We get this question, quite a bit, from friends, prospects and even customers.
The simple folks that we are, we usually answer in the affirmative with a polite ‘Yes’.
I know what you are thinking. How can we answer a ‘No’? Well, well, well. The Znbound website, on its own, averages ONE marketing qualified lead everyday.
Compare this to last year, when we averaged ONE marketing qualified lead in a fortnight. Inbound marketing is indeed picking up in India, atleast for us. I understood the gravity of the captioned question, just last week.
The Inbound Mantra team had been invited by an existing inbound marketing customer for a HubSpot demo. The HubSpot demo was scheduled post lunch. And Delhi’s searing May heat only made it more challenging. The conference room would have been about 100 square foot in size. The client’s team of 4, equally represented by business and technology, was seated in a semi-circular fashion facing me.
I began with a quick white boarding session explaining the inbound marketing methodology. I could see signs, of lunch getting the better of my audience. I quickly changed gears and opened the Znbound HubSpot portal. In no time, I showed how we were tracking their individual interactions with Znbound, whether it be website, emails and even social media. And when I turned around to my audience, I was puzzled to see faces that looked more like, exclamation and question marks.
Pat came the question, “Are people doing all this in India”? Yes Sir, they are !!! I was struck by the experience. Though we get the question often, I felt its intensity for the first time. I realized that while we go about our work as routine, the sophistication that inbound marketing brings, is almost like magic to those who have not experienced it.
Are businesses in India really ready for Inbound Marketing? In Znbound’s experience, yes. But what about the general market in India? Was there an increasing interest in inbound marketing? It was time to look for data.
Google Trends are Up
I went straight to Google trends and compared two search terms:
- “inbound marketing”
- “HubSpot”
I omitted “inbound marketing india”, “HubSpot Partner” and “HubSpot India” because of low search volume.
Here is what I found.
It wasn’t just Znbound. The entire market was trending up for “HubSpot and “inbound marketing” in India. Going by the regional interest, the increasing interest seems to be fairly distributed across all the cities of India.
Keyword Planner monthly searches are significant too
The trend is encouraging, but are the actual numbers exciting enough? Let us dig out the specific search volume numbers for our two keywords from the google keyword planner tool.
Here is what we find for the time period May 2013 to April 2015.
To see the actual search volume for any month, move the mouse over the interactive chart
If you look closely, the monthly search volume for both the keywords has almost doubled in the last two years.
Will this continue? We think so, but only time will tell.
In the interim, if someone asks you the captioned question, “Are businesses in India using Inbound Marketing?”, kindly direct them to the Znbound blog.
