Rural digital marketing: A post COVID-19 Scenario

Abstract

The concept of Rural Marketing plays a very important role in the Indian Economy. As we all know, most of the Indian people live in villages and it is more than 70% of the total population of the country. Rural Marketing generates more revenues in the country because the majority of the customers are from rural areas. Rural Marketing can be done in three ways i.e. Rural to Urban, Urban to Rural, and Rural to Rural. Therefore, rural marketing is opening for vendors to come and invest in it. But there are some obstacles in doing business in rural areas and marketers try to overcome these obstacles by shifting towards Digital Marketing. Digital Marketing is becoming the most important tool to target a large audience including rural areas. The government of India has taken many steps and started programmes to promote digital activities; it is the cheapest mode of communication. This paper focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on the rural areas after the adoption of digital marketing by the farmers. In India, most of the farmers use digital marketing platforms i.e. Whatsapp, Face book, YouTube (video sharing), social photos, etc. Furthermore, these platforms such as Whatsapp or Face book groups, Twitter helps the farmers to communicate with the online specialist. The COVID-19 crisis hit the agricultural industry to adopt different tools and types of equipment and the use of digital technology help the farmers to make the right decisions and improve their productivity. Therefore, real-life case studies have been illustrated at the end of the paper showing the post-COVID-19 impact on rural digital marketing.