Google Pay’s 2020 Diwali Campaign Is The Marketing Campaign You Need To Learn From

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Google Pay is a digital wallet platform and online payment system developed by Google. It is currently the market leader, with over 38% dominance, and a large user base.

It has recently launched its Go India campaign for Diwali, which is quite similar to the Diwali stickers game that was launched last year during Diwali. Only this time, it is going super viral, and here’s why:

Google’s UI is probably the smoothest among all the UPI apps in the market. Having such a simple UI not only helps in customer acquisition easy but helps the customers be more productive. This, in turn, increases customer retention rates.

Apart from its smooth UI and ease of use, one more reason is its incentive structure.

Unlike other apps, Google Pay’s incentive structure is pretty easy to understand.

Where Paytm and PhonePe are offering tons of cashback and coupons, often, it has tens of terms and conditions attached that make it difficult for users to remember and well use those incentives.

On the other hand, Google Pay is simply offering a scratch card with variable monetary value that will automatically be transferred to the users’ bank account, if the user wins any amount. There’s absolutely no terms or conditions attached to this.

Google is also offering vouchers that can also be simply redeemed on its partners’ website, with no hassle.

The winning amount is highly variable. There’s no such thing like “Get 10% cashback “or “Get Assured ₹20”, the winning amount that Google is offering is ranged between ₹101-₹501, and the winner may win any random amount after every scratch or no amount at all.

It is an interesting move by Google as it makes the user curious, keeping them hooked to the app for a long time than usual.

As of June 2020, Google Pay was so far the dominant player in the market with over 38% of the market share, thanks to its competitive market strategies, interactive UI, and clever inventive structure, it is leaving all the other players behind.

PhonePe (backed by Flipkart) had a 19.8% market share, Paytm (owned by One97 Communications) had a 15.9% market share, and Amazon Pay (backed by Amazon India) had a 16% market share. However, with the introduction of WhatsApp Pay, these numbers may change soon.

(Source: Business Insider)

Okay, so what is all the fuss all about?

Like the 2019 Diwali campaign, Google Pay is back with yet another creative campaign that’s going viral for all the right reasons.

For those who are not aware of this, Google launched its 2020 Diwali campaign where users have to collect tickets and virtually visit multiple cities in India.

(See picture below)

At the start of the game, users will be given virtual tickets and KM points. Using the KM points, users can travel from one city to another, until they reach the 30th city by 25th November 2020, which is the finale.

Once the users have visited all the 30 cities, they will get a chance to win a reward worth anywhere between ₹101-₹501.

As soon as the given tickets and KM points are exhausted, users have to perform actions like paying a merchant, sending money to a friend, etc., to collect more tickets and KM points. Users can also send/receive tickets to/from their friends and family, making it more fun to play.

In between these 30 cities, visiting a particular city at a particular time also gives a chance to win a bonus gift. It would either be a cashback coupon or a flat reward that ranges between ₹20 to ₹100 by answering a couple of questions.

The real fun begins here. Once you have exhausted your tickets, the best (and the most popular) way of getting tickets is to ask your peers. Since tickets are given randomly, users can exchange their tickets, and keep playing till they reach the 30Th city.

The networking feature alone made Google the talk of the town in a quick time since everyone was LITERALLY asking for tickets everywhere.

It also prompted old users to reactive their accounts and start playing.

Now that Google Pay became a talk of the town, where even the old users reactivated their accounts to play the viral game, the fear of missing out (FOMO) was too hard to resist.

It evoked interest among the general public, whose network (friend or family) might already be discussing, sharing, and taking part in the game.

And the fact that you have a limited set of things to do during this COVID-19 pandemic only erupted the campaign. (Remember how the Ludo game exploded as soon as the lockdown started?)

Now that Google Pay was already going super-viral, the number of payments of the platform has also increased many folds. Guess why?

For instance, once you have exhausted your virtual tickets or KM point, you have to perform certain actions to get more. Once the users were hooked to the app, Google used this to boost its primary objective — making them spend.

These include the following:

These include paying bills for DTH, Electricity, Broadband, etc. (We cannot run from these either, so why not?)

Users can recharge their mobile plans to get a ticket and KM points. (We do this anyway, don’t we?)

In simple words, whenever you are buying something, pay using Google Pay. (If the shop owner doesn’t have Google Pay, the person will get it now because you spread the word-of-mouth. SMART MOVE, GOOGLE!)

Because it was Dhanteras anyway. (And we Indians love buying gold as an investment, especially during this pandemic.)

The fact that there is no minimum limit, you can even send ₹1, and get a free ticket/KM points. This transaction can either be on UPI or direct Bank Transfer. (Although the real intention here is to keep maximum accounts active and running.)

And many more ways.

Every day, I wake up to at least five messages asking me for tickets, hundreds of status/stories on WhatsApp and Facebook, and tons of memes, YouTube videos, and what not!

Kudos to Google and its Marketing and Sales team! You did a fantastic job, and I must say, this year’s campaign was far more interesting than the last year’s.

Even before the campaign is over, I can safely say, you people are absolutely killin’ it!

Oh, by the way, I’m still looking for a ticket to Gaya. If you have one, don’t forget to let me know in the comments. I would appreciate it wholeheartedly. ❤️

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