Digital Marketing

The online environment is changing at an unbelievable pace. It’s continually evolving technologies and our ways to use them are being revamped e.g. for accessing our information, to interact and communicate with each other. Our ways of selling and buying products/services are also being transformed by the amazing evolutions in the world of digital media.

Digital technology is being accepted on a large-scale to communicate in such a way that were mind-boggling not far but just a few years back. Today, digital technologies are impeccably being integrated and used by ordinary people, from SMS updates to a free video call with loved-ones living on the other side of the globe. Who are these ordinary people? OUR CUSTOMERS who already have started using digital media without giving it a second thought as it’s no longer the realm of techies.

As stated by latest research, nearly 40% of the global population has internet connection. In 1995, it was even less than 1%. There is a big increment in the number of internet users, ten times, from 1999 to 2013. The first billion was touched in 2005, second billion in 2010, third billion in 2014, and 3.2 billion in 2015 according to BBC NEWS.

In modern world, internet access turned out to be almost omnipresent and the wide-ranging accessibility of active broadband connections have facilitated people to go online  day-to-day to do the whole lot from checking their bank accounts, to online shopping, video calling, chatting, and so on.

What makes this digital revolution so thrilling is that it’s being happened right here, right now. “ We’re not living in it but living through it”, and we can certainly be a part of this revolutionary transition.

In the details below I am trying to give you a walkthrough of the world of digital marketing. We will see how it was started, how it came to where it is today and where the tracks go in the future according to the faith of thought leaders in the industry. Together, we will explore how this escalating power of digital media can be coupled to drive businesses to the apex of this digital marketing wave, and how to keep holding it there as long as we would be longing.

As we discuss this digital world, we’ll discover together how top marketers in diverse industries such as travel, entertainment, retail, gambling, and so forth became aware of extremely successful techniques to motivate people on running their businesses over the internet, earning factually millions. We can learn how to rub on their experience to renovate our own digital enterprise.

Whether we are planning to start up our new family internet business, work for any national/multinational firm or whatever in between, to link our customers today and keep them in the future, we would need to include digital channels in our marketing mix.

Internet is being considered the prime medium-of-choice of the new generation consumers. This generation has merged digital media into every aspect of their everyday lives. This digital generation is entering the workplace and is spending like never before. This is the mass market of today and tomorrow. For businesspeople and marketers, this is also a challenge to be expert and competent in this new digital linguistic to talk efficiently to the target audience.

So what is Digital Marketing?
To keep it simple, Digital Marketing is a wide-ranging category of functions marketers use for the interactive presentations of their products and services with the help of digital technologies in order to reach and transform their leads into clients and retain them in future. It’s not only about assisting sellers to sell their products but also to help buyers to buy their products. Digital marketing is about promotion of products or brands, structuring preferences and keeping sales on the rise through one or several forms of electronic media.

Advertising in the Distant Past
Advertising which is a necessary element for the elevation of any business has been around for a long time. In the distant past, the Egyptians made use of papyrus (thick paper-like material) for the creation of posters and flyers, even though the lost-and-found advertising was also there in both ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Flyers, posters and signs were extensively being used in the ancient cities of Carthage, Rome and Pompeii to broadcast activities like circuses, shows, games, and gladiatorial fights.

From beginning of human existence, people have been attempting to influence other people using all that means and media they had at the time. Of course, human voice and word-of-mouth came first. Then someone might have picked up a piece of stone and started engraving imageries on a wall to tell stories, convey ideas and promote several ways of doing things.

The development and growth of printing during 15th and 16th centuries gestured a major landmark in the field of advertising making it more cost-effective for salespersons in order to spread to a much broader audience. Advertisements started appearing in early newspapers in England and then ranged across the globe in 17th century. That was the time when the first sort of mass media advertising was born.

There was an extensive growth in newspaper advertising combined with the birth of mail-order advertising in 18th and 19th centuries. This is when Volney Palmer set up the first advertising agency in 1843 in Boston.

Another new advertising era started in 20th century, with the arrival of radio broadcasting presenting an entirely new communication-medium through which advertisers and marketers could cover and reach more potential customers. Next was the TV set, which moved the advertising landscape move ahead again, and at the end of the 20th century a new force started coming out of the realm of tech-savvy – the internet – and became a recognized business and communication tool for all. This is the Age of Digital Marketing.

Hi-tech technological developments have contributed to the expansion of advertising changing the businesses tactics and ways to communicate with broader cross-section of clients. However, there are some superseded exist in market who came before and still not influenced by these ground-breaking developments in advertising. In modern digital age of pay for placement (P4P), keyword-targeted advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and social networking, we can still discover the older formulas of advertising working and bringing intended results.

If we have a leisurely walk through any market nearly anyplace in the world, from the food markets of New York to the bazaars of Dubai, to the street markets of Pakistan – and we’ll loudly hear the noise of vendors using their voices (word-of-mouth-marketing (WOMM)) in competition to draw attention of walking customers to their products. The human voice – the first-marketing-medium in old-age, is still going robust in the digital-age.

Technology and Digital Marketing
First printing press was introduced then the radio, television and now the internet. These are all examples of foremost breakthroughs in technology that eventually transformed the relations between businesspeople, marketers, salespersons, and customers on a global scale. But, of course, marketing is not about technology – after all, it is all about people – technology is only helping to connect people with other people effectually. Technology has the ability to cut through absolutely new markets and to drastically restructure the existing ones. The acceptance of digital technology – the internet, the software applications running on it, devices on which these applications are installed that allow people to connect to each other whenever, wherever, however, and whatever they want to – assures to lessen all that has come before. It sounds the lone most significant development in the history of marketing.

Whether these major developments in marketing signify an opportunity or a threat – as a marketer it depends deeply on our perspective. I hope the fact that you’re reading this post means that you see it as an opportunity.

Why do we need a Digital Marketing Strategy?
The quick meekest answer would be: because lacking digital marketing strategy we can miss the opportunities and mislay business or our products might be unnoticed in the market. So we need solid digital marketing strategy to conquer the digital generation and stimulate intended actions. Building strong strategy can support us making well-versed decisions concerning our invasion into the digital arena of marketing and will ensure us that our fight is focused on our business necessities.

Defining Digital Marketing Strategy
No ‘one-size-fits-all’ tactical remedy available to ensure the success of our digital marketing. Principally every single business interested in internet marketing needs to prepare its own strategic recipe consistent with its own specific set of requirements and business circumstances. It’s true that all the offered ingredients over the internet are the same but the resulting recipe would drastically be different as there are different products available in the market, even markets are different, consumer needs are different and the solutions would definitely be different too. So, finest people who best know your business should shape a strong digital marketing strategy to set a solid digital foundation. Consider the following outlines:

1. Know well your business – What about your business? Is it ready to adopt digital marketing?
2. Know well your competitors – List your key online competitors. Let’s have a match on what they are doing ‘Right’, learn from what they are doing ‘Wrong’, see an ‘Opportunity’ from what they are not doing at the moment, and learn how to ‘Differentiate’ your online contributions.
3. Understanding your consumers behavior – Study your customers and understand what their needs are and what do they want from you. Ask yourself, am I going to attend the same online customer-base, or will be navigating to a completely new demographic? How much knowledge my customers have regarding digital technology and how much they use it and how can I bind their familiarity and usage of this technology to my offerings in order to build a strong long-term relationship. Key behaviors of the online consumer are as below:
   1. Digital generation is gradually comfortable with the medium
   2. They want it all, they want it clear-cut and they want it right now – Time is everyone’s precious commodity. In the today’s digital world, where the whole things happen at the speed of light, consumers became habituated on getting their information on-demand and on-time from multiple sources concurrently. So they want information in such a format that they can scan for relevance without slaying time in inspecting detail.
   3. They’re unpredictable – The transparency and convenience of the internet do not eliminate the brand concept or seller’s reliability, but it does erode it. Today’s customers have the control to compare multiple competing brands exactly at the same time at their fingertips.
   4. Online Consumers are in audible conversations with each other – Connected consumers vastly talk to each other via reviews, social networks, blogs, forums and so forth. They share their positive even negative online feedbacks. For marketers, this is something like double-edged sword. Embedding their positive feedback can get far-fetched success possibility of our business.
4. Know well what you are going to achieve – Set very clear, flexible and reachable goals which are the key ingredients of digital marketing strategy. If you don’t know where and what you are heading to, there are plenty of chances you’ll certainly not get there. So understanding what we want to get out of digital marketing is necessary.
5. Know well how you’re doing – As compared to other means of advertising, the credit goes to digital marketing as the results are much more assessable. We can track a whole lot happening online and can compare to our progress along with predefined goals. We can see how our digital campaign progressing and if some improvements are needed – measure them, tweak them and refine them as digital marketing is a continuing and iterative process.
6. Recall your Marketing Mix (4 Ps) – You may possibly be thinking how all this innovative digital material fits into the usual marketing mix (4 Ps of Product, Price, Promotion and Place. We can break it down slightly like this.
   1. Place – Let’s just start with our place – the internet. 3+ billion connected people worldwide accessing via computers, mobiles, and other smart devices.
   2. Price – Pricing is much more critical in online environment so we need to be competitive in this way. We do not necessarily need to be the cheapest but to stay alive in market, we have to make sure our whole value proposition is convincing and stimulating actions.
   3. Product – This is the main focus of ours and this is what we are offering. A right product is the foundation of all the successful marketing, but it is predominantly vital in the digital age. Products bringing tangible benefits and meeting a real need of the targeted customer-base creates genuine opinions about the value proposition and give marketers the possibility they must have to do their job more effectively.
   4. Promotion – This is the whole thing we do either online or offline to get our product ahead of our forecasts, get new customers and maintain existing ones. Let’s summarize the key essentials to stimulate your hunger:
      • Website – It’s the core of your digital world and possibly the most significant component of your digital marketing strategy. To become valuable, you must have traffic and there are a lot of techniques to generate traffic but traffic itself is useless if it’s not navigated somewhere so where it should be navigated, of course, we need a website.
      • Search engine optimization (SEO) – It’s the process of receiving traffic from the free or natural search results on search engines. So manage content on website to what people are actively searching for and present in a way that makes it searchable to both search engines and people.
      • Pay-per-click search advertising (PPC) – Pay-per-click also called cost-per-click is an advertising model in which you pay only when your advertisement, keywords or key phrases are clicked. It’s an exceptionally effective way to generate search engine traffic more rapidly.
      • Associate marketing and strategic partnerships – Partner with other companies and websites in commonly profitable relationships to endorse your products and services.
      • Online public relations – Build strong online public relationships using online channels like blogs etc. to build a positive opinion concerning your products.
      • Social media networking – It’s a comparatively new marketing opportunity. Social networks are being used as a marketing tool for various reasons. Large companies use social networking websites to get information of their targeted markets, information of their competitors and to know the perception of people about their products as well as to promote their products.
      • E-mail marketing – This is often called granddaddy of internet marketing but suffering crisis in our time caused by constant spam attacks, but still an important digital marketing tool, especially to maintaining long-term relationships with existing customers.
      • Customer relationship management – Retaining customers and structuring mutually beneficial relationships with them are another significant component of digital marketing.

References: Understanding Digital Marketing

The contributor is Offshore/Onshore Project Coordinator | B2B/B2C Marketer | Oracle EBS Functional Team Lead | Content Writer, Visual Communication & Graphics Expert at Powersoft19

Powersoft19 delivers complex safety-critical embedded solutions to its clients around the world. The vision of the company is to enrich people’s lives by bringing innovation in everyday business processes. Powersoft19 specialize in developing innovative engineering and technological systems with many supporting services.

The understandings and thoughts articulated in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any team, division or business unit, subsidiaries, and technology partners of the Powersoft19.