Indian Online Market
I would say a safe estimate of the Indian Online Market would be around Rs 1,000 Cr. While some may argue that its Rs 850 Cr and not really 1K yet, some might even say its more.
Now one thing all of us have noticed in the last year is that the market has seen considerable growth. Hence if you are a Sales exec in an Online / Digital company your targets would have definitely been increased with the reasons being cited as - If the overall pie is growing our bite size should be bigger.
But its not simple.
Facebook is screwing a lot of people!
How?
Well earlier we could blindly assume that 50% of all online spends went to Search.
But now a certain ‘Facebook’ has entered the minds of the Marketing genre. Facebook is pretty much becoming the internet for a lot of people and if your brand is not present on Facebook…you’re doomed! (At least that’s how Social Media Gurus put it).
So now, apart from Google (which has also dived into Display ads and Youtube too has started featuring on every Planners excel sheet), there is Facebook which is taking up a huge chunk!
Not only are brands now paying for Facebook Ads but they are also spending their on ‘Social Media Agencies’ to run their page and some are also spending money to create content for their Facebook page!
So even though the overall market might be growing…
The amount you can get for your portal is reducing. Especially if you are planning on getting a client for a ‘branding’ campaign instead of a ‘CPL’ campaign.
So what can you do?
Well you don’t have to become yet another ‘Social Media Agency’ and update fan pages for brands. You don’t have to become a FB-Media buying agency and hope to take a commission on the spends of the Brand on Facebook…
But what you definitely have to do while pitching is…incorporate a sense of Facebook activity in all your pitches.
The current obsession of brands for blindly increasing their fans will soon pass. It will soon become…am I really benefiting from these 1 Million odd people I have on my page? How can I ‘engage’ them? How can I benefit from them? Why are they not buying my product?
And how is Facebook the ‘evil genius’?
They are making you spend on creating ads to run on Facebook.
They are making you spend to run ads on Facebook.
You are mainly running ads on Facebook and taking traffic to a page within Facebook.
Then they are making you spend to keep these fans engaged within Facebook!
That way, they own you when you make the ad, they own the traffic, and they own wherever the customer is going.
If you are working on a large online portal..
Ask your boss to reduce your targets :-)
