Swiggy Marketing Strategy: What Makes Swiggy India’s Go-To for Online Orders
🔍Insights
Swiggy started as a simple service that was into just delivering food and has now evolved into a platform that delivers not only food but groceries, essentials, and everything else with a few taps on your phone. Even amidst stiff competition with its largest rival, Zomato, Swiggy has climbed to the top with a staggering 76.35% of the food delivery market in its pocket. But how did it get there? The secret is in its marketing strategy—a mix of innovation, customer focus, and adaptability.
Nandan Reddy, Sriharsha Majety, and Rahul Jaimini's brainchild, Swiggy, have overcome their initial challenges to emerge as a household name in India's on-demand meal delivery market. Despite facing setbacks with their previous venture, an e-commerce platform for small businesses, the founders recognised the potential of the hyperlocal market, which led to the creation of Swiggy in 2014.
The early focus of the company on building a strong logistical network and forging valuable partnerships helped the company begin with just six delivery boys and 25 restaurant partners overcoming the initial hurdle of getting eateries to adopt the service.
Swiggy quickly adapted to the growing demand for on-demand food delivery, and by 2015 it expanded its operations and raised funds of $80 million to fuel its growth. Swiggy’s investment allowed them to expand their reach and operations and connect with over 200,000 partner restaurants in 500 cities across India. In 2022, Swiggy was worth $10.7 billion and was one of India’s leading meal delivery services.
Swiggy Target Market
Swiggy’s Marketing Mix
Key Marketing Strategies of Swiggy
Swiggy Marketing Campaigns
Swiggy Target Market
Though this is Swiggy’s primary audience, the demographic it targets stretches much further. The platform is for people aged from 18 to over 55 years old, without restrictions of profession, demographic area, or interest. Swiggy delivers to anyone who doesn’t want to cook or is unable to, from college students who can’t cook on their own to families who want to avoid cooking on busy days.
Swiggy’s ecosystem is not just about its customer base but also aims at restaurants as key partners. Swiggy’s network consists of these eateries, from small local joints to large chains. Through becoming delivery partners, restaurants use Swiggy’s large audience, while Swiggy makes sure that its customers receive a seamless delivery experience.
Vidhi Punamiya
Swiggy’s Marketing Mix
With its innovative services, customer-centric approach, and great user experience, Swiggy has transformed India's food delivery market. In creating a well-rounded marketing mix, Swiggy has not only satisfied the changing needs of consumers but also set standards of excellence for the competitive food tech industry.
Product
At Swiggy’s core, online food ordering and delivery brings customers to their favourite restaurants. Swiggy’s innovation doesn’t stop here. Instamart, which is a grocery delivery service with lightning-fast delivery times, has only further solidified its place as a market leader.
Swiggy Go is an express delivery service for non-food items, and Swiggy Stores is a one-stop shop for daily essentials for customers with diverse needs. The company also gives Swiggy Money as a digital wallet for easy transactions. Swiggy Super (now rebranded as Swiggy One) goes a step further by dedicating its subscription service to elevating customer loyalty to new heights by providing free deliveries, exclusive discounts, and faster service amongst other perks.
With Swiggy Fresh, Swiggy is focused on fresh produce, and Swiggy Access Kitchens help restaurant partners gain access to rent-free, fully equipped kitchens in underserved areas. The Swiggy Ads platform allows for precise targeting of audiences for businesses, which proves to be a win-win for all stakeholders.
Price
Dynamic pricing strategies help Swiggy strike the perfect balance between affordability and value. Factors such as demand, competition, and delivery distance affect the platform’s pricing, providing customers with the best value. Customers are kept engaged with a lot of frequent discounts, cashback incentives, and exclusive deals that can be availed of by using specific payment methods.
Place
Accessibility and convenience are what their place strategy revolves around. Established across India, Swiggy’s operation spans more than 500 Indian cities, and it has more than 150,000 restaurants as part of its partnerships. Customers can order, track, and pay with its user-friendly app and website.
Hot and fresh deliveries to doorsteps and pick-up options from restaurants are guaranteed by Swiggy’s delivery partners' fleet. Swiggy is not just diversifying into new markets by delivering groceries, medicines, flowers, and gifts but also expanding its footprint in the Indian delivery ecosystem beyond food.
Promotion
The promotional strategies of Swiggy focus on making the brand more relatable by executing creative and relatable campaigns. It stands out in terms of its social media presence, with platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, which are full of funny and engaging content. #SuperSwiggy and #SwiggyIndia are campaigns that have catchy one-liners and puns that can be related to audiences.
Kanimozhi Sivakumar
Key Marketing Strategies of Swiggy
India’s leading food delivery service Swiggy has set a path with a marketing blueprint that is both innovative and effective in reaching out to a huge audience. Swiggy has been able to lead the market by leveraging digital platforms and engaging with customers across multiple touch points and has garnered a lot of traffic from various sources. Below are the key marketing strategies employed by Swiggy:
SEO Strategy
On-page and off-page SEO is what Swiggy focuses on to improve the visibility of its website on search engines. SEO-friendly elements like H1 and H2 tags like “Hungry?” (H1) and “Order food from your favourite restaurants near you” (H2) make the website SEO-friendly so Google can understand what’s on the page.
Keyword research, interlinking, titles, and alt tags are used well by Swiggy to improve its search ranking. Though the backlinking is not very good, Swiggy still ranks well in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and is very visible.
Social Media Strategy
Social media has been masterfully leveraged by Swiggy to connect with its millennial audience on platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. Its Instagram account has over 300K followers and is a mix of witty, topical, and relatable posts that are often designed to entertain as much as they promote food delivery.
Their post about the mysterious monoliths that popped up worldwide in December 2020 is a prime example. But Swiggy used the trend to its advantage and linked it to a sweet Indian dessert to get over 9,000 likes.
Apart from being quick on trends, Swiggy is also known for campaigns that promote user interaction. Their most successful campaign was the #SwiggyVoiceOfHunger challenge, where people using Instagram’s voice note feature stood a chance to win food vouchers for the year.
As a result of this campaign, they saw a 40% increase in followers and a 2,100% increase in traffic. To keep its brand relatable and memorable, Swiggy encourages user-generated content and works with fun shareable content.
Paid Search Engine Marketing Strategy
Paid search engine marketing is a huge investment for Swiggy to drive traffic to their site and increase their visibility. The keyword 'Swiggy' is searched 1.83 million times per month, and Swiggy pays more per click ($0.20) than its rival Zomato ($0.11), according to SEMrush.
So despite the cost, Swiggy’s paid Google ads are working, pulling in a tonne of traffic to its platform. The Swiggy website has 4.3 million unique visitors, and paid search ads account for around 3.95% of the traffic, an increase of 9% over the previous year. With this SEM strategy, Swiggy always stays in front of users actively searching for food delivery options.
Email Marketing
Another strong pillar of its digital marketing is Swiggy’s email marketing. Swiggy achieved a CTR of 7% and an open rate of 25% in 2019, which are both very high compared to the average industry rate. In order to improve the effectiveness of its emails, Swiggy teamed up with Netcore Cloud, using AI to power marketing automation.
By working together, Swiggy was able to send emails directly to the primary inboxes of Gmail users, so their promotions and offers didn’t end up in spam folders. In addition to crafting compelling subject lines, concise titles, and strong CTAs to entice recipients to engage with the content, the brand also frequently includes coupons or exclusive deals.
Meme Marketing
With meme marketing, Swiggy has redefined the digital marketing landscape and proved how humour and timely cultural references can help in building impactful brand engagement. In a time when brands are competing to get noticed, Swiggy has managed a unique and effective way to stand out—staying on top of trending topics and making relevant memes for their audience.
Staying relevant and adding its twist to real-time events is one of the key strategies that sets Swiggy apart, and often it’s done through clever memes. One such example is how Swiggy reacted to the farmer’s protest in India. Rather than avoiding difficult or delicate topics, Swiggy leaped in with a well-thought-out and humorous response that is exactly the type of thing you want from a company that can comment intelligently during tense times.
Swiggy’s meme marketing is simple and relevant, and that’s its power. The way it speaks is very much directed at younger audiences, in particular millennials and Gen Z who are willing to accept authenticity and wit. Swiggy knows that memes are a part of everyday communication and has used it to fuel its social media presence.
TV Advertising
Swiggy’s “Why Is This A Swiggy Ad?” shows the brand’s capacity to enthrall audiences with creativity and innovation through a campaign. The campaign, launched in October, disrupted traditional TV ad formats by using an intriguing question that immediately caught attention: “Why Is This A Swiggy Ad?” It wasn’t just an advertisement; it was a puzzle, a conversation starter, and a channel to involve the audience through user-generated content (UGC).
A strong TV presence backed the campaign, with ads running in prime time slots, many of them featuring mysterious images and questions that would intrigue. The use of social media and print brought viewers to a dedicated website, 'whyisthisaswiggyad.com', where they could go even deeper into the mystery and share their theories. Swiggy’s TV ads were carefully placed on relevant shows that were popular with their target demographic, young, urban audiences.
In-App Advertising
With in-app advertising, restaurants find that they can get more visibility. For instance, users might see sponsored restaurant listings up front on the app’s search results, which will then give featured restaurants more visibility.
The 'Swiggy Pop program’ is a noteworthy feature that displays one item meal at an affordable price in the most prominent section of the app, thus increasing the click-through rates. Restaurants can use these promotions to drive conversions by targeting users based on their preferences and behaviour.
Swiggy Marketing Campaigns
WhatsInAName Campaign
#WhatsInAName Campaign
The #WhatsInAName campaign by Swiggy was a heartwarming success as it encouraged people to remember their delivery partners by their names. By showcasing the personal stories of delivery partners and the need to acknowledge their uniqueness, the campaign resonated with millions of Indians and helped foster respect and empathy.
Voice of Hunger
The creative campaign utilised Instagram’s audio note feature in a fun way. Users were challenged to create sound waveforms in the shape of different food items and send them to the brand via direct message on Swiggy. The brand rewarded participants who completed the challenge with a year’s worth of food vouchers. The campaign was a huge success, and Swiggy got more than 10,000 entries per day.
Swiggy "Karo Phir Jo Chahe Karo"
"Karo Phir Jo Chahe Karo" Campaign
This witty campaign was launched during IPL 2018, and the storyline was simple yet relatable. A man orders just one piece of gulab jamun in a 20-second ad and eats it secretly from his wife. Swiggy’s ad promised to deliver even the smallest orders with convenience, without any complex dialogues. The minimalistic, but charming, approach hit a chord with audiences.
Nitin Konde
Conclusion
It was Swiggy’s marketing strategy that has been the force behind its success in the food delivery space in India. Swiggy has successfully managed to provide for the changing needs of its customers by combining innovation, customer focus, and adaptability.
FAQs
What is Swiggy's marketing strategy?
The key marketing strategies of Swiggy include SEO strategy, social media strategy, Paid Search Engine Marketing Strategy, Email Marketing, Meme Marketing, and TV Advertising, In-App Advertising.
What made Swiggy successful?
Swiggy is committed towards its delivery partners, and for any delivery business, the most important part of their ventures is the delivery partners. The importance of fair rights towards delivery partners, when combined with other factors such as innovation and a customer-centric approach, play a huge role in the success of Swiggy.
What is the aim of Swiggy?
Swiggy aims to elevate the quality of life of urban consumers by providing them with convenience, which can be experienced with just a click.
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