What factors affect Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing exists in an environment which is ever changing and very dynamic. Hence, it becomes unquestioningly important to account for and thereby address the factors affecting it.

Factors affecting digital marketing can be listed as follows:

• Target Market: The first and foremost thing in my viewpoint is deciding the target market for digital marketing. You cannot randomly serve your advertisements and online content to the millions of internet users available online because that would only lead to more costs for a firm. Also, the content must be aligned to the suitability and interests of your target market.
• Channels: Based on the channel decision, a business will be able to target its potential customers. The online marketing domain covers a wide spectrum of platforms, and many more are emerging with time. A business needs to do conduct a cost –benefit analysis and rank the various mediums on the basis of their cost effectiveness.
• Technology: One of the most important factors affecting digital marketing is technology which needs to be reviewed and updated on a continuous basis. Your in-house internet marketing team must have the technological knowhow. Beyond technical difficulties, companies often have to invest in equipment and services to implement their digital marketing campaigns. For example, a company that wants to do video marketing needs a digital camera, lights and audio recording equipment and the expertise to use it, or must pay a studio to handle the video editing and recording.
• Big Data: Big Data lets you answer the what, how, when and why of digital marketing. Big Data will continue to be an all-powerful and overarching topic among business planners and marketing strategists. As businesses realize that customer behavior and usage data is pivotal for leveraging their overall performance and profit, more businesses will adopt Big Data policies and data acquisition and integration technologies.
• Content: Your digital marketing efforts must include language and images that reflect your target market and resonate with them. Studies have shown that effective content marketing contributes in a great deal to the improvement of consumer conversion and retention.
• Social media: Social media presence of a business matters a lot. Businesses these days maintain active and healthy social media accounts of their businesses as well ask their employees to do so to engage their customers. Many companies launch online campaigns through social media platforms to attract new customers and retain the existing ones.
• Talent: Everything will out of place if the talent and skills of your digital marketing team are not up to the mark. The human element of digital marketing is actually its backbone. The knowledge and experience you and your team have in digital marketing influences whether or not you incorporate it into your overall marketing strategy. Having a talented workforce is an asset!
• Budget: Digital marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing, but it is definitely not free. Hence, there arises a need to prepare a well-defined budget for digital marketing. A marketer must decide and appropriate mix of organic as well as paid promotions. If budgeting is an issue; as it might be for smaller firms, it is advisable for them to outsource their digital marketing to a business who specializes in this.

When all the aforementioned factors are well accounted for and strategies are designed in congruence with them, digital marketing leads a business on the road to success.

Cheers, Happy Reading!