Social Samosa takes a closer look at Meesho's marketing strategy, speaks to Nilesh Gupta about how it is catering to the Indian consumers' demands with affordable prices and becoming a one-place-stop for all their needs.
Founded in 2015 by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, Meesho started with a unique model, where people could earn from home, without any investments, any capital. And this was one of the biggest reasons why the brand has grown to a level their monthly active users have reached 125 million.
It started building its brand image by targeting retailers first and then becoming a place for women sellers to grow their businesses. The brand’s marketing largely focuses on communicating with the regional audience and positioning themselves up as a place where consumers can find all their needs without burning a hole in their wallets.
Today, Meesho operates in a huge ecosystem of 350 billion USD e-commerce category and has seen a revenue jump of 4.5-fold to Rs 3,232 crore in FY22 from Rs 792 crore in FY21.
In conversation with Nilesh Gupta, Sr. Director of Growth - Meesho, Social Samosa takes a deep dive into Meesho's marketing strategy, how they use their digital space to better communicate with the users and has made themselves the affordable pit-stop for every Indian’s digital needs.
A place for retailers
As a young brand in its foundation days, Meesho heavily targeted the sellers first. By sharing user experience on how the platform helped grow their business and sharing tips for budding users, the brand made a community of resellers through their campaigns.
These campaigns in their early days also talked about being the best platform to earn profits as a reseller and gaining more users.
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For the Indian women
Meesho’s initial objective of empowering resellers also focused on empowering women to start their own businesses and so on. This idealogy was reflected in many of their campaigns through the years.
Nilesh pointed out that the platform has over 1.5 lakh women sellers on the platform today and it still thrives on the shoulders of businesswomen.
As a platform that is run by women and caters to women, it started focusing on women in its advertising campaigns too. One of its campaigns, #MyStoreMystory focused on Indian women who overcome all social and economic barriers to claim what they rightfully deserve. It showcased a woman as a homemaker and a Meesho Entrepreneur.
Similarly, their latest campaign was dedicated to women-led businesses in India, shedding light on the stereotypes of people’s idea of a working woman and celebrating women in business from all walks of life.
The affordability factor
Apart from being a platform for women and their businesses, the brand has been slowly establishing itself as a one-stop shop for all the user's needs, at an affordable price.
As a young brand, Meesho focused on conversing with the everyday Indian without any celebrity endorsement. But as the platform grew out of its social commerce era to becoming a larger e-commerce platform, the brand started associating with multiple celebrities.
Nilesh mentioned that celebrities, in general, have been a great value addition to Meesho as they bring in their credibility factor that resonates well with the audiences and thus the brand plans on leveraging that in a big way.
Apart from celebrity endorsements, the brand has adopted a season-specific approach as well, which explores all the genres of products the brand has to offer and connects with the audience. This seasonality approach to marketing is seen in its campaign '" title="">Garmi ko bolo Goodbye.'
The regional connect
According to a report by Unicommerce, Tier II and III markets have grabbed a larger share of the e-commerce segment in the last few years. The e-commerce market share of Tier III cities grew from 34.2% in 2021 to 41.5% in 2022, while tier 2 cities rose from 19.4% to 21.4% during the period.
Meesho has always focused on the needs of Tier II and III markets that often buy loose, unbranded and local products as per their daily needs.
Nilesh said, “Since India on a larger scale relied on the unbranded tail but didn’t have a platform that served their needs; Meesho aimed at tapping this audience and by bringing this value proposition itself, we opened ourselves up to tier two, three, more in a very big way.”
To further make it more user-friendly, Meesho added 8 new regional languages to the app with an eye on 377 million potential users across different regions. Apart from its app, the regional focus is also evident in the brand’s communication. Their video campaigns are often made in multiple languages, aimed targeting diverse audiences.
This regional approach has proven beneficial for the brand. After tweaking their in-app design taking into consideration that most of their sellers were not digitally native, the platform saw their ad revenue shoot up by 30%.
Digital-heavy approach
Continuing on their conversation around affordable positioning in the e-commerce space, Meesho’s extends this to their digital front as well.
As a digital-first brand, the digital marketing space has played an integral part in Meesho’s growth. In the initial days, digital marketing took a good share of the pie, mentioned Nilesh. As time went by, the brand started exploring other mediums like TV, and print and focused on things like branding and others.
Despite this, the brand’s digital presence continues to be one of the biggest factors that drive the audience to the brand. Their Instagram handle has collected 2.2 million followers and similarly, it has a YouTube following of 1.1 million subscribers.
Nilesh told Social Samosa that the two large advertisers, Facebook and Google enjoy an alliance share in the digital marketing segment for the brand.
Influencer Marketing plays a big role in the brand's dynamic on the digital front. As the brand has a vast reach beyond the metros and caters to the whole of India, regional content creators are roped in to connect with the audience as well.
Additionally, because of Meesho, the digital space has seen a rise in affordable fashion creators on the gram, acting as an organic reach for the brand.
Apart from the organic reach, their social media focuses on humour as a prominent way to communicate with the audience. Meme marketing is one of their properties which resonates well with the users as well.
Nilesh pointed out that if a brand can blend information and entertainment together, they can reach a wider audience; just like Meesho did.
Social commerce and vocal for local to guide Meesho’s future
Nilesh concluded by saying that as the consumer trends are drifting more towards social commerce and the digital front, Meesho aims on going big on these two fronts in the coming year, and this will be reflected in the campaigns and other verticals.
With e-commerce giants playing and sharing a major chunk of the industry in the country for years now, Meesho seemingly emerged as a disruptor that catered to the Indian audience's needs and monetary capacities. With the industry growing at a rapid scale, the want for more ‘Indian first’ brands has increased among the consumers and brands like Meesho fit right in.
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