Digital Marketing – Taking Over The Traditional Methods
Not many are aware that, India holds the ‘Second largest Internet Population in the world’, which is further growing at the rate of more than 20% Year-over-Year. Additionally, the growth of Digital media is estimated to be at 4.5 Trillion annually served Online Ads as well.
Quite frankly, there are many reasons for a company to use or to not use the Digital medium for their Marketing; however, single most important reason you need to be online is that Consumers have far too many options, and they need to be constantly reminded that you exist.
Now if you’ve ever wondered or are wondering, what exactly is digital marketing and why should you use it, then you’re at the right place!
Let’s begin by first explaining what Digital Marketing really is?
What is Digital Marketing?
Formally speaking, Digital marketing is another medium of marketing, more specifically performed on the digital front, which also acts as a roof for targeted and interactive marketing of strategies as well.
According to the Digital Marketing Institute, Digital Marketing for a layman, is the effective use of multiple channels of the digital medium. Some of these include – Affiliate Marketing, Display Advertising, Email Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Game Advertising, Online PR, Video Advertising, etc…
Digital Marketing is all about having a customer centric approach, and it holds a wide range of activities under its roof as well. We might not even have heard about some of these, but in general, there are a selected few that are used by everyone, which include – Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Content Marketing, Campaign Marketing, eCommerce Marketing, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Social Media Optimization, E-Mail Direct Marketing, etc…
These also extend to non-Internet channels that provide digital media as well, such as – mobile phones (SMS and MMS), during Callback and the on-hold mobile ring tones, etc…
Digital marketing is a broad term used to describe a wide range of online marketing functions, but as a whole, brands and companies use Digital Marketing for various reasons such as – Promote their respective brands, Interact with their customers directly, To Increase their online presence, To perform market research, To increase sales as well, and many more…!
Some of the latest developments and strategies in the industry include: -
- Segmentation: this method focuses more on targeting your specific market
- Influencer Marketing: Influencer Marketing is becoming a highly important concept in digital targeting, wherein, one reaches out to influencers via paid advertising, or through a sophisticated sCRM (social Customer Relationship Management) software.
- Online Behavioural Advertising: Under this medium, behavioural information and online activity of the users is collected, in order to deliver advertisements that are tailored according to their interests and preferences
- Collaborative Environment: A collaborative environment is something wherein, the company, the technology service provider, and the digital agencies help each other out to optimize effort, resource sharing, reusability and communications. Additionally, companies have also seen to be inviting their customers to help them better understand how to service them.
- Remarketing: Remarketing plays a major role in digital marketing. is a tactic wherein marketers publish ads in front of an interest category or a defined audience (also called as Searchers) who have either searched for that kind of product or service or have visited that website for some purpose.
- Game advertising: as most of us know, game ads are advertisements that exist within computer, video or online games.
Companies Known For Brilliant Digital Marketing Strategies
Remember the Oscar Selfie?
Yes, although, it wasn’t a digital strategy of any company, but we just wanted to show you the power of the internet and digital marketing!
This Ellen DeGeneres’s 2014 Oscar Selfie had made a huge buzz around the social media for days. The image and the moment had literally, gone viral.
What was there to learn from it was – apart from the celebrities, the Selfie was about a group of people who wanted to click and share a picture, during an era when Selfies were highly popular.
Lesson Learnt: Do the right thing, at the right time, and in the right way!
We all know about the Austrian company Red Bull and its remarkable strategies. Red Bull really looks like a product from a global economy.
They have done such a great job at branding and marketing themselves, that many Americans assume it’s a local brand.
Lesson Learnt: Think Local, Act Global!
For all those who aren’t aware, Airbnb is a community marketplace for people to list and book accommodations from around the world.
Since the time it started in 2008, Airbnb has grown to 1,500,000+ listings in 34,000+ cities worldwide.
And what has helped them achieve this grand success? Two Words – Social Media!
Their long list of out-of-the-box yet targeted and focused digital strategies and campaigns have helped the company become the #1 in the world.
- Government Digital Services (GDS)
Yes, even the UK’s Government Digital Services (GDS) uses the digital front to market itself.
They have adopted and implemented, some of the most ground-breaking techniques, to market itself. From its style guide to its responsive methods of working, the team has rapidly redesigned many features across the Government’s diverse portfolio.
Again, most of us would agree to this point that, Coca-Cola is one of the greatest examples of digital marketing.
Their strategies mainly revolve around small community programs and they focus more time and money on small-scale charity efforts.
Other than that, we all have seen their unique and intriguing commercials and videos as well.
Oreo is known to be an opportunist and uses brilliant marketing strategies that revolve around the current events.
For instance, Oreo took advantage of the blackout during the 2013 Super Bowl in an interesting way, by posting a single image with the words “You can still dunk in the dark.”
With the help of a 15 person team on hand to take advantage of captive super bowl audience, the post went viral.
Now, that’s a strong social media marketing campaign.
Do we even have to say anything?
Starbucks is well known for its heart touching story-styled videos. They are also highly recognized for their communications, including email and social, and the fact that, they have adopted to go Wi-Fi in all their stores, also gives them a huge amount of data of their customers as well!
Nike has been able to evolve its global presence through the careful selection of their international digital strategies and sponsorships.
They have been very strategic to choose who and how they want to be associated with.
By putting the power of design into the hands of the consumer, Nike is able to deliver customized products that align with different cultural preferences and styles.
Other than that, just like Oreo, Nike has also used a major sporting event to surround their social media campaign.
So coming back to the Original question –
“Why Digital Marketing”?
For one, it is highly cost effective. I mean, an email or social media campaign, can reach out to and transmit a marketing message to a wider audience and potential consumers that too for the merest fraction of the cost of a TV Ad or Print Campaign,.
Apart from the obvious fact that – digital marketing is far more affordable than traditional offline marketing, let’s give you a list of few more reasons to why using digital marketing is not only investment-wise decision, but is also an equally (maybe even better) effective marketing channel: -
- It gives everyone a fair chance to both SME’s and larger corporates, to present themselves to a larger and wider audience, and also provides SME’s an equal opportunity to compete against the bigger corporates.
- Digital Marketing also supports several mediums such as Mobile Market, and unlike otherwise, it delivers conversion (one can trace the same too)
- It presents you with the opportunity to directly Communicate and Interact with your Targeted Audience
- Digital Marketing helps to build Brand Reputation, helps you to earn People’s Trust, charms and sways potential consumers to take a favourable action, and it also ensures the survival of a Business on the internet as well.
- You can generate comparatively better Revenues and better ROI for your marketing investments with just about a meagre amount of spending.
- Digital Marketing makes you ready for the Internet of Things (IoT – is a global ecosystem of interconnected devices – tablets, smartphones, gadgets, appliances and more – that can interact with each other through the Internet.)
Digital Trends That Are Going To Be Big In 2016
According to a recent survey conducted amongst 1500 people, below mentioned are some of the Digital Marketing Techniques and Strategies that will matter most to businesses in 2016: -
- Actionable Analytics and Intelligent Analytics such as Big Data
- Content Marketing
- User Engagement and Communities (Branded niche or vertical communities)
- Conversion Optimization and Experience Optimization
- ORM – Online Reputation Management
- Display (Banners on publishers, ad networks social media including retargeting and programmatic)
- Internet of Things (IoT) marketing applications and Marketing Automation (including CRM, Behavioural Email Marketing and Web Personalisation)
- Digital Channel Sales Optimisation
- Mobile Marketing (Mobile advertising, site development and apps)
- Paid search marketing, e.g. Google AdWords, Online PR, etc
- Partnerships including affiliate and co-marketing
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Location Based Advertising
- Wearables (e.g. Apple Watch, activity trackers, augmented reality)
- Video ads and Infographics
