The Digital Marketing Strategies That Fueled zomato's Rise

4 min readOct 30, 2023

Founded in 2008, Zomato has emerged as one of India’s biggest tech unicorns, operating in 24 countries and serving over 120 million monthly users. Zomato’s journey from a restaurant review site to a leading food delivery platform can be largely attributed to its smart use of diverse digital marketing strategies.

ZOMATO

Zomato began as ‘Foodiebay’ in 2008 — a restaurant review site founded by Pankaj Chaddah and Deepinder Goyal. Based in Delhi, it provided restaurant information, menus and user reviews for India.

In 2010, Foodiebay was rebranded to Zomato to mark its expansion to other countries. Some key milestones:

2011 — Launched dedicated mobile apps and introduced table reservations
2012 — Acquired menus from 30K restaurants in India to drive discovery
2013 — Expanded to Sri Lanka, Qatar, UK, Philippines and South Africa
2015 — Launched ‘Zomato Base’ with restaurant POS software and analytics
2017 — Raised $200M funding; acquired Runnr to enter food delivery space
2018 — Expanded food delivery to 24 countries; crossed 1M deliveries per day
2019 — Became India’s most used food app with 70M monthly users

Today, Zomato provides:

Restaurant discovery and reservations
Online ordering and food delivery
Hyperlocal grocery delivery
Reviews, photos and menus for over 1.5 million restaurants
Social sharing and community engagement

Digital Marketing Channels That Drove Zomato’s Growth

Search Engine Optimization

One of Zomato’s core SEO strategies was to focus on informational long-tail keywords like “North Indian restaurants in Connaught Place” or “best biryani in Hyderabad.”

Zomato built rich restaurant profiles with photos, menus and reviews. This provided value to users and search engines, driving up rankings. Location pages were optimized for local SEO terms as well.

SEO helped Zomato organically attract users searching for dining information online. It contributed to over 50% of traffic and cut down on acquisition costs.

Social Media Marketing

Zomato has been highly active on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube right from its early days.

It engages followers through:

Contests and giveaways
Responding to reviews, feedback and queries
User-generated content like food photos and restaurant recommendations
Videos on new features, events and food trends
Targeted ads to reach more users

This helped Zomato build a trusted brand image and vibrant social community. Exclusive deals and sneak peeks were used to drive app downloads. Food photos created major cravings that led users to order more delivery items.

Email and SMS Marketing

Zomato gathered email IDs and phone numbers to communicate promotional offers, discounts and engage users. Email and SMS campaigns focused on:

Welcome and cart abandonment emails to remind users to complete purchases
Promotions during festivals like Diwali, Christmas or Ramadan
Alerts on nearby restaurants, new menus or exclusive delivery deals
Feedback surveys to improve user experience
Monthly newsletters showcasing top dishes and restaurants

Email open rates crossed 60% and helped re-target inactive users to boost retention.

Influencer and Affiliate Marketing

Zomato ran both influencer marketing with food bloggers, chefs and celebrities as well as affiliate programs to spur growth.

Influencers helped spread brand awareness to niche audiences through reviews, social posts and endorsements. Zomato also had dedicated apps for top food critics to provide expert reviews.

The affiliate program allowed users to share referral links and promo codes to earn Zomato credits. Top affiliates who drove major sales were offered additional rewards.

These initiatives increased new user sign-ups by over 15% according to Zomato.

Online and App Advertising

For user acquisition and retargeting, Zomato leveraged:

Search ads on Google and Bing
Display ads on food sites and social media
Retargeting ads across the web to re-engage users
App install ads on Facebook, Google and ad networks
Video ads on YouTube to demonstrate key features

The ads were highly targeted using demographic, geographic, contextual and user intent data. Zomato was able to reduce cost per acquisition by 89% within a year through analytics and optimization.

Mobile App Innovation

Zomato built user-friendly mobile apps with features that drove daily engagement:

One-tap restaurant booking and food ordering
Personalized recommendations engine
Live order tracking with delivery partner details
Seamless payments integration
Rating and review submission
Photo sharing and social integration

This focus on the mobile experience significantly increased conversions, retention and growth for Zomato.

Results of Zomato’s Digital Marketing Efforts

Grew from 5K restaurant listings in 1 city in 2008 to over 1.5 million listings in 24 countries by 2018
Monthly active users shot up from under 1 million in 2014 to over 70 million by 2019
Now one of the top 10 most downloaded apps in India with over 240 million downloads
Commands over 55% market share of India’s online food delivery space
Added over 100,000 new restaurants and 250,000 exclusive delivery restaurants in 2018
Increased brand awareness and unaided recall by over 70% in target Indian metro cities
Cut down customer acquisition costs by nearly 90% within 1 year of optimized digital marketing

The Way Forward

By leveraging diverse digital marketing channels and constantly innovating, Zomato managed to make its brand a household name in India. Its success can serve as a model for startups and businesses looking to drive rapid growth through targeted digital strategies. With both the restaurant and delivery markets expanding globally, Zomato still has tremendous potential for the future. However, competition is rising from players like Swiggy. Sustaining its leadership position would require Zomato to keep optimizing its digital marketing services while enhancing overall customer experience.