With the strong wave of globalization and digitalization, businesses are dynamically changing. To meet your business goal in the diversified metamorphosis of the world, people have to be UNIQUE, INNOVATIVE and EFFICIENT. Whenever you are starting a business with a particular product, the first and foremost thing is to skim and scan the market by segmenting down it according to your target customer. And to make your business to survive in a healthy and profitable manner, you need to hit the customer at the right spot using few tools. One of those vividly reliable tools is marketing and advertisement. Even if your business has ground-breaking, industry-transforming products and services that satisfy your customers’ needs, without clasping the advertisement in the right direction, it will never have the chance to reach your target audience.

For startups, advertising is a deadly tool which can give the business a historical upside turn in this competitive edge of market. There are multiple new businesses popping up every day, and in between the crowd it is very hard to stand out. This is where advertising pitch in and win over the game of business. Advertising can be a great way to get your startup noticed, and there are several benefits that come along with it.

“Don’t tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it.” – Leo Burnett
Advertising is all about grabbing the attention of your customer letting them know, how effective the product will work for them, rather than only discussing about the features. Marketers use different techniques to determine their target audience and what they are interested in. Once they have this information, they can create an ad campaign specifically tailored to appeal to this target group.

The Recent Gimmicks of the Advertising World
The past few decades have come across some significant changes. With the advent of digitalization, the industry of advertising has seen a paradigm shift. Gradually it shifted towards digital advertising. As more and more people spend time online, businesses increasingly turn to the internet to reach their target audiences. This has led to new trends such as programmatic advertising, which uses sophisticated algorithms to target ads to the right people. From traditional print ads and TV spots, to new marketing strategies that include QR codes, co-branding, content marketing and online advertising, it has passed quite a long way.

Advertisement combines the art with strategy and creatively convinces the consumer to cultivate their business goal

Programmatic Advertising: It has revolutionized the online advertising industry by making it more efficient and effective. Through programmatic advertising, advertisers can reach their target audience more accurately and reduce costs. In the coming years, its importance will only grow. The Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG) used programmatic advertising to compete with third-party booking sites (like Expedia). With programmatic ads, IHG showed users what booking directly with their hotels would cost. IHG customized these ads to the user, pulling the hotel location, date, and price based on the user’s browsing history.

Targeted Online Ads: These ads are designed to be more relevant and exciting to the user than traditional ads, which are served indiscriminately to all users. While targeted ads can be helpful for businesses that want to reach a specific audience, they can also be seen as invasive or manipulative by using generative AI. Advertisers can enhance their targeting capabilities and deliver impactful ads to their target audience. AI provides reliable and accurate insights in real-time, improving return on advertising spend. Joined force of humans and AI allows marketers to focus on strategic tasks requiring creativity and intuition. Besides, AI handles data analysis and marketing optimization.

Omnichannel Advertising: It uses multiple channels to reach consumers. Unlike traditional advertising, which relies on a single track, such as television or print, omnichannel advertising uses numerous channels, including the Internet, social media, and mobile devices. Today, whenever a new product is launched, it appears on TV, magazine as well as social media platforms like facebook, youtube, and instagram to grab the attention. Beauty product brand Mcaffeine started from instagram and now they doubled down on its brand promotion activities in FY23, which resulted in a 74% increase in its advertising and promotional expenses. It spent Rs. 126.5 crore on this bucket in FY23 as against Rs.72.7 crore in FY22.

Data collected by ‘Think With Google’ explained that omnichannel strategies help generate around 80 percent of the in-store visits by customers. Furthermore, as much as 74 percent of customers do online research before visiting a physical store.

Mobile-First Advertising: The world is increasingly shifting to mobile devices, so it becomes crucial for businesses to adopt a mobile-first advertising strategy. Mobile advertising can include anything from SMS offers, banner advertisements on websites, ads on downloaded apps and games, and much more. The goal of the marketer here is to ensure continuous engagement with the consumers by means of different types of updates. According to Statista, mobile advertising spending continues to grow and is projected to reach nearly $399.6 billion by 2024. Market report says, mobile commerce is the top choice for conducting brand research for Gen Z consumers aged 16 to 24.

“In 2019, the mobile ad spend in India was roughly around Rs. 6,000-7,000 crore growing at a healthy CAGR of 40% over the past three years. In the next three years, I expect mobile ad-spends in India to continue to grow at a CAGR of around 45% and reach about Rs 18,000 crore – Rs 20,000 crore by 2022”, - Anmol Puri, Partner, Deloitte India.

Video Advertisement: It is one of the most trendy advertisement strategies of any time. Video advertisements provide an impactful means of showcasing your brand's personality, unique products, and emotional connection with your audience. By utilizing video content to narrate compelling stories of your product, highlight its benefits, and offer a distinctive demonstration, businesses can engage and captivate their target market.

In today's digital age, where visual content is increasingly dominant, video ads have become an indispensable tool for brands seeking to differentiate themselves in the market. Thus, leveraging the emotional resonance of video advertising, businesses can establish a powerful connection with their audience and deliver impactful messaging that resonates with their target market. Video advertisements are the most impactful and draw the target audience very fast. In this social media driven world, the startups are collaborating with known faces or influencers to showcase their products in different platforms like facebook, instagram, or youtube. Brands on instagrams with over 100k followers have grown by 163% in 2 years. There are more than 25 million business profiles on Instagram trying to seek user’s attention and engagement.

Bombay Shaving Company, a Delhi based Men’s self-grooming startup brand started their journey from social media which gave them much-needed visibility.70% of their sales comes from online and social media platforms.

A Chennai-based lingerie startup, Shyaway released its festive ad film, ‘Celebrate Yourself’, where it focused on self-admiration, joy of festivities and womanhood. It inspired many women who are under-confident about their appearance.

Impact of Advertisement on Mass
Indian Advertisements use strong messages or a clear view, depicting social and cultural events, which strongly pointing the target audience and create lasting impressions by capturing hearts, and become an integral part of cultural fabric. Mostly, in Jewellery ads, we see a variety of collection through a wedding story or any cultural event of any particular region. Through this they are promoting their collection and tempting the women to grab and deck up on their special days.

In one of the ads of Vatika hair oil, they promoted a strong message showcasing the boldness of the cancer patients who lose their hair. Insurance company HDFC drew the importance of life insurance through emotional stories of independent and secure future keeping aside all the unpredictability of life. Surf Excel’s ‘Daag Acche Hain’ campaign evolved over the years, touching upon various themes such as religious harmony and cherishing our inner child who is not worried about stains. Quick commerce platform Zepto’s ‘groceries delivered at Bumrah speed’, highlighted the acute need of a product and showed how it will be helpful if it is delivered in minutes. This uniqueness of their service and advertisement made it unicorn startup of 2023, in the crowd of millions of quick commerce platforms.

Taking everything into account, advertisement has a far-sighted impact on the startup landscape. It is the beacon of light for the blooming startups as it fortifies their brand recognition, increase traffic & visibility. Thus, it confidently boasts your brand to the mass. Startups should wisely choose their medium and type of advertisement so that, it can cost-effectively build loyal customer base to stand out from the competition and help them to win over today's competitive marketplace.