Online advertisement accounts for 49 per cent of all Global Ad expenditure, according to Zenith's Advertising Expenditure Forecasts. That is nearly half of the expenditure on advertisement is being made worldwide online. More so, 43per cent marketers plan on increasing their budget on influencer marketing by this year. On the other hand, location-based marketing is set to grow by 14per cent to $24.4 billion in ad spending by this year. To top it off, social referral traffic to retail ecommerce sites have grown by 110 per cent in the past two years. These were some of the most recent digital marketing statistics that one may come across. Needless to say, it is becoming truly hard to put a blind eye to the expansion of digital marketing in our lives.
The digital marketing scene is growing much like that of the Internet when it first appeared and it’s going big. In fact, the word ‘big’ might be an understatement in itself. According to Wikipedia, digital marketing is the marketing 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 has spread its wings past the internet as it extends into the non-internet channels like the phone (sms/mms), on hold mobile tones, etc. As a result, digital marketing has created its insignia apart from online marketing.
Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience in the right place and at the right time. Today that means you need to meet them where they are already spending time; the internet. Even though digital marketing uses different communications techniques to traditional marketing, its end objectives still remain the same. It can be easy to set objectives for digital marketing based around ‘vanity metrics’ such as number of ‘likes’ or followers. Since digital marketing campaigns are executed exclusively through digital channels, it gives marketers more control, tools and data to analyze the effectiveness of a campaign. With digital marketing, by using tools like Analytics Dashboards one can easily monitor the success and ROI of their campaigns more than you could with a traditional promotional content such as a billboard or print ad.
Now let us take the three important tasks that any successful marketing encompasses: identification, anticipation and satisfaction of customer’s wants.
The internet now acts as a marketplace allowing both identification and anticipation of customers’ demand. The online purchases make for an easy indicator of the consumption patterns worldwide and this helps in more efficient allocation of resources. Since digital channels such as websites and apps take in more feedback and work on constant improvisation and improvement, digital marketing has had greater success in achieving customer’s satisfaction. Alongside, even the smallest of the businesses today entertain a customer support team who constantly works on optimizing customers’ satisfaction. It is now common for consumers to post feedback online through social media sources, blogs and websites on their experience with a product or brand. In social media platforms like Facebook, Youtube or Instagram, a consumer may come across detailed reviews about products and services, which provide them with greater insight about the market. This is an example of word to mouth communication. With the emerging times, it is an unspoken prerequisite that the producers remain in direct dialogue with the consumers in order to gain their trust and loyalty.
Popular digital marketing methods remain content marketing, influencer marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing, display advertising, data driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, etc.
Before the emerging of social media and the internet, TV/Radio ads, billboards, sports marketing were popular advertisement platforms amongst others and till date they remain so. However, with the globalization of internet, people from all ages, culture, race, religion and origins found a common ground for global connectivity. And global connectivity came at the cost of increased screen time. Smart phones and smart devices became our personal assistant. A digital space emerged, much like the public sphere that the newspapers created in the early days; only this one ever expanding, vast and ever dynamic. This meant that traditional marketing methods could no longer suffice and needed to be revised to better suit the needs of the new era. The world of Netflix, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Amazon, Alibaba, Delivery Hero and Pubg is no ordinary world. The world is ever-experimental with their innovations in AI and virtual reality. And with greater communication and interactivity, the businesses needn’t any longer visit physical spaces near the consumers or face them either to feed them the message. It is only a video or a click away. With digital marketing, there are no limitations on the geographical reach it can have. This allows companies to become international and expand their customer reach to other countries other than their own.
As individuals use various digital channels and devices, they leave footprints, that in the matter of data. This data is collected in the form of cookies and then added up to determine the audience’s taste, identity, interests, etc. This information is made available to the marketers as they cater to personalized, highly relevant ads paralleling the experience of the audience. This is known as audience activation. Data driven advertising alongside other methods like influencer marketing, creating a collaborative environment through User Generated Content Omni-channel integration, In game advertisement- all of these are powerful marketing tools that have low possibilities of failure. Digital marketing, due to its cross platform approach acts in complimenting the pre-existing digital platforms like television and radio rather than competing with them, thanks to additions like live audio and video streaming amongst other innovations.
As a result, all of the channels that are in use for marketing come together in order to help understand and penetrate the minds of the audience in a more organic, holistic way.
With brands shifting to digital marketing, it has become a beneficial career option. At present, companies are more into hiring individuals familiar in implementing digital marketing strategies and this has led the stream to become a preferred choice amongst individuals inspiring institutes to come up and offer professional courses in digital marketing.
“Everything online has a global network working behind the faces of what we see. As the competition stretches across the global scene, meeting excellent standards is truly essential. We try our best to enable our students and team members to engage in the global marketers’ scene and triumph over them,” says Abrar Ali Khan, the CEO of RoadLink Digital, an IT firm providing integrated marketing and business continuity solutions.
The writer is an IT professional