How ITC’s Digital Marketing Strategy Transformed Their FMCG Business?

We all know ITC, right? ITC Limited – one of India’s leading private sector companies with a gross revenue of ₹69,446 crores and a net profit of ₹20,422 crores as of March 31, 2024.

Over the decades, ITC has evolved from a tobacco company into a diversified conglomerate with a strong presence in FMCG, packaging, paperboards & specialty papers, agribusiness, hospitality, and IT services.

Marketing has been at the core of ITC’s success and it is obvious because success and the need for marketing go hand in hand. This leads to the increase in demand for connecting with an experienced digital marketing company that knows how to analyze the current situation and create strategies that work in your favor.

So, let’s start to understand what works best for ITC. The case study exemplifies how the company’s innovations, aggressive campaigns, and digital outreach strategies have helped position its products well in a hyper-competitive market.

Table of Contents

A Little Bit of History About ITC

ITC, which was established in 1910 as the Imperial Tobacco Company of India Limited, changed its name to the India Tobacco Company Limited in 1970. While tobacco remains a key business to ITC, its expansion into diverse industries makes it one of the most admired and valuable companies in India today.

ITC’s business interests include:

FMCG (foods, personal care, stationery, safety matches, etc.)
Hotels (ITC Hotels, Fortune Hotels)
Agri-business (E-Choupal initiative)
Paperboards & Packaging
IT Services (ITC Infotech)

The mission of the company is to create sustainable value for stakeholders while fostering customer trust and product innovation.

ITC’s 4P Marketing Playbook

1. Product Strategy

ITC has a portfolio with heavy diversification related to the different market segments. Some of the best product lines are:

Cigarettes: Gold Flake, Classic, Navy Cut, Insignia, India Kings

Packaged Foods: Aashirvaad (flour, spices), Sunfeast (biscuits, cakes), Bingo (snacks), Yippee (noodles)

Personal Care: Vivel, Fiama, Engage (deodorants), Savlon (hygiene products)

Lifestyle & Apparel: Wills Lifestyle, John Players

Education & Stationery: Classmate, Paperkraft

Hotels: ITC Hotels, Fortune Hotels

Paper & Packaging: ITC Paperboards, Packaging Solutions

2. Price Strategy

The ITC Ltd. product portfolio adopts a varied pricing strategy depending on product categories and target markets. A competitive pricing approach for mass-market FMCG products such as Bingo chips and SunFest biscuits assures that these are made affordable, provided they remain in check with the competitors. In stark contrast, the pricing for new products such as Aashirvaad Organic Atta follows the policy of penetration pricing to induce consumers to try the product and thus attain market share.

3. Place (Distribution) Strategy

A vast and efficient distribution network makes ITC products available all over India and in international markets.

– 4 manufacturing plants and more than 60 dealers in India

– Reaching over 6.3 million retail outlets directly.

– Present in modern trade, such as supermarkets and hypermarkets, as well as e-commerce platforms

– Exports internationally to North America, Australia, the Middle East, and Africa.

4. Promotional Strategy

ITC’s promotional strategy leverages multi-channel marketing campaigns that include:

Television, Print & Radio Ads
Social Media & Digital Marketing
Influencer Collaborations & Celebrity Endorsements
Point-of-Sale Promotions & Discounts
Sponsorships & Event Marketing

Let’s Scroll Through ITC’s Digital Success

ITC Ltd’s Website Performance & SEO Strategies

ITC Website Traffic Analysis

With a commendable authority score of 56, ITC Ltd’s website, www.itcportal.com, gets over 522.6K organic visitors per month through its skillful SEO application. The site averages 171.5K hits with 159.9K unique visitors every month, spending an average duration of 03:28 minutes per visit. The bounce rate of 90.45%, however, does indicate that there is scope for better engagement of its users.

SEO Analysis- Mobile Traffic Leads

Analyzing the sources, ITC’s website gets more traffic from mobile than desktop, which reflects the growing trend of mobile-first browsing behavior.

On-Page SEO Techniques

ITC effectively engages in content marketing since it publishes reports on sustainability activities and blogs about its field of work. These blogs are employee-written, are mostly text-based, and are published primarily once a month, while reports are published in detail and updated twice a year.

Off-Page SEO: Authority Building

ITC Ltd’s backlink profile is largely strong, with 1.2 million backlinks focused on 35.3K keywords. An analysis of keyword intent suggests that 54.2% of ITC’s keywords are informational, while transactional (21.6%) and commercial (18.8%) queries are also important for traffic generation.

Nonetheless, there appears to be a seesaw trend concerning referring domains for ITC, while business and industrial sectors appear to contribute mostly to generating backlinks.

ITC Ltd’s Social Media Game Plan

Instagram: A Community-Centric Approach

The splendid ITC limited commercial Instagram page, @itc_limited, shows how popular it is. With 28.6K followers, it has a 2.11% engagement rate, wherein some posts are:

Employee stories that capture some professional milestones and personal journeys.
Insight into the orientation sessions for new hires to bring them up to speed on company culture.
Product-centric promotions encouraging consumer interaction and purchases.

Facebook: Product First Strategy

ITC’s Facebook page (14K followers) pursues a completely different approach. Everything on this page is entirely product-related and not at all about team or company culture. However, that has not affected it, and it continues gaining an engagement rate of 2.93%, averaging 370 likes and 48 comments per post.

Paid search and Google Advertisement

However, though it is organic traffic-focused, it still spends an amount of $78.9K on Google Ads for more reach and visibility.

How well ITC understands its target audience

As the product range varies considering ITC, this can be termed as a denser diversity. The company is reaching a wide number of demographics within metropolitan-rural age and different age groups and economic backgrounds.

ITC’s Standout Marketing Campaigns

1. ‘Din Khatam, Fantasy Shuru’ – A Twitter Sensation

Sunfeast Dark Fantasy from ITC Ltd began an extremely engaging campaign with ‘Din Khatam, Fantasy Shuru.’ The campaign kicked off with a cryptic tweet, inciting curiosity and developing into a wide Twitter conversation. Over 30 brands hopped onto the trend, resulting in the hashtag trending at number 3 on Twitter. The movement further fueled Sunfeast Dark Fantasy’s positioning as India’s hottest indulgent snack through user creativity and social media buzz for brand recall.

2. Dark Fantasy x Brodha V – A Rap Revolution

Targeted to interest the Millennials and Gen Z, ITC’s Sunfeast Dark Fantasy joined forces with rapper Brodha V to launch a fresh music-centered promotional campaign. The unique angle taken on this partnership assists Dark Fantasy in presenting itself as a new-age indulgence, merely not akin to the competitor Oreo, which is pretty much the children’s snack. Brodha V’s raps brought a young urban touch, a perfect fit with the digital-first audience. The plurality of the campaign extended even further as it combined music and social media involvement to make the Dark Fantasy a cultural statement.

3. Aashirvaad’s ‘Ghar Ka Khana’ – Celebrating Home-Cooked Food

ITC’s Aashirvaad Atta created ‘Ghar Ka Khana’ to depict messages associated with the home, in this case, family ties established through home-cooked meals. True stories and real-life memories feature in this campaign, traced back to memory and time. That created a love story for every Indian household using social media storytelling and influencer integration for Aashirvaad. This is yet another strong brand loyalty-building effort toward making Aashirvaad Atta a necessity in every Indian kitchen.

Final Thoughts

With the aid of marketing and digital strategies, ITC Ltd has established its leadership in the FMCG space. It has powered its way through the competitive market utilizing agile marketing mix programs, aggressive promotions, and novel storytelling. ITC is moving ahead, but brand building and market penetration will define its next growth phase.

So, if your brand also needs brand building similar to ITC, consult ShoutNHike, the leading digital marketing company in Ahmedabad, to implement the right digital marketing strategies that elevate your journey From “ A Company to A Brand.”

And let us know your take on ITC’s marketing strategy. Share your thoughts in the comment section!

FAQs

1. How has ITC positioned itself in the FMCG market?

The diverse and innovative portfolio of ITC in the FMCG space has been crafted by strong distribution leverage, premium product offerings, and deep consumer insights. It is manifest through the brands of Aashirvaad, Sunfeast, Bingo, Classmate, and Savlon, which combine their offering portfolio to address and cater to mass and premium consumers.

2. What is the future growth of ITC?

The future growth engine for ITC lies in the growth of non-tobacco businesses, digitization as well as sustainability initiatives. The investment thrust of the company is focused on premium and health-oriented FMCG products, improving agri-businesses, and maximizing its hospitality segment, into which the company enters aggressively. By equipping strategies in R&D, digital marketing, and market penetration, ITC envisions strengthening its leadership in the FMCG sector while maintaining continual growth in other verticals.

3. Why is ITC so successful?

A diversified business model, robust brand portfolio, and myriads of distribution networks make ITC successful. Combining FMCG with its agriculture, hotels, and paperboard businesses makes ITC a strategic mix so that any single spirit can never doom the company. Besides this, ITC has a strong commitment to innovation and sustainability and is way ahead in digital transformation, keeping it ahead of competitors.

4. What is the growth rate of ITC FMCG?

Consistent growth is shown by FMCG for the past few years at an annualized growth of 15-20% in revenues. In some major categories, namely packaged foods, personal care, and hygiene products, the segment has outperformed the overall industry growth.

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