The Chronicle of Zomato’s Genius Marketing Strategy

27-03-2024

There are a myriad of options available for consumers to choose when it comes to ordering food online. But Zomato is the first choice for many food connoisseurs. 

Zomato is an Indian multinational restaurant aggregator and food delivery company, headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana, India, with around 4000 employees working in the company (According to the data published by Wikipedia till 2022). Currently, Zomato is providing its services in 23 countries. 

Zomato was founded in 2008 by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah under the name of FoodieBay. In 2010, FoodieBay renamed itself as Zomato, as Foodieway was realizing that it may have indulged in a naming conflict with then e-commerce giant eBay. Initially, FoodieBay used to list restaurants and user reviews of restaurants on their website. It was kind of a recommendation portal for restaurants. 

The founders came up with this idea of listing the menus of restaurants online when Deepinder saw his friend ordering food from different restaurants. One more such incident they mention behind zomato is when Deepinder saw people waiting in a queue for the food. Founders were unsure about sticking to a food listing since the beginning, so they keep changing their short-term vision according to the market fit. 

Zomato’s Marketing Strategies

• Email Marketing: Zomato has a great team for Email Marketing. They always upgrade their level with every email they send to customers. Recently, Zomato’s email about Biryani won the hearts of customers. It had a detailed description of Biryani, why someone should prefer it above others, and added the Call To Action (CTA) as Hire Now.   

• Pop-Up Notifications: Zomato took a step ahead to make their customers happy and make customers order food from their platform. Zomato started sending app notifications like “Hey, your friend ordered for you! Lol, Just Kidding, You know your friend” These notifications will make you laugh as well as remind you that if you are hungry then Zomato is here. Sometimes they outperform with their marketing strategy, as they send you customized notifications specially for you, even with your name and according to the time. 

• SEO: The Zomato team is always making efforts to rank higher in the Google search. Zomato uses keywords like “Food”, “Online food ordering”, “Restaurant names” for Google AdWord.  

• Influencer Marketing: Zomato left no stone unturned to promote their brand. Zomato collaborates with micro and macro influencers, whichever they feel is right for their brand. They promote it through different social media channels which really gain audiences love through their content. Zomato’s YouTube channel has around 508K subscribers, 948K on Instagram, 1.5 Million Followers on X (formerly Twitter), 152K followers on LinkedIn, and 190K followers on Facebook. One of the videos on Zomato’s YouTube channel with Samay Raina and Sahiba Bali has more than 6 Million views. 

In conclusion, Zomato knows their target audience very well. Audience aged between 18 and 35, who know how to use a mobile. Zomato always comes up with ads or videos to promote the lives of their riders. They call their riders “food delivery partners” which shows respect towards everyone associated with the company.  All these strategies help Zomato to become an integral part of our lives. 

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