term paper on zomato

Marketing Strategy of Zomato - Case Study

Marketing Mastermind, August 2019, Published by IUP Publications

13 Pages Posted: 25 Oct 2019 Last revised: 17 Feb 2023

CMA(Dr.) Ashok Panigrahi

SVKM's Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS)

Date Written: August 31, 2019

This is a case study on Zomato, a pioneer in the e-food business segment of India. The study focuses on the online restaurant aggregator’s products, offers, marketing strategies, customers, and revenues, which have helped it emerge as a truly international brand.

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A Detailed Zomato Case Study-2023

Few brands have expanded exponentially after their launch. One of them is Zomato.

How did they manage to achieve this success?

What did they do to improve their customer base?

What was Zomato’s marketing strategy which they used to attract customers?

We believe that Zomato’s digital marketing strategy played an important role in achieving all these.

This article evaluates a few e-marketing strategies and a detailed Zomato case study.

Zomato Case Study- About Zomato Company

When Zomato started, it aimed to become the best restaurant search and discovery platform.

It had the names of different restaurants, menus, costs, reviews, and other essential details. It offered in-depth information on more than 1.4 million restaurants across 23 countries.

Over the years, it has become a popular online food delivery platform. Now customers can order food from their favorite restaurants by using their website or app.

Zomato has many delivery executives who pick up the order from the eatery and deliver it to the customer’s address.

How was Zomato Started?

Zomato is an Indian group founded by two IIT graduates, Deepinder Goyal, and Pankaj Chaddah, in Delhi NCR in 2008.

Once Deepinder saw his colleagues ordering food from different restaurants. That was when Deepinder came up with bringing these restaurant menus online.

One day they noticed their colleagues standing in a long queue in the cafeteria waiting for lunch.

So they thought about how much time people could save if they did not have to wait and get their favorite food delivered to their doorstep whenever required.

It is how they started the online food delivery service under “FoodieBay” and renamed it “Zomato.” In the initial stage, FoodieBay listed restaurants in Delhi and NCR. But, they soon grew their business in other metro cities like Kolkata and Mumbai.

As FoodieBay started attracting more and more customers, the founders decided to revamp its name to appeal to audiences outside India too. So then they changed the name of FoodieBay to “Zomato.” By 2016, Zomato had its sophisticated app doing food deliveries from registered restaurants.

Zomato Business Model

The success of Zomato lies in its unique Business Model. Zomato is an app whose business model works around food supply online, providing knowledge, user reviews, and menus of partner restaurants. Here are some of the essential components of Zomato’s business model:

1. Customer segments-  The customer segment of Zomato has three different components: Local restaurants, reviews, and users.

2. Zomato provisions-  Zomato has created a well-designed valuation model for its food delivery services. Zomato Gold & Piggybank has enhanced the standard of services that Zomato offers.

3. Alliances of Zomato-  New partnerships with several big names like Visa, Uber Taxi, and Paypal have improved the business model of Zomato.

This online food delivery app provides a discount to advertise its usage and improve its customer base, considering the tough competition in the market. It’s mainly a selling strategy. Zomato soon started its service in the Cloud Kitchen industry too.

Competitors of Zomato

With various new companies launched in the last decade, the food delivery industry has become one of the largest online platforms.

Thanks to companies like Zomato, Swiggy, Uber Eats, FoodPanda, etc., they are changing the food industry quickly.

The online food delivery system is booming in metros and Tier II and III cities. All credit goes to these significant apps in the market.

The online food delivery industry is rapidly evolving and attracts vast money. However, growing competition and unstable growth policies have resulted in few casualties.

Because of enormous losses, companies like TinyOwl and Eat Fresh had to shut their doors.

Even FoodPanda, a popular food delivery app with a presence in over 13 countries, has been attained several times, initially by Delivery Hero and followed by OLA.

However, the company is still struggling to maintain its position in the online food delivery industry.

Zomato Partnership Strategy

Zomato is continuously working with the government to ensure that its services run smoothly without any hindrance.

Furthermore, it makes sure to support millions of people who are part of their food delivery network by earning money to cover the loss if they have lost their money due to some crisis.

Zomato has always been a leader in identifying the importance of videos and using them to its benefit on the YouTube platform.

Zomato plays short, lively, and unskippable video ads on YouTube with a “call-to-action .” It is proven that video ads play an essential role in Zomato’s advertising strategy.

Zomato Digital Marketing Strategies

Zomato is active on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. It has 757K followers, 1.5 million followers on Twitter, and more than 737K followers on LinkedIn.

Zomato communicates with its customers by creating posts on popular subjects.

The brand is aware of its audiences, likes, and dislikes. As a result, it supports material that people love to share, discuss, and reconsider.

To engage customers online, it utilizes popular topics and publishes simple pictures.

During the 2016 Olympics, Zomato promoted its brand on Twitter. The brand used Olympic rings made of coffee and claimed they would receive the gold medal if drinking coffee were a sport.

Another hot subject that Zomato targeted was The “Pokemon Go” video game. Zomato started earning from that too. The brand used the famous Pikachu to promote its brand on Twitter.

Connecting with the customers by Zomato was aided by positing popular themes. Users possibly don’t want to contemplate too much while using social media. Individuals use social media to enjoy and view humorous content.

Zomato’s digital marketing strategies keep on getting adjusted with new trends emerging. They find new methods to attract customers’ attention. Currently, they are doing a fantastic job.

However, they will benefit considerably if they put forth a sustained effort.

These people are skilled enough to make the most of the Email marketing tool. One of the most innovative and effective strategies is Zomato’s email marketing.

Zomato keeps its customers loyal to its company by utilizing appealing subject lines and a drive to action.

The brand ran an email marketing campaign on Amazon Prime Video with the theme of the legendary series Mirzapur Season 2. Zomato used the subject lines from Mirzapur.

In addition, it created a CV for Biryani as a vital part of one of its most prominent email marketing methods. Food-related terms like, for example, “Curriculum Vitae of Biryani” was showcased by Zomato.

In addition, it used the CTA “hire immediately” instead of “order now.” It is the reason why Zomato’s email marketing strategy performed so well.

Regarding SEO, Zomato has put a lot of effort into this field. According to Ubersuggest data, Zomato ranks for around 7,544,348 keywords on June 2023. Its organic traffic is 77,874,441 users every month.

The company lists the top keywords in its niche and designs a webpage for those. This indicates to the search engine that these pages are apt for the user’s search query. It is a great strategy to ensure that your website ranks top.

As of June 2023, Zomato has 12,738, 685 backlinks from different high-authority domains. It, too, helps Zomato to rank higher.

They are active on Social Media too. Zomato has 829K followers on Instagram and around 1.5 M on Twitter.

Zomato Target Audience

Zomato’s target audience comprises people between 18 and 35 with smartphones and well-versed in using different apps.

It focuses on attracting two customers, one who prefers to eat out and another who wants to order food from outside and deliver it to their home. These groups frequently coincide.

The Zomato Gold program offers incentives for those who eat out and offers food delivery service for those who want the food delivered at home.

Individuals who work and want their food delivered to their office, students who live in hostels and need food, those who lack time to prepare their food, and those who occasionally enjoy eating outside under this group.

Digital Marketing Channels Used by Zomato

Zomato uses Google AdWords for its search ad campaigns. It targets terms like “Food,” “Restaurant names,” “Online food ordering,” and many others.

It focuses on attracting people who want food delivered to them. It also runs Google Display ads to target individuals on apps and websites from 3rd parties.

Influencer Marketing Strategy by Zomato

Zomato has advanced the “hyper-local marketing” idea by advertising its material in regional languages and contacting micro-influencers.

It, in turn, increases the credibility of Zomato by enabling them to connect with more and more audiences.

Zomato has focused on Influencer Marketing in its marketing strategy as it identifies its potential.

Whether micro or macro-influencer, Zomato is not afraid to move further and leverages its disrepute to expand its user base.

All of us are aware of Zomato’s humorous takes on different scenarios through its tweets.

Zomato offers content that will make its customers smile, no matter whatever issue they are dealing with currently or the one they encounter regularly.

Moreover, its humor spreads fast and has a powerful impact.

Memes play a significant role in social media, and the brand has mastered the “meme marketing” method as it recognizes its importance.

As a result, the food delivery company attracts a lot of organic traffic. Thanks to the content marketing strategies followed by the brand, which ultimately helps to increase its revenue.

Acquisitions

• Zomato has acquired 12 startups worldwide.
• In 2014, during July, Zomato made its initial acquisition by purchasing Menu-mania for an undisclosed amount.
• The company pursued other purchases, including obedovat.sk and lunchtime.cz, for US$3.25 million.
• In September 2014, the brand acquired a Poland-based restaurant search service, Gastronauci, for an undisclosed amount.
• In December 2014, it attained the Italian restaurant search service, Cibando.
• In 2015, it bought Urbanspoon, a Seattle-based food portal, for an estimated US $60 million.
• Other acquisitions of 2015 by Zomato include Mekanist in an all-money deal, MapleGraph, the Delhi-based startup that built MaplePOS, and NexTable, a restaurant and table reservation management platform.
• In 2016, it bought Sparse Labs, a logistics technology startup, and Runnr, a food delivery startup, in 2017.
• In September 2018, it bought TongueStun, a Bengaluru-based food e-marketplace, for around US$18 million in cash and stock deal.
• In December 2018, it bought a Lucknow-based startup, TechEagle Innovations, focusing on drones for an undisclosed amount. Zomato stated that the acquisition would assist in starting drone-based food delivery in India, establishing technology targeted toward a hub-to-hub delivery network.
• On 21st January 2020, Zomato bought its competitor Uber Eats’ in India, providing 10% of the total business to Uber Eats.
• On 29th June 2021, the company signed an agreement with Grofers to invest about US$120 million in the online grocery market by purchasing 9.3% stakes in the company.
• In 2022 during June, Zomato attained Blinkit for US$568 million in an all-stock deal.

Investors Leaving Zomato 

Uber, which attained 7.8% of Zomato shares when Zomato bought its Indian subordinate of Uber Eats, left Zomato on 3rd August 22.

The shares were sold at around $392 million to protect Uber against the losses. ICICI Prudential Life and Fidelity purchased the Zomato stakes.

As per the reports published on 4th August 2022, Tiger Global sold half of its Zomato shares.

According to the news, the American Investment company sold the shares between 25th July and 2nd August 2022.

As a result, tiger Global had a total of 5.11% shares in Zomato, now 2.77% after the sale.

What are the Future Plans of Zomato?

Online food delivery platforms, Zomato and Swiggy, hit an all-time high in sales volumes during 2021, as most people stayed indoors due to an increase in Covid-19 cases.

Zomato said it earned more than 100 crores in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), which shows the value of food ordered through this platform- compared to Rs. 75 crores it had achieved the previous year on 31st December.

While Zomato’s sales have been rising, the brand can still not make gains due to huge payments led by marketing and discounts.

It posted a total loss of Rs. 1,222 crores for March, a rise of about 50% since the previous year.

However, according to analysts, the food delivery business has a vast scope as it is estimated that the brand will achieve a turnover of $110 billion by 2025.

Zomato’s revenue increased 123% to Rs 4,109 crore in the financial year of 2021-22.

On the other hand, the brand’s loss increased by 24% to Rs. 1,098 crores. The brand’s annual report said its average monthly transacting customer base increased by nearly 116%.

The online food delivery giant, Zomato, narrowed its focus on three essential areas of online food ordering and delivery: food supply to restaurants through “Hyperpure” and fast commerce.

So Zomato started focusing on three vital areas: online food ordering and delivery, Hyperpure, and Quick commerce.

The brand’s online food delivery business is stable and headed toward productivity. As a result, online food delivery has enormous scope for growth in the future.

However, while restaurant food intake has risen in the last few years, its overall penetration in India is still drastically low compared to its worldwide competitors.

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Shareholders of Zomato

Info Edge India owns the largest share in Zomato. This company is a media and internet firm and owns a 23.9% stake in the company. 

Some of the major shareholders in Zomato include:

Did you know?

Deepinder Goyal, the co-founder and CEO of Zomato, owns a 4.3% stake in the company. 

Business Model of Zomato

Zomato provides a treasure trove of information, including restaurant names, addresses, contact details, and user-generated reviews and ratings. This helps the audience discover new and unique restaurants.

Zomato utilises the power of the restaurant depository and delivers food orders from these restaurants. Since almost every major restaurant is listed on Zomato, the users’ ability to switch to different apps is drastically reduced. They deliver food quickly to the address of the customer and charge a small fee in exchange for this service.

Zomato is earning money from a total of 5 segments, they are:

• Food Delivery
• Hyperpure (B2B Supplies)
• Quick Commerce (Blinkit)
• Going-out (Events platform)

Major Competitors of Zomato

Swiggy is a powerful rival of Zomato, forcing the company to innovate regularly due to the extremely low customer switching cost. As one of Zomato’s primary rivals, Swiggy has cemented its position in the Indian market, posing a strong threat to Zomato’s market share. 

Uber Eats is a company that falls under Uber Technologies and serves 60 countries; it is one of the leading food delivery platforms in the world. Zomato has acquired Uber Eats’ India operations, but Uber Eats still stands as a formidable competitor to Zomato in foreign markets.

DoorDash mainly serves in the United States and Canada. The company has built a reputation for its extensive restaurant partnerships and robust delivery network. 

EatClub operates in 5 metro cities and has eight brands, such as Box8 and Mojo Pizza. They come across as a very strong contender for Zomato. 

Key Data of Zomato

Here is some important market data of Zomato.

Financial Highlights

Income statement.

Profitability Ratios

Shareholding Pattern

SWOT Analysis of Zomato

• Globally available: Zomato expanded its services to various countries and made a global footprint, encouraging international reach and providing access to diverse markets. 
• Leading food delivering services : Zomato has become a leader in the food delivery industry. Its food ordering and delivery services cover more than 1,000 cities and have 14.7 million monthly average transacting customers.
• High Competition – Zomato operates in a highly competitive market, with various food delivery giants like Swiggy, Uber Eats, and EatClub competing for the same customer base.
• Operational challenges – The company faces several operational challenges as a food delivery company, such as delivery delays, food quality issues, and logistical problems. These issues can result in negative customer feedback and reduced customer loyalty, ultimately hurting the company’s profitability.

Opportunities

• Expansion through sustainable practices : The company is capitalizing on the growing demand for sustainable practices by expanding its eco-friendly initiatives.
• Revenue streams: The company diversifies revenue streams and enhances user engagement. Zomato must expand faster than others to stay ahead of the curve.
• New Users: Nowadays, smartphones and internet users have increased tremendously. This will help Zomato gain new users and audiences. 
• Fragile Business model: Economic factors can affect consumer dining and food delivery spending, potentially impacting revenue.
• Loss turning segments: The company loses a significant chunk of money in the Quick Commerce segment and thus has to return lower profits at a consolidated level. 

Zomato is building brand recognition, global reach, and user-generated content to contribute to its success in the food delivery industry. Zomato faces lots of challenges, constantly innovating and improving its services to stay ahead of the competition. They must maintain their position and take more initiatives to grow and expand their business. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Who is the ceo of zomato.

Deepinder Goyal heads the company as the CEO.

Is Zomato profitable?

Zomato turned profitable for the first time in the quarter ending June 23. The company produced a profit of INR 2 Crores.

What is the former name of Zomato?

Zomato was founded as FoodieBay in 2008 by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah.

How many segments does Zomato report?

Zomato has 5 segments, namely – Food Delivery, Hyperpure, Quick Commerce, Going-out, and Others.

Is Zomato used outside India?

The company is operational in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and UAE.

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Zomato Marketing Strategy: A Comprehensive Case Study

By Aditya Shastri

Some brands have grown exponentially since their inception. Zomato is one of them. How did they manage it? What did they do to increase their customer base? What did they do to keep their consumers coming back? We think Zomato’s Marketing Strategy played a significant part in all this, especially its digital marketing strategy. This article analyses a few digital marketing strategies used by the company to give you an insight into what they have been doing.

About Zomato

When Zomato launched, it aimed to be the best restaurant search and discovery platform. It had the names of various restaurants, their menu, their prices, reviews, and other details. It provided in-depth information on over 1.4 million restaurants across 23 countries.

Over the years, it has converted itself into an online food delivery platform. People can now order food from the restaurants near them using their app or website. Zomato has delivery executives who pick up the order from the eatery and deliver it to the address provided by the customer.

Now that we are discussing Zomato, let’s take a look at their marketing strategy too.

What’s new with Zomato?

Here’s what was buzzing around Zomato recently:

• Zomato acquired Blinkit, a quick commerce app in 2022 with a vision to enter the quick commerce space dominated by Swiggy Instamart & Zepto.  
• The food delivery giant also relaunched its “ Gold Loyalty Programme ” at the start of 2023.
• Zomato has started testing an additional Platform Fee of INR 2 on Zomato Gold members.
• Crocs and Zomato collaborated to celebrate the Monsoon Season in style. More about this campaign is discussed below.

Let’s now understand the target audience of Zomato better with the help of a buyer persona.

Buyer Persona of Zomato

A buyer persona generally refers to the detailed information of an ideal customer of a company. When it comes to Zomato, people from India use it the most. This buyer persona will help you understand the attributes of regular a Zomato user.

Buyer’s Persona

Profession:

College Student

• Affordable dining experiences
• Time-saving meal options
• Discovering trendy local restaurants
• Getting discounts for budget-friendly choices

Interest & Hobbies

• Exploring diverse cuisines
• Attending food festivals
• Consuming cooking content
• Posting food experiences on social media

Pain Points

• Inconsistent information on social media channels.
• Limited college budget
• Scarcity of cooking time
• Unreliable restaurant reviews

Social Media Presence

From the table above we can conclude that an ideal Zomato User uses the app for quick food delivery solutions or he/she is a foodie. In both cases, Zomato needs to evaluate the attributes further to understand future challenges.

Want to know about the current challenges of Zomato? Read a detailed SWOT Analysis of the brand before moving on with marketing strategies.

Zomato Marketing Strategies

1. search engine optimisation.

Zomato has put a lot of effort into SEO.

As per Ubersuggest data, it ranks in India for 2,494,988 keywords as of August 2023. Its organic traffic is 30,484,205 sessions per month. The stats are low compared to their SEO performance in February 2023. However, it is 2.5 times better than their closest competitor, Swiggy’s SEO Performance.

It is very difficult to get to know the Search Engine Optimisation techniques used by Zomato because they have blocked all the SEO tools from scanning their sites. However, we have tried to find out some of their techniques and list them here.

Here are some of their SEO Strategies: 

Keywords in URL

Zomato takes the top keywords in their niche and creates webpage URLs of them. This tells the search engine that their pages are relevant to the search query of the user. This is a very good strategy to ensure that your website ranks.

Zomato gets backlinks from 12,486,689 unique domains. It also gets 233 backlinks from high-authority domains like .gov and .edu domains. All this increases the Domain Authority of Zomato’s domain and helps it rank higher .

Keywords on the web pages

Keywords that include food names, restaurant names, and phrases like “order food online in Mumbai” tell the search engines that these pages have the content related to these search queries.

2. Social Media Marketing

Zomato is active on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. As of August 2023, it has 859k followers on Instagram, 1.9 million followers on Facebook and 1.5 million followers on Twitter.

Let’s analyze how their posts are:

Zomato engages with the audience by posting on trendy topics. The brand understands the audience’s nature. Hence, it promotes content that makes users share it, comment on it and view it again and again. It utilizes trendy topics and posts simple images in order to interact with viewers online.

One of the most noteworthy events in the field of sports is the Olympics. During the 2016 Olympics, Zomato posted something like this.

Another trendy topic of the time was the game “Pokemon Go!” Zomato capitalized on that as well.

Zomato gave a twist to the topic of the Panama Papers.

Posting on trendy topics built connectivity with the audience. Probably, users don’t wish to think much when they are on social media. As a matter of fact, users are there on social media to enjoy and see funny content. And, when such content appears on their news feed, expect your content to be shared. For sure!

Current Affairs

Many in the United States and people across the world know about the border issue between the United States and Mexico. Newly elected President Donald Trump had promised that he would ensure that Mexico would build the wall between the two nations and pay for it.

Zomato had some different plans in mind. Current topics were related to food. “Taco lovers” would have surely reacted to this post in large numbers. Such posts leave an impression on the social media audience.

Comparisons

Zomato has been a master of utilizing this form of engagement. There are tons of examples to showcase how comparisons have been carried out by Zomato.

Here you go:

Girls tend to check the name of the dish and decide what to eat, while guys usually look at the price of each dish before selecting it.

Yet another splendid image that showcases how people eat.

Yet, the best one is here,

There are two ways people eat Pizza.

You can relate to such images just by looking at them. You will like, share, comment, and recommend to others. That’s what Zomato wants, engagement with you, interaction with you, a real-life user.

Connectivity with the audience

‘How I ate your butter’.

Sounds wrong, right? Does it remind you of something else?

It has to. This ad was made by keeping in mind the American sitcom ‘How I Met Your Mother?’

Isn’t it similar to Game of Thrones?

How can Indians forget this? Demonetization!

Users can relate to many things. Right from lifestyle or incidents in the life of actors-actresses to social media content; users love such content to which they can relate.

Recently, Blinkit and Zomato collaborated on an advertising campaign featuring slogans on billboards. Blinkit’s billboard read “Doodh mangoge, doodh denge” (Ask for milk, we will deliver it), while Zomato’s billboard read “Kheer mangoge, kheer denge” (Ask for kheer, we will deliver it). These billboards have gained a lot of attention online.

Wait. There is more to it.

You won’t miss out on this.

It is related to your food habits. Zomato uses info-graphics in a way which audience can relate to. 96% of the youngsters would relate to this image with ease.

Ultimately, how can we miss out on sarcasm? Isn’t Facebook fully loaded with such content?

Check out how Zomato posts sarcastic content

And beyond that

While we are sure; you wouldn’t like to miss these ones.

Zomato uses the factor of making people relate to their content to increase engagement and appeal to their audiences. This strategy has worked well for them on social media platforms. You can also ace the social media game like Zomato by implementing these steps.

3. Push Notifications

Another strategy that Zomato has mastered is Push Notifications. Once a user downloads the Zomato App, Zomato keeps nudging them via quirky push notifications to order something.

The reason why their push notifications stand out from the rest is because they use related and Gen-Z language in their copy. Here are a few examples: 

4. Paid Advertising

Zomato runs Search Ad Campaign using Google Adwords . It targets keywords related to food, ordering online, names of restaurants, and much more. It targets users whose intent is to get some food delivered to them.

It also runs Google Display ads to target users on third-party websites and apps.

Along with this, it runs promotions on Facebook and Instagram to target users on these platforms.

Marketing and Advertising Campaign Examples

Here are some of the unique and successful advertising campaigns of Zomato:

1. The story of Raksha and Bandhan 

For the 2023 Raksha Bandhan campaign, Zomato shared a very unique ad campaign highlighting that siblings can’t do with and can’t do without each other.

2. Zomato vs Zomato Campaign 

Zomato used the entire confusion about the pronunciation of Zomato’s word as an idea and created an entire campaign with cricket legends who once argued on the pitch – Harbhajan Singh and Sreesanth.

3. Humans of Zomato featuring Delivery Agents 

Another gemstone of a series by Zomato is ‘Humans of Zomato’ where delivery agents are interviewed in a fun way by Zomato Anchors. This really created an emotional connect with the audience, showing that Zomato is compassionate towards the delivery agents.

4. Breaking Breads with Founders & CEOs of Food Brands 

Inspired by a globally renowned series – Breaking Bad, Breaking Breads is a series on Youtube where Zomato conducts podcasts with the founders of Food Brands like Farzi Cafe, Biryani by Kilo, etc. 

Failed Campaigns of Zomato 

Zomato more than often grabs attention with its unique marketing. But, there have been a few times when the campaign failed to connect with the audiences and gained backlash. 

Here are a few examples of failed campaigns of Zomato:

1. The Kachra Ad 

Zomato wanted to sarcastically draw parallels between a legendary character from the movie Lagaan-Kachra and World Environment Day. This met with a lot of backlash from the viewers who felt the ad made a mockery of untouchables, specifically Dalits. 

Here’s the apology that Zomato released after taking the video down:

2. Har Customer Hai Superstar  

Starring Katrina Kaif and Hrithik Roshan, the main goal of this ad campaign was to ensure that customers don’t talk to delivery agents in a condescending manner. Zomato wanted to highlight the unexpected conditions that delivery agents have to work in. 

However, this ad, just after its release, received backlash all over the internet. Some of the viewers commented that Zomato should first improve the basic remuneration of these delivery agents before preaching to the audience. 

3. Billboard Copy in Delhi 

Another instance when Zomato’s tongue-in-cheek moment turned into a nightmare for them is this copy. 

Top Competitors of Zomato 

Here’s the list of top competitors of Zomato:

While other competitors might be very small compared to Zomato, Swiggy can be considered a direct competitor.

As we wrap up our analysis of Zomato’s impressive digital marketing strategy, it’s clear that staying up-to-date with the latest trends and techniques is key to success in the digital marketing world.

Whether you’re a marketing professional or just starting out, be sure to check out our free digital marketing masterclass to gain a solid foundation in the essentials of digital marketing.

Who knows, you might just develop the next big marketing strategy like Zomato’s! Don’t forget to share your thoughts and comments on Zomato’s strategy in the comments below.

Author's Note: My name is Aditya Shastri and I have written this case study with the help of my students from IIDE's online digital marketing courses in India . Practical assignments, case studies & simulations helped the students from this course present this analysis. Building on this practical approach, we are now introducing a new dimension for our online digital marketing course learners - the Campus Immersion Experience. If you found this case study helpful, please feel free to leave a comment below.

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Aditya Shastri

Lead Trainer & Head of Learning & Development at IIDE

Leads the Learning & Development segment at IIDE. He is a Content Marketing Expert and has trained 6000+ students and working professionals on various topics of Digital Marketing. He has been a guest speaker at prominent colleges in India including IIMs...... [Read full bio]

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Zomato Case Study and Marketing Strategies | Success Story

Zomato’s case study, success story, marketing strategies and the overall journey will serve as an inspiring business model for Indian entrepreneurs for many years to come. Just like a typical startup, Zomato too has had its fair share of ups and downs. Because of this reason, many aspiring entrepreneurs can learn a lot by delving deep into what Zoma to has done to reach at the pinnacle of success in the food delivery industry.

In this post, we will take a good look at the entire journey of Zomato, its marketing strategies and the way it shaped the online food-ordering-and-delivery system in India.

Table of Contents

Quick t rivia

Did you know that Zomato has some sort of presence in as many as 24 countries and 10,000 cities? Zomato doesn’t provide food delivery in all these countries, but lists a plethora of information in terms of menu and user reviews.

T he f ounders of Zomato

Two IIT graduates named Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah co-founded Zomato in July 2008. Before launching Zomato, they were employed with a managem ent consulting firm named Bain & Co. (Delhi office).

The idea behind Zomato – A brief history

The idea of an online food menu struck the duo when they saw people standing in a queue at lunchtime in office and waiting for their chance to order. So t hey took pictures of the food court menu and uploaded them on their company’s private network. Everybody at the com pany started using the website, and Deepinder and Pankaj noted the huge traffic the network got in a few days’ time.

This gave them the idea of starting a portal called “Foodiebay”, where users could browse through the menu of eating joints and restaurants and see their reviews and ratings right from their computer. Foodiebay began listing restaurants from Delhi-NCR on their website and quickly expan ded to other cities like Mumbai and Kolkata . The first professional restaurant that found its spot on Foodiebay was from Hauz Khas in Delhi.

Soon the website was covering thousands of restaurants from metropolitan cities and the founders thought that they would rebrand it with an appealing name that would attract customers in abroad too, if they expand to such a level. As a result,

Foodiebay was rebranded as Zomato in November 2010.

By 2016, Zomato had a full-fledged app up and running, which was providing food deliveries from registered restaurants, through their thousands of valets.

Zomato Business Model

Zomato runs on a commission business model. It generates most of its revenue from the commission that it charges the restaurants for every order placed through their app. Furthermore, it also makes decent revenue from advertisements – the “promoted” restaurants that you see at the top of your search results.

Zomato Funding

Zomato has undergone multiple rou nds of funding since 2010. Here are the funding rounds in chronological order:

• Zomato raised $1 billion through Sanjeev Bikhchandani led Info Edge India in December 2010
• In 2013, Zomato again received $13 million from Info Edge India, making the firm a 50% stakeholder in Zomato
• Post the 2013 funding, a number of investors such as VY capital, Sequoia Capital and Temasek provided an undisclosed amount of funds to Zomato
• It is believed that by the end of 2018, Zomato had received funding of more than $300 million. Thanks to these funds, Zomato was able to expand its business into more cities
• Zomato raised $660 Million in the f unding of Series J round led by Tiger Global Management and Kora. With this, Zomato’s funding rose to $3.9 b illion.

Zomato filed draft documents with SEBI in April 2021, with the objective of raising INR 8,250 crore. The Zomato IPO opened up on July 14, 2021 and closed on July 16, 2021.

The price band for the issue was fixed at INR 72-76 per share with a face value of INR 1 each. Investors could bid for a minimum of 195 equity shares.

Zomato’s IPO was among the first from the list of unicorn start-ups in India and the first of an online food ordering business .

Zomato Hyperpure

Zomato Hyperpure is the company’s B2B vertical through which it s upplies highest-quality ingredients and kitchen products to restaurants. You can buy the following items with Zomato Hyperpure:

• Fruits and vegetables
• Dairy products
• Gourmet and packaged foods
• Packaging and Kitchen Consumables
• Meats and seafood

Zomato Acquisitions

Zomato has acquired many companies in its journey so far. Given below are all the acquisitions that Zomato has made, earning itself the tag of ‘Acquisition King’:

Acquired menu-mania in July 2014

The company acquired Czech Republic’s restaurant guide- Lunchtime and Slovakia’s restaurant guide- Obedovat for a combined sum of $3.30 million

It acquired Italian restaurant search service, Cibando

Then, the company bought Poland’s restaur ant search service, Gastronauci

The following year, in 2015, Zomato acquired Urbanspoon for $60 million

The same year Zomato made a few more notable acquisitions in the form of US-based NexTable and Delhi-based startup MapleGraph

The company then acquired a logistics-technology startup named Sparse Labs

Acquired Runnr, a food-delivery startup, in 2017.

The year 2018 was good in terms of acquisitions as the company acquired two more businesses , namely Bangalore-based TongueStun Food and Lucknow-based TechEagle Innovations

Zomato acquired Uber Eats in January 2020 for a whopping $206 million – Perhaps one of the most notable acquisitions of the lot

Zomato has come up with its own food and entertainment carnival named Zomaland. Its debut edition in 2018 was held in 3 metropolitan cities, viz. Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi.

This flagship event brings together a number of cuisines and entertainment methods together – be i t music, dance, comedy acts, carnival games, etc. Zomato has partnered with many notable companies for the organization of its event in as many as 10 cities.

Zomato Marketing Strategies

Zomato markets itself very well, in a way that appeals to people. Here are a few marketing strategies followed by Zomato

Social Media Zomato doesn’t use social media in the conventional corporate way. It believes in making humorous, playful and sometimes sarcastic posts that appeal to the youth. Because of this reason, most of the posts by Zomato on Twitter often go viral with many other companies and netizens joining the banter. For instance, this infectious smile by a Zomato delivery guy garnered a huge meme fest on social media.

Then, they often come up with some witty lines as well , such as:

Then they also capitalize on many sport events such as the IPL by launching their own cashback leagues such as Zomato Premier League.

2) Pay-per-click (PPC) ads

Zomato invests heavily in its PPC ads on search engines and social media portals such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If you have ever seen their ad s on any social media network, you’d know how mouth-watering their pictures and banners look. Zomato, as a result, acquires many of its new customers from social media.

3) YouTube Marketing

Zomato knows the importance of videos. That’s why you’d often see many advertisements of Zomato while you are watching videos on YouTube. Despite aggressive promotion on YouTube, the company isn’t too active on its YouTube Channel as you would expect.

Zomato Competitors

In India, Zomato faces direct competition from rival Swiggy . Until 2020, it also had a strong competitor in the form of Uber Eats, which it acquired in a $206 million deal. Zomato enjoys a monopoly in the food delivery business in many smaller cities like Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula.

Introduced Contactl ess Delivery during COVID-19 pandemic

The online food aggregator made many enhancements to its delivery protocol during the unpr ecedented pandemic. Temperatures of all delivery valets were checked multiple times a day and they had to sanitize their hands before picking up any order.

The company stopped accepting Cash on Delivery (COD) and encouraged people to use any kind of digital payment method. At the time of the delivery, the executive dropped customers’ packages outside their doors and left quickly to avoid the risk of transmitting or contracting the virus. Wearing a mask and a pair of gloves was, of course, mandatory for all valets. If they failed to do so, customers could report them through the delivery rating from the app.

Top reasons behind Zomato’s continued success

There are many reasons behind the successful launch and growth of Zomato. Here we present to you the most notable ones:

1) First-mover advantage

India wasn’ t familiar with the terms “online food ordering” until Zomato came along. Thus , Zomato has always had the first-mover advantage to capitalize on. And it did so quite effectively too.

2) Continuous flow of investment

Zomato has never been shot of funds. If you take a close look at the funding timeline mentioned above in this blog post, you will see that Zomato has been very successful in convincing investors about its long-term vision and growth objectives.

3) A strong network of restaurants and delivery valets

Zomato has managed to bring most of the restaurants and hotels on its app, with much ease, despite the hefty commission and promotion fee that it charges. A handful of eating joints that are not listed on the platform are missing out on some really good revenue opportunities.

The online food ordering and delivery company also has a strong workforce of delivery agents. As a result, Zomato has provided employment to lakhs of youth in the country.

4) Aggressiv e Marketing

In today’s time of such intense competition, you have to put a lot of funds in taking the word out. Be it traditional marketing methods such as TV and newspapers, or the modern-day techniques involving search engines and social media, Zomato has left no stone unturned in making itself a household name.

The Bottom Line

We hope that this post has given you some great information in terms of the case study, marketing strategies, success story, funding and acquisitions of Zomato. Th e journey of this food delivery company will serve as an inspiration for many aspiring entrepreneurs for decades to come.

The market of online food ordering was witnessing huge growth until COVID-19 struck. However, the landscape is slowly coming back to its pre-COVID shape. Zomato is also working to strengthen its grocery delivery system, in case another variant hits their core business hard, yet again.

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360° Zomato’s Marketing Strategies: A Case Study

“If something does not go as planned, then the core team of Zomato is always ready to pick it up and go through the same afresh, making the necessary changes.” – Deepinder Goyal, Co-founder, CEO, Zomato

This quote by Mr. Deepinder Goyal perfectly defines the character of Zomato as an organization. The leading food delivery company began in 2008 as a discovery and reviews platform named Foodiebay. After 13 years since its inception, the global food tech behemoth has a strong presence in 16 countries. Moreover, in 2021, Zomato created history by becoming the first-ever food delivery company to go public.

One of the main reasons behind this tremendous rise in stature has been Zomato’s impeccable digital marketing strategy. Whether riding on the latest social media trends or being the flagbearer by starting some ‘never-seen-before’ and personalized marketing strategies, Zomato has always stuck the right chord with its target audience.

Therefore, to take a ‘leaf out of Zomato’s book,’ we will analyze the online food delivery industry’s giant’s marketing strategy and how the company has gone from strength to strength over the years.

Table of Contents

Startup Journey of Zomato

Before becoming India’s first food tech unicorn, Zomato – Food Delivery company had its share of zenith and pitfalls. For example, after 9 months of its beginning, Foodiebay became the largest restaurant and food directory in Delhi NCR (National Capital Region). Then, in 2010, it was rebranded to Zomato, and there has been no looking back for the company since then.

After substantial success in Delhi NCR, the food-tech startup didn’t waste any time and started branching out in Ahmedabad, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru. And as the solid Zomato marketing plan reaped in rich dividends, the organization extended its services to Sri Lanka, South Africa, Qatar, UAE, UK and the Philippines.

Moreover, after seven years of a mind-boggling run, the company faced major roadblocks in 2015. The organization was struggling for revenues and had to carry out a massive layoff of employees. But then, as we saw in the quote of Deepinder Goyal, the food-tech startup picked itself up from there and in the first half of FY2020, Zomato recorded a whopping 225% rise in its revenue. In addition, in H1FY20, the food aggregator and delivery startup has almost 119k restaurants on its platform, with the future looking bright and shining.

Now, after getting a brief understanding of the journey, it is time to dive deep and see the digital marketing strategy of Zomato and how it aces it every time.

Winning Zomato’s marketing strategies

The rise of Zomato coincided with the rise of digital marketing in India. The internet boom and data were becoming cheaper and accessible inclined the odds in favor of Zomato, and the food tech startup pounced upon the opportunity with both hands.

Visual media to boost marketing

Zomato has been leading the way to use both traditional and digital marketing strategies. For visual or billboard advertisements, it uses punch lines and catchy phrases that connect with the customers and compel them to order food through their platform. While opting for the traditional route, amazing content has a vital role in Zomato’s branding strategy. .

Moreover, the visual marketing strategy gives a much-needed boost to the organization to approach their ‘not-so-tech-savvy’ target audience and get the best out of their on-demand delivery application .

Paid marketing strategy

Despite being a non-permanent marketing strategy, paid advertising is vital and contributes to keeping the engagement up at the platform. In addition, it drives organic footfalls on the mobile app or website drastically and improves the search results.

Zomato concentrates on running the Google ads only to target some specific customers. These ads get displayed along with the organic search results and allow the food tech giant to find a wide range of keywords that they can work on later.

Search Ads:

It is a search advertising method that allows online advertisements to be placed on the website, and these ads show results from the search engine queries. Zomato’s digital marketing strategy uses this method to enhance its online presence even more.

Display Ads:

Zomato uses this method of graphic advertising as it allows the food tech startup to promote itself in multiple formats such as through images, audio, video, etc.

SMS and Email marketing strategy

There are no qualms that Zomato knows a thing or two about nailing the email marketing strategy. It has one of the most compelling and wittiest email marketing strategies. The great subject lines and crisp call-to-action strategies play a pivotal role in maintaining the online food delivery platform’s brand loyalty.

In the subject lines, the food tech startup has created a ‘CV for Biryani’ and has included popular pop culture references from different web series, movies, shows, etc. These subtle inclusion assists in Zomato’s promotion strategies in a seamless way.

Along with email, Zomato has set ‘gold standards’ when it comes to SMS marketing. It presents engaging content according to the buying habits of the customers. This technique also helps in increasing the food tech platform’s retention rate.

Social media strategy

As we have seen earlier, most of Zomato’s target audience falls under the age category of ‘18-35 years. Therefore, it becomes essential for the food tech giant to keep its ‘social media marketing campaigns’ up to the mark. The platform puts an extra effort to stay connected with its audience through some unique content on social media by doing engaging posts.

Zomato’s followers on different social media platforms are:

• Zomato Instagram: 587k
• Zomato Twitter: 1.5M
• Zomato Facebook: 1.8M
• Zomato YouTube: 218K subscribers

Moreover, as per data, 0.73% of the total traffic, and YouTube and Facebook hold the chunk of this traffic.

Meme marketing

Memes are very famous on social media and Zomato, understanding its importance has mastered the art of ‘meme marketing.’ Through this content marketing strategy, the food tech giant generates much organic traffic that eventually helps in boosting its overall revenue as well.

Influencer marketing strategy

Zomato understands the power of influencer marketing thus has given much emphasis to it in the advertising campaign. Whether a macro influencer or micro-influencer, Zomato doesn’t shy away from going the extra mile and uses its popularity to increase its user base.

Rub off effect/humor

We all know the hilarious take Zomato’s tweets have on different situations. Whether it is an ongoing situation or the situation its customers face in our daily lives, Zomato has some content that will bring a smile to their faces. And its humorous content spreads like wildfire and has a great rub-off effect.

Use of local languages

Along with approaching the micro-influencers, Zomato has taken the ‘hyper-local marketing’ strategy to a new level by promoting its content in local languages. This helps Zomato in reaching more people, thus boosting their trustworthiness.

Emotion marketing

Human beings are emotional, and Zomato’s social media marketing strategy always has an element of emotion in it. More often than not, that emotion strikes the right chord with the audience and helps increase the overall engagement rate.

YouTube marketing

Zomato has always been a front runner in understanding the importance of videos and has been utilizing it to its benefit on the YouTube platform. You often will get to see short, crisp, and non-skippable video advertisements of Zomato on YouTube that have a subtle ‘call-to-action’. Thus, it will be safe enough to say that video advertisements hold an important place in Zomato’s digital marketing strategies.

SEO Strategy

In today’s business world, where everything runs on data and analytics, it becomes impossible to do away with SEO strategies. However, Zomato fully understands that there are no alternative, competent SEO strategies as it drives around 99.44% of organic traffic and the remaining comes from paid advertising.

It is the foolproof SEO strategy of Zomato that increases the organic traffic number from 66% to 99.44%.

Below are the few methods employed by Zomato to scale up its ‘SEO’ game.

Internal linking

The most common SEO strategy is to link the specific URLs to the keywords. Although it seems very basic, if done correctly, it reaps rich benefits, as we have seen in the case of Zomato. The relevant URLs to the keywords enhance Zomato’s digital media presence and take the promotion strategy to a whole new level.

Here the food tech brand targets many keywords that promote the overall brand.

Targeted keywords

In the marketing plan of Zomato, there are more than 900k keywords that are optimized for SEO purposes. Targeting these many keywords organically gives Zomato an upper hand in SEO that is tough to surpass.

One of the main reasons behind Zomato’s dominant position in the search results is its huge directory of restaurants and food, and it has become a blessing for them. And the directory includes minute details such as the name of the dish, place of the restaurant, its best-selling item, and many more. This data also helps in developing an airtight Zomato promotion strategy.

Website pages

Zomato has over 54 million pages on its website as it allows restaurants to create and maintain their data. In addition, the high number of pages helps increase the SEO of the website. This is because many website pages play a crucial role in getting high ranks on the search engine.

Having authority backlinks

Getting a high number of backlinks from various websites is crucial in boosting domain authority. For example, Zomato has a high domain authority as it gets backlinks from .edu and .gov websites. The food tech giant’s website currently has more than 13 million domains.

Along with its immaculate services, it is the top-class marketing strategies of Zomato that has helped the company to become a brand. We will see some of its top efforts before getting to the details.

Target positioning of Zomato

The target audience of Zomato falls in the age range of 18-35 years to a larger extent. These people majorly love to dine out or prefer food delivered to their homes. Therefore, the ‘Zomato digital marketing strategy’ majorly targets the youth who indulge in exploring new restaurants or new foods with their friends and colleagues.

Segmentation of Zomato

Along with figuring out the target audience, Zomato doesn’t shy away from bringing in experiential events and spreading positive vibes around food during the segmentation process. It does this by participating in entertainment and multi-city food carnivals. Moreover, it launches food both in-home delivery and dines out.

Through its segmentation marketing strategy, Zomato implements a multi-channel approach on the offline marketing channel as well. This helps the food tech organization to expand its user base outside its target audience as well.

Things that make Zomato digital marketing strategy unique

Now you might be thinking that in the digital marketing strategy of Zomato, there is nothing that is ‘out of the box. On the contrary, it does the same thing as you would expect from a normal company that has an online presence. Thus, here we will discuss those important aspects that make Zomato’s advertising strategy unique.

Offering diversified things

One of the greatest USPs of Zomato is that it believes in giving ‘something extra’ to its customers. So along with giving satisfactory food delivery services, it never fails to brainstorm on things that will enhance the overall app experience of its customers.

One such idea was to launch Zomato Gold in 2017. It was a premium service that offered countless discounts to the users against a monthly subscription fee. It turned out to be a ‘masterstroke’ and emerged as one of the leading app monetization strategies .

Then in August 2018, Zomato started Hyper pure. This initiative ensured that the supplies to the restaurant were highly hygienic and of high quality.

On-time or free campaign

Following the model of Domino’s Pizza, Zomato began the ‘On-Time or Free’ campaign in December 2019. And it went a step further than Domino’s as Zomato’s this campaign was applicable on all its food and not just Pizza.

The customers could avail themselves of the ‘On-Time or Free’ by tapping on a button on the Zomato app. And after that, if the food is not delivered on time, they will get their money back. The food delivery service provider used online advertising, TV creatives, and different kinds of social media platforms to promote this campaign.

Acquiring major companies

Since its inception, Zomato has believed in constant innovation. Thus, during its journey, it has followed the ‘constant innovation’ template and acquired different companies such as Uber Eats, Uber Spoon, MapleGraph, Nestable, etc.

Although these acquisitions were not cheap, they helped Zomato give momentum to the brand and innovate it time and again.

Zomato premier league

India is a cricket-crazy nation and Zomato as a brand understands it to the core. Thus, the food-tech startup introduced the Zomato premier league. It was an amazing attempt at gamification by the brand that became a huge hit among the customers. Through this, the brand listed great deals and discounts that were offered by the participating restaurants. In addition, the customers also stood a chance to win further discounts by predicting the winner of the match.

Zomato gold membership program

With a view to enhancing customer loyalty, Zomato introduced the gold membership program. The program is a monthly subscription scheme that renders superlative discounts and complimentary dishes to the customers.

This marketing strategy of Zomato became extremely successful and helped the brand increases its revenues. Until July 2021, Zomato gold membership is available in 41 cities in India and 9 countries worldwide.

What is the future of Zomato?

Whether for shopping or food or medicinal treatment, etc., the shift to mobile app s has been tremendous, and this m-commerce trend is here to stay. Thus, the future of Zomato and its contemporaries is bright and is bound to get better from here. Moreover, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has been a fuel that has escalated the speed of Zomato’s expansion. As people are adjusting to the ‘new normal, they have been more inclined to order food online, which has increased the revenue and user base of Zomato. For example, its revenue from operations rose to 140% in the second quarter of FY21 and has reached a whopping number of Rs.1024 crore.

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Final words

An entrepreneur can learn a plethora of things from Zomato’s digital marketing strategies. The online organization has mastered staying relevant and being a customer-centric company. Moreover, if you as an entrepreneur have a similar idea, always opt to hire a team of dedicated developers for the best results.

In addition, along with developing an app food delivery app like the Zomato – leading online food delivery service provider, there are other trending app ideas that business houses and start-ups should consider before putting everything into practice.

With in-depth knowledge in International Business Management and Information Technology, he can effectively craft business enhancement strategies and can skillfully untangle technical complexities. This has laid the path for him as the Co-Founder and MD of Prismetric . Writing about the new age technology and sharing his thoughts on the continuously evolving business trends keep him content.

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Table of Contents

Zomato target audience , zomato digital marketing channels, digital marketing strategy of zomato , influencer marketing strategy by zomato , zomato's collaboration strategy , zomato marketing strategy 2024: a case study.

Zomato, when it began, wanted to become the best restaurant search and discovery tool. It offered comprehensive details on more than 1.4 million establishments in 23 countries. There were restaurant names, menu items, pricing, reviews, and other information.

It has evolved into an internet platform for meal delivery over the years. People can now use their app or website to order food from nearby establishments. Delivery personnel from Zomato pick up the customer's order from the restaurant and deliver it to the specified address. While talking about Zomato, let's also look at their marketing approach.

"If something does not go as planned, then the core team of Zomato is always ready to pick it up and go through the same afresh, making the necessary changes." - Deepinder Goyal, Co-founder, CEO, Zomato

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People with smartphones and experience using apps between 18 and 35 makeup Zomato's target market. It aims to attract two customers: those who prefer to eat out and those who want to order food delivered to their homes. These groups frequently overlap. Its Zomato Gold program provides incentives for people to eat out and provides food delivery for those who need it.

People who are employed and need food in their offices, students who live in dorms and need food, those who lack the time or space to prepare their meals, and those who occasionally enjoy eating out are all included in this group.

Zomato utilizes Google Adwords for its search ad campaigns . It targets terms such as "food," "online ordering," "restaurant names," and many others. It aims to attract people who want food delivered to them. It also runs Google Display advertisements to target people on apps and websites from third parties.

On Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, Zomato is active. It has 726k Instagram followers, 1,899,405 Twitter followers, and 1.42 million followers as of July 2019.

Zomato interacts with its audience by posting on popular subjects. The brand is aware of the nature of its audience. As a result, it promotes material that encourages people to share, discuss, and revisit it. To engage visitors online, it uses popular topics and publishes straightforward pictures.

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During the 2016 Olympics, Zomato used Twitter to promote its brand. The brand used rings made out of coffee and claimed that if coffee drinking were a sport, they would get the gold medal. 

The "Pokemon Go" video game was another current hot subject. Zomato profited from it as well. Zomato used the famous Pikachu to promote its brand on Twitter.

Connecting with the audience was facilitated by posting on popular themes. Users probably don't want to ponder too much while using social media. In actuality, individuals utilize social media to enjoy and view humorous content. Expect your material to be shared when such content appears on their news feed. Of course!

Zomato's digital marketing strategy must be adjusted when new trends emerge. They will need to devise fresh strategies to get the interest of their customers. They are currently performing a fantastic job. They will benefit greatly from it if they put forth a continued effort.

These people are skilled in making the most of the Email Marketing tool. One of the cleverest and most effective tactics is Zomato's email marketing. Zomato keeps customers loyal to its brand by using appealing subject lines and a drive to action.

They ran an email marketing campaign on Amazon Prime Video with the theme of the renowned series Mirzapur, season 2. Subject lines referencing characters from Mirzapur were included by Zomato.

Additionally, it produced a CV for Biryani as part of one of its greatest email marketing methods. Food-related terms like "Curriculum Vitae of Biryani" were featured in Zomato. Additionally, it used the CTA "hire immediately" rather than "order now." That is how Zomato's email marketing strategy excels so well.

Zomato has advanced the concept of "hyper-local marketing" by promoting its material in regional tongues in addition to contacting micro-influencers. This increases Zomato's credibility by enabling them to connect with more people.

Zomato has placed a lot of attention on influencer marketing in its advertising strategy because it recognizes its potential. Whether a macro or micro-influencer, Zomato isn't afraid to go above and beyond and leverages its notoriety to grow its user base.

We are all aware of Zomato's funny takes on various scenarios via its tweets. Zomato provides content that will make its consumers smile, regardless of the issue they are now dealing with or the one they encounter daily. Additionally, its humor spreads like wildfire and has a powerful knock-on impact.

Memes are extremely popular on social media, and Zomato has mastered the technique of "meme marketing" because it recognizes its significance. The food tech firm generates a lot of organic traffic thanks to this content marketing technique, which eventually helps to increase its overall revenue.

Zomato is actively working with the government to ensure that its services can continue to run smoothly during the crisis, in addition to providing support to the thousands of people who are a part of their delivery network by creating a fund for them to cover any income they would have lost due to the crisis. Additionally, they made sure that their delivery partners had masks. 

Zomato has always been a pioneer in recognizing the value of videos and using them to its advantage on the YouTube platform. On YouTube, Zomato frequently has short, snappy, and unskippable video commercials with a subdued "call-to-action". It will therefore be appropriate to assert that video ads play a significant role in Zomato's digital marketing strategy .

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Marketing91

Marketing Strategy of Zomato

May 29, 2019 | By Hitesh Bhasin | Filed Under: Brand Strategies

Zomato is restaurant search and discovery and deliver business and was founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in the year 2008. Zomato currently operates in more than 24 countries. Initially, it started under the name Foodiebay which was later changed into Zomato in the year 2010.

Zomato has also expanded overseas to Sri Lanka, Qatar, Turkey, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. Zomato also claimed that it turned profitable in all 24 countries it operates in. In February 2017, Zomato introduced its zero commission model in a partner restaurant.

SmartTech magazine announced that Zomato was among the top 25 most promising internet companies and has been getting regular investments from Info Edge India.

About Zomato

• Type: Online food delivery and restaurant discovery platform
• Industry: Foodtech
• Founded: July 2008
• Founders: Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah
• Headquarters: Gurugram, India
• Area served: Over 10,000 cities in 24 countries
• Current CEO: Deepinder Goyal
• Number of employees : 3,800
• Major products : Zomato app, Zomato website, Zomato Gold, Zomato Pay, Hyperpure

Table of Contents

Our mission is to ensure nobody has a bad meal

We want to be the ‘ Google ’ of food. Our vision is to be the global platform when someone is looking for food locally

Discover great places to eat around you

Segmentation targeting and positioning in the Marketing strategy Zomato

Segmentation :.

Under the demographic segmentation strategy , Zomato targets the age 18-35. People who want to dine out and want to research the restaurants they wish to visit. Zomato has found a larger target segment in the working professionals who want to dine out and also want to get food delivered at their doorstep.

Zomato has also entered the experiential events segment and had launched the multi-city food and entertainment carnival called Zealand. Zomato believes that there is an experience that is needed to be built around food and Zomato has played a significant role in making that happen.

It intends to launch new products and business lines centered on food in both dine out and delivery segment.

The main target customer of Zomato is the youth who are between the ages 18-35 and people who often want to eat out with their friends and colleagues. It targets those customers who often refer to ratings and reviews and want to take a decision if the place is good.

It is those customers who are seeking to have a good time with their friends and want to be assured that the place is going to worth the price. It also targets the foodie who wants to experience food and share it with people.

These people also want to know where they get the best foods in town and visit those restaurants. The consumption target is all the online opinion seekers of restaurants.

Positioning:

Zomato has positioned itself as a platform that brings restaurants, suppliers, consumers , food suppliers, and logistics partners together. It aims to create a world where detailed food consumption and taste patterns across the globe and share that intelligently with the suppliers.

Zomato is an Indian youth’s go-to-app when it comes to dining out. It has become a mandate now to check reviews and recommendations before visiting a restaurant and Zomato is positioned as the app they should look for when it comes to looking for authentic reviews.

With the launch of Zomato Gold, it has made dining out pocket-friendly for its customers.

Distribution in the Marketing strategy of Zomato

Zomato revealed that about 40% of the total sales were referral driven. According to Zomato, almost 30% of the subscribers are coming through referrals and more than $2 Million orders have been made using Z coins. Zomato cross-sells its several offerings to a customer which has brought huge success as Zomato is able to capture the customers are any phase.

According to Zomato, customer acquisition cost is very low. Zomato claims that of the 1.4 million listings it gets, 150,000 are from India and sees 22 million users come on board every month. Zomato Gold is another program that is referral driven, where on sharing their referral code, a customer gets a month of the Zomato Gold services extended.

Brand equity in the Marketing strategy Zomato

The name Zomato has become a synonym for food and restaurants. It has become so popular among the consumers that they have reached 21 million monthly run rate and it claims to be a market leader when it comes to food delivery as well. Zomato has been able to show strong growth because the users are not using Zomato for discounts, they are using it for convenience.

To have easy access to food and get reliable information about restaurants. When it comes to dining out, more than 70% of the customers check the reviews in the app. Zomato has already laid strong foundations and has huge potential growth because of its good brand name.

Competitive advantage in the Marketing strategy Zomato

Zomato creates innovative schemes that keep the customers engaged. The Zomato Gold which is an exclusive membership loyalty program that gives customers an exclusive dine out and drinking membership with BOGO( Buy One, Get One) and 2+2 complimentary drinks.

The Zomato Gold now has more than 600,000 customers. This has helped customers to dine out more often, which according to restaurants has helped drive customer traffic at a higher rate. Gold has made dining out more affordable than it ever used to be.

The Zomaland which was an experience-driven around food, creating a carnival of food and music. This strategy to turn food into experience has worked in favor of Zomato.

Strong Brand Name:

A good brand name is a must when comes to surviving in the industry and Zomato has been effectively creating a brand name that resonates trust and convenience. There has been the number of entrants in this market like Food Panda and Uber eats but they will have to work extensively on their brand value in order to be able to compete with Zomato.

It has been able to constantly innovate across different verticals and has ensured to build on the advantage that they have created.

Focus on technology:

The biggest advantage Zomato has over its customers is its beautifully designed User interface. It is attractive and very easy to browse and this has helped create a pint of differentiation from its competitors.

The speed with which the website opens and the mobile application is also extremely fast and extremely easy to use, even for a novice. Zomato gives a lot of focus and effort in creating a convincing UI for its customers.  Zomato has amazingly used data science and has been able to crave its way for success.

Zomato has been able to obtain a competitive edge because it is extremely data-driven. It has been able to drive operational and commercial efficiencies like delivery time prediction, logistics optimization, ad delivery, and supply prioritization .

Zomato aims to implement the concept of cloud kitchen, which will help a restaurant to expand its presence without incurring any fixed cost. The focus on Zomato on technology will help it stay ahead of the competition .

Competitive analysis in the Marketing strategy of Zomato

The food industry is highly competitive with most of the companies doing extremely good in the market. Google Maps as well includes listing of restaurants in the neighborhood including reviews, photos, and ratings.

One main advantage Zomato has over Google Maps is that Maps has not started menu listing. Zomato is still a customer’s favorite restaurant discovery tool. The main competitor of Zomato is Swiggy when it comes to food delivery space, because of its extremely well-designed logistics capabilities, it is giving good competition to Zomato.

Foodpanda had a first mover’s advantage as it launched an online order facility much earlier than Zomato thus cause Zomato to lose the relevant market share . Burrp! Is another important competitor or Zomato, because of its expansion from restaurant listing to retails and events outlets, the company ’s focus has been distributed but Zomato has been stuck to its core functions.

Another competitor of Zomato is Uber Eats and it gets about 3.5-4 million orders per month. Uber Eats and FoodPanda’s acquisition by Ola has further shaken the market. Zomato will have to continuously innovate and evolve to stay ahead of the competition.

Promotion Strategy:

Zomato is one of the few companies to have been successful in the content market and uses images to promote its products. Zomato ensures that its contents stay fresh and has invested vastly on SME’s and SEOs.

Another important role is played by social media and it has helped Zomato become more popular among its customers.  All the promotions made by Zomato proves that the company chooses to stick to the niche and understands exactly who it is catering to.

Zomato’s Zomaland festival turned to be a great strategy for Zomato to promote its services and it was able to turn food into a carnival with music, dance, and stand-up comedies. Zomato uses the number of strategies like discounts and promo codes to make more customers use the platform.

Zomato is one of the most Omni-present brands on the internet.

Liked this post? Check out the complete series on Strategies

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• Marketing strategy of Coca cola – Coca cola marketing strategy
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• Marketing Strategy of Huawei – Huawei Marketing Strategy
• Marketing Strategy of Walmart – Walmart Marketing Strategy
• Marketing Strategy of Colors – Colors Marketing Strategy
• Marketing Strategy of Dior – Dior Marketing Strategy
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About Hitesh Bhasin

Hitesh Bhasin is the CEO of Marketing91 and has over a decade of experience in the marketing field. He is an accomplished author of thousands of insightful articles, including in-depth analyses of brands and companies. Holding an MBA in Marketing, Hitesh manages several offline ventures, where he applies all the concepts of Marketing that he writes about.

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