post blogs and on YouTube, they upload videos.
- Online Marketing Campaigns
There are many successful ad campaigns that Zomato has made.
Zomato uses Google Analytics. Their core team track the behaviour of the users to determine the success of the campaign.
Now, for your good, try to understand the Zomato Premier League marketing campaign.
Zomato knew about the fact that their audience in India follows cricket religiously. So, it gamified the entire marketing campaign. The users of the Zomato App had to predict a winner. So when those users bet on winning teams, they get to taste the great deals.
This campaign was a huge success for Zomato. Around 4 million users participated.
- Email Marketing
Consumers feel assured and confident when they discover their names in every marketing communication. Consumers prefer personalization. According to a report by Epsilon, 80% of consumers are ready to make a purchase from a brand that offers personalized experiences.
Zomato also knows about this idea. Their email marketing strategy keeps a good eye on what the target audience is ordering and eating. However, they are known to carry the right message with humour.
Those who used the Zomato app during the lockdown should be aware of its funny ‘Hire Biriyani’ email. During quarantine, there were more than 44 lakh orders of the dish. Even the CTA was quite a unique one – ‘Hire Now’.
Conclusion
We hope this piece will help you to understand the digital marketing strategy of Zomato. Proper implementation of this strategy has made Zomato the number one in the food-tech business in India.
