Pandemic has been a great enabler for organizations both large and small to venture into digital marketing, and that has led to a sporadic rise of digital marketing agencies. Born out of the market opportunities, these agencies have been promising to place their clients on the digital map. While SEO, SEM, and digital marketing had been garnering required attention from the organizations, the pandemic accelerated the need to have a digital presence to stay relevant in the market. The question that arises is how these agencies have fared in keeping the promises made in the sales pitch to their clients. Take the example of this Indian retail giant that had to change four different agencies within a span of a year for not getting the desired result. Thankfully, the retail giant found an adept partner in Markitome Digital Marketing who not only delivered the promise but also gained the confidence of the retail giant that now the organization is extending its partnership with Markitome Digital Marketing to add more services.

Started in 2013, Markitome Digital Marketing is a data-driven marketing company that delivers marketing services and helps businesses reach prospective consumers using targeted online mediums. In the initial days, the company only catered to the digital marketing needs of large behemoths and the experience helped them to extend their services SMBs. “We have segregated our products into six different segments: digital marketing, website design/development, data analytics and insights, SEO, SMM, and Advertising", says Vivek Rangabhashyam, Founder and Managing Director, Markitome Digital Marketing. “We have further created four markets for ourselves micro and SMB market for the startup pack and digital marketing, professional pack and digital marketing for medium-sized organizations, enterprise model for enterprises, and RevOps for vendors". The company has been catering to these markets since the inception of the pandemic and has helped many businesses have customized and unique experiences via their online presence.

More often than not, the clients of Markitome have some form of online presence but are unaware of the value they were getting out of it. Their reporting capability is not serving the required purpose and that’s where Markitome’s data analytics arm comes into the picture. They provide consultation services to help such clients understand their data and determine whether the company is

moving in the desired direction. To help its clients reach more potential customers, Markitome has expanded its advertising domain and created an international network of influencers. Partnering with agencies like MNTN, an advertising software creator, Markitome is well poised to help its clients make the most of their ads across digital mediums. Organizations can also choose a ‘buffet service’ from Markitome where the company bundles up its services.

The boom in digital marketing agencies is going to fizzle out and the result will be productization in the market

The service provisions also depend on the client base. The learning gained from working with large corporations enabled Markitome to tune its services as per the size of the client. For the micro and SME market, there’s a startup pack that helps these organizations begin their digital marketing journey. For medium-sized enterprises, there’s a professional pack and for large organizations an enterprise pack is available. The interesting part is the RevOps part where “we take over part of the operations and work towards reducing the operational costs. It's like a vendor management agreement for the marketing from A to Z in the consumer journey process till the sale and revenue, all taken care of by us”, adds Rangabhashyam.

The range of services offered is a combination of gained experience over the years as well as passion to deliver the best to the clients. From serving large, well known conglomerates to moving to the SMB market, Markitome has grown tremendously. And now, the company is gearing up to take the next step in the field of digital marketing. “The boom in digital marketing agencies is going to fizzle out and the result will be productization in the market. There are going to be more products in the market that help people do digital marketing themselves", says Rangabhashyam. Markitome is already working towards developing a product to help brick and mortar stores that have their presence in leading e-commerce marketplaces. One of the problems that the software product aims to solve is reducing the spillage of organic and perishable products in inventory management. The software will take care of integrating e-commerce with the client’s website that will be built in one click. There will be mobile app integration as well as social media to search engine visibility. The hardware product will be like a computer system designed on Raspberry Pi with extensive enough storage to handle product management and having cloud backup.

In addition, the company is also focussing on developing an ecosystem around digital marketing. Apart from their digital marketing agency module, there will be Digital Marketing Academy and partnership model. Digital Marketing Academy will aim to empower people to do digital marketing by themselves. And under the partnership model, Markitome will help other smaller agencies to utilize the services that the company already sells to its clients. Markitome will white-label these services to enable these agencies to become a reseller. These will accelerate the pace of growth of Markitome. The company is targeting 300 clients by the end of the financial year 2023-24 and they have gathered enough momentum to reach there.