To be or not to be - Digital

Earlier this month, a renowned consumer goods brand had a well-defined problem statement for us. The ask was more for qualitative metrics to understand the impact of the branding beyond impressions and reach – covering Brand awareness, Top of mind awareness, Aided awareness, Unaided awareness, Consideration, Brand Salience. 

So how do you know how your brand is perceived in the minds of consumers? 

Which are the channels which can make your brand more relatable and has highest recall value? 

Well, we are sure no one would have a foolproof answer for these questions. Not because it is not possible or is complicated. That’s because there are multiple factors that need to work collectively to make a noticeable impact and provide the requisite results.  

Marketing as a sector as well as practice has evolved tremendously over the past few years. Also, the digital evolution has further pushed marketers to innovate and utilise various platforms for the benefit of their brands and customers.  

The Digital World 

Digital marketing is a very appealing concept and has soon become popular amongst the marketers.  

If we look at the various definitions of digital marketing, you can notice that all of them revolve around promotion of products or services using different digital mediums. You will not find a holistic definition that also covers aspects like customer experiences, relationship building and development or the importance of multichannel approach and integration. These all are very important in digital marketing as well and play a key role in making your digital marketing efforts work and provide efficient results.  

Digital marketing can help brands to ‘Identify’ customer needs and wants, ‘Anticipate’ customer behavior and preferences and also to ‘Satisfy’ their unique needs by regularly checking the feedback, performance, etc.  

Let’s have a look at the Indian digital scenario. The current urban population is around 33% while the internet penetration is 35%. As per IBM Report 2018, mobile phone penetration, which is currently at 79%, is expected to go up to 90% with 850Mn internet users by 2022. Multiple reports suggest that India is on its way to become a trillion-dollar digital economy. Low cost mobiles and easy internet accessibility surely are the key factors that are making this change happen.  

Digital marketing has been accepted as the preferred way of marketing by almost everyone lately and brands are investing heavily in this space and are also achieving good results. If we look at use cases of impactful digital marketing strategies and campaigns, you will surely find a huge list.   

Benefits of Digital Marketing: 

- Cost effective 

Marketing and advertising cost is one of the major concerns for businesses. While bigger businesses do not have an issue with investing huge amount of money for marketing, it becomes a nightmare for smaller businesses to spend hefty amount on marketing and advertising and compete with larger brands for ad space.  

Offline marketing is generally a costly affair. The newspaper ads, TV ads, radio ads, etc need a huge budget. Online marketing, on the other hand, is very affordable and even young entrepreneurs can easily manage to do it from the money they have saved up. Online marketing is a very cost-effective way to market your business and also achieve good impact. 

- Real time results 

When it comes to traditional marketing, you need to wait for weeks or even months to see the results and understand if your activities have made any impact among the audiences. However, with online marketing, you get to see the results quickly in real time. You can easily metrics like number of visitors, most active time, conversion rate, bounce rate, etc in real time.  

Digital marketing analytics have taken away the guesswork game where you had to wonder whether a particular activity/ campaign will work or not. Also, since you get to see the results in real time, you get a good understanding about what is working well and what isn’t. these insights can help you plan future campaigns in a better way too.  

- Higher exposure 

Any form of traditional advertisement is generally limited to a certain locality. You cannot really say that every television ad or newspaper ad that you do reaches out to the majority of the population.  

Digitization has turned the world into a global village. Digital marketing gives you the opportunity to make your ad or campaign visible in any part of the world hence reaching out to the entire world. The global nature of the digital platforms have had a huge impact on increasing the exposure of your marketing activities. 

- Higher engagement 

Continuous engagement with your audience is extremely important in today’s highly competitive world to stay relevant and maintain your customer base.  

When it comes to traditional marketing, it is not possible to interact with your target audience. Also, to plan your future steps, you need to wait for any responses or feedback. This entire process becomes very long and tedious.  

With online marketing, you can easily engage with your audiences in real time via different digital media channels and discuss as well as share details about your brand with them immediately. This definitely demands more time and engagement from your side as well. But eventually, engagement is crucial and if you are able to hold the attention of your customers well it can help you build a credible reputation for your brand/ business.  

- Precise targeting and segmentation 

Digital marketing allows marketers to precisely target their audience by presenting the ads to users basis their preferences, past actions, likes/dislikes, etc. This way, your customers get to see what they ask for. Most of the digital mediums have a smart algorithm that can study and collect information about user preferences making it easier to target campaigns specifically for a certain set of users. This eventually cuts down the marketing cost and also helps increase the possibility of sales.  

Digital platforms also allow for customer segmentation. This further reduces the costs and improves the likelihood of sales. However, it is necessary to collect sufficient information from the users for segmentation to work efficiently.   

- Huge return on investment (ROI) 

We all know how crucial ROI is for businesses. Even with small investments, digital marketing has the capacity to provide substantial amount of returns for your brand. When compared to traditional marketing, email marketing or running ads on social platforms cost very less and provide good amount of returns.  

- Brand development 

Online advertising can contribute tremendously in developing the brand image. Digital marketing has an upper hand in this case majorly because of the limited space and frequency of ads with traditional marketing.  

Rather than having a column in a newspaper, you can have an entire website for your brand. You can share information with your users through regular blogs, social posts, etc. All this can help in creating a consistent image of your brand/ company. This cannot be achieved via one TV ad or newspaper post. Digital mediums allow you to be highly interactive with the audiences eventually helping you build the brand and reputation of your business.  

- Levels the playing field 

Traditional marketing tactics generally require a huge budget to provide substantial results. While this might not be a big deal for bigger businesses, it’s difficult for small businesses to compete with their larger counterparts considering the limited budgets and resources they have. 

Digital marketing comes as a boon for such small businesses and helps level the field wherein everyone can gain exposure online at affordable budgets and allowing smaller brands to be competitive online. It also expands the reach for even smaller businesses allowing them to target the audience across the globe.  

Should you go Digital? 

Considering all the positives of digital marketing and with all the hype around it, it is normal to think that you should be putting in all your efforts and energy into your online presence. However, we suggest it is not quintessential for brands to go digital – just because everyone is joining the bandwagon. There are multiple factors you should consider before just randomly taking the digital route.  

Moreover, a single point of focus never works for anyone. Even if it does, the effects or results are often short-lived. You should always consider the specific needs of your business, understand your audience well, know where they are more active, get insights about their preference and only then decide on the best marketing route.  

Customers interact with the world both online as well as offline. Your marketing strategies also need to be available across channels to truly reach out to the maximum audiences so as to create a noticeable impact. Online and offline marketing both have specific benefits, so businesses shouldn’t rule out one or the other. To try and spread your company message as far and wide as possible, you should use all channels available. A multi-channel strategy is crucial for any business and can benefit tremendously in the long run.  

If we look at the traditional and digital ad spends across different verticals, you will notice that the numbers aren’t the same for everyone. As per Kantar IRMB Report 2017, BFSI sector is seen to be investing heavily in digital media with their share of digital ad spends at 46% of their total ad spend. E-commerce sector’s share of digital ad spend is at 29%, Education sector’s share is 12% while the share of digital ad spends for FMCG and consumer durables is at just 6%.    

While some sectors are totally taking advantage of the digital platforms and using a good mix of traditional as well as digital channels, there are many who are still far behind in the digital marketing game. Digital marketing has a lot to offer and not using it totally or sufficiently is surely not a good idea. If we want to efficiently market our products/ services and reach out to all the possible audiences in the right way, digital route is necessary. It is upon us to decide how much time and efforts we need to invest in digital marketing for optimum results. However, it is necessary to take that first step and get going with it.  

What are your views about digital marketing? Do you use the digital platforms for your brand as well? Do you believe in using a good mix of traditional as well as digital marketing for your brand or are getting good results only with digital marketing?  

Also, for those who are keen on using digital marketing and believe in its power, I will be sharing my thoughts about how you can implement it effectively for your brand in the next article.