Digital marketers have finally understood the importance of vernacular content in their marketing efforts. The world is filled with people of different cultures and languages, and to attract them and get them to even click on the online advertisement today, vernacular content is the way to go. Vernacular content’s relevance today is more crucial than ever. Out of the 1.3 billion people in India, only 125 million speak English. The rest are fluent in their own languages and if you are not capturing this market, you are going to lose a huge chunk of your audience. It is high time you adopt it in your marketing strategies too.
With the recent digital boom and tier 2, tier 3 cities coming into the picture, entrepreneurs, small businesses and individuals have taken to localized content to market their products and services. The new year, 2020, is also set to see an upward trend in a vast, multilingual country like India.
Today, one can access YouTube India’s page in more than 10 different languages! Most of the subscribers are from the smaller towns and cities and add up to more than 60% of the viewership. Even though Hindi forms the majority of the percentage, languages like Telugu and Tamil also increased over the past few years. From 2016 to 2018, Telugu subscribers soared from 16 million to 166 million – a number that lets us rethink our marketing plans for reach, visibility and attracting the audience.
To give you a few real-time examples, Chinese companies like UC Browser and Opera who have been operating in India for a long time now, have started focusing on Indian regional languages to target the masses. They focus on a few languages like Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi and Telugu and appoint authors well versed in the local dialect to create impactful content. Popular Indian food delivery and delivery apps like Zomato and Dunzo have realized the potential of releasing content in the local dialect and have won over the masses.
There are 22 languages officially recognized in India and we have over 6000+ dialects. With the smartphone revolution in the country and government schemes like ‘Digital India’ taking over, vernacular content is still being experimented with and can’t be ignored anymore by digital marketing companies.There is still a huge gap that needs to be filled in bringing vernacular content to the people. The focus should be on research & development in this field for the foreseeable future.
Tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter have also focused on vernacular content over the past years. The investments in the regional language tech sector by these companies are significant and saw a 33% growth rate with a funding of $ 5.8 million dollars between 2015 to 2018. This makes it clear that vernacular intent content is on the rise! The entry and success of regional language apps and companies like BIGO and Bytedance in putting out vernacular-focused content is also a testament to that.
The estimated market opportunity of vernacular based content in India stands at $53 billion by 2021! Notable companies apps like Tech Mahindra, Opera and ShareChat understand the need of the hour and have started to put out content in the local language to appease the people. This has forced the marketers of today to look at other languages too. Facebook, Google, etc who have a strong hold on 80% of the digital advertising spend in India, are already supporting languages like Bengali, Tamil, Marathi and Hindi in their online activities. Curiosity drives consumption and your business needs to address this gap in your own marketing strategies and make the most of vernacular content. Take charge of your marketing efforts and capitalize on the emerging vernacular content market. Local social media companies need to invest more into this and find the best resources to overcome the challenges and resolving the gap between the people and digital media.
Are you a business in need of engagement with the help of vernacular content? Talk to us and we can help you! We are Let’s Goo Social, a contemporary social media company providing guaranteed solutions by tapping the mass market for growth. Chat with us today and understand how you can skyrocket your business. We are on call 24×7 at +91 9087706000 and we come with proof. Are you ready to introduce some English-Vinglish and change the way you market?
