AdLift is a leading global digital marketing firm founded in 2009 by Prashant Puri and Vivek Pahwa, which focuses on delivering niche-marketing solutions that focus on ROI. At AdLift, prime focus remains on providing its clients with individualized, expert search and social marketing solutions that drive advertiser value. The company is serving an impressive roster of clients ranging from small startups to marquee brands, including numerous Fortune 100 companies. The company has years of proven results under its belts, which it has accomplished through a unique combination of technical search analysis, content marketing via its proprietary software, data-driven digital marketing research, evergreen content creation and social media strategies. In the past 6+ years AdLift has worked with over 250 partners.
Sujata Sangwan Interacts With Prashant Puri, Co-founder & CEO, AdLift And Spoke To Him
GenesisAdLift started its operations primarily focusing in the North American market. In 2012, while looking to expand its services, the company saw APAC as a big opportunity. There’s been a significant increase in digital marketing spends in India – it’s grown from ~$0.5B in 2013 to an estimated $1.5B in 2015 – that’s a CAGR of 44%!
Unique key feature/services AdLift has innovated and decided with data. Online marketing is extremely trackable – company’s goal is to track results for campaigns managed by it and deliver the targeted ROI for its clients. It has been worked out effectively at AdLift since its inception in 2009. Where a lot of web solution companies have closed shop – AdLift has grown 110% in strength in the last 2 years. The company is now close to 100-person team globally – US and India.
Differentiation factorsAdLift is a bootstrapped digital marketing agency that’s become a multi-million dollar global digital marketing agency without any angel/VC investment. The company specifically works in North America and APAC markets where its focus is in driving digital marketing ROI for its clients. Company’s USP lies in:
1) It’s expert team on in-house data analyst and search marketing experts and
2) Content marketing platform – Content Lift that’s used by 90% of its clients including – Barnes & Noble, ICICI, PayPal, HDFC and many more.
Funding status & Monetization modelAdLift is a bootstrapped company since inception. The company is working on a couple of monetization models depending on the client requirements and needs. These are 1) Monthly retainer 2) An ad management fee which is based on % of ad spend 3) Pricing based on a one time project. The company is growing at 78% CAGR (2012 to 2016).
Future plans Further expand our footprint in the content marketing vertical. Own the social media brand endorsement space with the help of http://yral.digital/ company’s social media brand endorsement platform.
Marketing plans Most of the clients work with AdLift provide word of mouth referrals which is the best way to grow a strategic and niche digital marketing agency. The company do manages PPC, SEO and social media for AdLift - we like to eat our own dog food !
Challenges faced
It’s a very competitive market with a number of agencies that don’t do right by their client. The company has worked hard to reverse this thought process - at AdLift the thinking is to pretend ourselves as partners and not client-agency.
Market size & opportunity There’s been a significant increase in digital marketing spends in India – it’s grown from ~$0.5B in 2013 to an estimated $1.5B in 2015 – that’s a CAGR of 44%! It’s growing rapidly. Analyst estimate this to be ~$1.5B in 2016 and grow to $3.6B by 2019.
About Prashant Puri, Co-founder & CEO, AdLift Prashant Puri is the co-founder & CEO of AdLift, a Digital Marketing Solutions company headquartered SF Bay Area with offices in Gurgaon, India.
An alumnus from Columbia University, Prashant is a digital marketing expert having an extensive 13 years of industry experience. With his ability of building websites into multi-million dollar enterprises, he played an instrumental role in setting up the company and taking it to a high growth trajectory.
Recently, Prashant has also founded a new venture, Yral (pronounced ‘Viral’) which is a joint venture between cricketer Yuvraj Singh’s YouWeCan and AdLift. Yral is a platform that connects advertisers with celebrities by leveraging their social media network.
