As we know digital marketing has become the key driver to connect with the audience, engage them and drive revenue for business. It’s important to understand how we connect with the rural audiences through digital. 

In this article we will understand how digital marketing can be done for rural India. I will take an example of a brand called, “NETAFIM” and demonstrate how we did digital marketing to connect with the rural audiences in Maharashtra for different crops and generated sales for the brand. 

So let’s get started!

About NETAFIM

NETAFIM is a global leader in smart irrigation solutions. They have different products and services including micro irrigation, community irrigation, greenhouse and digital farming solutions to farmers across globe. 

Objective of the campaign

The objective of the campaign was to connect with the farmers, communicate different aspects of drip irrigation and why farmers should go for drip irrigation while producing different crops

Focus Crops for the Campaign 

• Cotton 
• Sugarcane 
• Ginger 
• Turmeric 
• Banana

The Strategy

We crafted a strategy which focused upon communicating below aspects: 

• Crop specific best practices for production 
• Why drip irrigation for crops 
• Different irrigation techniques 
• Growing higher and better yields in a more sustainable way 
• Uniform growth of crop with drip irrigation 
• Low investment and high returns 
• Less wastage of water 
• Reduces use of fertilizers
• Saves time and energy 

So how did we communicated?

We wanted to communicate these aspects effectively to the farmers and encourage them to go for drip irrigation for their crops, so executing it in a simple way which conveys the message was the key part. 

For this we came up with content properties and executed the campaign with these content properties. The first content property we created was called as NETAFIM Krishi Samvaad 

1. NETAFIM Krishi Samvaad 

NETAFIM Krishi Samvaad is a content property which communicates all the key aspects about the crop and how drip irrigation can increase the yield. As the focus crops were cotton, sugarcane, ginger, turmeric and banana, we on boarded agronomists, who were the key spokesperson for each crop, and they communicated the entire story through Facebook Live in marathi language. 

We started the campaign with an announcement post of Krishi Samvaad for Cotton, which helped us to build the event on social media.

The Fb event was then streamed live which reached to 6.8 lacs farmers and generated 3,67,000 views. Below is the Fb live 

Similarly we did NETAFIM Krishi Samvaad, for other crops 

Ginger NETAFIM Krishi Samvaad 

Turmeric NETAFIM Krishi Samvaad 

Sugarcane NETAFIM Krishi Samvaad 

Further we executed the strategy in Gujrathi 

NETAFIM Krishi Samvaad in Gujarathi 

NETAFIM Krishi Samvaad in Kannada

NETAFIM Krishi Samvaad in Tamil 

NETAFIM Krishi Samvaad in Telugu 

Through Krishi Samvad, we were able to reach around 5 million farmers across the country, making it a huge success driving leads and sales 

The next content property we defined was NETAFIM Pathshala 

2. NETAFIM Pathshala 

NETAFIM Pathshala is a content property which educates the farmer about the core concepts of drip irrigation, farming techniques, best practices, water management, equipment options and profit maximization for a specific crop in a visual format. 

NETAFIM Pathshala video content for Banana crop 

NETAFIM Pathshala product specific video 

NETAFIM Pathshala another product video 

The campaign was further supported with Facebook Lead Generation ads, which helped us to achieve below numbers, making it a huge success!

The Impact

If your would like us to define your Digital Marketing Strategy for Rural India, then talk to us – Digital Marketing Agency For Rural India

Related Article – Japfa India Social Media Case Study – Clean Farm Challenge