Marketing to rural consumers - the indigenous way
Sanjay Kaul, Director, Impact Communications
Today everyone seems to be impacted by the economic slowdown. However this is largely an urban phenomenon thereby highlighting the significance of the rural market. Rural consumer is neither a big borrower from banks nor an investor in stock market. With consistent monsoons and increased public spending the per capita income growth in rural India remains insulated from meltdown shocks. Industry analysts expect the growth across sectors in rural India despite urban slowdown trends.
The past decade has seen corporate focusing on rural India with various flagship initiatives. Companies have started realizing that to achieve the incremental growth and for customer acquisition it is imperative to reach out beyond cities and unlock the untapped rural potential. We have with us success stories of innovative strategies from HUL, ITC and Indian Oil etc. Still the best of the initiatives have not met the pan India spread as these are largely infrastructure and investment dependent. Further low ROI is the key reason why rural marketing has not yet taken off as it should have been despite the potential seen ahead.
The current argument is the use of technology solutions to address the above concerns. Technology can definitely impact the reach-out practices and enable cost effective penetration to companies, however innovations and breakthrough are to come with the passage of time.
Rural Marketing practitioners are alive to the fact that major reason for lower advertising spends is primarily due to high investment to engage and reach in rural. In the given scenario the marketers need to explore measurable and above all better ROI solutions within the existing marketing environment and available infrastructure.
Rural India has large existing trade channels and congregation platforms like
Melas/
Mandi/ Sugar Mills. These existing congregative platforms across India have assured visitors on stipulated week days and certain annual/ seasonal periods.
The 25000
Melas held across the country, 47000
Haats across 18 states, 7000 pure grain
Mandis and 450 regulated Sugar mills are handy marketing platforms which remain unexploited or underutilized for rural marketing initiatives. Each platform in itself has huge commercial dimension to make the marketing activities productive with multiple opportunities like communication, sales, display, demonstration, customer engagement, and sampling. More importantly it enables reaching to a larger number at one go compared to isolated village interception models thereby deliver better cost per contact.
Taking the example of the one platform from the catalogue –
Haat, on an average caters to 20 villages. Of the total if we target just one third, a company can reach almost half of the rural consumers.
Over 7000
Mandis, another regulated seasonal rural trade channel, hold a huge potential due to sheer size of farm turnover and geographic reach in rural India. This platform not only provides opportunity to intercept the huge farmer group for a period of fortnight to month bi-annually but also to interact, communicate, demonstrate and influence them.
Mandi is the potential window for farmer reach-out activities in terms of ideal timing as it activates during post harvest time when the farmer is cash-rich. Similar is the case with 450 regulated sugar mills across India with an annual turnover of Rs.150 billon, in which rural farmers constitute a major party in terms of transactions.
Cruising along the congregations, Rural India has in its lap 25 thousand
Melas. These events of celebration in rural areas can be used to showcase wares and initiatives of companies; at the same time it allows them to strengthen the emotional connect of their brands with masses. The
Mela platform attracts all consumer groups including women /girls (who have the social sanction to visit
Melas), making it relevant for marketers to use this platform for mass marketing. This platform is relevant to a diverse product segment, ranging from auto brands to FMCG. Marketers can woo their respective consumer segments through customized consumer engaging activities. The myths surrounding
Melas stands beaten - that people don’t buy in a
Mela. The annual sales across
Melas amounts to approximately Rs.3500 crore and half the outlets at a major
Mela sell manufactured goods. According to an IMRB study, nearly 8000 of these
Melas in rural areas have acquired commercial dimensions thus relevant to corporate. The glaring examples of the same are Nauchandi Mela, Gwalior trade fair and Sonepur Cattle fair etc. which attracts large number of brands for participation. Still a large lesser known chunk remains unexplored by rural marketing practitioners for reach-out initiatives. These untapped chunks are mostly occurring in deeper and media dark areas.
To summarize, rural congregation platforms pave one of the routes to reach out to a large number of consumers in the giant rural market. These trade channels play a pivotal role in village economy. At all these platforms, the rural consumers are in a buying frame of mind and pocket-rich. What we require today is access and interpretation of quality data enabling marketers to plan effective, scalable and measurable solutions across these platforms.
Other columns
For the sake of tolerance
DVD at your doorstep
Death has no domain