Thread by @_buildd

Zomato is a marketing POWERHOUSE!

1. Discovery ⇒ SEO
2. App downloads ⇒ CTAs
3. Nudge to order ⇒ Push Notifications
4. Overall Brand Awareness ⇒ Social Media

STEAL their iconic marketing strategy that drives 1.5 million orders per day for your own startup! 🧵

Structure:
1) What is Zomato?
2) How does it make money?
3) Zomato marketing strategy
a) SEO
b) CTAs
c) Notifications
d) Social media

Thread continues below 👇

Read the full article on buildd — buildd.co/marketing/zoma…

1/ What is Zomato?

Zomato was founded by 2 IIT Delhi grads Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chopra.

It is an online food delivery platform where users can get food delivered from their favourite restaurants!

Today, Zomato gets 1.5M daily orders & generates revenue of INR 4192 Cr.

2/ But, how does Zomato make money?

To understand Zomato's growth strategy, we'll first have to understand how this startup makes money.

Well, let's begin.

We know Zomato has 4 major wings:
1. Food delivery
2. Dining out
3. Zomato Pro
4. Materials supply business

(contd.)

The first 3 businesses are built on the backbone of its database of restaurants.

Here's how they make money

A) Zomato charges a 7% commission on total order value + some restaurants (with low weekly orders) have to pay a platform fee.

(contd.)

B) Zomato makes money through its ad network. Restaurants pay them to get better placements for their ads.

C) Zomato Pro is a paid subscription with heavy discounts.

So essentially, Zomato makes money when users visit their platform and decide to order food.

3/ Zomato Marketing Strategy

Now we know Zomato's main goal is to
- Drive users to its website or app
- Nudge them to download their app
- Subtly push them to order more.

Here's how it accomplishes this!

(contd.)

1) SEO

On Google, Zomato finds both sets of users who are looking:
a) to order food
b) for restaurant reviews, menus...

So, SEO is an important marketing channel for them.

In fact, 61% of its users arrive on the website through "Search". That's 30M+ monthly visits!

(contd.)

One of the reasons behind their SEO success is their hierarchical site structure!

Structure:
City Subfolder ⇒ Restraunt-name ⇒ Location-name ⇒ Review / Order / Menu / Photos pages

But, today let's explore a different strategy!

(contd.)

Now, apart from the usual restaurant pages, Zomato has a bunch of pages targeting "near-me" type keywords.

For example:
restaurants nearby — 20.3M
bakery near me — 1.3M
bars near me — 3.5M

~500 different "near-me" pages collectively bring 2.5M monthly traffic!

(contd.)

But, how is Zomato able to rank for these high volume, high difficulty keywords? Well, here's how!

1. Keyword infusion = They've infused keywords in the slug & the template page

2. Internal linking = They cleverly add links to similar pages under "Explore near me".

(contd)

3. Topical Authority = Finally, since Zomato has ~500 such pages, they have essentially gained topical authority for the "near-me" type keywords.

Google can see that they have covered the whole "near-me" topic through Zomato's internal links.

So they easily ranks at the top.

2) Nudge to download the App

Now, once these users arrive on the website, the next goal is to make sure they:

Goal ⇒ order food online + repeat their orders a few times during the week.

To accomplish this, Zomato only allows food delivery orders via its mobile app.

(contd.)

So, users can't place orders on the website and have to download the mobile app for ordering.

This in a way seems counterintuitive, right? Because now it takes longer for users to place orders.

Well, Zomato has a very good reason for doing this.

(contd.)

1. Mobile applications are more sticky. You are more likely to use an app multiple times than visit a website on your browser.

2. When a user downloads the app and fills in all the details, Zomato can then entice them with offers and periodic notifications.

(contd.)

But first, Zomato has to drive people to download their app. It does this by displaying a "Download the app" CTA on its website.

1) The top banner reads => "Use App"
2) Bottom window reads ⇒ "Order in App"

(contd.)

3) When a user arrives on the restaurant page, a big window appears with the message ⇒ "Continue in app"

4) Finally, when a user is looking at the menu, a pop-up appears asking them to view the menu in app.

3) Push Notification Strategy

Now, once the user downloads the app, the next goal is to nudge them to order periodically. Zomato does this through push notifications!

But, implementing push notifications can be tricky.

(contd.)

You see, most brands in an attempt to make these notifications entertaining, make them cringy.

Now, there is no avoiding pop-culture references to Bollywood dialogues when it comes to these notifications.

But, Zomato does a great job at making them very effective.

(contd.)

How? Well, it focuses on "timing" & "relevance"!

A) Timing ⇒ Zomato has different kinds of notifications depending on the time or the day.

Example:
May your Monday be... ...as small as the lemon seeds in your Poha ⇒ A Monday notification

(contd.)

B) Relevance ⇒ Depending on past orders and location, Zomato displays relevant notifications.

Example:
Heavy chances of training... ...offers in your area! 🌧

By pacing them out and keeping them relevant, Zomato successfully drives users to order more!

4) Social media

Social media is the best place for brands to continue reminding their users that they exist!

And, seeing a food meme by Zomato on Twitter might get you hungry and push you to order food! 😉

(contd.)

Zomato's social media strategy essentially combines

⇒ wit + food + popular references — a very simple recipe for more engagement.

1) Zomato capitalizing on the Pokemon Go craze!

2) Eating too much and never gaining weight — every person's dream!

(contd.)

3) Two kinds of people!
4) Coffee or Chai?

https://twitter.com/zomato/status/1543824594926153728

Now, Zomato's marketing efforts are obviously not limited to just these 4 areas.

You of course know that Zomato runs ads and a number of different marketing campaigns.

But, these 4 marketing strategies in particular have a very specific intention behind them.

(contd.)

And, given the journey a user goes through on Zomato, logically these strategies make a lot of sense.

Journey
1. User discovers Zomato => SEO, Ads, Social media
2. % of users browse on the platform
3. % of users download the app => "Download App" CTA

(contd.)

4. They share their personal details
5. Periodic nudges to get them to order more => Notifications
6. Overall Brand Awareness => Social media

Zomato is obviously in tune with this journey.

And, regardless to say, they have seen great results — 1.5 million orders per day!

If you liked what you read,
- Give us a follow
- Retweet the first tweet :)

https://twitter.com/_buildd/status/1552147095960064003