Abstract

Firstcry.com (Firstcry), an initiative of Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha, entered the baby care products market in the year 2010. The start-up was launched through an online platform and offered various baby care products. The founders later developed a hybrid or O2O model (combination of both online and offline) to create an Omni channel presence for the company. Along with this integrated business model, Firstcry adopted various customer-driven marketing strategies such as Direct-to-a parent program, the launch of its brands, a kiosk innovation model, one price strategy, and many more. The company also used digital marketing strategies such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), email marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, and many more to reach its target customers. It launched various advertisement campaigns as well to promote its products. Firstcry faced various challenges such as the changing preferences of Indian parents, difficulty in understanding the wants and behavior of parents, and many others. The major challenge it faced was the increased competition in the Indian baby care products market. Although Firstcry started with innovative customer-driven marketing strategies, it progressively began adopting digital marketing to remain profitable and competitive. It remains to be seen what additional strategies the company would adopt to sustain its leading position in the online segment of the Indian baby care products market. What further steps would Firstcry take to extend its offline presence in India?

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the customer-driven marketing strategies used by a successful e-commerce start-up
• Recognize the importance of SEO, mobile marketing, and internet marketing for the success of an e-commerce start-up
• Analyze the role of content marketing and inbound marketing in the growth of an e-commerce start-up
• Understand how social media helps an e-commerce start-up to strengthen its customer base
• Assess the challenges faced by e-commerce companies in the baby and kids’ products market

Keywords

Customer-driven marketing strategy; Search Engine Optimization (SEO); Social media marketing; Omni channel marketing; Digital Marketing; Content Marketing; Email Marketing; E-marketing; Inbound Marketing; Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy