In Digital Marketing word, it is high time that companies realized the importance of the internet and its role in their growth. With the growing penetration of the internet worldwide, few companies can take the risk of not utilizing or playing in this channel. While most big companies have started implementing their digital marketing strategies, there are still many companies that have yet to rope in the benefits of digital marketing generated through effective and efficient use of the customer data and its analysis.
What is Digital Marketing
Before moving on to how companies can benefit from digital marketing, we need to completely understand what digital marketing is and why it is essential. Simply speaking, digital marketing refers to the promotion of products and services through any of the available electronic media. It differs from traditional marketing because marketers can analyze their marketing campaigns to understand in real-time what is working and what is not. While there are several channels like mobile apps, wireless text messaging, mobile instant messaging, podcasts, digital television, electronic billboards, and radio channels considered part of digital marketing, the internet is regarded as the most closely associated channel.
Importance of Digital Marketing.
In today's times, digital media is omnipresent. People have access to information wherever they want it, and at whatever time they prefer. Gone are the days when people could access the internet only through their laptops or computers. Today internet is available via smartphones and tablets that provide information on the go. They have first-hand information from various sources.
For this reason, companies cannot say just anything about their brands. They must have good figures and facts to support their claims. Moreover, they have to provide trustworthy information as potential customers look for companies they can trust, personalized communications, and tailor-made information relevant to their preferences.
Digital marketing involves monitoring several aspects of e-commerce. Such as checking what the consumers generally view, the time they spend at a website, whether the same customers are visiting the same sites or similar sites, the website content is appropriate, and the sales conversion figures. Finding the answer to the questions mentioned earlier is essential for the successful implementation of digital marketing.
Digital Marketing And Traditional Marketing Strategies
Digital marketing is the future of marketing and is here to stay. Thus, it should be an integral part of your overall marketing strategy irrespective of your fondness for it. But will it replace your traditional marketing or complement it?
As we know, traditional marketing is the mode of advertising, promotion, or campaign of brands or products adopted by various companies and in use for decades. It has also been a proven method with an excellent rate of success. Traditional marketing includes marketing tools and print media (newspaper advertisements, newsletters, flyers, etc.) and Television commercials.
Digital as a medium has picked up enormous momentum. Nowadays, everybody takes the help of search engines whenever they want to have any services, including the local ones such as calling a cab, identifying a food junction, or even looking for a plumber. Online searches are also made for luxury items and making large purchases such as buying real estate, finding holiday packages, purchase electronic products, etc. In short, our dependence on the online medium is increasing at a rapid pace.
Digital Marketing primarily comprises of:
- Digital Video Production Services
- Social Sharing and Social Media Platforms
- Blogs
- Digital Images
- Traditional and Digital Webinars
- Planning the marketing strategies
The best way to plan your marketing is to make a combination of digital and traditional marketing techniques. But, when considering micro or start-up businesses, the low cost of digital marketing may offer the only route of adequate marketing.
Digital Marketing and The Internet
Before we move on any further, here are some interesting figures that indicate how the penetration and usage of the internet have grown over the years. The numbers also show the quantity of data. That is generated and needs to be utilized fully by companies around the world:
Introduced in the late 1980s, the internet had reached approximately 2.4 billion people.
Internet penetration in China was 42.2 percent in 2012 and is expected to grow to 52.1 percent by the following year.
The average time spent on the internet by the users in US has increased from an average of 9.2 hours a week in 2015 to 21.6 hours in 2020.
Almost 30 percent of consumers shop online, while 25 percent consider purchasing things via the internet, and 36 percent take the help of the internet to evaluate products and services.
Internet users generated data to the tune of 4 exabytes (4×1018 bytes) in 2018 alone. This data was fed by more billion smartphones and more than one billion computers
30 billion pieces of content are shared by users on Facebook every month
There were 5 billion mobile device users in 2020, and this has grown by around 20 percent every year
Challenges faced by Digital Marketers
Now that we understand what digital marketing implies and its importance, we need to retrospect the challenges digital marketers face.
The abundance of digital channels: Digital marketers face the challenging task of gathering information from various media as consumers now have access to multiple digital channels. Each of these channels uses different specifications, interfaces, and protocols to portray information.
Large volumes of data: as mentioned earlier, the importance of data generated is far more than what the marketers can analyze and evaluate efficiently. It is becoming increasingly difficult to cope with the large volumes of data which can otherwise be very helpful in reaching the right decisions.
Intense Competition: More and more companies utilize the digital marketing space to showcase their products and services. Compared to traditional media, digital media is relatively cheap, which is why even small businesses can reach out to customers, thereby creating intense competition in the market.
The Traditional Marketing Concept
The traditional marketing concept is a bit expensive and not something that will stay forever once created. For example:
Advertisements on TV are only for the moment and may be forgotten in the next minute, and people can switch to something else.
Newspaper and magazine advertisements may not be seen at all by your potential customer.
Thousands of dispensed mails could end up in the post boxes of the receiver forever.
A more significant business can still afford to do so as they have a higher marketing budget and get a good result from traditional marketing by repeatedly reaching customers. However, the true brilliance of Digital Marketing lies in the ability of smaller players to run their ads along with the giants even on a limited budget that they have. The massive reach of the digital medium can result in an excellent base of followers if offered is of value, even if they are minor players.
Why Go Digital Marketing?
In contrast, when you create some content (maybe a video, image, text, or a combination of all) for digital marketing purposes, the search engines will keep them forever visible whenever some eager and related customers search for it. Writing enough content and weighing it with knowledge creates “Inbound Marketing,†an element of new generation media.
Inbound Marketing is the method developed to aid the potential customers to locate and come to you instead of looking out for them. It has been a compelling yet low-profile strategy of digital marketing.
Social media have genuinely transformed our life. It has changed our mode of interaction, communication, business, shopping, meeting, and the way we manage our day-to-day activities. We live in a digital world that is entirely different from the past—something we never experienced before. Technology is genuinely evolving at a record pace.
So, digital marketing in true essence cannot be without the influence of social media. But, now, social media has also started to get saturated with ever-increasing advertisements. Many people getting annoyed may switch off many business-related posts to prioritize social posts. Focusing only on digital marketing and social media, such as TikTok or Instagram in the current scenario may lead you to a sudden drop in your business.
At the same time, this fluctuation in business can be avoided by using digital marketing as a compliment and not as a replacement for traditional marketing. The presence of your brand in both the traditional and digital worlds will help your brand grow better.
It would help if you focused on the following tools to create a successful combination of digital and traditional marketing strategies.
Have your Brand Website along with your Office and Brick and Mortar stores?
We all know the importance of office space along with a brick-and-mortar store. That builds credibility and assures the potential customer about the Vendor’s authenticity and the ability to address the vendors in post-purchase difficulties. Similarly, a Website is also essential for a business. It builds authenticity for the Vendor and gives the buyers an address to get back to them. Also, a website serves as a platform. It displays all your products and services and your portfolio, which builds credibility for your brand. In today’s age, a website has also become a requirement in the minds of consumers. It is now considered an essential requirement for all businesses.
You are maintaining the right relationship with your customers.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has always been one of the most important aspects of retaining customers. Hearing the customer’s problem and solving it or trying to solve it has always helped uplift a brand image. Still, for the time-consuming nature, many consumers did not go to the CRM department for their complaints and instead changed their brands. But with Digital Marketing, and especially Social Media, CRM has become fast, effective, and fruitful. The brands take care of the problems in real-time with the visible benefit of exponentially increasing customer satisfaction and thus retention.
The power of Targeting
With traditional marketing, we have always managed to catch many eyeballs through Newspapers, Hoarding, etc., thus increasing brand awareness. Digital marketing targets specific demographics. It thus helps convert brand awareness to brand recall for the potential customers and result in conversions, sales, or repeat business.
For example, in recent times, OLA has done a fantastic job through cross-promotions in traditional and Digital media. Thus first attracting eyeballs, creating awareness through hoardings, newspapers, etc., and then running offers and targeting potential customers through app downloads and digital marketing. Their marketing mix was an actual work of brilliance resulting in brand appreciation and competing with the existing players like UBER and other Local players.
Do not discount or underestimate the power of traditional marketing, even in the era of digital marketing. Strategic utilization of different forms of digital marketing in a combination of conventional marketing can produce some profitable and attractive outcomes.
Steps to Improve Digital Media ROI
It is clear that "big data" that is now generated must be utilized so that companies see their marketing efforts succeed. As suggested by the experts, the need is to profile the web users according to their digital footprints and customize the digital advertising. Here are the steps that digital marketers can take to improve their digital media ROI:
Marketing personnel must track the users by way of cookies or other following methods. They must collect large samples of data or profiles of web users according to their web histories. The data collected must be analyzed to study the consumers' behavior. The profiling would help the marketers know about the user's interests and formulate strategies according to this.
Profile the Users:
Marketing personnel must track the users by way of cookies or other following methods. They must collect large samples of data or profiles of web users according to their web histories. The data collected must be analyzed to study the consumers' behavior. The profiling would help the marketers know about the user's interests and formulate strategies according to this.
Correlate With Products:
Next, marketers can correlate consumer behavior concerning specific products. They analyze the relationship between the consumer and the product. Establishing the correlation between the product and the consumer must be based on analyzing the sales conversion rates. While there may be several users who might have received the display advertising, it could be only a few who responded and purchased the product.
Advertise According to the Segments:
Marketers then need to focus their digital advertising campaigns according to the customer segments that they have created. These would be pushed only to those customers for whom they have been made.
Use the Approach Regularly:
Once the digital marketing strategy mentioned starts working, it needs to integrate it into its system. The various ad servers would have the design embedded in them, thereby being a part of the company's advertising process daily. The campaign would focus only on the web users who are most likely to buy specific products.
Importance of Data Analysis
We are aware that with the growing dependence on computers and high penetration of the internet, lots of data is generated each day. More and more people are logging in to the internet not just for information but also for e-commerce. Online shopping is increasing by the day. People buy lifestyle products like mobiles and gadgets, home and personal care products, and even groceries. So, with the increased activity on the internet, loads of data are generated. Companies need to aggregate, analyze and evaluate this data to understand consumer behavior and preferences, which defines digital marketing.