Zomato was launched by Mr Deepinder Goyal in 2008. In the initial years, the brand was known as ‘Foodiebay’, but eventually was renamed to Zomato, which then was a restaurant searching platform that offered details related to the place (cafe/restaurant, etc.) – menus, price lists, autonomous reviews, and other details.
Over the years, Zomato has grown exponentially and has become a dominant brand in the online food delivery industry. The top digital marketing company in Gurgaon found- that by constantly applying multiple digital strategies with strategic expansion plans, Zomato has successfully been able to spread its operations across 24 countries and over 10,000 cities globally.
Achievements:
- Started its journey from Delhi, India, the homegrown project has now become one of the largest food aggregators in the world.
- In its 12 years of journey, the brand has acquired 12 startups from across the world.
- In 2017, the company claimed that its revenue grew by 81% in this particular year.
- Zomato recorded a 225% rise in revenue in the first half of the Financial Year 2020.
Zomato’s Business Model:
Although, in the early years, Zomato was not much focused on its revenue generation strategy, however, the food delivery business strengthened its presence and created multiple channels to generate revenue over the years. Here is a simple breakdown of Zomato’s Business Model:
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Restaurant Listing/Advertising:
Since the brand began as a restaurant directory, advertising by hotel owners has always been a major part of the platform’s revenue generation strategy. However, now, with food delivery in the picture, Zomato charges the restaurants to be placed on the application feed.
This on one hand is an excellent opportunity for restaurants to improve their visibility and achieve more customers, and on the other hand puts Zomato at a more advantageous position – as it showcases more restaurant partners for its customers (thus, more orders), and revenue from listing.
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Food Delivery:
Based on each order, the food delivery platform charges a commission from the restaurants, while Zomato users pay the delivery fee as well. The commission is then split between the brand and the delivery partner.
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Subscription Programmes:
Zomato offers a subscription programme with the name ‘Zomato Gold’ where the users pay a subscription fee and are given access to a loyalty programme which includes exclusive discounts and offers. Also, the restaurants have a separate programme, where they pay to get their hand on additional services like live tracking, Zomato-branded tamper-proof packaging and more.
Apart from these, the food delivery giant has been working on innovative discoveries to generate new revenue plans. Some of the latest revenue strategies included White Label Access, Live Events and Zomato Kitchen.
Mission: Zomato’s mission is to ensure nobody has a bad meal.
Vision: Zomato wants to be the ‘Google’ of food. Their vision is to be the global platform when someone is looking for food locally.
Motto: Every Meal Matters.
Target Audience:
One of the best digital marketing companies in Delhi NCR understands that Zomato has a very specific targeted audience, the people between the age of 18-35 years, who have access to a smartphone device and are comfortable in operating a mobile application.
Based on its services, the target audience is majorly divided into two types of customers: people who want to get their food delivered and the other group of people who wish to dine out.
The majority of Zomato’s audience includes corporate professionals who wish to order their food in the office, students from hostels, or people who love to enjoy outside food on occasions.
Competitive Analysis:
The food industry has been fairly competitive with brands like Swiggy and FoodPanda doing amazingly good. Google maps as well included the restaurant listings which showcase the customer reviews, pictures and more.
Fortunately, Google has not yet stepped in the food business, and Zomato still remains the people’s favourite restaurant discovery tool.
In the past years, UberEats was also one of the biggest competitors for Zomato, until 21st January 2020, when Zomato acquired the food delivery biz for around $350 million.
Zomato’s Focus on Tech:
Technology has always been a potent weapon for this food delivery platform and has helped it to stand out of the crowd. The best website development company in Gurgaon has enlisted the brand’s major attractions for the users:
- Zomato’s website load speed is very fast, and the mobile application is extremely easy to operate.
- The brand strives to create an incredible user interface for its visitors.
- The team has tapped into the power of data science, which has led the brand towards success.
- Zomato’s data-driven approach has provided the business with a competitive edge in various services including delivery time, ad targeting, and logistics.
Marketing Strategy behind Zomato’s Success:
While studying the marketing journey of Zomato, the most important fact that we came across is how the food delivery business has managed to generate an outstanding omnichannel strategy with a seamless blend of Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Video Marketing, Content Marketing and Out-of-the-home Advertisements.
So, let us peek into Zomato’s marketing practices, one platform at a time:
Zomato’s Approach towards Social Media:
The leading social media marketing agency in Gurgaon found that Zomato utilizes the following social platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn and Pinterest. When it comes to social media, the food-tech brand believes in taking a simple yet effective approach which helps the business to establish a strong bond with its customers:
- The marketing team at Zomato clearly understands the power of social media and leverages it as a platform to connect with its users, to receive feedback, suggestions, complaints and much more which has helped the brand to strike a chord with its users.
- When it comes to content, the brand believes in quality rather than quantity, which is why the brand has witnessed great engagement with its followers.
- Zomato’s social media posts never miss to meet the business’ standards while maintaining a friendly tone.
Here are some of the most remarkable examples of great social media content by Zomato:
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Remember when Avengers was a hot topic in the market, well Zomata had something of its own in mind. This is what the creative team at Zomato did.
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The brand leveraged the popularity of TV shows, such as Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother, House of Cards, among others, to be the talk-of-the-town. This is how it turned out:
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Using sarcasm on social media has always been the thing by Zomato:
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Making the most of the moment by creating humorous social media posts around pop-culture topics and hot trends which are garnering attention across digital platforms.
Do it like a Pro. pic.twitter.com/ccleMAnR4v
— zomato india (@ZomatoIN) September 10, 2019
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When it comes to social media, users always have their eyes on interesting contests, but Zomato took these contests to a whole new level with its #ZomatoLoot campaign.
After constant criticism by the customers on the butter chicken ad on youtube, the biz tried to replace those annoying advertisements with something more entertaining. In that attempt, the brand announced a UGC campaign on Instagram, asking the users to create an outstanding ad for the brand. This campaign also led to Zomato garner brownie points from its followers – as they accepted how they themselves are tired of watching the same ad, and wanted to do something quirky for their brand’s marketing. Zomato also offered a price of Rs 25 Lakh for the creator of the winning video.
This is how this contest was announced:
Winner Entry:
This contest did wonders for the brands and attracted the eyes of thousands of users and have so far got 4000+ entries with some really fascinating video ads.
Search Engine Optimization by Zomato:
The best SEO company in Gurgaon found that Zomato has been performing incredibly in its SEO practices which is why it has managed to get over 36.8m organic visitors per month. Here is a quick look into Zomato’s SEO performance:
The above picture shows Zomato’s outstanding performance, and here is how the team has reached such a great level:
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Zomato uses Internal Linking to rank higher:
A huge share of Zomato’s organic traffic comes from keywords like “restaurants near me” or “cafes near me”. Zomato, aiming to become a restaurant aggregator, tries to rank for these keywords as well.
This internal linking structure has been performing well for the brand and attracts thousands of customers daily.
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Zomato’s huge listing:
The Zomato website has been built following an E-commerce structure which consists of thousands of restaurants and millions of pages. The more the pages, the more chances Zomato has of ranking on the top of the SERP page.
Now the fact is, these listings are created by the restaurants directly and include the required keywords as well.
Munchies – The Zomato Blog:
Munchies has always been an essential part of the Zomato website as it has proven to be the most valuable and efficient resource for sharing the latest news, brand values, company culture, valuable lessons and a lot more.
The brand attracts visitors to the blog by utilizing all its social media platforms and integrating relevant keywords in the blog.
Online Paid Advertising:
The best digital marketing company in Delhi NCR understands that Zomato consistently runs Google Ads and targets keywords related to online food delivery, food, restaurant names and more. It targets users whose intent is to get food delivered to them.
Not just this, the food delivery platform also utilizes Social Media advertisements to reach out to its potential audience based on their taste and preferences.
Zomato’s OOH Campaigns:
The food-app brand amused the audience, gave a burst of good laughter and convinced the viewers to get on the app to order their favourite food with several out-of-the-home campaigns which were run in association with MOM and the in-house creative team.
This campaign was designed with the objective of sending out the brand messages, but, in a quirky way.
This campaign was not limited to outdoor advertising because the team decided to share these amazingly designed creatives on the social media platforms as well, which in turn received thousands of likes from the users.
In 2019, Zomato spent Rs ₹1214 Crore On Advertising and reported a 3X revenue growth.
Top Digital Campaign by Zomato:
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#OrderForMom: The focal point of these campaigns were mothers who spent their time in the kitchen cooking delicious meals for their family, while it targeted the children who sit and relax while their mother did all the hard work. The campaign was intended to inspire each individual to celebrate mother’s day.
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Safety levels: Mom Approved: In the light of the global pandemic, Zomato launched a very engaging video marketing campaign showcasing a typical quarantine mealtime.
The video was created specifically to showcase how the brand takes measures to ensure safe delivery for its customers, and has undoubtedly created an enormous impact on the viewers, as the brand was able to receive more orders as we progressed into the pandemic.
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On-Time or Free:
In 2019, Zomato launched a campaign where the customers were promised free food if the food is not delivered within time. This was the first-ever app to offer guaranteed on-time delivery to the customers.
The brand also launched a TVC based on these ‘thoda sa late ho jaata’.
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Push Notifications:
Quirky, on-time, and personalized push notifications by Zomato mostly entices the users into ordering from the platform. This digital strategy allows Zomato to be closer to the user and encourages them to order the food in their cart.
Conclusion:
Zomato has undoubtedly proven to be an epitome of innovative marketing, which has been a key factor in turning the brand into the world’s largest food delivery platform. One of the best digital marketing agencies in Delhi NCR understands that a 360-degree marketing strategy is a must for any brand to achieve a leading position. Zomato’s creative marketing strategies have helped the brand to improve its credibility and earn the trust of the customers.
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