Alok was at his best, pulling up factual Web Analytics data from Games2Win to show what the head and the tail is like on the Web. While India features at #5, the web market still tends to lie in North America and Europe. Countries like Colombia, Mozambique feature prominently on his Analytics.

Alok’s attempts at SEM were disappointing and not worth the spend. He cites dismal ‘acquired’ audience loyalty when compared to organically acquired audience. Alok’s team worked with the leading SEM provider but could not solve the problem, so they abandoned SEM altogether. They had managed to bring down their CPC to 0.30p (INR).

Alok’s approach is to share a unique slice of life with those who have never experienced what we believe to be ordinary. Prajakt mentioned that after hearing Alok’s pitch on Games2Win, he would definitely go and try out their Games (Word of Mouth?).

Abhishek Goyal talked about a Web startup Erasmic funded (now Accel). The founders experimented, built and successfully scaled intensely engaging applications and features (5Mn+ UU’s p.month). Alok Mittal of Canaan Partners was impressed by the quality and efficiency of execution of the founding team (Edit: changed with feedback from Abhishek).

Anuj Khurana was disappointed by efforts to market PurpleTrail on twitter and friendfeed, he cited greater traction when investing in original content around his core audience (party-planners). Anuj asserts that Google must feature in Marketing strategy for destination sites. Key learning from Anuj, Alok and Abhishek,

• Marketing on the web is all about achieving intense scale and distribution. Budget is irrelevant (Edit: Anjali).
• If you don’t aim to hit a Million+ UU’s in 6-9 months, don’t bother starting up on the web.
• You can’t hide behind geographic product positioning, the web nullifies that defense.
• Expect the unexpected and quickly adapt to how your users behave to gain an edge.
• Cut through the noise when you can see business models (built over conventional thought) fail.
• Alok’s moment of Zen: You can’t buy advertising when you intend to sell Ads as value to other Brands (build your own audience).

Vijay Basrur, Quikr.in adds: We are also faced with an uphill task of growing organic traffic at Quikr (www.quikr.com) but are making great progress by sticking to the basics. Buying advertising only works in the short run but not in the long haul.

There’s more… Punetechlive, Bhavis and Trakin‘s tweets on the event. Understand your audience – Why Big Marketing spend is not the same as building an audience for your application.

~ Santosh

If you look at how India-centric Social Networks are shaping up, the importance of today’s talk is amplified. In fact, traffic & engagement is every thing to the Social Networking arena.

Back in 7/2007, BigAdda launched with a multi-crore marketing campaign. They blanketed billboards, television and FM. The ferocity of their campaigns threw the Industry in to confusion. Could an explosive mix of Money and mass-market advertising replace patient and painstaking build up of word-of-mouth? The heads of Chakpak and IndyaRocks kept their sanity and did not follow suit.

Two years down, the short-term advantage gained through marketing spend has been nullified. At the time this was written, Alexa shows the three social networks to be neck and neck in reach.

Alexa - IndyaRocks (blue), BigAdda (red), Chakpak (green)

Marketing on the Web on a zero-budget is all about long-term strategy over short-term tactical advantage. Even if it does seem frivolous to talk about social networks from an individual’s perspective, engaging an audience of over 5 Million UU’s every month is something else.

~ Santosh

Vibhushan comments: Reliance (ADAG) tried to use their standard strategy for launching any new product/service. As we have seen with their telecom and DTH launch, they love storming market with a big bang, capture market share initially by bleeding heavily and milk the acquired customers later on. However the point they missed was that as against CDMA handset and DTH setup, internet portal has very less or zero switching cost, and hence unless you dont have a very good product, you would lose customers.

Anyways, one good thing that happened out of this in 2007-2008 was that it increased the money spent on internet advertising in India. I am sure many websites surviving on advertisements must have seen their revenues going up and would be praying for more such launches from ADAG.