Blog

Almost every company today needs digital or social media marketing. When it comes to a small business, it all boils down to budgeting as resources are limited compared to large companies that have in-house marketing teams that run campaigns all year round.

The majority of smaller businesses usually rely on either freelancers or agencies on a budget for their social media marketing, which typically includes post creation and Google ads, among other things. In addition, despite their best efforts, companies are unsure how the target audience would get the ad.

Gurugram-based startup Intellemo that to the Tech50 from YourStory List of the most promising early stage startups, aims to solve this very challenge by automating the entire process of launching a digital media campaign of any size with its “pre-made ad templates”.

Connect with Intellemo

The three-year-old startup, currently rated with $ 3 million, has served over 100 customers worldwide and generated annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $ 300,000. Some of its clients include Urban Company, Bidding Mart, Kohler, Lenskart Kids, Apna and House of Candy, among other. With its solution, Intellemo promises to work on reducing the dependency of small businesses on external resources and launching social media campaigns within a budget.

The genesis

An alumnus of IIT Delhi, co-founder Saurabh Gupta ‘s always had a passion for marketing. After completing his studies, the chemical engineer tried his hand at public service before joining the eyewear startup Lenskart as a digital marketing analyst.

Connect with Intellemo

“I had a knack for marketing but never followed it all day. I started marketing for one of my UPSC coaching centers, which gave me a chance at Lenskart, ”says Saurabh, who has decades of experience working with startups like Yatra, UrbanClap and Upwork.

During his tenure, Saurabh was tasked with developing scripts to automate marketing processes, which gave rise to the idea of ​​pre-made templates, especially for small businesses that normally cannot afford large marketing teams to launch their campaigns.

“Big companies have strong teams, but what about small companies that have similar products but not the capacity,” says Saurabh, who founded Intellemo in 2018 as a digital marketing company and worked on multiple models to find a scalable solution.

“We tried and repeated the problem with various solutions for almost two years before deciding to turn our marketing services into a product.”

In January 2020, the startup switched from services to products and updated Intellemo with its new range of pre-made templates. His wife soon joined him Tusha Agrawal and brother Shivam Gupta, as a co-founder. Tusha and Shivam have strong marketing backgrounds and are the COO and CMO, respectively, of Intellomo. The founding trio have jointly invested around 150,000 US dollars in the product.

Team Intellemo

Digital media marketing umbrella

The startup is building a large collection of promotional materials for creating instant marketing campaigns on Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. This is aimed at standardized small businesses so that they can use digital marketing campaigns effectively without internal marketing or creative know-how.

To begin with, Intellemo has curated a variety of industry-specific pre-built templates – created by professional designers and reviewed by marketers – that users can select based on their needs.

This could be a simple social media template for New Years greetings or the introduction of a new jewelry product or an announcement of a special offer. Once a template is selected, the user can change text, color, images, logo, etc. and align with the respective brand guidelines. Users can then integrate their social media pages to publish organic posts or run ads for new or existing campaigns. Every campaign launched on the Intellemo platform is automatically optimized according to the specific marketing goals and budget of the user. The platform also monitors the leads and orders received by the customer. The full range of social media management and its performance, including templates, saved audiences, and landing pages (coming soon), is handled by Intellemo.

In addition to landing pages, the startup will soon add YouTube and Google ads to its portfolio. “We have not yet tested our product on the international market, but we will soon diversify into newer regions. We have some recommendations. ”

The master market

Easy to use templates for marketing are a booming area as everyone on social media is a potential content creator. This trend has made international players like Canva extremely popular, reaching a value of $ 40 billion. There is definitely an opportunity for a template content product game from India, and Intellemo believes it has an early mover advantage.

“We face direct competition from Canva and Invideo. However, they do offer templates to make the life of a designer, not a businessman, outright easier. Our target segments are different. We haven’t seen anyone in the Indian market with a similar product, ”says Saurabh.

Rocketium, based in Bangalore, is another startup that automates much of the process and enables teams to scale campaigns. His customers include CasaOne, BigBasket, Cult.fit and Meesho.

Overall, the global market for ready-made templates is valued at $ 120 billion, according to Saurabh, while the Indian market has untapped potential of $ 6 billion. “The market is very crowded just to serve businesses. Nobody solves 99 percent of the industry, i.e. small businesses, and nobody is able to solve it on a large scale as it requires a lot of technical, marketing and design know-how. Finished products and automation are the only solution [sic]. “

Along the road

The startup has a subscription-based revenue model with a fee associated with each creative post / ad. These posts are currently being created in-house, but Intellemo plans to: a Marketplace model (Adstock) where anyone can submit creatives and receive commissions based on their launches.

“We set up Intellemo Studio, in which around 100 content creators have registered. We create pre-made script videos that can be picked up by any brand for their next campaign. Content creators or influencers will act as suppliers of these scripts. ”

The startup is working with the long-term goal of serving brands worldwide via a lakh as part of a paid subscription model. Over 1,000 brands are to be served and new segments added by the end of 2022.

“So far we have bootstrapped profitably. For faster growth, we are in talks with investors and have made around 600,000 US dollars available for a seed round. Our goal is to be the largest platform alternative for a digital marketing agency, essentially for small businesses, ”says Saurabh.

Connect with Intellemo Edited by Ramarko Sengupta