Wondering how the Indian Government practices inbound marketing ?Among an ocean of things to learn from the Indian Government, one of the world’s largest democracy, one thing is Inbound Marketing.
Young inbound marketers might have Brian Halligan or Dharmesh Shah as their ideals, but only few realise the top-notch inbound marketing being carried out by the people that make up the Government of India.
If this statement sounds exaggerated let me ease you in with a case study.
Let’s take three parts of the indian government as our study, namely :
- The Ministry of Finance
- The Ministry of External Affairs
- The Prime Minister of India
Buckle up to get a bunch of economists and bureaucrats drive your inbound marketing concepts.
The Ministry of Finance
This important ministry within the Government has really revamped itself in terms of making the budget process more transparent and participative. How did they do it ? Dive into the following facts:
- Last year, the Finance Ministry took to social media to enquire what should be the Finance Minister’s focus on the budget planning for the year 2015.If you think this was out of the ordinary, it wasn’t. Because a few days before this event, the North Block also released the tax figures on the Finance Ministry’s Youtube channel.
- Also, the Finance Ministry has really been active in running campaigns to outreach the common people via the platform eSampark.
For all those who are unaware what eSampark is, it is a platform to connect the Government directly with citizens across India by running mailer, outbound dialing and SMS campaigns. It is essentially used for sharing informational and public service messages. It is believed that the Finance Ministry is using this platform to its full potential.
The Ministry of External Affairs
This department of ministry is no less. Look how it created a storm digitally.
- The External Affairs Ministry has really been creative in it’s efforts to reach out to public. For instance, they recently launched an app which integrates the social handles of about 170 Indian missions on a common platform, which they made with the help of Facebook.
- Integrating channels and being creative in your approach is good to expand your reach, but it is not even close to the reach of the twitter conversation Sushma Swaraj had with a frustrated buyer.Here’s how the story goes. A man, with way too much time on his hand, tweeted to Sushma Swaraj about something she doesn’t have to reply to ! Look out !
Now, any commoner would ignore, but Sushma Swaraj. Read what she replied:
This tweet captures the authority of a duchess with an attitude of a rockstar. And it might just be the reason why it got 8,000+ retweets !!!
The Prime Minister
Now, let’s talk about the harbinger of “Acche Din” himself, Mr Narendra Damodardas Modi. If you’re thinking what interesting could be learned from a boring life of the Prime Minister, let me remind you he’s a kind of the Prime Minister that quotes StarWars while standing alongside Wolverine to a crowd in Madison Square Garden.
- Our dear Prime Minister is 65 year old with a social presence of a 20 year old. Apart from being active on social media, he also hosts a radio program, aptly titled “Mann Ki Baat“. Here, he addresses the nation with his thoughts on various themes. This program is public oriented and takes into account their inputs as well. So far, more than 61,000 ideas along with 1.43 lakh audios has been received. Each month, some selected calls become a part of the broadcast.
- Moreover, nothing makes him stand out more than the use of hologram to address dozens of rallies. At the time when holograms were used only to revive dead musicians, Modi used and embraced the technology, making him and his campaign staff an example to learn from.
These are just few instances of our Dear Ministers to learn from. Do let us know in the comment box if you know more.
