This article is contributed by Pranjal Agarwal, India Market Head, Mudrex.
Diwali is one of the few festivals that is commonly celebrated across India. During this time of the year, people tend to buy new clothes, ornaments, cars/bikes, gadgets, gifts and many more including making new investments, signifying a prosperous year ahead. To capitalise on these age-old traditions, brands from across industries and segments come up with various campaigns targeting their audience to improve their brand image and value, thereby increasing sales. Let’s understand how various brands can use consumer insights to design the perfect campaigns for their target audience.
Website and App Analytics
Website or App Analytics is key. These analytics help brands in analysing user behaviour, revealing how users interact with their app/website. Key metrics such as demography, and engagement time and behaviour tell you so much about the user like what interests them, what they connect to, their cultural ideology and many more. A/B testing allows you to experiment with different versions of your website or app to determine which performs better in terms of user engagement and conversion. Using these metrics, brands can help create tailored campaigns and enhance their user experience making sure any campaigns for Diwali and any other occasion have the highest engagement rate.
Taking Advantage of Key Diwali trends
Based on the sector your brand is in, you can use specific Diwali trends to drive traffic, sales or volumes. For example, making new investments is one of the biggest traditions in India. If you are a stock broker or any other exchange, waving off the transaction fees during the famous “Muhurat Trading” would be a well-fitted campaign for all your audience. Shopping is another major part of Diwali. To capitalise on this, e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart announce sales in the name of “Amazon Great Indian Festival” and “Flipkart Big Billion Days” benefitting both users and brands equally. It is important to find that specific Diwali trend that your brand can capitalise on to improve sales, volumes or traffic.
Capturing the Emotional Aspect of Diwali
Apart from increasing sales or driving volume, brands also create campaigns to build their brand value in the minds of their audience. Given that Diwali has a strong emotional aspect to it —- bringing families together. No amount of discounts, offers or cashbacks can come close to this feeling. Hence, brands building on Cultural insight with localised themes have an edge over others.
The Best Use of Customer Insights
Listening to your customers is one of the best ways to connect and get more such customers. With feedback on what’s good about your product/service, what’s not good, and what more they want, the brand can understand the pulse of the consumers. Not just their feedback but their queries also give a sense of what they are looking for. These insights from your customers help you style your communications and talk to them in their language (be it millennials, GenZ or Boomers) to connect with them better.
Concluding Thoughts
While there are 1000s of brands targeting millions of audiences in many creative ways, the key things that make a Diwali campaign successful is if our brand brought happiness to our consumers in some way or another. Making sure our customers get the best product/service they deserve should be the priority. It would be interesting to see what kind of campaigns we get for this Diwali. Given the increasing use of AI and other tech by brands, this Diwali will surely be a delightful one for both brands and customers. Wish you all a happy and safe Diwali.
Since the release of Google Search in 1997, the company has dominated the search engine market. As of January 2024, it holds a massive 95.32% share of the global mobile search engine market.
Understanding and adapting to Google’s algorithm updates are extremely important for SEO success. In tune with this, StartupTalky tapped into the wisdom of Marketing and SEO experts to understand how they’re evolving their strategies in response to the Google algorithm updates.
Now, let’s explore the strategies these experts employ to maintain their SEO expertise amid Google’s ever-changing algorithms.
In March 2024, Google rolled out the core update and spam updates, targeting unhelpful content and spammy practices. With this, Google wanted to reduce unhelpful content by updating its main systems. It targeted spammy practices like creating lots of content just to rank higher.
In May 2024, Google announced the Site Reputation Abuse update. It addressed third-party content produced mainly for ranking purposes, treating such practices as spam. Automated and manual actions were implemented to control this form of manipulation.
Soumitra Sengupta, Fractional CMO and Growth Advisor
Soumitra Sengupta, Fractional CMO and Growth Advisor
The current Google update seems to be a response to the AI spam that has been growing on the internet with the advent of ChatGPT writing tools. As a response to the growing AI spam content, Google is now giving more and more traffic to only high authority sites and UGC sites (Reddit’s & Quora’s traffic has 3x-5x since the update).
My current strategy is to diversify on the traffic front to reduce dependency on Google. More email marketing and content marketing to develop the brand voice and stickiness of the audience. Also, purely on the SEO front, the strategy will remain to develop more authority in a niche with higher focus on Link Building.
Chaitanya Kulkarni, Head, SEO and Analytics, Tring
Chaitanya Kulkarni, Head, SEO and Analytics, Tring
Algorithm updates often result in changes to the way Google ranks websites. Core updates are designed to improve the quality and relevance of Google’s search results by rewarding websites that provide the best user experience and the most useful information. There have been two major changes to SEO strategy in response to Google’s recent algorithm updates:
More important than simply publishing new content frequently, there is more focus on how often you refine, adapt, and reoptimize the already published content.
With the advent of EEAT, user experience has become of utmost importance. And that’s not just in terms of UI/UX of the website or Core Web Vitals, it is also the way content is able to satisfy the end user.
In response to the Google algorithm update, we have aligned our strategy more closely with Google’s emphasis on content quality and user experience. Earlier, we use to mainly focus on the keyword density and backlink but this has changed after the new update from Google.
We have shifted our focus and investment more towards producing high-quality and EEAT content and addressing users’ queries and needs. To do so, we do proper research on the users’ needs and intent and accordingly produce content that can solve their problems. We no longer believe in keyword stuffing and generating backlinks from sites that are nowhere related to our niche.
Additionally, we are also more focused towards page speed and mobile optimisations to give better on page experience to our users. With this we have prioritized technical SEO with a focus on better site architecture which will help in indexing and crawlability.
We have taken a more holistic approach that balances technical SEO and high-quality content which excelles and improves our overall search visibility.
Omm Dev Sharma, Founder, Mavericks Global
Omm Dev Sharma, Founder, Mavericks Global
As an agency, we’ve consistently adapted our SEO strategies to align with each Google algorithm update, ensuring that our clients’ search engine rankings are maintained or improved. For instance:
Following updates emphasising content quality, we’ve focused on creating informative, engaging, and well-structured content that provides genuine value to users, while also incorporating relevant keywords naturally.
With the shift towards mobile-first indexing, we prioritize mobile optimization, ensuring that our websites are responsive and deliver a seamless user experience across all devices.
We’ve emphasised site speed and performance optimization, recognizing its impact on both user engagement and SEO ranking.
Adhering to technical SEO best practices, such as optimizing website structure, meta descriptions, title tags, and internal linking, to enhance search engine crawling and indexing.
Our SEO strategy has evolved significantly in response to Google’s algorithm updates. We’ve transitioned from a focus on keyword density and backlink quantity to prioritizing user intent and content quality. Understanding our audience’s needs has become paramount, guiding our content creation and optimization efforts.
We conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant topics and incorporate them naturally into our content. Additionally, we prioritize creating engaging, multimedia-rich content that not only ranks well in search results but also resonates with our audience. By focusing on providing value to our users, we’ve seen improved search visibility and user engagement.
Kishore Acharya, SVP & Head of Marketing, Masai School
Kishore Acharya, SVP & Head of Marketing, Masai School
The most recent updates from Google focus on Low-value content creation, manipulative outgoing links, and repurposing of expired domains to artificially boost rankings. While this is still being done in phases, the algorithm is yet to be fully ready.
Our SEO strategy has evolved to prioritise user experience and create only high-quality and engaging content that meets the search intent of users. We emphasise factors such as mobile-friendliness, page speed, and relevant keywords to ensure our content ranks well in search results.
Kiran James, Global Head of Marketing & Product Development, Muthoottu Mini Financiers Ltd
Kiran James, Global Head of Marketing & Product Development, Muthoottu Mini Financiers Ltd
Our SEO strategy adapts to recent Google updates by prioritizing quality content, optimizing for user experience, and addressing technical issues like broken links. We emphasize expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness to build credibility. Our approach is flexible, incorporating new tactics and staying informed about industry trends. We focus on providing value to users while adhering to Google’s guidelines, aiming to maintain visibility in search results despite algorithm changes.
Sumit Singh, CEO & Co-Founder, DashLoc
Sumit Singh, CEO & Co-Founder, DashLoc
We at DashLoc swiftly adapt our SEO strategy to any updates in the Google algorithm to ensure ongoing effectiveness and relevance. This involves prioritizing several key elements, including quality content, user experience enhancements, local optimization, technical improvements, and adaptability.
By consistently delivering valuable content, optimizing for local search parameters, ensuring seamless mobile experiences, and staying abreast of the latest SEO best practices, we maintain our visibility and competitiveness in search engine rankings. This agile approach enables us to successfully navigate algorithmic changes, ensuring our sustained online presence and growth in an ever-evolving digital environment.
Pranjal Agarwal, VP-Brand Marketing, Mudrex, a Global Crypto Investment Platform
vPranjal Agarwal, VP-Brand Marketing, Mudrex, a Global Crypto Investment Platform
While all the recent Google algorithm updates addressed the issue of low-quality, unhelpful content and automated content scaling abuse, our SEO strategy remains user-centric. We prioritize helpful, original content to avoid the pitfalls of AI-generated spam. Our approach is user-centric; creating value for them has been the key to success.
Varun Bhardwaj
