BY MEGHA CHAUHAN

19BSPDD01C094

Times of India’s marketing

strategies to gain Competitive
Advantage

The Logo of the newspaper itself signifies power and strength with two elephants

facing each other with a crown in between them that signifies royalty. The slogan of

the Company is straight and simple, “Let truth Prevail”.

The various marketing strategies adopted by Times of India includes the following .

These strong business strategies adopted by the newspaper helped it to widely

circulate this English daily all across the nation and even internationally.

● To improve the product quality so as to draw more readers across the nation
and worldwide.
● To increase circulation by launching new editions of the newspapers in both
English and other regional languages to expand the scope of the paper.
● To cover news relevant for students who are appearing for competitive
examinations that need daily general knowledge about the nation and about
the recent news updates of happenings around the world. A weekly paper
called Ascent is launched for the benefit of job seekers and students.

● To expand the scope of circulation by launching e-paper and mobile papers.

 ● To invest more in TV advertisements for a wide coverage and increase in the
sales margin.
● To invest in social campaigns involving the youth of the nation.
● Apart from these the rate of subscriptions per year is kept low at 250 Rs
which allows the buyers to opt for combo offers all throughout the year. The
price per paper is also kept low at 3 Rs per paper which is lower than the
competitors like the Hindustan Times, Economic Times and the Hindu.

Campaign
BCCL and its subsidiary Companies focus on every media platform starting from
newspapers to Books, Magazines, TV, Internet, Radio, Event Management, Movies,
Music and more. Promotional campaigns are very important for expanding the
scope of the newspapers worldwide. Giving the readers discounted offers provides
for more promotions of the English daily.

It is very important to get the promotions right. Providing for combo offers for
regional newspapers, or providing combo offers for both the advertisers and the
buyers at large etc. help in driving the sales margin.

These promotional offers help in enticing new readers to create a brand image of
the Company as well as for the newspaper itself. Times of India collaborated with
HDFC bank to launch a new program which is called the Times Card. These
promotions help to create brand awareness and customer familiarity that reinforces
the brand presence all across the nation.

The Times group has other brands like Mumbai Mirror, Maharashtra Times
and the Economic Times to cater to the needs of all classes of readers.
Starting from entertainment to finance, news from every sector is covered by Times
of India.

It also has some owned channels under its brand name which are as follows.

● Zoom TV
● Movies Now
● MN+
● MNX
● Romedy Now
● Times Now
● ET now
● Mirror Now
These channels offer full entertainment to the consumers all across the world.

Conclusion
It is the world’s largest newspaper with a strong brand image. With its large
circulation channels this daily newspaper has captured the media strongly providing
all kinds of news to the readers. It has a wide circulation of around 4 million and
three hundred thousand copies which is the largest for any English daily newspaper
in the world leaving its tough competitors like Economic Times and The Hindu
behind. Therefore we can say that:

It follows Differentiation as it's generic strategy.

TOI has successfully placed itself as the national newspaper of the country with
regional editions spread over different states. This offline circulation is completed
by the strong online presence that the Company has launched through its e-Paper
domain.