DIGITAL MARKETING

 Introduction

  Digital marketing also known as Online Marketing or Internet Marketing is   promotion of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the  Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other  digital medium.

  Digital Marketing Activities

 

 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

   

  

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

    

Content Marketing

   

 

Influencer Marketing

     

Content Automation

  

Campaign Marketing
    

E-commerce Marketing

     

Social Media Marketing

     

Social Media Optimization

     

 E-mail Direct Marketing

Display Advertising
   

E–books
  

Optical Disks & Games

    

  

History

Though digital marketing has roots in the mid-1980s, the term digital  marketing was first used in the 1990s, when the ChannelNet, developed  advertising campaigns for automobile companies.

 Digital marketing became more sophisticated in the 2000s and the 2010s and  the proliferation of devices able to access digital media has led to great  growth of digital advertising statistics produced in 2012 and 2013 showed that digital marketing was still a growing field.

Strategy Of Digital Marketing

"Emergence of digital marketing”  was the One of the major changes that      occurred in traditional marketing

•  Segmentation: In order to target specific markets in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer sectors, more focus has been placed on segmentation within digital marketing
•   Influencer marketing: Important nodes are identified within related communities, known as influencers. This is becoming an important concept in digital targeting. It is possible to reach influencers via paid advertising, such as Facebook Advertising or Google Adwords campaigns, or through sophisticated sCRM (social customer relationship management) software, such as SAP C4C, Microsoft Dynamics, Sage CRM and Salesforce CRM. Many universities now focus, at Masters level, on engagement strategies for influencers.
• Online behavioural advertising: In order to deliver advertisements tailored to that user’s interests and preferences, , Online behavioural advertising collects information about a user’s online activity over time, “on a particular device and across different, unrelated websites.
• Collaborative Environment: A collaborative environment can be set up between the organization, the technology service provider, and the digital agencies to optimize effort, resource sharing, reusability and communications^.. Additionally, organizations are inviting their customers to help them better understand how to service them. This source of data is called User Generated Content (UGC). Much of this is acquired via company websites where the organization invites people to share ideas that are then evaluated by other users of the site. The most popular ideas are evaluated and implemented in some form. Using this method of acquiring data and developing new products can foster the organizations relationship with their customer as well as spawn ideas that would otherwise be overlooked. UGC is low cost advertising as it is directly from the consumers and can save advertising costs for the organisation.
•  Remarketing: Remarketing plays a major role in digital marketing. This tactic allows marketers to publish targeted ads in front of an interest category or a defined audience, generally called searchers in web speak, they have either searched for particular products or services or visited a website for some purpose.
• Game advertising: Game ads are advertisements that exist within computer or video games. One of the most common examples of in-game advertising is billboards appearing in sports games. In-game ads also might appear as brand-name products like guns, cars, or clothing that exist as gaming status symbols

·  Advantages

•   Reduce cost:  Your business can develop its online marketing strategy for very little cost and can potentially replace costly advertising channels such as Yellow Pages, television, radio and magazine.
• Simple to measure: You can see in real time what is or is not working for your business online and you can adapt very quickly to improve your results. For measuring traffic to your site you can use Google Analytics to measure specific goals you want to achieve for your website or blog and most packaged email marketing solutions provide good insight into how many people are opening, reading and converting from your emails.
• Greater client appeal: The firms have the benefit of attractive to customers in results that can be brought by a medium rapidly. Online marketing gives a range to them of options to promote their business to the market.Thus, the technique and overall success of marketing strategies rely on business objectives and the total amount the business desire to purchase online marketing.
•  Brand Development: A well maintained website with quality content targeting the needs and adding value to your target audience can provide significant value and lead generation opportunities. The same can be said for utilizing social media channels and personalized email marketing.
•  Greater engagement: With digital marketing you can encourage your prospects, clients and followers to take action, visit your website, read about your products and services, rate them, buy them and provide feedback which is visible to your market. So it doesn't take long for good publicity to enhance the prospects of your business.

Disadvantages

•  Online Marketing  is not free as the cost of hardware, software, wed site design, online distribution costs, maintenance of your site and yes time, all should be factored into the cost of providing your product and service.
•  Still, the internet is considered as a source of information gathering for the majority of your customers. Many people are there who still prefer the live interaction when they buy. This may deter customers from buying if you have a small business with one location.
• Over 50% of households shop online and this number is continued to grow, you are reaching less than two out of three households.
• So many scams on the internet.
• Timing of updates is critical so it’s easy to have outdated information on your site.
• Is your website safe? Because of the fear of website’s security, many of the visitors will not want to use their credit card to make a purchase if they don’t know that your site is secure.
• No replacement is there for good old fashioned customer service. The majority of online marketers lack inquiry response programs and customer service. Therefore, your many online visitors will already have painted your website as poor service before contacted you. Also, the majority of sites have poor navigation that makes it tough for the visitor to find what they are looking for. Many sites were created without a customer service point of view.
• A lot of competition for your product already out there. When your visitor finds you then it means they have been checked many links already. Until and unless they can find what they are looking for quickly, they are gone.

Power of digital marketing from Asma Akhtar