Read how Wakefit’s fearless D2C digital marketing strategy, influencer marketing, and viral campaigns changed India’s sleep industry into a digital-first marvel.

If you’re hoping to crack the code on what separates winning brands of today from the rest and if you want to partner with the best digital marketing agency, this case study is your playbook. In a category once dominated by legacy brands such as Sleepwell and Kurl-On, Wakefit created a new paradigm by combining superior product design with disruptive marketing strategies. Their experience provides an invaluable case study for any homegrown upstart eager to rattle such a ₹12,000 crore category.

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Direct-to-Consumer (D2C): Wakefit’s Bold Entry into a Cluttered Market

Direct-to-consumer, or D2C, is characterized by brands cutting out middlemen, including retailers. Wakefit’s Daring Move Into a Crowded Market

At a time when buying mattresses was still a prohibitively cumbersome experience involving in-person shopping, dealer negotiation, and the absence of a fixed price point, Wakefit took the plunge online. The founders understood that consumers were tired of being taken advantage of by the old 20th-century retail model and wanted an alternative.

By operationalising a Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) approach, Wakefit cut out the middlemen, distributors, and local dealers, right from its supply chain, and sold directly through its own website and leading e-commerce channels.

This strategy enabled Wakefit to:

Manage the customer experience from beginning to end, from first aware of a product through service and support after the sale. Eliminate conventional retail margins, lowering prices without compromising quality. Develop a more efficient, data-informed operating model that might be able to respond more nimbly. Get feedback straight from riders and leverage it for ongoing enhancements

The D2C model not only allowed them to minimize costs but also supercharged brand loyalty by providing a frictionless experience. This is a critical competitive advantage in a cutthroat industry. For any brand that’s new entering a popular category, the D2C route is probably the most effective launchpad they can take.

Content Marketing: Wakefit’s Secret Weapon for Long-Term Growth

Wakefit’s content strategy wasn’t a late decision. As much as proven capital, talent, and experience had everything to do with its record-shattering success, it was dogmatic to that success. At a time when other well-known brands were bombarding the market with advertising that screamed “Buy Now”, Wakefit’s approach was counterintuitive and unconventional but centred on providing value upfront.

They are designed to illustrate a point or demonstrate a practice. Created an extremely educational, user-friendly blog meant to educate consumers on the debilitating conditions of back pain and sleep disorders, and how they relate to posture. Created YouTube videos that showcased hands-on advice, research-supported suggestions, and a humorous style

Rank for top keywords like “best mattress for back pain” or “how to improve sleep quality” with blogs that are optimized for search engines

Photo: Andrew Bacher-Onyenso / PeopleForBikes Despite it being a slow-burn strategy, this approach ended up bearing fruit. Wakefit didn’t stop there. It didn’t just build a lasting brand — it built trust. Customers started to see Wakefit as an authority on wellness rather than simply a mattress company. This, in turn, created long-term loyalty and reaped them massive waves of organic traffic, enabling them to spend much less on paid ads if they spent any period.

If you are like most companies out there that are trying to build an indelible brand in 2021 and beyond, content marketing is the brand moat you’ve been looking for. The only way to execute and develop that infrastructure right is with a smart digital marketing agency that knows SEO, digital storytelling and social amplification inside and out.

Campaign as “Sleep Internship” Campaign: Viral Marketing Done Right

One of Wakefit’s sleep-aided sole campaigns to go viral far and wide was its Sleep Internship Program. During the new campaign, participants were paid ₹1 lakh to sleep a minimum of 9 hours a day for 100 days. Instead of the original image as a wacky prank, this was a genius marketing move operated exclusively through smart marketing on the power of relevancy.

Here’s what I think made it successful.

It hijacked earned media coverage—from Forbes India to BuzzFeed

Without a single paid dollar in advertising spend, Assam Tourism generated earned PR value of crores, they crowed. Wakefit’s campaign started a national dialogue about sleep health, establishing it as a wellness champion along with its audience. Great campaign, Feb 11, 2017. This timing could not have been more perfect for them, especially considering that Quebec-based GOOD’s mission is to help people get better sleep. What was even better was their approach to accomplishing the really daring creativity, plus the product placement. This is something that requires a genius marketing team to come up with, and you can barely name on five fingers how many do it correctly.

Celebrity Alignments, Cultural Moment Celebrity Moment… Wakefit’s Audacious Hires

Wakefit doesn’t just follow the buzzwords in marketing. They masterfully capture cultural moments. Yet even as these collaborations represent a larger moment of ideal attunement with the creative community of the brand, creating, staging, and flexibly responding to developed concepts, tested concepts, their timing and the nature of their partnering have been exceptional.

Film celebrity Ayushmann Khurrana was the best fit to characterize the model’s id because of his relatability. They followed that up with this second painfully hilarious campaign featuring big-booty national treasure Bobby Deol, where they put the “back” in “back support.”

In what might be their most bold publicity trick yet, they hired Poonam Pandey after her no-death PR ploy. In retrospect, the ad was nothing short of provocative, audacious, and yes, all kinds of viral. While certainly risky, this was an effective partnership that proved the Wakefit is definitely in touch with India’s growing internet culture. It understands that the new, savvy consumer of today is not just in buying a product—they’re buying a conversation, a feeling, and an experience.

Leveraging Influencer Marketing Strategies

In a world ruled by technology and social media today, influencer marketing has become one of the most effective ways to earn trust from real people, for real people.

With ad fatigue at an all-time high, influencer marketing was made one of their primary pillars. They understood that the new audiences would respond best when they got the nod from the original creators instead of from ostentatious celebrity advertising or cookie-cutter influencer deals.

In particular, their influencer marketing comprised the following:

Production of higher-quality long-form YouTube influencer reviews that use the product, discussing features and benefits in greater detail. Instagram reels are created by personal trainers, yoga teachers, and home renovation specialists. Collaborative outreach through mommy bloggers and others who possess arenas in the homestead

Second, authenticity trumped reach for them. The reason why many of their influencer partnerships were so successful was because they weren’t working with mega stars, but rather micro and mid-tier influencers whose audiences genuinely took their recommendations to heart.

To be able to do this at scale, Wakefit looked to the power of user-generated content (UGC). This inadvertently produced a huge snowball effect across social media, all initiated by everyday people sharing their unedited, untouched journeys. For any brand looking to replicate this, working with the best influencer marketing agency ensures you find not just any influencer, but the right one.

Digital Transformation Customer-Centricity Trust is the New Currency

A more considered purchase, like a mattress, isn’t exactly the ripe target for an impulse buy. It’s good news and a wise investment. The most accepted learning Wakefit figured out was that winning a customer’s trust was an absolute bottom line.

To accomplish this, they implemented:

→ Free returns are as easy as sleep, with a 100-night trial.

→Develop product specifications and pricing

→ Real and unbiased factory ratings and reviews from customers on their own websites.

→ Online interactive, responsive support through email and Twitter.

This purchase model not only led the way to consumer confidence by being clear and risk-free, but it also gave consumers the safety net they needed to make online purchases without testing the product in real life. Wakefit wasn’t only building customers—they were building brand evangelists, the kind that rave about your product in WhatsApp groups, online communities, and family weddings.

Omnichannel Evolution: From Clicks to Experience Centres

While Wakefit was initially born with the intentions of being an online-first brand, founders Ankit Garg and Rahul Dutta quickly realized how offline could accelerate their growth. They launched experience centres in each of the Indian metros. Locations where consumers could touch, feel and experience products before ordering.

Benefits of this approach included:

→ Winning confidence from traditionalists still not willing to give up physical stores

→ Providing one-on-one appointments for mattresses, chairs and other furniture

→ Merging their digital customers with physical world information to identify new and more accurate customers.
→ One that’s doing this better than most is our hybrid model. It’s digital-led but experience-backed.

This one-of-a-kind playbook is becoming the go-to manual among India’s top D2C brands, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Wakefit demonstrated the possibility of attaining both scale and intimacy, provided your strategy is on point.

Innovation Design for Real Indian Environments

Wakefit’s marketing excellence shouldn’t distract from the reality that the brand’s foundation is solidly built on creating products uniquely tailored to Indian households. Be it foldable furniture made for Indian cities or orthopaedic mattresses tailored for desi sleep patterns, Wakefit is constantly incubating and experimenting with new concepts with the help of consumers.

Here’s a look at some of the most significant upgrades and changes:

→ Ergonomic chairs from the post-pandemic work-from-home boom

→ Foam mattresses in tropical climates. Some heat-activated foam mattresses aren’t ideal for hot and humid climates.

→ Foldable and modular approaches to furniture to mitigate clutter and develop a climate-conscious lifestyle

→ A lovely collection of house and home goods

This amazing flexibility to turn on a dime, invent, sculpt, and morph is their biggest competitive edge and trump card against established brands who are still very much stuck in their ways. Their product-market fit isn’t accidental—it’s the result of digging in, iterating in a thousand test pilots, and customer-validated puzzle-piece match-making.

Real-Time Marketing and Social Listening: Never Out of the Discussion

Wakefit’s meme game is on point—and on purpose. Rugby, cricket, Budget Day, IPL, or viral trends,  you can be sure that ads are at the heart of the cultural conversation.

They employ high-end social listening technologies to:

• Monitor the latest hashtags and memes
• Monitor brand sentiment in the moment
• A/B test creatives to ensure they have the most engagement
• Don’t let great reviews get away. Answer quickly to make the most of bad or good reviews.

This newfound nimbleness in communications helps them remain timely and topical and goes a long way in humanizing the brand.

Why You Should Have the Right Digital Enabler — Not a Vendor

As we’ve shared in the past, even the best products won’t succeed if they aren’t marketed correctly. In many ways, Wakefit is a shining testament of what happens when there’s clarity of purpose, consistency of approach, and creativity in abundance—all at scale. Behind every successful campaign is a dedicated team well-versed in strategy, content, performance, and culture.

If you are like any other business, startup, or D2C brand that wishes to disrupt their industry like Wakefit did, getting associated with the best digital marketing agency can do wonders for you.

From performance marketing and SEO to influencer strategies and social media, through conversion optimization, we partner with brands like yours to accelerate with focus.Together, we can craft an authentic brand narrative. Let’s make a change together.

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