Cred has gained popularity in so much less time from its viral videos. But before going deep into the popularity of cred, it is important to understand what credit is and who is behind such marketing ideas that become viral in an instant. Cred is an Indian startup of Kunal Shah who was also the founder of free charge. This is a fintech company and majorly operates on credit card processing fees. Although cred is loved by many and is quite popular. There is often civilization for cred as it lacks a good monetization strategy. In 2021, cred had approximately 5.9 billion users and approximately 20% of credit bills in India were paid through cred. Cred has also introduced five new services in 2021. These services are Cred RentPay, Cred Cash, Cred Pay, Cred Store and Cred Travel Store.
After the launch of cred in 2018, cred has used different marketing strategies to entice its customers. From the beginning, it was clear that the targeted audience for cred is millennials and Gen Z. So most of the cred’s marketing strategy revolves around these targeted audiences.
Some of the marketing strategies used by cred.
1. Event Marketing
Event marketing is a marketing method used by most companies to get visibility to a larger audience. So many brands today do event marketing but cred took this even marketing to another level. When cred signed a three-year contract with IPL (Indian premier league). Most of us here will have to admit that if we know about cred today then it is because of those ads during IPL. This cred made a statement that you do not need to invest in multiple events, with just one event you can attract a huge mass audience.
2. 100% cashback
During the 2020 IPL torrent, cred launched a 100% cashback scheme for all its customers. For all those customers who paid their bill through cred, one lucky winner would get 100% cashback. This scheme allured so many consumers and took the popularity of cred to so many new levels. Not only this cred also organized various social events, advertisements and campaigns for marketing purposes.
3. Viral Marketing
There are many marketing ads which deserve recognition here from Indiranagar ka Gunda to sending cakes to their existing customers. We all are well familiar with Rahul Dravid’s Indira Nagar ka Gunda ad wherein a general calm and cool Rahul Dravid was shown as an Indiranagar ka Gunda. This ad caught much popularity and attention due to its unique feature. The name behind this comic ad was Tanmay Bhat, a comic icon. The other viral ads are the ones using 90s celebrities such as Madhuri Dixit, Govinda, and Anil Kapoor. Each ad of cred is a marketing wonder. They are creative, innovative, unique and comic in their own right.
4. Customer retention policy
So in another marketing strategy, cred has sent several cakes to the clients who paid their credit card bills on time through cred. So this cake was sent to workplaces, and as usual when asked who sent you this cake? The customer has to reply with that cred sent them this cake for being a loyal customer and paying the credit card bill on time. This will help in marketing as other office workers will be more interested in paying through cred. Having such spontaneous gifts will also motivate the clients to be more loyal. This will help cred in making a list of loyal customers.
5. Getting support from other brands
When the ad for Indira Nagar ka Gunda ad by cred got popular other brands like Zomato or dunzo also shared tweets regarding the same. This gave more coverage to the ad and even more visibility to cred. Cred is using Twitter in a very smart way and making the visibility of cred to the maximum. The best part is the founder of cred is using Twitter in a very creative way from supporting social causes to using creative slogans to promote cred’s focus.
Cred’s unique advertising ideas are liked by gen z and millennials as they are out of the box and away from traditional forms of advertising. Cred also regularly updates its youtube channel with information on finances and how the companies are earning from IPLs. Currently, cred has a total evaluation of $2.2 billion. All the cred’s advertisements revolve around humor, it seems users are more motivated to listen to explain if they have a positive emotion such as laughter. With cred’s advertisement of Indira Nagar ka Gunda, cred is sure on its way to becoming marketing ka Gunda.
Although there are other reasons apart from brilliant marketing strategy for the success of the cred. We have curated a list of such reasons also.
Reasons for the success of cred
- Founder of Cred: Kunal Shah was already a known person in the world of finances for his other foundation(Freecharge). He sold free charge to snapdeal in 2015 and took an exit from the app. So Kunal Shah is a trustable factor for investing in cred, as he already has experience in creating a successful application.
- Community of cred: Cred has a community of taxpayers and no one is rewarding them for paying the taxes and bills on time. Credit is helping this niche community grow by rewarding them. The database of cred includes the richest, wealthiest, trustable individuals who pay their bills on time and have high credit scores.
Not everyone is accepted: Generally where every brand is looking to expand more and more and get a lot of customers or consumers, such is not the case with cred. Cred has a specific idea that anyone with a credit score higher than 750 is only welcome. Hence it focuses on a very small segment of the population. Cred is not for everyone. This approach is quickly making being on cred a social symbol and a lot of people want to join cred.
These are a few reasons which have made cred a huge success in the world of finances and among its targeted audience. We can learn a lot from the marketing strategy of cred like not being conventional is a good thing. Using humor in your advertisements can help in a great way for making your brand visible.
If you are new to the finance world and would like to know more about good marketing techniques and how to make your brand more visible. Our piece on Kanika Gupta can help you a lot. Kanika is also the founder of YourSpex!